Disputationes

Semantics and Correlative Theology

2012-01-09T00:00:00.001-06:00

There was once a time when I did not worry too much about how talk of God and talk of the universe as such connected.   In those days I solidly subscribed to a correlative theology which linked the semantics of theological language to the semantics of human existential/phenomenological/ontological language. Theological truth and meaning had to do with human truth and meaning. The language of each could be mapped to an appropriate background language such that the discourse of theology was commensurate with that of theology. While the logical geography of fundamental ontology differed from that of theology, they could be compared. Existential questions could be given theological answers, and theological answers would invite existential questions.

Over the years I have come to regard this effort as being more or less misguided. It is not that existential questions cannot be correlated with religious answers, it is simply that when this is done, the religious answer correlated has a different meaning than it would have had were it not so correlated.   How is this so?

Religious and theological answers pertain to soteriology, and what is salvific with respect to our immediate situation in the universe is not likely the same thing as what is salvific when our immediate situation is worked up existentially-phenomenologically-orntologically.   (I realize that this statement needs a considerable amount of unpacking.) A corollary to what I am saying is simply that a problem with the method of correlation is that it cannot save the one that correlates. This method is to the philosophy of science what lived salvific immediacy is to the practice of science.

It is finally a question of semantics. For C (the one correlating), existential question E has a definite meaning that can in some way be addressed by theological answer T. E and T have more or less definite semantic conditions for C. Think, however, about one who has not adopted the reflexive standpoint of C. Let us call such a non-reflexive one U (standing for unable of willing to occupy the standpoint of C). For U, T has different meaning and truth conditions than for C because the truth conditions for T are ontological - - one might better say 'ontic' here because I am talking about being not the be-ing of beings - - in a way that they are not for C.

How is this so? Clearly, the truth conditions for T with respect to U are tied to what is the case in a way that T is not for C. Accordingly for C, T is true just in case T obtains. But this need not be so for C. Here T is true just in case it is appropriately linked to E. For U, T is true just in case a relationship R holds appropriately of some state of affairs S. For C, T is true just in case a relationship R' hold appropriately of some religious or theological description D that is pertinent to E. For U, T is true because of some reality that is what it is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. This is an extensionalist interpretation of T. For C, since T is true just because there is a reality which is what it is because of human awareness, perception, conception or language, the description of this reality becomes the most important matter.   Now we have moved to an intensionalist context.   (This needs more unpacking as well.)

If I have not made myself sufficiently clear in the proceeding paragraph, let me try again. The theologian who believes there is some extra-linguistic, extra-subjective ontological situation that obtains from which one must be saved, will regard the meaning of that which saves to be of a different type than the theologian who does not believe this. The move to the reflexive level is indeed a move out of the primary soteriological context. The one making the move likely has reinterpreted the meaning of the soteriological context in ways that make it true that a real ontic answer no longer is necessary or warranted in addressing that context.

The question of which we are dealing concerns the identity conditions of theological and religious statements.   What makes one theological proposition semantically identical to another? Identical syntax does not an identical semantics entail, for theological propositions have different meanings within different contexts.   Semantics does not supervene upon syntax unless the syntax is defined to include the very form of life of the one using the syntax.   (One might then talk about a global supervenience of semantics upon syntax.) The identity of theological propositions is clearly not externally related to the philosophical (ontological) context in which they find themselves and to which they are related. The point is that the context of reflexive correlation is a very different context than immediate lived existence.

A related question of identity within theological semantics arises for the theologian who believes that the content of preaching Christ and Him crucified is somehow identical across various philosophical and metaphysical worldviews. Wilhelm Hermann argued famously that metaphysics is irrelevant to theology. That is to say, presumably, that the semantic identity of a certain set of theological statements is invariant across different ontological worldviews, across worldviews as different as nineteenth century materialism and teleological Aristotelianism. The semantics of theological propositions are indifferent to the greater philosophical context, that is, to alternate sets of philosophical presuppositions.

But this cannot possibly be the case. What a theological proposition means is fundamentally connected to the context in which it finds itself, that is, to the wider philosophical context. It is very easy to see this is true, for the truth conditions of a theological proposition does in fact change across different ontological horizons. Why?

Imagine I hold that the proclamation that I am forgiven from my sins in spite of my sin is a performative utterance issuing in the perlocution of existential empowerment in the face of fundamental anxieties.   Clearly, the semantics of the declarative utterance is related to the context of a linguistic/existential structure of human existence. The meaning of the declarative statement is not related to some kind of theological states of affairs, but rather to the human existential/linguistic structure. In this way, one might say that the Word is what it does.

However, the critical question is and has always been, is the Word only what it does.   Is the perlocution itself the result of a belief about the world, or can the perlocution happen without such a belief?   It has always seemed clear to me that the possibility of the perlocution occurring is tied to human belief in a very proximate way. Without the belief being the belief that it is, it is not the case that the perlocution is the perlocution that it is.   Responding to the gospel declaration is not like hearing the words "excuse me." While the conventions of the social situation are present in the former, they do not determine the use and response to the gospel address in a similar way.

But the deeper question has to do with truth conditions themselves.   If one says "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself," is it not quite different to say that the truth conditions are that God is in Jesus Christ, or alternately that they are somehow in the existential empowerment of the listener? Consider how different these two truth conditions are:

1) 'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' is true if and only if God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.

2) 'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' is true if and only if the utterance of 'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' effects a particular hearer H (appropriately structured so as to be effected by the utterance), in such a way as to have existential empowerment of an appropriate kind,

While one could spend a great deal of time and effort trying to clarify (2), it should be apparent what the salient difference between (1) and (2) is.   The meaning of the latter has to be defined relationally with respect to the human linguistic/existential structure; the meaning of the former can be defined by its relationship to a world that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. world.

The Big Problem for Lutheran Confessionalism

2011-12-04T16:06:00.003-06:00

Thinkers like to think about things towards which progress can be made. Philosophers of a materialist or physicalist persuasion find it relatively easy to understand how properties at higher levels might covary as a function of properties at lower levels.

For instance, biological properties distribute as a function of chemical properties, which distribute as a function of molecular properties, which themselves distribute as a function of atomic properties or subatomic properties. While there are some problems relating levels, the big problem concerns how it is that psychological properties covary with respect to neurophysiological properties.

While we may have no difficulties in general in countenancing a view of things where neurophysiological actualizations are finally metaphysically dependent upon mircrophysical causation, the notion that thoughts and decisions might ultimately metaphysically depend upon mircophysical processes is disquieting. While moderate reductions seem unproblematic throughout physical reality, the countenancing of reductions between the mental and physical involves some rather paradoxical claims, e.g., the notion that my writing these words in this blog right now themselves metaphysically depend somehow upon microphysical actualizations of various kinds.

While some philosophers here warmly embrace the "downward causality" of the mental into the physical on a mereological basis, the fundamental problem remains: If mental event m1 causes neurophysiological actualizations p2, then it seems that m1 must either itself have a physical realization or not. If it has no physical realization, then the advocate of downward causation must finally advocate a substance dualism - - something they want to avoid - - or she or he must admit that the physical realizer of m1 - - let us call this p1 -- itself causes p2, and there is no real downward causation. So the big problem is simply this: How is genuine freedom possible for an agent when the agent and his/her acts are metaphysically dependent upon microphysics? The problem is so big and intractable, that philosophers generally work on easier problems, providing in other ways the work that can advance a physicalist agenda.

We confessional Lutherans also have a problem that is so big that we really don't want to entertain it. We want to work on things that can be worked upon profitably, e.g,, Law/Gospel matters, not problems that seem intractable, problems that pertain to the truth of our theological position.

All the standard paths are open for the Lutheran wanting to talk about truth, of course. One could say that proposition p is true if and only if p describes or expresses the feelings, attitudes or the existential orientation of the one so uttering p. Or one might improve this somewhat by saying that p is true if and only if it liberates from sin and grants the freedom for the future (whatever precisely might by meant by "sin" and "freedom for the future" in this context). Or one might say that p is true if and only if it functions as a rule for the specification and use of other utterances by a particular linguistic community. Or perhaps one is less trendy and say that p is true if and only if p obtains. But then one must ask the rule specifying the condition for p obtaining.

Readers will understand that this last option asks that we think about the truth of p in broadly "cognitive-propositional" terms. For one stating that 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself' is true if and only if God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, the question is what conditions must be met in order for God to be in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. This is not an easy question, as we shall see. One could say that that there is an individual God, and individual Christ, and that the two are related by the first being in the second. But this does not help too much either, for what are the conditions for "being in"?

At this point, the discussion of the last few decades about Christian inclusivism, exclusivism and pluralism becomes relevant. One could say that there is some kind of linguistic commensurability across religions such that the same objects and events can be in principle picked out in the various religious worlds. On this view, the Christin and Buddhist would presumably disagree about whether God was in Christ obtains, but they would both understand what it means. However, if a particular kind of holism holds, then the Buddhist could not state that "God was in Christ" in the same way as the Christian, and thus the fact that it obtains for one and not the other would not entail that the very same thing would need to obtain for both in order for truth to be predicated.

The point is a basic one between internalism and externalism. Are there conditions that must be met in order for a proposition to correctly apply to a situation, conditions that are internal to the proposition in question (and its relevant context), or are they external to it? What I am asking is simply whether or not there can be some "bird's eye" factual perspective above and beyond the practico-linguistic worlds occupied by adherents of the various world religions. While this question of the priority of facts over language arises within philosophy generally, theologians must pay especially intense attention to it because, in some sense, much of what the theologian is trying to talk about is beyond what can be said to be factual in any ordinary sense. The theologian who embraces externalism must seemingly hold, as John Hick suggests, to a view that Ultimate Referent of religious and theological language lies beyond the linguistic worlds of any religion and that it is a noumenal reality to which the phenomenal fields of meaning of the various traditions point.

Lutherans do not often enter the fray on what many would regard as a "philosophy of religion" concern, but it is simply the case that some position on the inclusivism, eclusivism, pluralism issue is more cogent and plausible than others, and must thereby be adopted - - either explicitly or implicitly. While the relationship between grace and nature in some of the Catholic theological tradition sets up nicely for inclusivist views like those of Rahner, Lutheran emphasis on the discontinuity between these two seem to block any argument for being an "anonymous Lutheran." A tendency towards exclusivism seems to be in the Lutheran theological DNA, but clearly we cannot easily argue like seventeenth century Lutherans did before the "Copernican revolution" of realizing that Christian faith is one belief system among the other world religions, and that the Lutheran take on Christianity does not predominate even there.

To hold to religious pluralism is much easier when one works with an alethia account of truth as unveiling, rather than an account that supposes there is an objective reality identified by Christians as the Triune God. To the theological realist, of course, truth is not promiscuous, and it is predicated of those propositions that tend to represent most accurately that which can never be known. (While the paradox here makes this problem seems acute, it is no worse than the problem of the external world generally.)

I believe that the big problem I describe here should be regarded as such by any Lutheran thinking through the options on the table. We cannot simply decide not to engage the issue. To do that would be an example of the quietism we have so long been accused of sponsoring.

The Ugly Broad Ditch

2011-10-08T08:28:00.008-05:00

Gotthold Ephriam Lessing (1729-81) is famous for a great many things, one being the authorship of the trenchant phrase, "the ugly broad ditch which I cannot get across."

Lessing's "broad ugly ditch" concerns the supposed jump Christian theology must make from the accidental truths of history to the necessary truths of reason. He writes: "If on historical grounds I have no objection to the statement that Christ raised to life a dead man; must I therefore accept it as true that God has a Son that is of the same essence as Himself?" Lessing's solution to the problem of the ugly broad ditch is not to base the deep truths of religion on the contingent facts of history, but rather to reverse the situation and find in history an exemplification of the deepest truths of religion. These truths are ultimately grounded not in history but in personal experience. Lessing compares his solution to geometry: "Is the situation such that 'I should hold a geometrical theorem to be true not because it can be demonstrated, but because it can be found in Euclid'?" The truths of Christianity are to history as the theorems of Euclid are to Euclid. History no more grounds Christian truth than Euclid grounds geometrical truth.

A distinction used among twentieth-century philosophers gets at the issue about which Lessing is concerned. We must distinguish the context of the origination of a putative truth from its context of justification. Just because probability theory originated among men of rather unsavory reputation playing in the Italian casinos does not mean that probability theory is somehow incorrect. Truth claims must be justified in the logical space of reason, not by an appeal to external historical circumstances. The context of origination (or discovery) of a truth simply is logically independent from the context of its justification. To confuse the two is to commit the genetic fallacy, to claim that an argument is unsound on the basis of the one giving it (and the purposes for which it is given), rather than on the basis of the evidence for the premises and the validity of the reasoning.

Lessing's claim is thus that the "ugly broad ditch" of logical independence separates the context of the origination of Christian truth from the context of its justification, and that this "ugly ditch" is, in effect, necessary to prevent one from committing the genetic fallacy. Christian truth must stand on its own legs; it must not be dependent upon who said what when. Reflecting a bit on this, one realizes that the problematic of the "ugly ditch" forces one to take a position on revelation: what is it for God to "disclose" to us truth that we could not have grasped by free exercise of our insight?

Specifically, we must inquire as to whether revelation is best conceived as external, contingent and accidental, or whether we might understand it to be somehow internal, necessary and reasonable? (I am using "necessary" here in the sense of Lessing, and not making a modal claim.) This question as to the "location" of revelation goes right to the heart of the matter, I believe, and how one answers it determines who one's theological comrades are and, indeed, even potentially what century one lives in theologically. For Lutheran Orthodoxy, there could be no question of the "place" of revelation. It is indeed external; the formal norm of Scripture establishes the material norm of Christ, and both norm theological reflection. For denizens of the heady world of nineteenth century post-Kantian theology, revelation's "place" cannot be external because there can in principle be no bridging of the ditch on that assumption. The contingency of the Biblical text, the contingency of history, the contingency of the Christian tradition all mitigate against a successful justification of the most profound truth of all of life.

Within Lutheran theology we have moved a very great distance indeed since the time of Lessing. We have passed through German idealism, the disintegration of Hegelianism into the right and left wing schools, the rise and fall the Ritschlian School, the rise of fall of Neo-Orthodoxy, existential, phenomenological and hermeneutical theological approaches, and the various theologies of liberation. We have witnessed sophisticated, learned attempts to do theology faithfully, attempts that understand the intellectual and cultural horizon of the time as well as the witness of Scripture and tradition. But the sophistication of the theological enterprise over the last two centuries can sometimes obfuscate certain fundamental questions. The question of the ontology of revelation is central among these questions. It infects all of our theological thinking, oftentimes confusing conversational partners to the point of not knowing even that they are confused! I will close this brief essay with an example of how this is so.

Lutherans have always spoken of sola scriptura, claiming that Christian truth is not founded on the pronouncements of canon law, councils or popes, or in the authority of the patristics or other church fathers. Authority is found in Scriptures. But now the question arises: In the meaning of the written words of Scripture? The standard reply here, of course, is "no!" The words of Scripture are themselves to be understood contextually both synchronically and diachronically. The words of Scripture have meaning within the context of their origination and throughout the context of their transmission, and in the context of Scripture itself being a tertiary witness to the primacy of the Word manifest in Christ and the secondary witness to this Word in the immediate oral tradition. Now this way of things has interesting corollaries because it makes it difficult to claim that unsophisticated readers can ever "know" what Scripture is meaning. (Presumably, one must know the context deeply before one can know the text.) One could simply ignore these problems, but one does it at one's own theological peril. Regardless, the larger problem of Lessing forever looms: Something in the contingencies of history and tradition can undermine Christian truth, the truth upon which our very existence rests.

So another way of understanding Scriptural authority must seemingly be sought, a way that does not abandon Scripture in externality, but which rather protects the sola scriptura from the vicissitudes of scholarship upon the text and context. This way of understanding, I think, must proceed by locating authority somehow immediately within the reading of the text. The text is not authoritative because of some historical, causal connection to a divine nexus, but is rather authoritative because of what it somehow does to the reader in its reading. The place of revelation is now found within the power of the revelatory event itself. The original authoritative externality of the sola is now translated safely into the inner authority of the event of revelation as text confronts reader.

It should be obvious that all of this has very deep repercussions for Lutherans fighting about whether the practice of homosexuality is consistent with Biblical truth. The relationship among the notions of Biblical authority, revelation, Christian truth, and the "ugly broad ditch" cannot be more palpable. It is not my intention here to offer a constructive solution to the problem, but merely point it out. I have always believed that if we could get clear on the problems in theology, perhaps we could get clear on the kinds of discussions that would profitably lead to a solution.

Can a Lutheran Semantics be Recovered?

2011-09-04T14:14:00.006-05:00

For some time now I have been interested in theological semantics. Reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus thirty years ago, made me acutely aware of the problems we encounter when we try to talk about extra-worldly" things. (I include any talk about a talking about extra-worldly things as itself an extra-worldly thing.) Wittgenstein's distinction among propositions having Sinn (sense), those that are sinnlos (senseless), and those having nicht Sinn (nonsense), was for me very convincing that theology encounters significant problems in its speaking. Because I thought in those days that getting clear on semantics could be done independently from affirming or presupposing a metaphysic, I thought that there was some global problem with theological semantics. The language simply could not refer properly, it could not clearly affirm a state of affairs that one could falsify. Because I was hoping to become a theologian, the idea that the language of the trade was strictly speaking nonsense, caused me considerable discomfort.

While I am still somewhat uncomfortable with the general problem of theological language, over the the years I have gradually come to understand that a deep relationship exists between semantics and metaphysics and/or ontology. There simply are no semantic facts and judgments that can be made (or presupposed) independently of what one believes is that case. For the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, a metaphysical atomism nicely accompanies his semantic nominalism. If it is true that facts comprise the world - - "Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsache, nicht der Dingen - - and if there are not ethical, philosophical, aesthetic and theological facts, then the propositions purporting to talk about these things must be "pseudo-propositions." They look like they are making factual claims, but are finally not doing so.

Because of the press of many matters, I have not developed adequately what I regard to be the case: The Lutheran Reformers were unreflective theological realists and the presupposition of such a realism made them theological semantic realists as well. For those who wrote, read, debated, and signed the various confessional documents, there was simply no question that the language of the documents referred to divine entities, properties, events and states of affairs. Furthermore, because they believed that a divine realm exists outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language, the language could rather unproblematically connect to it, and state what is the case (or not the case) with respect to it. Confessions-talk is thus talk "in the material mode;" for the Reformers it made truth-claims of the world, for the world of the Reformers was filled with facts about which Wittgenstein would be astonished. His judgment that human language was unable to picture in logical space the transcendent was simply an admission of what philosophers since the Enlightenment presupposed: Talk of the divine was, in general, on very problematic epistemological footing.

