Abstract

In The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology, Paul Moser argues that Jesus’s love commands have important implications for how philosophy should be done by Christian philosophers. He calls for a reorientation of the questions that philosophers pursue, requiring that questions lead to agape-oriented ministry. Yet Moser omits discussion of an important duty of philosophers—teaching. Once the duty of teaching is considered, this essay argues that few philosophers could meet Moser’s ideal. Instead of abandoning Moser’s project to reorient philosophy, though, this essay takes it one step further and argues that many, though not all, Christian philosophers should leave academia to become clergy. Examination of these meta-pedagogical issues, including that of Christian calling and vocational choice, transitions to pedagogical speculation of what Moser’s demands might require in the classroom. Moser’s obedience mode of philosophy is then compared with competing models in the advocacy-neutrality classroom debate.