Jurgen Habermas is one of the most cited international academics and his pedigree among Frankfurt School scholars makes him an important example of what debaters call "reluctant testimony." As a secular academic and scholar, Habermas confirmed for his fellow critical theorists that nothing in current social justice theories can be derived apart from the teachings and influence of Jesus Christ: “Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage.”

It is the life, teaching, and resurrection of Jesus that brings us to the persistent yet peculiar moment of Jesus versus the intellectuals in 2025.

In the approach of Easter, Christians acknowledge the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. Christianity is often charged with being anti-intellectual, even though Jesus was known as a teacher. Jesus’ famous teaching found in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John instructed: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” My home university at SMU, like many universities across the nation, is historically adorned with this pivotal insight offered often in latin: veritas liberabit vos. It is not an altogether surprising paradox that the small Baptist teaching college known as Harvard now finds itself at the apex of academic power while also squaring up against a populist culture war. It is hard to deny that hard-nosed secularists have wrested private Christian universities away from the paradigm of Jesus into a realm of social negotiation about what “truth” is. The outrageous denial of womanhood stands as one of the most important current dicta demanded at universities across the nation.

The idea that Christianity might be anti-intellectual should surprise no one. It certainly did not surprise the intellectuals and academics rooted in the academic institutions of Jerusalem. Precisely as foreshadowed in the Serpent’s discussion with Eve about having knowledge without God (Genesis 3). The tree of knowledge is liable to give any human being a sense of pride that incorrectly supposed that walking and living life apart from God is for the best. Jesus’ confrontation at the temple in Jerusalem at the nation’s highest point of learning was a predictable narrative consequence to a story peppered with accusations and defiance as Jesus answered questions from academics across the nation of Israel. Jesus correctly observed that the teachers of the day corrupted the knowledge of God into a deadly weapon being used against the people of God. Our ongoing intellectual abilities to misinterpret God and leave Him entirely out of our academic equations is perfectly consistent with the rhetorical arc of the Bible.

The reason Jesus taught that the “truth will set you free” was that he recognized that within the faithful seed of the resurrection, a cadre of brave followers would be willing to seek and indulge the truth in times of mass deception. As Orwell and so many prescient thinkers have observed, the price of telling the truth in times of mass deception can easily be the loss of human life. The communist party of China excels at mass deception and intimidation. It is not surprising that the consequence of this pathology is that the government executes thousands of people every year --  exponentially more than any other government in the world. Easter centers the resurrection like an intellectual diamond amidst the absurdity of global Gleischaltung -- a term noted by Hannah Arendt to describe the mass deception led by academics in Germany as prelude to the Holocaust.

Jesus recognized when he first turned water into wine that he was initiating a clock of inevitable annihilation rooted in the intellectual resistance to his embodiment of the truth. The Christian belief in the resurrection is the truth that sets us free because it can by faith place our mind beyond the reach of fear induced by deadly genocidaires who kill the innocent in public as a means of gaining the consent of gullible masses. Death is not the last word in political argument. It can ultimately be an important and idealistic beginning. That is essentially why Easter remains so important in 2025. The world maintains its pathological intellectual attachment to death as argument. The public killing of the innocent has always been among humanity’s worst features. The resurrection of Jesus is offered as an important and necessary alternative to that shrewdly crafted world. 

Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several academic books regarding political communication, presidential rhetoric, and genocide.

Image: PxHere