This epistemic liability is related to ontology: One either says that we cannot affirm p because we cannot know that p is, or that we can affirm p even though we don't know for sure that p is - -or perhaps that our criterion of "for sure" has changed. In the Reformation period, when what it meant to know "for sure" was different than the Enlightenment, one could reasonably hold metaphysical facts that later became quite unreasonable. As it goes with metaphysics, so it goes with semantics. If it is unreasonable to hold a particular metaphysics, then it is reasonable to revise our language or, like Wittgenstein, claim that there is something about our natural language that makes it the case that it naturally can refer to states of affairs of a materialist or physicalist nature, but cannot picture a theological order at all.

We theologians who learned that the theological task must go through Kant learned to neglect certain questions and to prioritize others. The possibility of theological semantics (including theological truth) had to begin with a rejection of the very possibility of theological and semantic realism. Trained in the post-Kantian theological tradition, we looked at the texts of the Lutheran Confessions with quite different eyes than those who formulated, debated, and signed them. The questions that were of interest to us were naturally about things that could be of interest to us.

None of this is, of course, necessarilya bad thing. Classic texts have a deep fecundity; their history of interpretation takes them sometimes far from the contexts in which they are written. However, when the Churches of the Augsburg Confession find themselves no longer able deeply to recognize each other, then the question arises: When has the interpretation ceased any claim to normativity? How does one determine what is normative about such normativity in this case? Is there a set of presuppositions or affirmations that grounds a normative stance on the Confessions?

My sense is that Lutherans will continue to talk past each other as long as they are unwilling to articulate their ontologies. We live in a far different context than that of Wilhelm Hermann who claimed the independence of theological assertion from metaphysics. In a time where society and culture no longer grant a continuity of theological practice and expression (through a difference of ontological interpretation), people are searching again for authentic claims. They are not looking to find some way to justify the continued use of a theological language in the face of modern philosophical and scientific developments, but rather they search for a ground or reason to employ such language at all. As it was in the beginning of the Christian tradition, so it is now: The only reason to employ the language is that we Christians regard something to be true that non-Christians do not so regard. But the question of truth is always connected to the question of being. So it is that we Lutheran Christians must ask, "What is it that we hold to be so that others don't so hold, that is what it is apart from us, and that we sense the need to tell others about? What is this thing?

The Reformers could not have entertained this question without presupposing a rather explicit theological realism. The question for us is simply this: Can we? I used to think we could, but I no longer believe this. If Christ has not risen from the dead, than we Christians are the most to be pitied.

Institute of Lutheran Theology Happenings

2011-07-01T09:23:00.006-05:00

As many of you know, I have had the opportunity these last years to serve as the founding president of the Institute of Lutheran Theology. I have been grateful to have been able to do this. The time came a few months ago, however, for me to reevaluate what it is that I can do and can't do. With the Institute growing so quickly, it just is not possible any longer for me to serve both as President of ILT and Vice President of Academic Affairs. Accordingly, as of the June ILT Board meeting I am no longer president of this organization, but now VP of Academic Affairs only, I am very excited to be back doing mostly academic work, and am thrilled about the new person the ILT Board has selected to represent ILT as president. The announcement of this new person will come later this summer.

Many people connected with the Institute of Lutheran Theology have recently been contacted by a former staff person of ILT concerning a new start-up entitled "St. Paul Lutheran Seminary." As it turns out, two former staff members of ILT are advertising that a new seminary will be on-line this fall, and they have apparently gotten one former ILT faculty member to teach for them. Like the ILT Board and the rest of the ILT staff, I am concerned that people understand that "St. Paul Lutheran Seminary" is in no way connected to ILT. Its efforts are neither supported nor sanctioned by ILT.

Now the question arises: What motivation might there be to start a new seminary? It seems that when things like this happen within Lutheran circles, there are generally the following motivations:

One might start a new seminary because of theological reasons. However, it appears that the new entity has no theological differences with ILT. The Institute has always tried to understand Lutheran theology in the context of its origination and development, and related this theology to the contemporary intellectual horizon. I doubt if the new organization is opposed to this.

One might start a new seminary because of ecclesioloigical reasons. However, it appears that the new entity is striving to serve the same market as ILT. The Institute has always tried to serve LCMC and NALC congregations, and support as well those ELCA congregations who sense they are not being fed theologically by the ELCA seminaries.

One might start a new seminary because of structural/organizational reasons. However, it appears that the organization of ILT as a "distributed residential community" with non-geographic "Designated Teaching Centers" using the latest in synchronous technology is one with which the new entity might agree.

Sometimes it is said that if one puts three Lutherans in the same room, one gets three different theological traditions. Lutherans have traditionally privileged truth over unity. When important doctrinal/theological issues are at stake, Lutherans have historically separated from one another. However, Lutherans need not be opposed to unity. We can work together. Sometimes unity is a very good thing. ILT has always hoped that one seminary might develop to be the voice of theological conscience within present day Lutheran diaspora. I do not think the present context warrants a division or reduplication of efforts in the building of a truly confessional Lutheran seminary.

I have been working on trying to build ILT for about six years now. We have now a very fine faculty, scores of students, a great curriculum, dozens of congregations relating closely to us, and the financial stability to accomplish those things we believe that God has put before us. The future is very exciting! Let us work together in trust and love.

Soli deo gloria.

On an Infinite Regress of Causes

2011-03-17T08:05:00.006-05:00

The general structure of cosmological arguments is well known: Starting from general features about the world (e.g., that there is movement), these arguments proceed by pointing out that these general features must have a cause, and this cause must have a cause, and since if there were no first cause there would not be any subsequent causes, there must indeed be a first cause.

Much has been written over the years about cosmological arguments, and there are, in truth, many different types of such arguments. One must distinguish in esse arguments (arguments in the order of ontological dependency) from in fieri arguments (arguments in the order of temporal becoming). One must distinguish arguments that proceed from the fact of contingency from arguments proceeding from movement or causality. One must distinguish arguments that use the principle of sufficient reason from arguments that do not make explicit use of this principle. To enter into any discussion of the diverse array of such arguments shall not be our concern here. What I want to deal with in this post is an interesting attack by James Sadowsky on the notion that there can be an infinite regress of causes ("Can there be an Endless Regress of Cause," International Philosophical Quarterly, 20-4, 1980).

Sadowky points out that the operative principle in the cosmological argument is that "if each cause of A were itself in need of a cause, then no cause of A could exist and hence A itself could not exist." From this the argument proceeds easily: A (let us say there is motion in the world) exists and thus all of A's causes are not in need of a cause, that is, there is some cause that is itself not in need of a cause. [One thinks here perhaps of Schopenhauer's quote that the law of universal causation is like "a hired cab that one dismisses when one reaches one's destination."]

Critics of cosmological arguments oftentimes point to the obvious fact that in order for A to be, there must be some B which causes A, and in order for B to be there must be some C that causes B, and that this series can run back to infinity. Think for a moment about the infinite series of integers. For every integer I, there is some integer 'I - 1' such that I is generated from 'I - 1' by adding '1'. Any integer can be "caused" by taking the preceding integer and adding one. There is no problem with this series running back to infinity, of course. If it did not, we would have a pretty truncated mathematics.

But proponents of cosmological arguments often make claims about how an actual infinite is not possible - - after all, Aristotle said so - - and that the analogy between an infinite causal series in the world and the infinite series of integers is not great. For the infinite causal series, the operative principle specified previously holds, which does not in the generation of infinite mathematical series: If each cause of A were itself in need of a cause, then no cause of A could exist and hence A itself could not exist.

Sadowsky asks us to compare the statement of the cosmological argument that no causation can take place because each act of causation requires a previous act of causation with the following: no permission can be asked for because each asking of permission requires a prior asking of permission. Consider this statement:

1) No one may do anything (including asking for permission) without asking for permission.

Is (1) true? It seems not, for how could it be that the condition for asking for permission is itself the asking of permission. It seems that permission asking in order to do every X cannot run back to infinity, because X includes the asking of permission. The activity of asking for permission cannot run back to infinity because there would be no first asking of permission and thus no subsequent series of permission asking.

Sadowsky asks us now to consider Ryle's demolition of the so-called "Intellectual Legend": Never do anything (including thinking) without first thinking about it. Consider then (2):

2) No one ought to anything (including thinking) without first thinking about it.

Is (2) true? It seems not, for how could it be that the condition for thinking is itself based upon thinking? It seems that an infinite series of intellectual reflection based upon intellectual reflection is impossible, for how can it be that one's reflection on something (call it X) must result from X?

Although Sadowsky does not explicitly say so, he supposes that (1) and (2) are unsatisfiable, that is, there cannot be a state of affairs of every act of intellectual thinking being dependent upon anterior acts of intellectual thinking. Why? Because if there is real contingency in intellectual thinking - - if it is possible to consider propositions either shrewdly (intellectually) or stupidly - - and the condition for considering propositions shrewdly (intellectually) is a prior condition of having considered propositions shrewdly (intellectually) and not stupidly, then in order for there to be subsequent acts of intellectual consideration there must have been a first act of intellectual consideration. In other words, there is no possible world in which there can be an infinite regress in the order of prior intellectual operations as a prerequisite of subsequent intellectual operations. There must be a first intellectual operation that grounds subsequent intellectual operations, or there would have been no subsequent intellectual operations. Similarly, there must be a first permission that grounds subsequent acts of granting permission. There can be no possible world in which one cannot do anything without first asking permission, if it is true that "doing anything" includes the seeking of permission.

In (2) it is impossible to break into a series of intellectual considerations without there being an intellectual consideration not grounded in anterior intellectual considerations. In (1) there cannot be a breaking into the series of permissions without there being a first permission granting that needs not anterior permission. We have here the claim that there must be intellectual consideration that is not the result of an intellectual consideration, and a permission seeking that is not the result of a permission seeking. Now the question is simply this: is an infinite regress in the order of causes analogous to these two cases? Is it true that (3) is unsatisfiable?

3) For each and every cause, there must be a cause of that cause.

Is the denial of (3) somehow contraditory? Is it contradictory to have an uncaused causer? Or, put differently, if there must be an an unpermitted permitter, and a nonintellectualized, intellectualizer, why not an uncaused causer? Why should causality be regarded differently?

It seems that the answer to this might lie in the different contexts in which intellectual considerations, permission seeking, and causing inhabit. It strikes me that intellectual considerations and permission-seekings are teleological activities. Take, for instance, the notion of an infinite series of purposes. It seems like an infinite order in the series of final causes is indeed unthinkable. If everything that occurs, occurs for the sake of something else, is it not true that there must be finally something for which all things occur. (Heidegger traces this back to Dasein, of course.) No infinite regress in the order of teleological "reasons for" is possible, for it seems, that in order for there to be subsequent "reasons for" there must be a first "that upon which all reasons are ultimately reasons for."

Most of the time, however, we regard the order of causes as a nonteleological context: A causes B which causes C, etc. In a universe without meaning or purpose, why would an infinite series of causes not be allowed? Of course, there is not a first cause on the basis of which subsequent causes are! That is the point of thinking about an order of causes purely extensionally. There is nothing unsatisfiable about (3), though there might be about (3') below:

3') For each and every reason, there must be a reason for that reason.

I think many people would dispute (3') being satisfiable on the basis of there being finally a 'brute reason or purpose' on the basis of which other reasons find their positions. (Heidegger would agree here.) We often trace human reasoning back to a human telos generally. Why did Bob do x? He had such and such reasons for doing x. But why did he have these reasons? Because he ultimately desired that some y come about, and he reasoned in ways that would eventuate in y. But why did he desire that some y come about? Reasons must stop somewhere, and one might just say that his desire for y just is. Is it reasonable? Perhaps, but it is not reasonable based upon other reasons. It is an unreasoned reason.

Sadowsky has forced us to see more clearly into what we often mean by an infinite regress in the order of causes. We mean something that is quite without meaning. It seems in an unthinking universe without value and purpose there could be an infinite series of causes. Whether a thing is or is not is not the same kind of question as whether a proposition is reasonable or not. While the second concerns a teleological context where an infinite regress is impossible, this is not so of the first. Or at least that is what one might reasonably say.

Tremendum et Fascinans

2011-03-10T23:00:00.002-06:00

Joel 2:1-18 speaks of the "Day of the Lord." This day is "a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come." The people are waiting for the Day of the Lord perhaps as children wait for Christmas. But this is folly, for this Day will be nothing like they expect.

In the heyday of dialectical theology 90 years ago or so, theologians emphasized the totaliter aliter, of the divine, the "wholly otherness" of God. The times were indeed ripe to talk of God as that nullity which effectively judges being. They proclaimed that one cannot find God by finding Him somewhere in the field of being, no matter the lofty region He might inhabit. If God really is infinitely qualitatively different from His creation, then this difference cannot merely be some adjustment of form or quality within a common potentiality spreading from the heavens to earth. No! Divine being must be totaliter aliter than the potentiality that lies within being itself. In other words, God is wholly other than what the philosophers once called "prime matter." To speak of uncreated divine being and created being under the general category of "being" is deeply problematic, for how could God be the Krisis of the world if he retains a place within it?

No matter how we might try to think the being of divine being, it is a different type of thing we think than the being of created being. God is so radically different from created being that we use the word 'being' a bit improperly to describe Him. God and the universe form ontological antipodes: God is what the universe is not, and the universe is what God is not. This ontological gap between the creator and creature is a necessary condition for the grace-full contingency of creation itself. If the created order where merely an adjustment on the uncreated order, then the gap between the divine and not-divine narrows to the point that what God is, is no longer what the universe is not. On this view Emerson would be right in saying, "Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine." On this view, God's otherness is lost and God becomes less than God.

Why does God become less than God when God's otherness is lost? How can the asymmetrical relation of 'being other than' somehow make God other than God is? If God has a determinate being, and x regards God as other and y does not, is God more God for x than x? This is but another way of asking the realist question of God: Is God externally or internally related to His creation?

What is necessary is to distinguish God-in-Himself, versus God-in-regard-to us. While divine being has the contour it has apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, what human beings regard to be God is deeply dependent upon how God is for them. While God is God apart from whether or not God appears distant or close to x, x will regard something as God only if God is not wholly proximate to x. What I am saying is very simple: For something to be regarded as God by person p, there must be an experience of extraordinary distance for p in the presence of this putative divinity. God cannot be God for p if p does not fear God as that before which p feels puny, is overwhelmed, and experiences shudder. For p - - and I would generalize to great numbers of people - - that which is not experienced as distant cannot ultimately be God.

The paradox of the Christian proclamation is that the Distant One, however, loves us. The experience of the divine has the character both of divine distance and proximity. While that which is not distant cannot be God, that which is not close cannot save us. The tremendum which is necessary for p to regard something as God is at the same time the fascinans by and through which humans are drawn to God. Our experience under the condition of existence is not a healthy one. What is needed is salvation from that which is not ultimately us. Just as creation is the free act of a being ontologically discontinuous from the divine itself, so is redemption a free action of a being ontologically discontinuous from human existence as such. While a God that is not distant cannot be God, so too a God that is too distant cannot save. The necessary condition for x to regard g as God is that g is distant from x; the necessary condition for x to be saved by g is that g is close to x. For human being, God purchases salvation generally by sacrificing divinity; he purchases his divinity by sacrificing His soteriological intimacy. This is the way of nondialectical assertions within the field of being.

The dialectical theologians were fond at pronouncing paradoxical phrases. None perhaps is more paradoxical than these we must make: Only the Distant One is ultimately Close to us. Only the One whose impassibility precludes the sentiment of love can ever really love us.

Theological Realism and Christology

2011-03-05T16:01:00.002-06:00

One of our assumptions at the Institute of Lutheran Theology is theological realism, the notion that God exists and has a definite contour apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. While this would not be a surprising claim for most believers throughout Christian history, it is somewhat of a bold claim today, 230 years after the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. For most of the nineteenth century, attempts were made to talk intelligibly about God while at the same time not affirming that God is a metaphysical substance capable of sustaining causal relations with His universe. This penchant survives and is deeply presupposed in much Protestant theology, especially of the Lutheran persuasion.

Yesterday as I preached on 2 Peter 1:16-21, it struck me that no matter how robust the claim of theological realism is, the claim of Christological realism is be even more bold. Imagine claiming that Christology is objective, that it is an evidence-transcending propositional truth about the universe that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Imagine making such a powerful claim that the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ is factual, that is, that Christ's suffering, death and resurrection exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language! It seems to me, on reading these passages from Peter, that the claim of factuality is emphasized precisely over and against claims that the proclamation of Christ is mythological, that the proclamation somehow is a response to our inchoate religious yearnings.

It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I think Heideggerian thoughts much of the time. I have always been deeply convinced of the rectitude of Heidegger's analysis of human existence and authenticity in the face of the phenomenon of death. For much of my adult days I have assumed with Heidegger that death is basically a phenomenological reality, that only in life is there death, because there can be no death for death - - as Epicurus famously taught.

But while Heidegger's phenomenological analysis is deeply persuasive and penetrating on this point, because it is phenomenological it cannot deal with the relationship between the phenomenological and that which grounds the phenomenological. The reason is easy to see: To reflect and articulate the relationship between the phenomenological and the non-phenomenological is no longer to describe the phenomenological, but to conceive why the phenomenological has the contour it has.

Yet while moving beyond a phenomenological analysis may not a phenomenological analysis make, clearly it is not unreasonable to ask what grounds the phenomenology of death. One does not have to think very profoundly to answer that question: The phenomenology of death is grounded in the factuality of death. We live with one foot in nonbeing because we shall someday fully be nonbeing. A reasonable person not unduly timid about ontology would certainly assert such a thing. (Maybe phenomenological ontology is finally an ontology of the timid . . . )

When reading 2 Peter 1:16-21, it seems clear that the last testament of the writer to the truth of Christ is a testament of the factuality of Christ, that is, the writer wants us to know that the proclamation that liberates us in the face of death is itself grounded in the reality of the one that liberates us from death. Just as death is not a linguistic event but a fact as well as our phenomenon of it, to too is liberation from death not merely a linguistic event, but a fact as well as our phenomenon of it. In other words, just as my death exists apart from my awareness, perception, conception and language, so too does my liberation from death exist apart from those things as well.

Why is theological realism important? Because Christian theological realism just is Christological realism. But why is Christological realism important? Because as the writer of 2 Peter declares, "We do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made know to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty" (16).

Thinking and Thanking

2011-01-08T10:17:00.002-06:00

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger was fond of the seventeenth century Pietist phrase, “Denken ist Danken, (to think is to thank).” Heidegger writes, “Pure thanks lies in this, that we simply think that which is solely and properly to-be-thought.”

But what is it that properly ought to be thought? For Heidegger, it is Being-Itself, and thinking of this being is itself a thanking for being. Much of Heidegger's later work is a poetic exploration of the common etymology between thinking and thanking, and I recommend his ruminations to those so inclined. But what has this philosopher to do with the question of God and Lutheran theology generally? And what has thinking and thanking to do with the Institute of Lutheran Theology?

Heidegger distinguishes calculative thinking from meditative thinking, claiming that while the first attempts to grasp being, the second responds to it by “thinking after” it as it discloses itself. While Heidegger never calls Being-itself 'God', the connection is palpable. Just as light-itself lights the world, so does Being-itself radiate beings. Accordingly, Being-itself is the “ground” of all that is, a ground that cannot be investigated in the way of other things. The answer to the first question about God is that just as Being-itself is the ultimate ground from which beings arise, so too is God the creative mystery at the heart of the universe.

Heidegger realized that while being could not be grasped by human thinking - -for such thinking always presupposes being - - human thinking is nonetheless a way of be-ing. Accordingly, while the human subject cannot grasp the object (being), the object can and does call forth the subject's thinking of it. Simply put, while attempts to grasp the divine always end in failure, the divine successfully reveals itself to us. The answer to the second question about Lutheran theology is that what the law cannot do is done by the grace of God. God's revelation in our lives is something we cannot coax, engineer or guarantee. His presence is donated to us from outside ourselves, not by virtue of our own efforts at spiritual transformation.

But what has Heidegger to do with our work in the Institute of Lutheran Theology? After all, is not ILT committed to the Bible and not to German philosophy? Moreover, why do people at the Institute of Lutheran Theology concern themselves with such heavy thinking? Is it not simply enough that ILT gives it future graduates instructions for doing effective ministry? Can't we simply train pastors the way we train computer engineers, librarians and hotel/motel managers?

The Institute of Lutheran theology is deeply committed to reading and understanding the Bible. Collectively, we have a very high view of Scripture, believing its clarity and authority to be matters not of our doing. But while the source of theological reflection must always be the Bible and the tradition of its thinking, this source is always reflected through the medium of the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.

Reading and understanding the Bible is thus both simple and difficult. It is simple because the Bible speaks immediately to its readers as the Word of God; it is difficult because there is no methodological formula that can forever establish the exact words of that speaking. The Bible speaks as it is questioned by different readers at different times. Ultimately like Heidegger's Being-Itself, the Bible reveals its Word as a matter of grace, for it cannot wholly be grasped through application of methodological law.

I am convinced that one of the main problems facing Lutheran clergy today is that oftentimes their education denies them the freedom to think, at least to think so deeply that their thinking is transformed into thanking. While they acquire a set of skills - - they know now how to give sermons, how to plan worship and how to make hospital calls - - they aren't mentored to think what continually ought-to-be-thought: God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. This Word of grace, which cannot be established by human thinking, is itself revealed to human thinking, and in the thinking of this thought, human life becomes itself a thanking, a life lived in joyful response to the One who has Himself called such thinking into being. Faith is thus active in love.

Indeed we at ILT cannot be happy simply with teaching students what to do, until each is clear on what it is that must be thought. With an eye toward the ought-to-be-thought, students at ILT study Bible, history of church and theology, philosophical underpinnings for theology, Lutheran Confessions, and systematic theology. The objective is to think so deeply the thought that the Holy Spirit has called us to think, that we live out our deeply-thought lives in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus the Christ and in thankfully serving Him. Pastoral skills are only important if pastors believe that about which they speak. Faith is always active in love.

All of this is to say something that Lutherans have always known, but that has gotten a bit obscure in our time: Being precedes doing. Over and against existentialists, pragmatists, modern day Aristotelians, and enthusiasts of the law in all its forms, Lutheran theology has always steadfastly declared what the Bible perspicuously records: While a good tree bears good fruit, good fruit does not a good tree make. More important than future Lutheran clergy learning in their classes how to do the job of being a clergy person is that they have the time (and the space) to think through what it is to called to be one who in his or her thinking has pastoral doing as a mode of thanking. God's work of faith establishes the possibility of love.

So it is that we think about many things at ILT. We consider deeply the human condition, sin, atonement, and salvation. We think about how God relates to His universe in creation, redemption and sanctification. We reflect upon how language of God relates to other kinds of language, to the words of poets and scientists. We are convinced that if our language of God cannot easily be used Monday through Saturday, it is only very oddly and parochially employed on Sundays.

We think as well that considering these things deeply is already to occupy a position of gratitude. Think of the grace involved in such thinking! To think deeply is to realize that there is something rather than nothing, and that this situation has no worldly explanation. To think deeply is to realize that we might not have been, or that we might not now be who we somehow still deeply are in time. Thinking deeply pushes us to consider the radical contingency of human existence, to think the thought that there is nothing necessary about being. But as we consider that things could have been other than they in fact are, we realize that why and how things are themselves involve grace and gift. Thinking through contingency breeds a thankfulness of what is. Denken ist Danken!

As the end of this first decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, our collective thinking at the Institute of Lutheran Theology is in truth radically oriented to thanking. After all, there is no reason to expect that a seminary starting from nothing on a financial shoestring should be successful. People thought it could not be done. How could ILT overcome financial constraints, accrediting issues, and course delivery problems?

But I am here to proclaim to you the startling, and wholly contingent fact, that it daily is being done. ILT is blessed to have high quality students, a stellar faculty, an increasing list of generous donors, and a very professional course delivery system that allows students interaction with some of the best Lutheran theologians in the English speaking world. Where else can students study with professors Jim Nestingen, Mark Hilmer, Paul Hinlicky, Robert Benne, Hans Hillerbrand, and Uwe Siemon-Netto, to name but a few? Where else can students get the opportunity at home for one-on-one interaction with professor of international reputation who will coax them daily into thinking deeply what it is that ought-to-be-thought?

Next semester ILT will be in the process of launching a second generation video delivery system that will deliver much higher quality video to anyone having a broadband internet connection. Please tune into our fifteen minute chapels every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10:00 a.m. to see clearly Lutheran preachers preaching clearly the Word of God. Soon students will have greater options for accessing higher quality video during select lecture formats. Through the generosity of almost five hundred individual and congregational donors this last year, the Institute of Lutheran Theology is transitioning from a start-up seminary with a vision for tomorrow to an actually existing Lutheran graduate school filling the needs of students world-wide today.

While the universe did not have to be, yet by the grace of God is, so too with ILT: It could have failed, but it did not. Not only did it not fail, but it has the opportunity to lead the transformation of Lutheran theological education world-wide. To think about this radical contingency of ILT is perpetually to thank Him who called it forth into Being.

Through the work of the faculty, staff, students and supporters of ILT, that which ought-to-be-thought is itself humbly and thankfully being thought. To think in a sustained way about what God has done for us in Christ is to live a life of thanksgiving. It is from this ground that ILT has emerged, and it is from this ground that it is watered and will ultimately grow into full fruition. The divinely-worked faith of human thinking is always active in the divinely-worked love of human thanking. May God's faith and grace be indeed with you all this New Year!

Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt

President

Institute of Lutheran Theology

Theory Construction in Theology

2010-11-29T23:07:00.005-06:00

For sometime now I have had the reoccurring thought that theology employs theories in much the same way as the natural sciences. Of course, with the natural sciences, theory construction and disconfirmation is patent. We know that if theory T has as a logical consequence P, and if ~P actually turns out true empirically, then there is something wrong with theory T. (Assuming, of course, that one's inferences are in fact deducible theorems of T.) It is all rather straightforward for the scientist - - or at least it seems prima facie so.

A number of years ago I was excited by some of the similarities I found between scientific theory construction and theological construction. It was to me then rather exciting to think that somehow theology uses theories. (I confess to having a bit of the natural theologian in me in those days.) But something has happened. While it is true that I am no longer much excited by the similarities between scientific and theological theory construction, it is not because the seeming similarities have faded for me. No - - it is because it seems to me now patently obvious, and not at all surprising, that theological theory and scientific theory have the same structure. The excitement has faded because there is no longer anything creative in the thought. They just are of the same kind. Let me explain with an example that is not that of natural theology at all.

I am rereading some of the Finnish work on Luther in teaching 'Luther, Justification and Deification' in the Institute of Lutheran Theology Masters of Theology program. Among the many claims made by the Finns is that Luther employs the notion of theosis as a central motif within his theology, that his notion of justification presupposes the unio cum Christo. The way that this is argued is to take a number of themes in Luther, chart the interrelationship between these themes, and then go to the Luther texts to see if perusal experience is consistent with the theory built out of the interrelationship of these themes.

For instance, they argue that the inhabitatio Christi grounds both forensic and effective justification, that the imputational notion of justification is the divine favor or gratia, while the effective notion is the divine donum or gift. While the favor of God addresses the wrath of God, the gift of God pertains to the corruption of our natures. Just as favor of God undergirds the gift of God, so the gift of God grounds the favor of God. For Luther, justification is a unitary process that includes what is often regarded by the Reformation traditions to be sanctification. God gives Himself to His creation in love, and thus all of creation is butressed by the indwelling God. But fallen creation groans in travail for salvation. This salvation is available through the gift of divine love which is the presence of Christ in the believer grasped through faith. Thus, 'x has faith' and 'x has the presence of Christ' are materially equivalent. (I thought about claiming that they were conceptually equivalent, but I can imagine x having faith without x having the presence of Christ. How is this possible? It seems that much of Lutheran Orthodoxy was quite capable of asserting the truth of the former without asserting the truth of the latter.)

Now these general assertions could be clearly stated as propositions of a theory. One would start with some statement such as 'x has the indwelling of Christ if and only if Christ gives himself to x'. One might say then that 'for any divine property P had by D, if x has P, then x has D itself''. After such definitions, one might declare as theoretical postulates that 'for any x, if x has the presence of Christ, then x is justified', and 'for all x, if x is justified, then x is both declared righteous by divine favor, and made righteous by divine gift'. That this would be tedious work, is readily granted; that it would succeed in laying bare the structure of a class of theoretical assertions is only hoped for.

Given that a theory could be structured in which the logical and conceptual relationships between the assertions of the theory were aptly displayed, the question arises as to the applicability. Is this theory applicable to theological reality itself? Is it applicable to a class of texts written within a tradition, or written by a single author? Is it applicable to the Luther texts? Here is seems that what the theory would have to have besides the internal marks of consistency and coherency, are the external characteristics of applicability, adequacy, and fecundity. I shall treat each in turn.

Theory T would be applicable to a class of texts C if and only if it were not disconfirmed by any particular assertions found within C. Theory T would be adequate to a class of texts C if there were not assertions of C that T could not in principle handle. Theory T would be fecund with respect to C if it generated a continuing program of fruitful and creative insights concerning the relationship of T to other theories.

What is different between scientific theory construction and this theological theory construction is what Heidegger called the Befragte, that which is asked questions on the basis of the theory. In natural science theory construction, nature is the Befragte; in theological theory construction it is most often a class of texts that are questioned. To find out what view Luther held, one must be content to advance theoretical models, some of which are contradicted by the texts and some of which are not, some which fit nicely into other overarching theories, and some which do not. Just as we cannot know the Ding an Sich in nature, but must model nature and build a sustainable "take" on nature given our experience with it, so too in theology, we cannot know the mens auctoritatis (mind of the author), but content ourselves with sustainable "reads" on the basis of the Luther texts themselves. Moreover, just as traditional scientific theory must not be easily discarded in favor of newer scientific theory, but generally regarded as authoritative unless directly contradicted by new empirical evidence, so too should newer theological theory not supplant traditional readings unless there is a compelling reason to do so - - a reason arising from a straightforward experience with the Luther texts themselves.

So I find these days in theology that some statements are "more theoretical" and some "less theoretical" on the basis of whether the first are "further removed" from the primary literary experience of reading the text. So too are some theological terms "more concrete" or "less concrete" as to how they cash on the basis of the particular texts. Accordingly, oftentimes the most "theoretical" of terms are those that are presupposed everywhere in our perusal experience without being asserted directly very many times at all! It is of this latter nature, it seems, that the Finnish Lutheran notion of divinization participates.

Normativity and Theology

2010-09-03T00:22:00.006-05:00

Some distinctions are so basic and simple that we denizens of North America tend, in general, to forget them. One such distinction is between the normative and the descriptive. While Hume famously taught that one cannot derive an "ought" from and "is," many no longer can grasp that statements about what is the case cannot entail statements about what must be the case. The only way, in fact, to get the "ought" from the "is" is to describe what is in such ways that there is an implied ought. But then one merely derives an "ought" from another "ought."

I taught for many years at a state university. Students came to there first or second class in philosophy assuming that how people behave somehow entails how they ought to behave. Perhaps the problem is the ambiguity in the word 'norm' itself. What is "normal" for human beings is that which falls within a spectrum of human behaviors. While what 85% of people do is "normal," clearly at least 5-10% is not. What is "normal" is what human beings normally do. This becomes a norm for human behavior for many, for they have never thought through the fact that normal behavior does not the normative make. Just because 90% or more of humans do a certain thing does not entail that they should do that thing. One simply cannot get an "ought" from an "is," even if what "is" is normal for human beings.

The loss of the "ought" probably is inevitable in a democratic equalitarian culture where one voice is prized as highly as the next. Clearly, the loss of the "ought" is connected with relativism with respect to truth. If one "ought" not hold one position more so than the next, it is difficult to understand the semantic field for truth. When doing mathematics one solves the equation is properly and truly or improperly and wrongly. Those who do it wrong "ought" to have done it properly. Grading mathematics examinations presupposes that the student "ought" to solve the problem this way and not this way.

Maybe it is because the natural shows "no echo of the normative" (Davidson) that we present-day devotees of naturalism have such a difficult time with truth. And if truth in mathematics is problematic for contemporary naturalism, how much more is truth in theology. How can it be so, for instance, that a notion of justification within theology thought and taught these last 1000 years is the position that one "ought" to hold. Given that Augustine, Thomas and Luther taught differently on justification, which one, or which elements of these thinkers views are right, are what rational agents ought to hold true? Surely serious work in theology must eschew the descriptive in favor of the normative. It is not merely that A taught x and B aught y and C taught z, and we must document this, but rather that A wrongly taught x, while B rightly taught y. Theology is thoroughly normative. To give up on the normative makes the descriptive task of church history merely one of reporting. While the historian in this case might say the C agreed with D, she cannot say that D rightly agreed with C.

Theology must always include the normative. Like philosophy, theology survives as a remnant to a by-gone era before statistical methods and the new "science of man" turned questions to human regularities (norms) of behavior. Theology, in its commitment to "oughts," does indeed suggest that the natural is not all that there is. There must be, besides are world, a world of the "should have been," a world of what would be ideal and beneficent, a world of the very Created Order of God, a world mirroring the ultimate design features of deity prior to its dissolution into what is, before its Fall into existence. That we only catch glimpses of this world seems reasonable to we creatures of this Fall.

Luther: Justification and/or Deification?

2010-08-16T18:32:00.003-05:00

In 1988 I attended my first Luther Congress. We met in Oslo, Norway. While there I met a young Finn named Risto Saarinen who gave me a copy of the book Thesarus Lutheri. Later I was given a copy of Luther und Theosis and I began to read.

In the early 1990s, I became quite interested in whether or not Luther was a theologian of theosis (or deification). I remember standing up at the Lutheran gathering at the American Academy of Religion one year, and talking about the new Finnish research. It was new and exciting research in America. At the next Luther Congress in St. Paul in 1993, I was in Mannermaa's seminar. I found him to be an immensely likable man, someone who was willing to question his own research, someone who would genuinely dialogue. I got to know some of the other young scholars in Mannermaa's group. They were intensely interested in theological conversation.

When working through Simo Peura's Mehr als ein Mensch, my uneasiness with the way that the Finns were reading Luther grew. It seemed to me that so much of the thesis of deification depended upon a rather small group of passages, and these mostly from the early Luther. Moreover, as I read a bit more of Augustine (and those that know Augustine), it seemed to me that deification imagery was palpable in the Augustinian tradition. I concluded that in order to show that Luther was a theologian of deification, one would have thereby to establish that he was using the imagery of deification differently from how it was employed by theologians who have generally been thought to uphold justification, not deification, as their central salvific notion.

As I considered the historical question of Luther's adherence to deification, I quickly determined that I would need to know what deification is if I were to be able to determine whether Luther held to it. I looked at the question of what deification is both semantically and ontologically. Firstly, I wanted to know the identity conditions of 'deification' so that the term could be properly applied. Secondly, I wanted to know what state of affairs would make true the claim that deification was present.

My contribution to the Mannermaa Festschrift in 1997 considered the ontology of deification. What claim could we be making about the divine/human reltionship when asserting that person p is deified? While the essay was itself speculative and inconclusive, the exercise was useful to me, for I found how little textual evidence there was to adjudicate among senses of 'deification', and I discerned that some notions of justification were not entirely unlike some notions of deification. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the boundary between 'justification' and 'deification' was becoming porous. What began as a seemingly firm distinction dissolved upon deeper reflection.

Beginning in two weeks, I will present a course entitled 'Luther: Justification and/or Deification'. The course will, as the title suggests, try to get clear on the claim that Luther is a theologian of theosis, by getting clear about what state of affairs would make true a statement about the deification of a person. Accordingly, we shall start in the course by understanding justification in the tradition generally, and the late medieval options on justification. After this we shall read some of what the Finns claim about deification. Looking specifically at the Luther texts, we shall try to answer this question: Was Luther, as Mannermaa has suggested, a theologian of theosis? Please visit the Institute of Lutheran Theology web page at www.ilt.org for details. The course is in the new ILT Masters of Theology program. This degree is designed for those wishing to study theology beyond the M. Div. level. All are welcome. Any takers?

Singular Divine Causal Statements

2010-08-15T14:30:00.005-05:00

To say that 'John wrecked the car' is to make a causal statement. It is to say that 'John caused the wrecking of the car'. To make such causal statements truthfully demands that there is some state of affairs (or some states of affairs), on the basis of which, it is true that 'John caused the wrecking of the car.' So what is the "stuff" that makes true the statement? What are the truth-conditions of 'John caused the wrecking of the car'?

One answer is to say that there is a substance (object or entity) John who has a particular set of properties necessary (or necessary and sufficient) for the existence of the set of properties the car has. Here the basic ontological category is that of substance, with the change of properties that substances have being causally determined by the properties other substances possess. The properties of the relevant entities can include times and places such that 'A causes B' is true on the basis of some substance S having property set P - - picked out by 'A' - - being necessary and sufficient for some substance S* having property set P* - - picked out by 'B'.

An alternate analysis construes the basic ontological facts of causation as a relation of events. On this view 'John causes the wrecking of the car' is really elliptical for something like 'John doing x causes the wrecking of the car'. Accordingly there is event E (John doing x) and event E* (the car wrecking) such that E causes E*.

One of the problems of understanding causality has been our infatuation with the Humean account of causation and the "covering law" models that derive from him. Famously, Hume argued that a statement like 'John doing x caused the wrecking of the car' must be analyzed in this way: i) John doing x temporally proceeded the wrecking of the car; ii) John doing x is contiguous with the wrecking of the car; iii) and events (or substances having properties) like John doing x are constantly conjoined with events (or substances having properties) like the car wrecking. This regularity theory of causation was regnant through much of the last century, giving rise to the notion of "covering laws." Accordingly E causes E* if and only if there is a universal generalization to the effect that 'for all y if y instantiates E then y instantiates E*. This cannot merely be an accidental universal generalization, however. It must be a nomic regularity. It must carry the force of necessity of a particular kind.

Ignoring all the important details, one might claim that the analysis of a singular causal statement presupposes universal hypotheticals, on the basis of which the singular causal statement is true. Accordingly, singular statement S is true if and only if S can somehow be seen as an instance of L: S is true by virtue of L. Of course, the standard Humean regularity theorist wants to go no further than the existence of the regularity. It is unexceptional that force between two objects equals the gravitational constant times the product of the mass of those objects over the square of their distance. This is a bare fact about the universe. That in some particular instance referred to by singular causal statement S, the mass of the two objects times the gravitation constant over the square of their distance gives the observed force is not surprising because, of course, this happens all of the time and this situation is an instance of what happens all of the time.

There are many problems with Humean accounts, but they are still held in favor by very empirically-minded philosophers who are not wont to ascribe ontological status to those entities quantified over in their theories. Anti-realists here can simply point to the fact that "this happens." This is the way that things are, and while we can have theories that might explain how those things are, those things will finally reference other "brute facts" about the way that things are. Of course, any one seriously interested in allowing 'God' to be a term in a singular causal statement cannot subscribe to a Humean or neo-Humean position on causation. If it is true that 'God caused the universe to be', this is a singular event. There is no covering law that this statement can instance. When it comes to talking about God and God's relationship to the world, we must - - if we allow truth-conditions at all to such statements - - understand the statements as both irreducibly singular and causal.

So to say that 'God's word caused the universe to be' is to claim that some state of affairs exists such that that statement is true. This state of affairs seems, plausibly, either to have to be the existence of a divine substance with properties, or an irreducible event. But clearly, God speaking cannot be ingredient in an event, if we mean by 'event' what is standardly meant by 'event'. Presumably, time began with the creation of the universe. Accordingly, so did events. Before time there could not have been events - - whatever could be meant here by 'before' - - for the precondition for eventhood was not present. Thus, it seems, we must give an analysis of the divine in terms of substance and properties. There seems to be no other way than this to proceed.

So to say that 'God spoke the universe into being' is to say that 'God's speaking caused the universe to be', and this is to presuppose as truth-conditions a substance God having the property of speaking - - whatever might be meant by that - - the existence of which is both necessary and sufficient for the world to be. This view nicely supports the counterfactual that if there were not a universe, God would not have spoken it into being.

Of course, in the contemporary theological discussion, few want any longer to analyze the semantic conditions of 'God created the heavens and the earth' in the way I have just suggested. While many would talk about the meaningfulness of the statement, they would have difficulty in specifying precisely the conditions that would make it true or false. But meaning and truth stand together. One can't have one without the other, it seems. To the degree that theologians have divorced the two, to that degree the language of theology has become, to use Wittgenstein's phrase - - a "wheel idly turning.'

The necessary condition of theological language not becoming moribund is for it to reassert its traditional commitment to truth-conditions. Such a recommitment to truth presupposes a determinate ontological situation, and it is this situation that must be investigated. What I have suggested here is very simple: To claim that "God created the heavens and the earth' is true is to claim that there is some being God exhibiting certain properties on the basis of which the universe, which might have not existed, does indeed exist. But making assertions like this takes considerable courage. Lamentably, there has been far too little courage in recent decades on the part of those within the theological guild.

An Evaluation of Bayer's Luther Book

2010-03-28T06:50:00.006-05:00

Oswald Bayer's Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation is must reading for anyone interested in Luther and Lutheran theology generally. Ably translated by Thomas Trapp, this work was originally 30 hours of lectures for a general studies course at the University of Tuebingen in the Winter Semester 2001/2002. Bayer compares his work to a documentary film drawing on a deep repository of archival footage to present a topic from multiple perspectives. Like all documentaries, sustained scholarly examination must sometimes be sacrificed to achieve an orderly, organic presentation.

Bayer claims that he is bringing Luther into a conversation with other truth-seekers, e.g., Kant, Hegel and Schleiermacher (xx); he declares he is asking the questions: "What is true? Likewise: What has enduring value within the river of historical change? (xix) Accordingly, "his contemporary interpretation" is a "re-presentation in the double sense of the phrase." Firstly, the "historical subject matter,"which has determined the modern consciousness, must be brought again into modern consciousness; secondly, this subject matter must be examined from the perspective of its truth. Bayer's exploration relies upon over forty years of research into Luther texts of various genres: "sermons, treatises, written polemics, table talks, lectures and dispositions; predominant are the three genres of catechisms, prefaces to biblical books, and hymns" (xix). As expected, Bayer does not disappoint: his work with Luther is masterful, and his systematic theological emphasis is everywhere apparent. Moreover, the book is highly engaging; easily readable by those who read neither Luther monographs are systematic theology tomes for a living!

Bayer divides his presentation into an Introduction presenting the "Rupture between Ages" of the old and new eon, a four chapter presentation on Basic Themes (e.g., Luther's understanding of theology, his understanding of the sinful human before the justifying God, the Reformational turning point in his theology, his understanding of the authority of the Holy Scriptures), and finally 12 chapters dealing with Individual Themes (e.g., creation, human being, sin, Christ, Holy Spirit, church, faith, the two realms, eschatology). Everywhere Bayer emphasizes the divine promissio, the promise made and kept by God, and the content and contour of private and corporate life lived on the basis of that promise.

There is so much to be praised in this book, and I am sure that most readers will be as thrilled by its publication as the both Mark Mattes and Steven Paulson are, both of whom are capable theologians contributing endorsements on the text's back cover. I enjoyed reading the book, and I learned from it as well. Bayer does succeed, I think, in combining sound Luther research with systematic theological investigation. But frankly Bayer's own question haunted me in the reading of the text: Is his interpretation true? What of sixteenth century are we leaving behind in finding that of "enduring value within historical change"? Moreover, is Bayer's own systematic program true? Is it internally coherent and consistent, externally applicable and adequate, and sufficiently fruitful for further research? I have lately been quite fascinated by the realization of the dissimilarity between the ontological and semantic presuppositions of theology in Luther's time, and the ontological and semantic presuppositions of interpreters of Luther's theology in our own time. I believe, in fact, that the emergence of the Kantian paradigm in theology over the last two centuries has made it difficult sometimes to understand Luther's theological work on its own terms. More importantly, however, the hegemony of that paradigm has made it difficult for contemporary theologians to engage deeply the fundamental questions of theology, questions that go to the heart of the question of whether or not theological language has truth-conditions.

With respect to this text, I wish to offer constructively four questions, questions that arise for most Christian believers today who have not learned the standard theological moves routinely practiced by theological practitioners downstream in the Kantian tradition. The four are these:

Is it possible to build systematic theology and a Luther interpretation on the basis of the primary use of theological language being performative?
Is it possible to account for the authority of Holy Scriptures in terms of the existential effect the texts have upon their readers?
Is it possible to deal with creation, either systematically or in Luther interpretation, without raising explicitly the causal question?
Is it possible to have Christian faith, (e.g., the faith of Luther), in the absence of explicit metaphysical commitments?

All of these questions are weighty, challenging, and clearly take us beyond what would normally be discussed in a review. However, each is incredibly important to evaluating the ultimate success of Bayer's Luther interpretation. If, as Bayer and many assume, existence is linguistically-constituted, then divine promises make all the difference in the world, not only to who we ultimately are, but to whom God ultimately is. If the being of the Word is a function of what the Word does, then one needs to be excruciatingly clear about the identity conditions of what the Word does, and those conditions that merely accompany, but do not determine, what the Word does. But seemingly, what the Word does is deeply dependent upon the cultural horizon of the time, a horizon itself constitute by presuppostional ontological, semantic and epistemological commitments. It is simply obvious that the Word will strike the heart differently if the auditor believes that there is actually a God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, a God who cares, who loves, and who ultimately is causally efficacious in salvation.

Perhaps this is enough said for now. I whole-heartedly recommend Bayer's book for general reading, and for use both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Bayer on What Makes the Bible become Holy Scripture

2010-03-26T10:08:00.004-05:00

Bayer believes that Luther's foundational thesis, Sacra scriptura "sui ipsius interpres," is not primarily a claim of the hermeneutical circle: the parts interpret the whole, and the whole interprets the parts. It is instead a statement of the effect the text has on one reading, hearing and interpreting it. Bayer, in fact, the text is best translated as, "the text itself causes one to pay attention" (Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Introduction, p. 68). Bayer writes:

"The authority of Scripture is not formal but is highly material and is content driven. It is the voice of its author, who gives; who allows for astonishment, lament, and praise; who demands and fulfills. Scripture can in no wise be confirmed as having formal authority in advance, so that the content becomes important only as a second stage of the process. The text in its many different forms - - particularly in the law's demand and the gospel's promises - - uses this material way of doing business to validate its authority" (69).

This statement accords well, of course, with Bayer's claim that the Word is what it does. Bayer is stating that which to many contemporary theologians is obvious: There are no properties of the text that establish its reliability outside of the meaning of the text. That is to say, there are not syntactical or causal facts about the text considered apart from its meaning, that would properly dispose one to believe that what the text announces is true.

Bayer labors, of course, to defend the text's autonomy. The meaning of the text is not established or constituted in the act of interpreting it. The external meaning of the text confronts the reader and transforms her. The Bible is the Holy Scripture because of the power the Bible has to, as Luther says, "draw the individual into itself, and into its own power" (71).

Bayer thus makes the following claims:

The authority of the text is wholly constituted in the meaning the text has with respect to my life.
The meaning of the text is objective; it exists apart from my act of interpretation.
The Spirit is involved in the delivery of the meaning of the text to me.

Notger Slenczka sums it up very well when talking about the normativity of the text: "The normative function of Scripture demonstrates its claim to be normative by basing it on the way it is existentially verified when it interprets itself, in the way Scripture conveys its own intended meanings" (quoted in Bayer, 77).

Generally, I am sympathetic with what Bayer, Slenzka, and many contemporary theologians suppose: The authority of the text is established by its effect on its reader. I am sympathetic because I know the problems of trying to argue for an artificer/artifact causal relationship between God and the text. However, if one could trace some kind of causal chain back from the text to God, as was done in former years, then some type of authority would be established such that the text's claims might be deemed reliable. When I say 'reliable' I am not claiming that each and every proposition of Scripture is timelessly true - - however, we might want to unpack that - - but simply that there is some epistemic warrant for regarding the text as saying what is generally the case with respect to the divine and God's relationship to human beings. My reflections often take me in this direction:

Imagine two texts s and p. (We shall allow s to be the bible and p to be some other text.) Now imagine cultural context c, such that s in c is part of a sufficient condition for bringing about existential meaning m, meaning that is of a life and death matter to me. (We can surely admit that the Holy Spirit does most of the causal lifting in this.) Now imagine p in c*. Clearly, there is no reason that p should not form part of a sufficient condition for m apart from the de facto non-operation of the Holy Spirit. It seems, thus, that Bayer's position, and that of all who suppose this way of moving forward, presupposes that as a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit will not provide casual input for p, even if He does so for s. The reason that the Bible is the Holy Scriptures, instead of some other book, is that the Holy Spirit is effective in it for realizing m, but not for the other book.

When one thinks somewhat carefully about these matters, one must thus distinguish between the descriptive observation that the Bible, and many other books, can strike readers with existential truth, and the prescriptive claim that the Bible ought so to strike one as having existential truth. Until we can give an analysis of why the Bible ought so to strike one as donating being and the meaning of one's being, we have not engaged the issue of what the claim to formal authority was trying to answer.

I can well imagine a time where the Bible does not strike many people as giving existential truth. This time has indeed happened in much of the first world. In what position is then the theologian left who has rejected all claims to establish the text's normative status solely in its effects upon people? Theologically, one must then say that the Bible is not the Holy Scriptures any longer, that it no longer has a normative claim upon us. One must wait then for new books that can engage the salvific situation of humankind. Those books, like those before, will be evaluated by their effects upon us, and thus new truths - - whatever we might now mean - - will be laid before us.

It is a tough time to be a theologian. It is important that we always realize how much is lost when we move forward in ways meant to avoid the problematics of Modernity.

"Signum Philosophicum est Nota Absentis Rei, Signum Theologicum est Nota Praesentis Rei."

2010-03-20T10:00:00.009-05:00

The words mean "the philosophical sign is a mark of an absent thing; the theological sign is a mark of a present thing." The proposition is recorded in the Tischreden of Luther (WATR 4.6666.8f), and it is used by Oswald Bayer (Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Introduction to state a general principle in Luther's semantics: "The signum itself is already the res; the linguistic sign is already the matter itself (52). For Bayer, the promissio that is the center of Luther's theology is unpacked by equating the word in language with the reality itself. In promises, words are not given either extensional (or even intensional) interpretations, but themselves are their own reality. This view of things - - which I have elsewhere termed the donational view of language - - is thought by Bayer to be the deepest presupposition of Luther's theological semantics, a view which Bayer claims is akin to the view countenanced by Austin in his 1955 Harvard lectures later published as How to Do Things with Words: the notion of performative language. Bayer writes:

"In contrast to every metaphysical set of statements that teach about the deity, this assertion [e.g. "To you is born this day a Savior"] declares that God's truth and will are not abstract entities, but are directed verbally and publicly as a concrete promise to a particular hearer in a specific situation. 'God' is apprehended as the one who makes a promise to a human being in such a way that the person who hears it can have full confidence in it" (53).

In evaluating this we must remember, of course, that it has proven difficult in practice actually to distinguish clearly performative and constative assertions. Bayer's position, however, supposes they can be compartmentalized. He goes on to say, in fact, that the performative sentences of promissio, for Luther, must be sharply distinguished either from the descriptive or the imperative. Quoting again:

" . . . one cannot take the promise, which is not a descriptive statement, and transform it into a descriptive statement. Secondly, one cannot take the promise, which is not in the form of a statement that shows how something ought to be done, and transform it into an imperative. . . . the truth of the promise . . . .is to be determined only at the very place that the promise was concluded; more accurately, where it was constituted. This means it is located within the relationship of the one who is speaking . . . . and the one who hears. . . . If it is correct that the one individual is in the position of hearer in the relationship that is constituted by this promise, and if that is verified, it excludes the possibility that he himself can verify the promise. . . . To seek to verify this oneself would be atheism; it would be no different than for me to try to verify myself in my own subjective piety or if I would seek to verify myself by means of a defined atheism. In such situations a human being wants to speak his own truth about himself, but he makes God into a liar in the process" (54-55).

There are a number of claims made here that must carefully be distinguished and examined. That there are such statements as "I promise to pay you $1000" is, of course, true. That such statements cannot be fully analyzed into a set of descriptive statements is true as well. Reporting is a different linguistic activity than promising. And that such statements are not themselves reductively analyzable into a set of imperative statements is true also. However, one must distinguish between a reduction of the performative to the descriptive and the imperative, and an unpacking of the palpable presuppositions that the performative has, presuppositions that are statable in terms of the descriptive and imperative.

In "I promise to pay $1000", the following statements are putatively presupposed: "I exist," "you exist," "$1000 exists," "I ought to pay you $1000." The first three sentences are descriptive, and the fourth imperative. Now notice that here the verba of the sentence do not themselves constitute the rem, but presuppose definite res: the existence of two agents, and the taking on of an obligation. This is not to say that 'x promises z to y' can be reduced to the existence of x, y and z, and a set of imperative statements concerning the three. There is more to promising than the taking on of an obligation. However, an obligation is nonetheless presupposed in the promising.

With regard to the promise of salvation "to me," it would seem that the same structure of presuppositions obtain: God exists, I exist, and some state of affairs to which 'salvation' properly applies exists (at least in a possible world) such that God is under obligation to bring about salvation to me. (This is rather jarring, of course, to think of God being under obligation, but it does seem like promising demands it. Maybe it is "analogical obligation" . . . . It seems that if God were to retain impassibility, promising could maybe not be attributed to God at all.)

But let us examine more close what Bayer has to say about truth and verification. He claims that the "truth of the promise is determined where it is constituted," in the one speaking and hearing. But what exactly, is this to mean? Clearly, Bayer here is not talking about a correspondence, coherence, or even pragmatic notion of truth. In fact, we are told, that the individual cannot verify the truth of the promise. To do so, moreover, would involve one in atheism. This claim demands analysis.

If 'Bob promises to pay me $1000 on April 1' and does not do so, he has broken his promise. This much is clear. Moreover, we would not normally say that his promise is true or false. It was, to use Austin's language, an "infelicitous' performative utterance, but it was not false. Truth or falsity does not append to promises qua promises. So it is not clear what the "truth of the promise" is supposed to mean. One could say that the promise was made, the promised being kept presupposed some state of affairs S, such that if S does not obtain then the promise is broken. Or alternately, one might say that the descriptively-stated presupposition for the keeping of the promise did not obtain such that that statement is not true. But this is not to say that the promise was false; it merely was not broken. One could then state whether it was true that the promise was broken. Such statements about promises have definite truth conditions; we can easily verify when they might be true or false. Bayer does not seem interested, however, in the truth-value of statements about felicitous performative promise statements, but rather about promises themselves.

Bayer's discussion of verification is quite an independent issue from putative presuppositions of promise-making. It might be atheism, I suppose, to claim that we can verify the truth of the descriptive statements that state of affairs S obtains such that S makes true the truth of the statement, 'God has kept promise P'. But I am not sure anything could finally count against the claim that God's promises are kept. One might, in fact, claim this as an analytical truth, or better, a rule by which we play the language-game of the Christian God. Clearly, there are a number of issues that Bayer needs to clarify.

Personally, I have always been chary of the move to an exclusive analysis of fundamental theological assertions in terms of performative utterances, a move that does not presuppose metaphysical and philosophical assertions like these:

There is a God
This God has intentionality towards His creation
One attitude of divine intentionality is promising, and promising keeping
Agents exist who are so constituted as to be cable of being promised to by God.
The ontological and semantic situations are different than epistemological one: Truth is logically distinct from verification

I invite others to post comments on this issue. I want someone to give me an example of a performative utterance that presupposes neither descriptive nor imperative utterances. It seems like this is necessary before one gets too excited about an analysis Austin gave for certain kind of utterances in 1955.

What Luther was talking about in the Tischreden concerns the ontological situation, not the semantic one. Luther knows that the language of theology must always refer to that which is present because, God truly is ubiquitously present in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Later in the text, Bayer makes clear, for Luther, that philosophy knows neither the efficient or final cause of this world. Perhaps Luther's statement quoted at the beginning of this post has more to do with this, than a general denial of extra-linguistic signification in the primary assertions of theology.

On the Performative, the Constative, and a Peculiar Move within Lutheran Theology

2010-03-14T13:42:00.011-05:00

It has become commonplace within Lutheran theology to downplay the notion and use of descriptive true/false statements. While it is true that in natural languages we regularly assign both intensions and extensions to account for meaning and truth-conditions, there is a strong recent tradition in Lutheran theology that does not want to do this. Here we are told confidently that much of the language of Scripture is playing quite a different kind of game entirely, quite a different kind of game than uttering statements having truth-conditions. Citing How to do Things with Words, John Austin' text from over 60 years ago, some theologians find in performative utterances the key to unlock what it is that theology is doing when it is doing what it is doing most fundamentally.

The idea is simple enough: Constative utterances say something and performative utterances do something. Theological utterances are uttered between the demand of the law and grace of the gospel in the concrete existential situation of the believer before God. Thus, instead of the language about God being about truth and falsity, it is at best "felicitous or infelicitous.' For Austin, the marks of felicitous performative utterances include:

The existence of conventional procedure governing the utterance of certain words in certain situations;
The situations being appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked;
The procedure being executable by the participants correctly and completely;
Where to inaugurate the procedure depends upon the person inaugurating it to have certain thoughts and feelings, the person so inaugurating it must have certain thoughts and feelings, and all the participants involved must have the appropriate thoughts and feelings;
The participants conducting themselves accordingly.

If one or more of these conditions are not met. The performative utterance will be unhappy. Austin makes use of some examples:

'I do' - - as in the course of a marriage ceremony.
'I name the ship the Queen Elizabeth' - - as uttered when smashing the bottle against the hull.
'I give and bequeath my watch to my brother' - - as occurring in a will.
'I bet you a sixpence if it will rain tomorrow.'

For Austin, it is not merely the words themselves, but the words in the appropriate circumstances, with appropriate motivations, and appropriate conventions that bring about the happy performance. Presumably, the same is to obtain in theology as well - - though the conditions are not explicitly worked out.

Of course, Austin himself knew that the distinction between the constative and performative was difficult to maintain. Take for instance the claim, 'there is a dangerous animal here.' While it seems structured as a constative, in certain circumstances is it not elliptical for the putative performances: 'I bet there is a dangerous animal here'; 'I guarantee that there is a dangerous animal here'; or 'I warn you that there is a dangerous animal here'?

Because of this problem, Austin was working at his death upon clarifying the distinction between the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary as a substitute for the previous distinction. In stating what is by means of a locution, one is doing so with illocutionary force, that is, one is normally assuring, or warning, or ordering, or expressing an intention. The perlocutionary subsequently deals with the effects of the illocution in the feelings, thinkings, or actions of the audience, speaker, or other person.

We could at this point talk about how Searle revised his teacher's theory, but for our purposes what is important is to see that illuctionary acts make use of locutions in order to bring about a perlocution. That is to say - - using the early vocabulary - - a performative utterance has propositional content, an intensional or extensional meaning. Furthermore, the utterance presupposes facts and conventions, many of which can be explicated if one were to take the time. For instance, to say 'I bequeath my watch to my brother' with sincerity, presupposes that I have a watch, that I have a brother, that I intend a situation of my brother having a watch, and that there is a social convention whereby of bequeathing such that the state of affairs of my having my watch will give way to my brother legally possessing it.

Within some of these quarters of Lutheran theology an explication of religious and theological statements is given in terms of performative utterances in order, I believe, to escape the thorny question of truth. Thus, to say that "I declare unto you the entire forgiveness of all of your sins in the name of Christ Jesus' is not thus to commit oneself to any specifiable ontological situation involving divine states of affairs, relations, properties, and events. It is rather a performance that, to use Austin's later terminology, has a perlocution. The hope is that the utterances can existentially empower without suggesting any "death-dealing metaphysics."

But a moment's reflection shows how wrong-headed it is to think that perlocutions are somehow psychologically independent of what is being asserted. If one has a social convention of bequeathal, it makes all the difference in the world to the perlocutions generated in the inheriting brother by this illocutionary act, whether he does have, in fact, a brother, and whether or not the brother has something to bequeath.

Analogously, having one's feeling and emotions affected by the declaration of forgiveness of sins has everything to do with whether one believes one has sins, and whether or not Christ is thought to be the kind of being that could in principle forgive them.

While Scripture is filled with what Austin would have at one time called performative utterances, this does not mean that one can escape the truth game. Truth pro me is still truth. I will be dealing with some concrete texts in coming posts. My purposes are entirely constructive. We must as theologians grasp the contemporary philosophical situation with respect to the philosophy of language, if we are going to be making moves in the philosophy of language that are to accomplish such heavy theological work.

'God', Descriptivism, and Reference

2010-02-27T11:50:00.017-06:00

In the last two blog posts, I have discussed some possible advantages to understanding 'God' as used by Christians as a rigid designator. Spurning the descriptivist view that 'God' just means 'aliquid quo nihil maius cogitare possit', I have suggested we might move forward theologically by delimiting the semantic content of the term. In this post, I want to discuss the descriptivist theory of naming generally and some of its well-known flaws. After briefly discussing the causal theory of reference, I will describe problems arising when when 'God' is regarded as a disguised definite description. Finally, I will discuss how it might be semantically fruitful causally to fix the reference of 'God' over various possible worlds.

When considering phrases like 'Frege is the author of the Begriffschrift', we can distinguish among the following:

The mechanism by which the word 'Frege' might attach to a particular object in the world.
The meaning of the term - - either construed as the mechanism by which reference is established or perhaps as the reference of the term.
The relation between the mechanism by which reference is established, or perhaps reference, and the truth-conditions of assertive sentences containing the term.

The question is this: How do singular terms, particularly proper names refer? What is the mechanism by which 'God' refers; what meaning does the term have, and how might assertions containing the term be either true or false?

Descriptivist theories of proper names claim a proper name like 'Frege' has an associated description - - which can vary from speaker to speaker and over time - - by which reference is accomplished. The mechanism on the basis of which reference is fixed forms, on the descriptivist theory, the meaning of the term or expression at hand.

Descriptivist views developed in opposition to Millian theories of naming, whereby the name was regarded to have no semantic content. Frege famously argued that 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star' gives informative content. Accordingly, material identity statements seem to cry out for an analysis in terms of descriptive content. 'Morning Star' and 'Evening Star' seem to mean different things, though they have a common reference. If the meaning of a term were simply its reference, then an informative identity statement is seemingly impossible. But it seems that informative identity statements are possible, therefore, by modus tollens, the meaning of a term cannot be its reference.

Or take 'Fred Flintstone does not exist'. If the meaning of 'Fred Flintstone' is its referent, than how can 'Fred Flintstone does not exist' have meaning, for the necessary condition for meaningfulness clearly does not obtain?

Or take 'Janet believes that Melanchthon, but not the author of the 1521 Loci Communes, wrote on rhetoric'. If 'Melanchthon' and 'the author of the 1521 Loci Communes' have the same referent, how can Janet, a supposed rational agent, hold the statement to be true?

On a descriptivist view, these problems seem to dissolve. For instance, it is different semantic content that makes 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star' informative. In 'Fred Flintstone does not exist', 'Fred Flintstone functions as a description that is not satisfied. In 'Janet believes that Melanchthon wrote on rhetoric, but not the author of the 1521 Loci Communes', it is because Janet associates different semantic content to each of the terms that the statement is true.

But Ruth Barcan Marcus, and later Saul Kripke, argue subsequently (and persuasively) that names do not have semantic content after all, and thus are not semantically equivalent to any description. For both thinkers, proper names refer directly without mediation of an associated description. For Kripke, not only proper names, but also definite descriptions and natural kind terms (e.g., sheep) rigidly designate their bearers. Kripke points to three problems with descriptivist views: the epistemic problem, the modal problem, and the semantic problem.

The epistemic problem is the problem of unwanted necessity. Suppose that Bob knows that the Morning Star is the Evening Star because he knows they refer to the same thing. Then to Bob, adjusting his associated descriptions, it would seem that 'Morning Star is Evening Star' is necessary. But clearly this is not necessary, thus a descriptivist account is false.

The modal problem arises when the application of descriptive content to names produces absurdities in counterfactual situations. Imagine that to the word 'Fred Flintstone' we associate the greatest cartoon figure of the 1960s. Then were Fred Flintstone not to have been invented, 'Popeye the sailor lived in Bedrock' would be true - - if the description 'greatest cartoon figure of the 1960s were now satisfied by Popeye the sailor.

The semantic problem emerges when a description is falsely associated with a name. Take, for instance, the description 'the author of the Speculative Grammar'. Tradition has it that Duns Scotus was the author. But it may have been Thomas Bradwardine. Thus, if one were to say 'Duns Scotus died in 1308' and have as the associated description 'the author of the Speculative grammar', then the statement would be false because Thomas Bradwardine died in 1349.

The fact that names have no semantic content is consistent with a causal theory of reference, a theory that allows for a neo-Millian approach to proper names. According to the theory, in a reference-fixing event there is a dubbing of a name to a bearer, a relationship that is then causally transmitted linguistically. 'Aristotle' thus names the individual writing the Metaphysics in this world, while it names the same person in other possible worlds who did not write the Metaphysics. Instead of demanding a criterion of transworld identification that would pick out the same individual in different possible worlds, the proper name rigidly designates the same individual in all possible worlds - - not by virtue of a description, but through causal reference.

How does the descriptivist account fare with respect to the term 'God'? Plausibly, we might claim an associated description of 'God' as the sum total of all positive properties to the infinite degree. Accordingly, 'God' would pick out in each and every world that being that has the available properties and degrees instantiatable in that world. Obviously, a world in which there is neither goodness, love, nor even thought would have a very different being satisfying the description 'God'. To say, 'God could have created a world without goodness' demands that this God is instantiated in possible worlds without goodness, not simply that some being or other fulfills the suitable description in other possible worlds - - some without either matter or thought.

Of course, the idea that 'God' names the same being in all possible worlds in which He exists suggests that there is some ontological contour to God, a contour projectible across possible worlds. While this individual divine essence cannot be wholly specified, the fact that one names this God rather than that one suggests an ontological contour to the divine. More to the point, to say that 'God is good' is to say that the individual referred to by 'God' in all possible worlds in which that individual exists is identical to the instantiation of goodness - - whatever "the instantiation of goodness" quite means. All properties of God are accordingly essential to God, and they apply to God necessarily.

It is critically important to disambiguate logical, conceptual and metaphysical necessity here. While the freedom of God implies that God could have done other than what God did in fact do (and thus that 'God is good' is neither a logical nor conceptual truth), the way that God is constitutes God's essence in this world and in every world where this God is. Given the choice God has made for human beings, God's contour is metaphysically necessary for God to be God. From the standpoint of the reference of 'God', God could still have been other than good, for it is logically possible for God to have done other that what God did. While human beings generally know God as 'aliquid quo nihil maius cogitare possit', in salvation history the reference of 'God' is accordingly fixed such that it is now metaphysically necessary for God to be good. This necessity, however, is intraworldly, it applies to those world's in which the conditional 'God established covenant x' is true.

Another way of saying this is that God is identical to love and goodness in all metaphysically possible worlds, but not so in all logically or conceptually possible worlds. The set of metaphysically necessary worlds is a subset of the set of logically necessary worlds. There are worlds in which God could do x that are not metaphysically accessible by the God who is who He is, and will be who He will be. The question concerns now the "bare particularity" of the divine, the One who in being other than who He is, could have still be somehow still Himself.

Luther, Ontology and Rigid Designation

2010-02-26T08:03:00.002-06:00

I had a conversation yesterday with someone following this blog about whether or not yesterday's post Luther, God, and Rigid Designation, somehow was in conflict with the things I have earlier said about Luther and ontology. I want to clarify.

To say that the locution 'aliquid quo nihil maius cogitare possit' fails to conform to the semantic situation presupposed by the potentia dei absoluta, is not to argue a different metaphysical or ontological point than I have previously made. We must distinguish from divine states of affairs and how they states of affairs are referred to or picked out. My point was that 'aliquid quo nihil maius cogitare possit' fails to allow projections of this God of Christianity into counterfactual situations like the following: 'God might have not willed theft to be a sin'. Clearly, the Nominalist insight is that it is of the nature of God that He could have done other than what He in fact did do. Accordingly, it is not necessary that God would have established a covenant with his Chosen People. It is precisely this radical contingency within the deus nudus that forms part of the experience, I think, of the deus absconditus. God in his awe-full majesty is at work in the apparent contingency of the world. The contour of His unbridled, but hidden will, cannot be domesticated by human thought and rationality.

This being said, God has from among possible worlds actualized this world, a world in which He is present in Christ as provident and beneficient. It is in this world that God is known to be constituted as Trinity. But once this fact is known, we can claim that this God is a Trinitarian God in all possible worlds. While 'that which none greater can be thought' picks out the Trinitarian God contingently, the locution does not constitute the essence of this God. Analogous to Kripke on the essence of water, we might say that the essence of God is to be Trinitarian, and mean by that that in possible worlds where Trinity is not established, neither is God, that is to say, in all possible worlds, the Trinity is instantiated if and only if God is instantiated.

None of what I say here undercuts that claim that God has a particular nature, an ontological contour, and that the truth-conditions of theological language, with appropriate qualification, allow for this contour either to be rightly or wrongly stated. In other words, the notion that 'God' could be understood as a rigid designator is fully consonant with the assertion that Luther was both a theological and semantic realist, that he held that God exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and that language about this God is in principle capable of being true or false. What is lost in the semantic content of rigid designation is, in fact, gained in the metaphysical situation. Ontologically, one can be as robust as one wants, as long as 'necessity' as applied to God is not understood as logical or conceptual necessity, but as an intraworldly metaphysical necessity.

In other words, what I was trying to suggest in Luther, God and Rigid Designation is that the semantic notion of a rigid designator might be helpful in thinking through the radical freedom of God presupposed in late medieval Nominalism, and insofar as that divine freedom was, in fact, presupposed by Luther. I still claim that Luther is not a radical nominalist when it comes to his thinking about God, particularly his Christological thinking. Here, it does seem to me, that he needs to grant ontological status to natures, and cannot merely reduce them adverbially to ways in which the one divine-human entity is constituted or behaves.

I hope this clarifies the matter.

Luther, God, and Rigid Designation

2010-02-25T06:16:00.004-06:00

Famously, Luther differed from Thomas in holding that God's power extended over the laws of logic. Thus, while Thomas could so that not even God could make a square circle, Luther denied this, holding that if God truly is an infinite being with infinite power, the laws of logic cannot dictate what God can do, or how God might be. Here Luther shows his indebtedness to late Medieval nominalism. That tradition had distinguished between the potentia dei absoluta and the potentia dei ordinata, between God considered with regard to his absolute power, and God considered in so far as he has covenanted to relate to human beings in certain ways. While Anselm had confidently defined (or described) God as "aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit" ("that which none greater can be thought") the nominalists of the via moderna understood that this view necessarily limits the being and action of God to that which human must think when thinking God. Why indeed must God be the way humans think God? Do we not limit God's being when we think the Being of God must be the way that humans think God?

Luther follows the nominalists here in understanding that God is not merely an abstract entity. While it is characteristic of abstract entities to have the being that they have for human thinking, it is not so for living, concrete entities. Take, for example, the number '3'. If Russell is correct, and '3' really is 'the set of all triples', then the essence of '3' has been clearly, statically, and eternally been discerned and asserted. (Please excuse the use of 'essence' talk here!) In the same key, to say that 'God' just means 'aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit' is to clearly, statically and eternally uncover the essentiality of God in God's very Being. The problem, of course, is that God is unlike the number '3' in being alive: God is a dynamic, living, causally-efficacious being. To have causal powers, to enter into causal relations, and to actually live in time suggests a disanalogy with an a priori essentialist account of God. (Luther seems to follow the tradition in holding that all of time is eternally present in God.)

To say that there is a potentia dei absoluta is to say that there are things about God that might not neatly fall under the description aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit. If God is God, after all, God's being is logically prior to our thinking of God. This means, among other things, that God possesses a fundamental freedom that might not be able to be rationally described by human beings. A fundamental commitment to this voluntaristic insight underlies Luther's thinking on God. If God is God, then God is free to be whoever God wants to be. God's freedom is not found, pace Spinoza, in His necessary conformity to His divine essence, but in His will. It is the nature of divine will to be radically free, for if God is omnipotent, God can do whatever God wants to do whenever God wants to do it. Accordingly, to reidentify God across possible worlds cannot be grounded upon what God happens to do in any actual world. God's power and freedom strips away the logic of perfection advocated by Anselm and presupposed by Thomas. All such attempts at a "divine grammar" must be viewed only in regard to how actually God has chosen to act with respect to His creation. A logic of perfection must be a conditional logic, one granting the antecedent, "Since God has shown himself to be X, then we can conclude . . . " It is, of course, a ramification of the hiddeness of God that no conceptualist transworld identity is possible.

So how does one refer to the Deus Absconditus, the God hidden whom courses through all things, and without which things would not be as they are? What semantic and metaphysical theory of the divine is actually consistent with what Luther says in The Bondage of the Will and other places; what metaphysics of God conforms to the demands of the deus absconditus, the hidden God?

Many Lutherans have simply rejected thinking about the hiddenness of God because Luther has advised that one must keep one's eyes upon the deus revelatus, the God revealed in Christ, and that reflection on the hiddenness of God will necessarily take one's eyes off of the Sache, off of the wonderful gift that God has given His people in Christ. While properly theologically motivated, the problem with this approach is that for many today it is precisely the hiddenness of God that must be thought in order for it to be understood to be a good thing to avert one's eyes from this God. The locution 'hiddenness of God' is not merely metaphorical, but it is a description of a reality, the reality of a God who can do other than what he does, and who apparently often acts in ways dissonant from what a human logic of perfection would predict. In other words, God does not behave in ways seemingly in accord with what a confident unpacking of His divine nature would assume. (It is characteristic of living beings to be this way, I think.) So how to think about this hiddenness of God?

I think it plausible here to use the notion of rigid designation in referring to a God who in His absolute power has taken very different attitudes towards us in other possible worlds. The idea would be this. The ancient Jews encountered a God through an initial baptism in experiences like the burning bush. This God of the "I am who I am" was the God that brought them out of the House of Egypt, who gave them Torah, who spoke through their prophets. This God whom they encountered is not a God for whom a criterion of transworld individuation could easily have been given. The ancient Israelites were waiting to see how this God who was would be toward them; they were waiting for his revelation of himself to them.

It is this God whom Jesus called "my Father," and it is this God then who is named by the Triune formula. However, just as water was water before its essence was known to be H2O, and just as it is now impossible to identify water apart from its identification with H2O, so was God, truly God prior to it being known that God is the Father of Christ - - even though it is now not possible to identify God apart from his identification as the Father of Jesus Christ. God being the Father of Christ is an a posteriori necessity in the same sense as 'water is H2O'. Just as 'water' and 'H2O' rigidly identify in all possible worlds such that 'water is H2O' is a necessary identity statement, so do 'God' and 'the Father of Christ' rigidly designate in all possible worlds such that there is no world where the identity 'God is the Father of Christ' does not hold. In the same way it might seem counterintuitive the water must be H2O, so does it seem counterintuitive to hold that God must be the Father of Christ. But the counterintuitivity abates when one realizes that in one cannot meaningfully claim that 'water is not H2O' because then water would, of course, not be water. The same is true of God.

The upshot of all of this is that if one is to think about the essence of God at all, this essence is not going to be found in filling in 'that which none greater can be thought'. (This God would be pretty average anyway in ontologically impoverished worlds.) Rather, God's essence is to be the Father of Jesus the Christ. Now making this identification does not compromise the potentia dei absoluta because the Triune God could not have not been identified as the Father of Christ. If God is triune, then not being the Father of Christ is not an option in any possible world.

This God that is essentially Triune is not reidentifiable by a description or a cluster of concepts applied from world to world. This God is ontologically prior to description, because all description presupposes the conceptual machinery of this world and cannot describe or apply to the Being of God in God's self, that Being that is within God's power alone, a power that extends beyond the language and categories humans have to think it.

Experience of the hidden God presupposes that humans can refer to such a God. Understanding 'God' as a rigid designator makes such reference possible.

On Identity and God

2010-02-18T07:20:00.006-06:00

We often make identity statements where those things seemingly identified could have existed without being so identified. A putative example is 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star'. Presumably the identity here is contingent; while it is true that 'Morning Star' and 'Evening Star' pick out the same object, this is only contingently so. Presumably, there are possible worlds where 'Morning Star' picks out another object than Venus, and thus cannot be a co-referential expression with 'Evening Star'.

As is well-known, Saul Kripke argued four decades ago that we must in situations like this disentangle the relevant epistemic, metaphysical and semantic notions. Starting from the simple metaphysical and logical truth that identity is reflexive - - each and ever object and each and every term is identical to itself - - he argued that necessity applies to identity in the nature of the case. Each thing that is is necessarily identical to itself. I can imagine no possible word in which an object is not itself. I can not imagine a kind of thing not being the kind of thing it is, and I cannot imagine an individual thing not being the individual thing that it is.

Famously, Kripke argued that terms are "initially baptized" such as to apply to objects. Sometimes realization of this baptism takes time. 'Morning Star' was baptized to apply to the object in the sky that turned out to be Venus. The same is the case with "Evening Star'. So the truth of 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star" has the same logical and metaphysical status as the truth 'Venus is Venus'. Because of this, the two statements have the same modality; both statements are necessary.

Kripke terms words that pick out the same object in all possible worlds "rigid designators." Names are, accordingly, rigid designators. This is true of proper names like 'Hesperus' as well as common names like 'heat' or 'mean molecular kinetic energy'. Because 'heat' rigidly designates the same objective state of affairs as 'mean molecular kinetic motion', the statement that 'heat is mean molecular kinetic energy' has the same modal status as the statement 'the state of affairs designated both by 'heat' and 'mean molecular kinetic motion' is identical to itself'. While 'heat is mean molecular kinetic energy' is true in all possible worlds, it is not true that P's sensation of heat is identical to mean moleuclar kinetic energy. How heat is sensed is merely a contingent matter. Heat could have been sensed in such a way as not to feel hot, to feel loud, or not to be felt at all. Sensing by contingent beings does not change the objective reality of heat, or the objective fact that it is just mean molecular kinetic motion.

Kripke argues quite plausibly that if theoretical reductions like 'heat is mean molecular kinetic energy' are necessarily identical, if they are identical at all, then any putative theoretical reduction of pain to a particular brain state would involve a necessary, not merely contingent identity statement. Pain of type x would be thus be necessarily identical to neurophysiological actualization of type C. Moreover, it would seem, that the tokening of type x would be necessarily identical to the tokening of type C. Because the instantiation of the pain state x essentially involves its sensation, identities between pain and brain states are disanalogous to other kinds of theoretical identities. Whereas one can distinguish the sensation of heat from heat, one cannot distinguish the sensation of pain from pain. While it is a contingent fact that the sensation of heat has been correlated with heat by human percipients, there is no possibility of any contingency between the sensation of pain and pain. While the seeming contingency of statements like 'heat is mean molecular kinetic motion' can be explained by the fact that heat and the sensation of heat are only contingently correlated, there is no analogous method allowing identification of pain and the sensation of pain. In sum, to say that 'pain x' is brain-state y' is to utter a statement that we have no explanation whatsoever of how we could have failed to know it!

The question for the theologian is, of course, is the term 'God' a definite description like 'the inventor of bifocals' and thus something that picks out different objects in different worlds, or is 'God' a rigid designator? Do we not want to say that 'God' must be distinguished from our experience of God and surely the conceptual machinery we employ in picking out God? Has not the tradition's emphasis on the incomprehensibility of God presupposed that we are yet talking about something even when we have only a very inadequate conception of what it is that we are talking about?

It seems that we must perhaps claim an initial baptism of 'God' with that being who did a number of salvific things for His people, including being the Father of Jesus the Christ. Making this identification rigidly means that 'God is the Father of Jesus the Christ' is necessarily true in the same way the 'Morning Star is the Evening Star' is necessarily true. The question of human experience of God, and even the human conceptual apparatus to identify God - - I am thinking here about 'that which none greater can be thought' - - is a question that involves contingency. It is perhaps contingently true that 'God is that which none greater can be thought'. It is perhaps necessarily true that 'God is the Father of Jesus the Christ'. This is an interesting way to think about old terrain that all of us have felt has been well-established for a very long time indeed.

On the Existence of God

2010-02-15T15:54:00.009-06:00

One can talk about many things without claiming that those things exist. For instance, one can speak about imagined things (e.g., unicorns), fictitious characters (e.g, Sherlock Holmes), or even theoretical entities (e.g., charmed quarks). One can also talk about things that exist, but not in the way we might say other things exist (e.g., the set of all triples, the average American taxpayer, or the spirit of the Renaissance.)

In theology, it has become quite common to speak about God, or the being of God, without claiming that there is a being, God, that is. Theologians are quite adept, as it turns out, in talking about God - - even if they are not always able to specify what exactly they are speaking about in such talking. This has been true of philosophers as well, and was clearly true of that philosopher who in many ways set the stage for modern philosophy, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).

It is clearly true that the secondary literature has been divided on whether or not Hobbes believed that God exists. While some see him as a defender of Orthodox Christianity, others find him to be the consummate atheist. In reading Hobbes, one often wonders if many doing constructive work in theology would actually disagree with much of what he says.

Like many theologians, Hobbes admits that theology deals with things "outside philosophy" and thus with things outside the realm of causal explanation. Moreover, he claims repeatedly that of such a God, we can have no conception, for the only way to have a conception of a thing is to first have empirical impressions of it, impressions from which there is a decaying sense of imagination, and upon which conception is built.

As with many theologians, Hobbes believes that supposed revelatory experience is not caused by an divine object. In fact, in The Leviathan he seemingly grants no possibility that such visionary experience can be in principle veridical of something external to the experiencer. Speaking of that to which the name 'religion' applies, Hobbes writes:

"'Fear' of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, [is called] 'religion', not allowed, 'superstition'. "

He points out that dreams in stressful circumstances, when one is sleeping briefly, are visions - - whether they be visions of ghosts, goblins, or God. Hobbes further writes:

"To say he [God] hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say that he dreamed God spake to him, which is not of force to win belief from any man that knows dreams are for the most part natural and may proceed from former thoughts … To say he hath seen a vision, or heard a voice, is to say that he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking; for in such a manner a man doth many times naturally take his dream for a vision, as not having well observed his own slumbering" (Leviathan 32.6).

The important point, of course, is that Hobbes is offering a natural causal explanation for the existence of putative divine encounter. The supposed vision is, at root, the causal effect of antecedent and concurrent mechanical motions. While there could still be a God that one's putative knowledge could be about, this supposed act of knowing can trace no causal sequence back to an object that the supposed knowing purports to be about.

There could also be a God, even though Hobbes gives solid grounds upon which to base a causal story of why men and women are religious. In Leviathan Chapter XII (On Religion), Hobbes makes the following claims:

Human beings are naturally inquisitive into the causes of things.
We naturally assume something like the principle of sufficient reason, for anything that is, there must be some cause why that thing is.
But humans cannot discern what are the causes of those most important things of life, thus they concoct such causes of them "as their fancy suggests," or as they find that other men and women suggest, who are deemed to be "wiser than [they] themselves."
Men and women are thus in a state of perpetual anxiety in trying to figure a way to avoid the evils (that which they do not desire), and acquire goods (that which they do desire).
The fear that men and women have because of their ignorance of the causes of things has driven them to embrace the ultimate object of fear: God.
However, in Christianity it has not just been fear that has driven human beings to God, but also the desire to know the causes of "natural bodies, their virtues and operations." This has driven men and women to assert that "there must be . . . one first mover, that is, a first and an eternal cause of all things, which is that which men mean by the name of 'God'. . .
The "spirit incorporeal" that human beings claim as the cause of things, about that they can form no image. The very incomprehensibility of the notion has led them not to reject the notion as unintelligible, but rather to worship it.
This incorporeal substance, which men and women cannot think, has subsequently been borrowed in conceiving their own souls.
Religion has emerged because of natural human ignorance of what causes things most important to human beings, from devotion to what is ultimately feared, and from a natural tendency to project causal connection improperly upon the universe, a projection that gives rise to putative prognostication.

While natural science explains and predicts quotidian phenomena properly and rightly, religion explains and predicts the most important and significant phenomena of human life improperly, and wrongly.

I have labored a bit to present Hobbes' views simply because they are not something that many theologians would reject, though they may not be comfortable in speaking as forthrightly as Hobbes. Theologians often begin their work not with a rejection of the prophets of post-modernity (Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), but with a tacit acceptance of their central argument. Human beings project the notion of God on the cosmos in order to buttress themselves in the face of their radical ontological insecurities. The radical contingency of human existence leads humans to search for religion as a way to either deny or cover-up this basic existential insecurity. Constructive theologians then move to embrace an assertion of God consistent with an underlying commitment to the causal closure of the physical, to the assertion that for all x, if x is a natural event, then there was some y, such that y is a natural event causing y, and that for all natural events x, if x is to cause any other event, that event caused must itself be a natural event.

I think that commitment to an underlying naturalism while yet espousing the power of the Word to save and transform is finally a commitment to an unintelligible intellectual position. It may be that Hobbes was no more bloated in his ontological inventory of the divine than many contemporary theological thinkers. Perhaps he just was more honest.

Certain Confusions Concerning Faith

2010-02-14T12:56:00.009-06:00

To the question, "How do I know that my Redeemer lives?" some facilely respond "by faith." But what is this "by faith" whereby they know that there Redeemer lives? This is a question perhaps we have not explored deeply enough - - or at least not deeply enough in those areas which are by nature rather deep.

Lamentably, those responding to the question often make a fundamental kind of error, somehow believing that faith itself forms some perceptual-revelatory content whereby they are put in touch with the objectivity of the Word. The Word is imagined to be a content for thinking, willing, and doing, a content that faith somehow displays. Lutherans, of course, have always stressed the externality of the Word over and against its subjective appropriation. Because the Lutheran theological tradition has thematized externality, one would think it difficult were it to cast its eyes upon those having faith, were it to look upon the contour of faith rather than what faith is about. Clearly, for Lutherans, the reification of faith must be averted.

For this reason, believe, is perhaps helpful to think of faith adverbially. Like the adverbial theory of perception, an adverbial theory of faith would understand its subject as a way of being given, rather than as a content of givenness. In order to see this, let us review the distinction between the phenomenological experience of the subject's sense-data, and the way that the subject might know objects in the world.

Classically, sense-datum theorists claimed that there was something definite that was known perceptually, a phenomenological content that then could be judged as to how it related to the world. Accordingly, the world is conceived to have a definiteness to which the sense datum is related. Sometimes called an "act-object" theory of perception, the problem easily became how how to connect the givenness of the object of the act of givenness to the external world. It seems, in fact, that a type of perceptual dualism can easily arise, a dualism that holds between the sense-datum objects, and the putative mind-independent objects somehow causing them.

Adverbial theorists, however, take another avenue entirely. Instead of claiming that there are mind-dependent sense-datum objects interposed between the act of perception and the mind-independent external order, the adverbial theory declares that perception is of the external world, and that the thing putatively experienced, according to the sense-datum view, is merely a way in which the mind-independent world is experienced. It is not the experience of X that is present for an act of cognition or perception, but that the act of cognition or perception is a way of experiencing the world in a X-ly fashion.

An example might be helpful. According to a sense-datum theory, I can be given a red spot - - whether or not there is such a spot in the world. What appears to me is a red spot. The adverbial theory, alternatively, claims that I am experiencing the external world in a red-spottedly way, that is to say, I am being appeared to red-spottedly. While the theory successively opposes ontologizing perceptual content, it unfortunately does not adequately deal with the what exactly it is to be appeared to red-spottedly. While there is now no mystery how to get to the mind-independent world from an act of consciousness, there is great mystery in knowing precisely what the act of consciousness is by which one knows the world.

While neither the sense-datum and adverbial theories are cutting-edge these days in the philosophy of perception. their existence is useful for thinking through the nature of faith.

One might claim that faith provides a content in being "interposed" between the Word grasped and the subject grasping the Word. Accordingly, faith has a content that can be encountered, a content present to the subject that is in some way "caused" by the Word. Just as the mind-independent external object causes the putative sense-datum that is itself the object of the act of percepient's perceptual act, so too does the Word cause the content of faith, a content that is itself the object of the believer's act. Accordingly, there is an ontological priority to the Word over what the Word creates: the believer's faith. On this view, faith is made a substance, it is ontologized to become a thing existing between the believer and the Word.

But Lutherans would do best not to go down this track. Instead, it is far better to think of faith as a "way-of-being" the believer, as the way that Word is grasped by the believer. The Word is not available to us as a perceptual/conceptual content of the act of the believer's consciousness, but rather we are appeared to Word-ly. Faith is not an apprehension of the Word, but rather the Word's apprehension in us. Through faith we are appeared to Word-ly. Our experience of the Word is not a state in us that we can know, but rather is that by which the Word is itself known. Faith is not a theological reality, but the way in which theological reality is grasped. Accordingly, we are justified by grace not because of faith, but because our justification by grace happens faithfully. We are justified propter Christum, not propter fidem - - less anyone should grow confused.

On Identity and the Mind/Body Problem

2010-02-13T11:14:00.006-06:00

For a time 50 years ago the contingent identity thesis was all the rage in the philosophy of mind. The idea was simple. While mental terms and physical terms (brain language) did not mean the same thing, mental and brain language could still refer to the same thing. Just as 'Morning Star' and 'Evening Star' mean something different - - they have different modes of presentation according to Frege - - and yet nonetheless refer to the same object Venus, so could a mental term (e.g., 'headache') and a brain term (e.g., 'C-fiber stimulation of such-and-such a variety) mean something quite different, yet refer to the same physical state of affairs. The idea was that just as there are possible worlds where water is not H2O, there are possible worlds where pain is not C-fiber stimulation. (This world is apparently the actual world. I use 'C-fiber stimulation' here because this is what was used in the literature.)

According to the contingent identity thesis, as I read it, there must be some criterion of trans-world individuation for, respectively, water, lightning, and pain states that does not include, respectively, H2O, electrical discharge, and brain states. One is left to puzzle out exactly what this might be, the contour of the "is of definition," but this much is clear: If it only happens to be the case that water is H2O, then being H2O is only accidental to water. There must be something about water that allows projection across possible worlds, something that makes water water in all of these worlds --whether or not these worlds even have molecules at all. A fortiori, there must be something about the phenomenological state of pain that makes pain pain, regardless of how that pain is realized in neurostates - - or even if it is realized in neurostates. (I can clearly make sense of the notion of an angel being in pain, yet angels by their nature are incorporeal, and thus could not have brain states at all.)

The contingent identity thesis seemed to be committed to a Lockian view of secondary qualities. Heat is whatever is in the object that, in the presence of a suitable percipient, would cause the sensation of heat in the subject. The thesis thus presupposes a distinction between heat, the experience of heat, and the atomic facts which are identical to the heat in the object. The important point here is that heat is an objective property; its criterion of transworld individuation is not subjective, but rather an objective fact about the thing which has the power to produce an experience of an appropriate kind in the subject. On this view, heat just is that power in the object capable of producing the sensation of heat in the subject, and it is this power that is contingently identical to mean molecular kinetic energy.

This view rather nicely deflated phenomenological ontology, according to its advocates; the experience of heat was not a thing that was being experienced, but rather the experiencing of the thing. Adherance to the adverbial theory of perception was celebrated, for one did not wish to reify phenomenological content, but rather to speak about the thing that was experienced phenomenologically. Heat is in the thing, and the phenomenon of heat is just my experiencing of heat in such-and-such a phenomenological way.

The problem was, of course, what to do with putative phenomenological objects that seemed to have being apart from any external situation. What about an after-image? If I see a green after-image, I am not seeing that power in the object capable of producing an experience in me of a particular type, but rather am just seemingly experiencing the phenomenological object itself. The question is this: What is the being of an after-image? The answer that Smart and Place gave was that an after-image just is a brain process of a certain way. A green after-image is the experience of something that would be normally associated with the experience of a green object. Green, like heat, is a power in the thing which can produce an experience in us. A green after-image is the experience normally associated with the presence of a green object.

The problem with the contingent identity thesis, among other things, was and is that there are no contingent identities. As Saul Kripke argued so forcefully in Naming and Necessity, all identities are necessary. If a =b, then a just does not happen to be b, a is b. There are no possible worlds in which a thing is not identical to itself. If the Morning Star is the Evening Star, and both 'Morning Star' and 'Evening Star' designate Venus, then because 'Venus = Venus' and there is no possibility that 'Venus is not Venus', then 'Morning Star is Evening Star' is true in all possible worlds. The idea here is that names and expressions form rigid designators. Transworld identification is not done on the basis conceptual content, but by the initial baptism of the name to the thing. Once we discover that the Morning Star = Venus = the Evening Star, then we cannot think the Morning Star not being the Evening Star, because to think such a thing is not to think of the Morning Star at all. (It would be to think of something very much like the Morning Star' except for it not being the Evening Star.)

According to Kripke the apparent contingency of 'heat = mean molecular kinetic energy' is due to the fact that we think that it could have been otherwise. We did not know the heat is mean molecular kinetic energy so we naturally think there are possible worlds in which it is not. But obviously, if this is what heat is, then heat could not have been something other than mean molecular kinetic energy. This is not an example of what Place called the "is of constitution," but rather of what he called the "is of definition." The human race simply did not know for most of its history what heat was, but that does not mean that it was somehow not necessary that heat was mean molecular kinetic energy. One's epistemic limitations with respect to necessary truths do not infect the modal status of those truths.

Kripke thus distinguishes, like the materialists, from among the heat, the molecular realization of the heat and the experience of heat. There are qualitatively indistinct experiences that are experiences of different things. The contingency comes in the relationship between the percipient and the thing with heat, not in the relationship between heat and what heat ultimately is. Similarly, green just is a certain range in the electromagnetic wave spectrum, although we might have an experience of that which is qualitatively indistinct from it but not yet be an experience of green. (Presumably, this is the experience of a green after-image.)

What Kripke forcefully points out, however, is that the materialists are simply wrong if they believe that a mental state just is a brain state. The mental state of experiencing green cannot simply be a brain state as they argued, for there is a fundamental disanalogy between the example of 'lightning is an electrical discharge' and 'pain is C-fiber stimulation of such-and-such variety. In the first we can distinguish the lightning, the electrical discharge and are experience of lightning. There is a contingency between the experience of lightning and the lightning that just is not present between the pain and the experience of pain. If the lightning is necessarily identical to electrical discharge, our explanation for not knowing that is our failure to have gotten clear on whether our experience of lightning was actually of lightning. If we have the presence of lightning, we have the presence of electrical discharge in all possible worlds. The explanation of why we did not always know this, is that we were not clear on the identification of lightning.

This explanation is not, as Kripke points out, available to the one seeking to identify pain with C-fiber stimulation. The reason for this is that there is no meaningful distinction between pain and our experience of pain. If pain is necessarily C-fiber stimulation, then we have no way to explain the apparent contingency between pain and such stimulation. While we can imagine possible worlds in which we could have an experience of heat that is not mean molecular kinetic energy - - because our experience of heat is turns out not to be of heat - - we cannot imagine possible worlds in which we have an experience of pain that is not mean molecular kinetic energy. We accordingly should not be able to entertain the possibility of types or tokens of mental states that are not types or tokens of physical states and, alternatively, types or tokens of brain states that are not types or token of mental states. But we can, as Descartes has shown us, easily think the possibility. If the only identity available between mental states and brain states is necessary identity, then it seems that Descartes' argument has new legs.

Start from the indiscernibility of identicals, the assertion that anything identical to itself has all properties in common. If pain states and brain states do not have all properties in common - - do they have anything in common except temporal position? - - then they simply can't be the same thing. If there is no possiblity that the terms can mean something different yet be the same thing, then there is no possibility that the mental and the physical are the same thing.

Now Kripke is not a Cartesian substance dualist, and he wants very much to protect himself from the application of such an appellation. However, it is true that his work on the nature of identity continues to give ammunition to those uneasy with facilely naturalizing the mind. This is especially true when it comes to the qualia of the mental, the raw feels of color and pain experience. How can it be true that pain is identical to some brain state or other, if the identity for the person is necessary? How finally does the intuitive counterfactual that "I could experience this even after death" get answered if the 'this experienced' is supposed finally to be necessarily identical to some brain state or other? This question remains, and it is not without theological significance.

There is no reason why Lutheran theology should not be interested in such questions as these. I continue to believe that tacit philosophical assumptions must be coaxed out and explored, if theology is profitably to address the questions of the contemporary intellectual horizon. I can see no more pressing question than that of the ontological status of mind.

Towards a New Lutheran Graduate School

2009-12-15T16:55:00.006-06:00

It has been far too long since I have posted. What is the reason for this delay? It is, of course, that the Institute of Lutheran Theology has taken up far too much of my time. But what is this Institute of Lutheran Theology and why would I let it take up so much time?

I have been graced to be able to lead this new Lutheran theological educational project, a project that attempts to analyze the current intellectual and cultural waters, to chart a theological course through them, and to train the next generation of Lutheran pastors and church leaders in these navigational techniques. We are uncompromisingly committed to thinking through the philosophical presuppositions that have determined, (and will continue to determine) the theological moves that are available in our context. We believe that the intellectual and cultural situation is sufficiently complicated today as to demand a rather deep pastoral preparation - - if pastors are today to function as theologians, as those who have been called to preach the kerygma of the life, death and resurrection of the Christ to a world which has forgotten why it is that such a Christ is necessary.

In his Kingdom of God in America, the American theologian, Richard Niebuhr wrote:

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross."

His words remain profoundly a propos today. A necessary condition for the possibility of divine wrath is otherness, it is the possibility of confrontation from that which is other than what one is. When God remains a noble sentiment for us, He/She/It still is our sentiment. A God without distance cannot be a God who drives one to the Cross. The Institute of Lutheran Theology knows well that it must recover and teach the alterity of the divine.

Such alterity is, of course, connected to the ontology of sin. If sin is not to degenerate into a moral notion, then it must continue to connect conceptually to the distance between God and human beings. Divine judgment of human being is a judgment of this distance, of the infinite qualitative fissure that has opened between the infinite and the finite. The necessary condition of human sin and divine judgment is thus the wrath of God; it is, finally, the ontological rift that opens between divinity and mortality. It is the Cross that finally reconciles the two irreconcilable orders. The truth of this Cross must, moreover, be communicable and relatable to other truths, otherwise the truth of the Cross becomes the experience of the Cross, and theology gets locked up again within the province of the subject.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology presupposes that God has wrath, that human beings have sin, that God's kingdom includes judgment, and that Christ is not Christ without a Cross. Moreover, it proclaims that the divine is real, that are assertions about the divine make truth-claims, that the divine is not causally disconnected from His creation, that the divine is at work not only at the level of the subject and in idea, but also within the objectivity of the world itself! Finally, it claims that the Scriptural witness has something very clear to say about the sojourn of the Divine within time.

Please visit us at www.instituteoflutherantheology.org. We want students willing to think with us what an engaged Lutheran theology must look like in the early 21st century!

Why the ILT Theological Commitments are Important for the Parish

2009-06-16T13:51:00.005-05:00

This address was given at the ILT Theological Conference at Mt. Carmel on June 7 - 10.

Introduction

I want to say something today about the theological direction of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, and how that direction relates to preaching and teaching in the parish. This is a very important issue for those, like me, who still believe that seminary and graduate theological education should be effective in making students better teachers and preachers. Accordingly, I will begin by describing briefly what has now become the five theological emphases of the Institute. I will then relate these principles to what I take to be the “hermeneutical horizon” of those we shall likely encounter within the pews of North American churches in this early part of the twenty-first century. I use the term “hermeneutical horizon” to describe the set of interpretive presuppositions and principles of these early twenty-first century Americans and Canadians who are listening to sermons, participating in liturgies, and attending theological educational opportunities in their congregations.

The Five Theological Tenants of ILT

A few years ago I put together a list of what I believed were fundamental theological assertions or claims for the future of a robust Lutheran theology. The list included a number of assertions about the nature of church, the relation of the infinite and the finite, and the sufficiency of the agency of the Holy Spirit in the process of salvation. Since that time, however, it has become increasingly apparent to me that the first three claims that are not strictly speaking theological are nonetheless the most important of the claims for our time. The first speaks of the reality of God, the second about how we might objectively talk about God, and the third pertains to the nature of God’s relation to the universe. Since those first days of what was called then “the fundamentals,” I have had discussions with numerous people - - including the very able staff of the Institute of Lutheran Theology - - and I have accordingly refined the list to five. I offer the following as critical assertions for a robust Lutheran theology:

•Theological Realism. This is the assertion that God does exist and has a particular, determinate nature apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. While it may be surprising to some that a theologian would have to specify a commitment to theological realism rather than merely presuppose it, the truth is that theological realism is by no means any longer assumed within mainline Protestant theology. The explanation for this takes a bit of time to develop, and its full development is unfortunately beyond what I can do here today. However, I should say that I did do a Ph.D. in Contemporary Theology and Theological Thinking at the University of Iowa in the 1980s, and I found very few theological realists in those days either in the theological books I read and reflected upon, or the students, faculty, and professional theologians with whom I had the opportunity to work and speak.

•Semantic Realism. This asserts that our language about God has truth-conditions, that is, that there are features about the world, or more generally about what ultimately is, that make our language about God true or false. While it may be again surprising that theologians would not simply presuppose semantic realism, there are a host of very technical reasons - - some of which are scarcely understood by the theologians themselves - - why semantic realism is not widely subscribed to within leadership circles of faith communities within mainline Protestant denominationalism. Semantic realism claims the possibility of evidence transcending truth conditions, that is, it claims that language about God and God’s being is either true or false regardless of whether or not divine being is perceptually and publicly manifestable to us. This is widely assumed to be a very controversial philosophical claim. There are several alternatives to semantic realism, some of which claim that our talk of God is entirely in error, meaningless, or ultimately about features of ourselves or the world, features of which many users of the language are not aware. It is my contention that most theological education in the last fifty years has either explicitly or implicitly rejected the very possibility of semantic realism.

•Theophysical causation. This asserts that God can actually do things in the world. Beginning with the assumption that “to be real is to have causal powers” theophysical causation states that God’s actions must be understood causally, and that God’s agency is involved in causal relations. For instance, to say ‘God creates the universe’ is to assert a causal relation between God and the universe; it is to say, minimally, that the universe would not have come about as it did were it not for the activity of God. Moreover, to claim that “God redeems His creation” or that “God sustains His creation” is to say that creation would not have been redeemed without God’s action, nor would it have been sustained. Talking about theophyiscal causation, however, involves us in a very tricky matter: We have to be able to assert some kind of relationship between the infinite and the finite, between eternity and termporality, between the nonphysical and physical. Clarifying the nature of such a relationship is enormously difficult and fraught with numerous philosophical problems. For instance, how can something nonphysical be said to cause a change in the physical when the causal chains of the physical do not terminate in the nonphysical?

•A Lutheran Theology of Nature. This asserts that Lutheran theology, if it is to be sufficiently robust to survive within future generations, must reclaim a strong connection to daily life and living. The days of philosophical idealism are over. While previous generations of Lutherans may have rested content in the assumption that their theology and physics did not mix - - and were confident that such a non-mixing was good for theology - - I believe that this is no longer the case. We live in a time dominated primarily by physicalist assumptions. We believe, after all, that all things are made of atoms, and that such atoms are themselves very complex wholes whose parts are leptons and hadrons, etc. While we admit that the quantum world is quirky, we are not ready to admit that it is spiritual, that it is finally somehow mind. In such a world as ours, separating the actions of God from nature leaves people confused. How can one talk about the mighty acts of God without talking about the mighty acts of God in nature? The problem, of course, is that we Lutherans, along with many within mainline Protestantism, have been quite successful in talking about God without talking about nature. The notion of God, we have intoned, is after all finally something that connects to the realm of human value, not the world of physical and metaphysical fact. It is my contention that our slavish commitment to the fact/value distinction has marginalized theology and its language; it has made such language basically language about the self and what it values, rather than language about the world and what ultimately obtains.

•The Clarity of Scripture. This asserts that Lutheran theology must again return to a robust understanding of sola scriptura. Luther and the reformers presupposed that the Bible had a clarity making possible the apprehension of its content without the need of sophisticated and profoundly scholarly methods of ascertaining it. After all, Luther criticized the tradition’s four-fold method of Biblical interpretation, whereby all of Scripture was thought to carry a literal/historical sense, a hidden allegorical sense, a morally-relevant tropological sense, and finally an eschatological anagogical sense. Luther and kin realized that having such a method virtually guarantees that the Bible can mean anything that the interpreter wants it to mean, that is, that the sense of Scripture is merely a projection of the human interpreter upon the text. Such a view of things, of course, undercuts the very authority of Scripture. Accordingly, it is not Scripture that has the authority, but the various human readings of Scripture that has it. Luther and the Reformers also spoke of the internal clarity of Scripture, the clarity that Scripture had for the hearts of men and women in bondage to sin and not able to free themselves. The external clarity of Scripture grounds and internal apprehension by the faithful, an activity that presupposes the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Why Not the Classic Lutheran Tenants?

These fundamental assertions have been sometimes attacked because they do not seemingly talk about what is essential for Lutheran theology, that is, the centrality of Christ, the distinction between law and gospel, the theology of the cross, the simul iustus et peccator, the finite bearing the infinite, etc. But this is an unfortunate misunderstanding of these assertions. I have stated clearly and repeatedly from the beginning that our theology presupposes and affirms these traditional Lutheran motifs, as well as traditional Christian motifs generally. The reason that this set of assertions is highlighted is precisely because the fissure in the modern theological context is not primarily on the question of the putative centrality of Christ in salvation, but rather pertains to the reality of Christ Himself. Granted that Christ is central in salvation, the critical question is whether it is our idea of Christ, or the culturally-transmitted symbol of, or language about, the Christ that is central, or Christ Himself. Is Christ a real being that can sustain causal relationships with other beings in the universe, or is it merely a question of our ideas about Christ that are causally efficacious - - if ideas can be efficacious at all?

Lamentably, in this lecture today, we can only deal with the first three issues. I want to claim that the notions of theological realism, semantic realism, and theophysical causation are central and crucial to life in the parish. I want further to suggest that committed lay people have, in general, always had the good common sense to affirm these notions. The problem has been, I believe, in the educational system that produces pastors and teachers in the mainline Protestant denominations: These people have not been trained in ways that are sympathetic to these three affirmations. Instead much theological training has assumed theological irrealism, semantic expressivism, and the causal impotence of the divine. There is, accordingly, a theological disconnect between those who teach and preach in mainline Protestant denominations and the committed lay people within them.

But another disconnect arises as well. While committed lay people often simply regard theological realism, semantic realism, and theophysical causation as entailments of the Christian tradition generally, the dominant “cultural default” position within North America is not a position that supposes any of these to be true - - or, at least, does not suppose them to be true in any profound sense. The situation within mainline Protestantism whereby pastors and teachers not espousing theological and semantic realism are supposed to evangelize a group of people themselves not holding such realisms is not a happy one for the perpetuation of the Protestant tradition. While there does not exist a profound presuppositional disconnect between the horizon of leadership and the group to be evangelized on issues of theological and semantic realism, the tacit agreement of horizons between the two groups unfortunately offers no real reason for those to be evangelized to become committed lay people living out their faith within Protestant denominations throughout North America.

Why Theological Realism is Important in the Parish

The classical model of God in the western tradition presupposes certain Greek notions about perfection. In Greek thought influenced by Plato - - Whitehead has said that “all of philosophy is a footnote on Plato” - - God is figured as timelessly eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, simple, and impassible. God is, as Anselm was to say centuries later, “that which none greater can be thought.” God is accordingly regarded to be a necessary being, a being that does not merely happen to exist, but one who could not have not existed. Such a being is thought to exist apart from human being; indeed God has never not existed. This means, of course, that God existed for eternity before His creation of the world. The Triune God exists for eternity within the immanent Trinity prior to God’s expression into that which was other than He. What is important to see is that on the classical model the order of being (ontology) is unaffected by the order of knowing (epistemology). According to the classical view, God’s determinate being is what it is apart from our ability to perceive, conceive and understand it. God exists determinately before all worlds. The traditional view of God thus presupposes that ontology is logically prior to epistemology.

The Kantian revolution of the late 18th century radically transformed thinking about God. Because the notion of God has no “empirical intuitions” falling under it, Kant regarded it not to be the kind of being that could either be a substance nor could be known to be causally related to anything else that is a substance. Kant thereby relegated God to the status as merely an ideal of pure reason. Accordingly, God has in principle no causal efficacy, nor can He be said to exist apart from human awareness.

After Kant, theologians had to work out various “post-Kantian options for doing theology.” Instead of God-language being about some reality existing over and apart from human being, such language must ultimately be cognized as relatable to the self and its experience. With Kant, epistemology takes primacy over ontology. Accordingly, Schleiermacher identifies God not as a being existing external to human being, but rather “the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence.” Within the nineteenth century, we see various attempts to think God anew. For Schleiermacher, God is somehow reducible to, or identifiable with, the human feeling of absolute dependence. For Kant himself, and certainly his disciple Fichte, God becomes reducible to, or identifiable with, the human moral drive generally. For Hegel, God is somehow reducible to, or identifiable with, human reflection upon reflection, that is, with human thinking generally. Accordingly, as human beings progressively understand the historical identity of being and their thinking of being, they grasp that their thinking of being is itself the thinking of God as God comes to know Himself historically and temporally.

Later post-Kantian options turned more existential in their orientations. Barth and Tillich could both hold basic Kantian presuppositions, yet talk a great deal about God not being a mere idea. The trick here was to regard God relationally as the other of a human encounter, an encounter with a phenomenon that is not of their own conjuring or projection. Yet Barth’s commitment to the eschatological breaking into history of a reality that could not be part of history made it the case that God’s “mighty acts in history” could not be “mighty acts within nature.” Moreover, Tillich’s radical separation between God as the ground and depth of being and the human structure of being made it the case that, for Tillich, God’s existence could not mean that God was simply a member of the domain of existing things, that is, that an “ontological inventory” would include within it that being we call “God.”

Interestingly enough, people in the pews - - and I would say even mainline Protestant pews - - have never really made the Kantian turn fully. They seem yet to believe that to be real is to have causal powers. I would argue that in the present context, with so many options for belief, most people find that there are really no compelling reasons to attend church simply to remember or venerate an idea, ideal, or any other abstract object - - no matter how lofty that idea or object might be. One can, after all, venerate an idea or attune oneself to an abstract object without being in church. For the great numbers of people presupposing that the notion of God somehow clarifies the highest and noblest sentiments of human being, attending church services often grants no profound utility. Reading and discussing one’s noble sentiments is probably more useful than going to a church service where one’s sentiments are only obliquely referenced.

I think that the “cultural default” position on God in modern North American culture is probably not far from what Christian Smith has recently called “Moral Therapeutic deism”. In his recent Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Life of American Teenagers, he offers the following summary of this view:

• A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
• The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself.
• God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die.

It is important to analyze this a bit, for on first blush it would appear that this cultural default view suggests theological realism after all. As Smith and company point out, the teenagers they have interviewed do mostly hold that a God does exist outside human awareness. Indeed, they espouse a rather vaguely platonic belief that they have a soul and it goes somewhere good when they die. After this, however, things get complex in a hurry. God is not thought to be causally active in the world, and theological language is not thought to be capable of sustaining truth-conditions. The idea is that people use the language that they have inherited, and somehow this language helps in being both moral, and in achieving some peace and happiness in one’s life.

In analyzing this view, it is important to note that those holding it have not, in general, thought deeply enough about it to assure any kind of theological coherency. While the first tenet of “moral therapeutic deism” suggests theological realism, I am not sure most holding this view would want to assert that some determinate divine being exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. To claim that ‘God exists and watches over the world’ is consistent with the great religious traditions of the world, is clearly to deny the Triunity of God. A general God cannot both exist and watch over the world and a specific Triune God also so exist. Moreover, it cannot be the case that both ‘God is not particularly involved with one’s life’ (as moral therapeutic deism asserts) and that God is triunely active in quickening the hearts of dead sinners. The two cannot exist simultaneously.

Even if one could somehow assert that moral therapeutic deism does presuppose theological realism, it is simply not the case that such a realism would be a Christian realism. The critical claim for Christians is that Christ has been resurrected, and that somehow that resurrected Christ now exists independently of human awareness, perception, conception and language.

It seems to me all important that the Christian theological realist assert the reality of Christ apart from human being. In the absence of such a realism, language of Christ merely becomes symbolic language of empowerment, language that helps the person achieve greater moral direction and existential peace. But, of course, this moral therapeutic deistic trajectory is completely consistent with the Kantian turn in theology: The idea of God functions importantly to ameliorate human life. God is somehow identified with human moral striving and human existential health. God’s being is not a being that is prior to human being, but God’s being is only assertible on the grounds of human being. For moral therapeutic deism, epistemology is prior to ontology.

It is obvious that Christian discipleship is very difficult on such a view. While God is thought to exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, the Triune God is not. This means, of course, that Christ is not important in and of Himself as He whom one must follow. While talk of Christ is fine within a tradition of reflection on the problem of human being, fear of committing to Christian exclusivism makes even putatively committed Christians not want to be realists with respect to the second person of the Trinity. Of course, Christ has always been a stumbling block.

Why Semantic Realism is Important

Traditional theological language was truth-conditional, and robustly so. While the tradition always understood that one could perhaps not know what it is that one was talking about when talking theologically, the specificity of the talk was deemed nonetheless crucial in order to refer properly to the divine. Specific Trinitarian formulas were necessary to state the truth about the Trinity. It was not merely a game of having to say the same things as the rest of the tribe, it was rather the assertion that these things were true, and because they were true the whole tribe should say them. Traditional theological language held to the possibility of evidence transcendent truth-conditions. Language about God and God’s relationship to human beings is true or false because of the nature of God and His relationship to human beings. Such language while said by human beings, is not thought to be true because of human beings and the way in which such language is said.

There has been, however, quite a revolution in our thinking about theological language. This is an area where there is perhaps the most profound disconnect between the presuppositions of mainline Protestant pastors and teachers, and the presuppositions of committed lay people. It is an area where there is perhaps the deepest sharing of presuppositions between the “cultural default” view and the horizons of pastors and teachers.

Revisionist views of theological language assume that semantic realism can either not be defended in theology, or if defended, that the assertions of theology must be reduced to the assertions of some other area of discourse entirely. Opponents of theological semantic realism have various options. One can be a semantic realist and claim that no states of affairs exist which make true the sentences of theology. Such opponents say that semantic realism is committed to error theory, to a view of things that simply does not obtain.

Other detractors of semantic realism include semantic expressivism, the view that all language about the divine really is a projection or an expression of the self. This view is quite widely accepted, I believe, and often accompanies the moral therapeutic deism previously mentioned. That God wants humans to be happy and peaceful is perhaps best understood as an expression of the self upon the world. If God is not causally engaged in the world, what is the best analysis of the assertion that “God wants humans to be happy?” I would argue that it is best seen as a mere projection upon the cosmos of our own desire to be happy.

Other options for opponents of theological semantic realism include reductionisms of various stripes. Maybe talk about God really just is talk about the self, as Feuerbach claimed. Maybe all such talk is either semantically or theoretically reducible to psychology, economics, or sociology. It should be obvious that the rejection of semantic realism is consistent with, and probably entailed by, a rejection of Christian exclusivism.

If language about the divine is not really about the divine over and apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, then such language is really culture-bound and its “truth” must be asserted in ways that are quite different from the the truth-conditions of the tradition. For instance, one might assert that the various religious languages of the differing traditions are true in that they express or empower human beings in various ways. Statements about Christ thus are true because of the effect of the symbol, language, or concept of Christ within human experience generally.

It should be obvious that pastors and teachers presupposing this view of things do not really have a reason to evangelize the masses who are already accepting the “cultural default” view. What is it about the particularity of Christian claims that makes it the case that one would want others to adopt them? The tradition said that such claims were true, but in the absence of clear truth conditions, this assertion devolves merely to an assertion that such language is effective in the moral and existential lives of human beings.
Why Theophysical Causation is Important

The tradition assumed that God really does create, redeem and sustain the world. While there was much reflection on the relationship between the being of God and the being of contingent being, there was never a denial of God’s actions as somehow causing the distribution of natural events. The whole premise of the supernatural/natural distinction is that God can and does work in the world, whether through divine primary causality coursing through all things, or via special interventionist causal action.

However, since the time of Kant, the effort has been to think of God primarily in noncausal terms. God is not the kind of being that can be appealed to as the terminus of any causal chain. God’s being is not like contingent being, so whatever contingent causality is, it is not divine causality. As I pointed out previously, in periods deeply in debt to idealism, this is not as profoundly problematic as it is in our time, a time governed by physicalistic assumptions, a time where people widely regard it to be the case that “to be real is to have causal powers.” In our time, when people do decreasingly come to worship out of cultural inertia, there has to be some compelling reason to do so. If pastors and teachers suppose that God is not real in the sense of being causally efficacious in one’s life, then they can finally only offer God as a great idea, as the embodiment of justice, goodness, power, etc. But it is difficult to see why one would go to church to encounter such a God unless the pastor or teacher can say things that ultimately make the church-goer happy or more at peace. But this puts the pastor or teacher in the same business as the counselor or the writer of self-help books.
On the issue of divine causality, there exists again the profound disconnect between the loyal lay people who regularly pray to God and expect God to do things in the world and the pastors and teachers who know that God is not the kind of thing that can be in principle a being that can do things in the world. Here the pastors and teachers have to teach and preach in such ways that do not cause the really committed to leave the faith community. Yet, in their preaching and teaching, they are to preach and teach to an audience that does not believe that God is causally efficacious but somehow still desperately wishes it were so.

The question of the causal efficacy of the divine is, in my opinion, the fundamental fissure between Christian Protestant expressions. While we can argue the fine points of theology among Reformed, Lutheran, Tudor, and Anabaptist traditions, the question of whether or not God is the kind of being that can in principle change the distribution of worldly events and properties is far more fundamental. It is, after all, quite difficult to frame a non-causal account of divine redemption. If Christ does not exist over and apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and if divine things are in principle not able to be causally linked to worldly things, then in what sense can Christ “save” us? That we have been able to proceed for so many years within mainline Protestantism as if this were not a deep and significant question merely shows the theological bankruptcy of our time.

Conclusion & Summary

There was once an emperor who was convinced that he had clothes though no one else saw them. All except the most unsophisticated were able to affirm that the naked emperor had clothes, but not so the children.

When I was a child I marveled at the world and asked questions about how there might be a God that somehow hooked up to it. After six years of Ph.D. work in theology, I was ready to put away childish things and do real theology. But I know now that some questions from children our childish and some quite profound. I think that the question of whether or not the emperor has clothes is the profound question of a child. Jesus told us to be as little children. So that is why I am here today. I believe that the emperor is naked; I cannot find a stitch of clothing on him. I can’t see a way ahead theologically without first coming to terms with the nakedness of the emperor.

The Institute of Lutheran theology thinks the emperor is naked as well. It steadfastly and boldly asserts that God is real, that our language about God is true, and that God really does create and redeem His world. The Institute believes that these commitments are of fundamental importance in the parish. The pastor and teacher must, after all, have a good reason to evangelize. If her God is real, her God causally active, and her language about God true, she has every reason to evangelize. If this is not the case, then things are much more complicated. In fact, if not, one would expect to see a rather confusing situation in parishes across North America; one would, in fact, expect to see the situation we are in fact witnessing today.

On Looking Above and Below - - Clarifications on Reform

2009-04-23T22:40:00.008-05:00

Martin Luther always said that if the church is to be reformed, human beings cannot do it, for only God can reform his church. In order to think about this clearly, one must understand what 'church' means and what 'reform' means. One must also get clear on the impossibility that Luther finds that human beings have with respect to 'reforming the church'. I wish to explore these matters a bit below, seeking at all times to think through these themes from a perspective that is ruthlessly Lutheran.

'Church' means primarily, for Lutherans, the 'association of those with faith and Holy Spirit in the heart' (Apology, Article IV). As such this church is that to which the four Nicene predicates apply. 'One' is predicable of it because it is a set of those having the same attributes. 'Holy' is predicable of the church because those in which faith and the Holy Spirit reside may be called holy. 'Catholic' can be predicated of the church because it is everywhere, that is, there is no place where those with faith and the Holy Spirit are not. Finally, 'apostolic' can be predicated of the church because those with faith and Holy Spirit in the heart are those who have a successio fidei reaching back to apostolic times. This is the way that these predicates were standardly applied during Lutheran Orthodoxy.

The first thing to realize about construing 'church' in this way is that it seems not in need of being re-formed at all. The hidden church, what Melanchthon calls "the true church" is not the kind of thing that can be reformed, because if faith is not present in a person putatively in the church, the person is not actually in the church. The church has definite boundaries; it is a binary or digital phenomenon. There are no grades of this church; it simply is - - or is not.

So when Luther said that God is in the process of reforming his church, it may seem that he is not primarily interested in the hidden church, but rather the hidden church as it is revealed around Word and Sacrament. This church, of which the hidden church is a subset, is visible, and because of the presence of the hidden church within can be called by synechdoche 'church' as well. This visible church, which is not the true church, can be either purely formed or better formed. A felicitous forming would be one in which the gospel would regularly be preached in its purity and the sacrament rightly administered. An infelicitous ordering would be one in which it was difficult for the gospel to be proclaimed in its purity and the sacrament rightly administered. So the question is this: can this church only be reformed through divine causal power? Luther seems to say "yes".

But before we decide this easily in the affirmative, it is important to distinguish what powers human beings really have. In The Bondage of the Will, Luther decries any who, like Erasmus, would claim that human beings have a free will. But what is this claim to mean? What is meant by 'free will' and how does the presence or lack of free will relate to the issue of the reform of the church?

Luther does understand freedom of the will not primarily along the lines of being able to do other than what one did do, but more along the line of being able to do what one wants or rationally decides to do. Luther claims in the Bondage of the Will that one has no free will with respect to actualizing the desire or decision to be closer to God, to move toward God. While human beings are free with respect to "those things below them," they are not free with respect to those above them. A person can plant corn if they desire or rationally decide to do so. A person can build a house using asphalt or steel shingles. These things a person can do. What a person cannot do is move closer toward, or gain the favor or gifts of God; one cannot change the situation with respect to God by one's own efforts. The will is bound never so to properly relate to God. A human being cannot be his/her own reason or strenght believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or come to Him.

So how do these ruminations relate to the issue of the visible church? Luther says only God can reform it, not human beings. So what is the visible church, a thing above or a thing below human reason. Do human beings have power to affect the contour of the visible church?

The short answer to this must be that the visible church, in so far as it is an earthly institution, is truly a thing below human reason. As a thing below human reason, human beings can affect its structure such that felicitous attributes that get the gospel properly preached are either augmented or diminished. To reform the church in this way is something that human beings have the causal power to accomplish. One can either augment or diminish the tendency of the earthly insitution to proclaim purely the gospel and administer rightly the sacrament. Accordingly, human causal powers can affect the state of the visible church. Why is this? The answer is simple: The visible church, considered as an association of people gathered around Word and sacrament, is simply a temporal organization that either is properly ordered or imporoperly ordered to get the josb done: preach the gospel in its purity and administer the sacrament with propriety. So considered, human beings can affect the visible church.

However, human beings can make no headway in changing the breath of the hidden church. With respect to the divine, human beings are powerless. Human beings, no matter how properly they order the visible church for gospel purity, cannot increase nor decrease membership in set of all of those with faith and Holy Spirit in the heart. Only God can do this; only God can form again the hidden church he once brought into being. Just as human beings can do nothing to increase their own salvation, so can they do nothing to augment the boundaries of God's Church. Only God can do that.

So what have we learned? When Luther said that only God can reform his Church, he meant that only God can form again the boundaries of that hidden Church. The class of all those with faith and the Holy Spirit in the heart is homogenous. There exist no density points, no "closer thans" or "further froms" within the true church. Only God sets the boundaries of that church. But of the empirical church within which both the hidden church and "tares" reside, that church is a human, temporal organization and as such can be affected by the causal powers of human agents. Man and woman have freedom of the will with respect to the empirical church considered as a historical reality. They do not have freedom of the will with respect to the extension of the hidden church. The hidden church is a thing above human beings; the visibile church in which it resides is clearly a thing below human beings. Confusion abounds when these things are not clearly thought.

So against our first judgments we must hold that the church Luther is thinking only God can reform is the hidden church., and the church we see around us is fully susceptible for reform by exertion of human causal power and agency.

Science, Natural Theology and the Internal Clarity of Scripture I

2009-04-22T22:08:00.008-05:00

On the surface, it seems that science and the internal clarity of Scripture have not much to do with each other. How does science, that activity whereby humans build theories to explain and predict natural and social phenomena, connect to the theological notion that Scripture is clear in and of itself? How does science link to Scriptural perspicuity, to the notion that while we may not deeply understand Scripture, it nonetheless retains an objectively understandable meaning? To connect the previously unconnectable is always dangerous, for there are reasons why they have not previously been linked.

Yet in the spirit of exploration, I wish today briefly to think their linking; I wish to suggest that they can be connected, and that linking them entails a rather robust Trinitarian perspective. Before setting about exploring the being of their linking, however, we must understand what it is that we are trying to connect. This demands we say something both about the nature of science and Scriptural perspicuity. We shall deal with the latter first, consider the former second, and conclude by connecting the former to the latter.

The locus classicus for thinking Scriptural perspicuity is Martin Luther’s 1526 Bondage of the Will. Here Luther counters Erasmus by arguing both that Scripture has a discernible clarity that human beings don’t immediately grasp, and that it has both internal and external clarity. Luther acknowledges that many things in Scripture seem obscure:(1)

"I admit, of course, that there are many texts in the Scriptures that are obscure and abstruse, not because of the majesty of their subject matter, but because of our ignorance of their vocabulary and grammar; but these texts in no way hinder a knowledge of all the subject matter of Scripture."

Accordingly, while we may be ignorant of the vocabulary and grammar of Scripture, knowledge of Scripture’s subject matter is possible, e.g, knowledge of the Trinity, the incarnation, and the work of Christ. “The subject matter of the Scriptures, therefore, is all quite accessible, even though some texts are still obscure owing to our ignorance of their terms.”(2) Luther goes further, claiming of those who do not grasp Scripture’s clarity that a “veil lies over their minds.” The problem is the stubbornness of the interpreter:

"With similar temerity a man might veil his own eyes or go out of the light into the darkness and hide himself, and then blame the sun and the day for being obscure. Let miserable men, therefore, stop imputing with blasphemous perversity the darkness and obscurity of their own hearts to the wholly clear Scriptures of God."(3)

The clarity of Scripture does not entail we know the nature of divine things and how it is that they are the way they are; it only entails that we know divine things are in a particular way: “Scripture simply confesses the trinity of God and the humanity of Christ and the unforgivable sin, and there is nothing here of obscurity or ambiguity. But how these things can be, Scripture does not say (as you imagine), nor is it necessary to know.”(4)

Luther has made a couple of important distinctions in these passages. Firstly, he apparently wants to distinguish the sentences of theological language from the propositions expressed by those sentences. While the words and grammar of the language can be obscure, what is stated by it is clear - - if one approaches the text with sincerity.

For Luther, inheriting the semantic theory of the late middle ages, words and sentences signify, that is, they cause the mind to think about certain things. Luther is merely claiming that there is no ambiguity in what the sentences of Scripture cause the mind to think about.

Secondly, Luther appears to distinguish the clarity of the propositions from the putative states of affairs to which these propositions refer. While one might know what is asserted by the proposition, one cannot know exactly how it is that what is asserted obtains or can obtain. In the semantic theory of the day, Luther is claiming that while the supposition of Scriptural language makes true that language, it is not easy to grasp how what is supposited can obtain. For instance, while the statement ‘God is Triune’ has a clearly signified sense and a definite reference making it true - - ‘God is Triune’ is true if and only that which is signified by ‘God’ is a member of the class of all things signified by ‘Triune’ - - it is not routinely possible to picture or grasp the natures of these objects signified by ‘God’ and ‘Triune’.

Finally, Luther distinguishes external obscurity and clarity from internal obscurity and clarity. The first pertains to the external ministry of the Word; the second concerns the understanding of the heart. Concerning the latter Luther writes:

"If you speak of the internal clarity, no man perceives one iota of what is in the Scriptures unless he has the Spirit of God. All men have a darkened heart, so that even if they can recite everything in Scripture, and know how to quote it, yet they apprehend and truly understand nothing of it. They neither believe in God, nor that they themselves are creatures of God, nor anything else . . ."(5)

The “internal clarity” of Scripture is concerned with the salvific significance of those things signified and it is given only via the Holy Spirit. Luther distinguishes this internal understanding from the external clarity:

"For the Spirit is required for the understanding of Scripture, both as a whole and in any part of it. If, on the other hand, you speak of the external clarity, nothing at all is left obscure or ambiguous, but everything there is in the Scriptures has been brought out by the Word into the most definite light, and published to all the world."(6)

A century later and in words deeply reminiscent of Luther, the great Lutheran dogmatician Johann Gerhard writes:

"If you speak of the internal clearness, no man understands a single iota of the scriptures by the natural powers of his own mind, unless he have the Spirit of God; all have obscure hearts. The Holy Spirit is required for the understanding of the whole of Scripture and all of its parts."(7)

Externally Scripture is clear, though human beings often (maybe mostly) find it obscure; inwardly it is obscure unless the Holy Spirit “lifts the veil” and facilitates its apprehension. The external Word is thus a necessary condition for the text’s external clarity, while the presence of the Holy Spirit is the necessary condition for its internal clarity.

At play in this tradition of reflection Scriptural clarity is the notion of the “hermeneutical circle” where the parts interpret the whole and the whole interprets the parts. The 17th century dogmatician Quenstedt writes:

"The more obscure passages, which need explanation, can and should be explained by other passages that are more clear, and thus the scripture itself furnishes an interpretation of the more obscure expression when a comparison of these is made with those that are more clear; so the Scripture is explained by Scripture."(8)

But, this hermeneutical circle again presupposes the agency of the Holy Spirit:

"From no other source than the sacred scriptures themselves can a certain and infallible interpretation of scripture be known. For scripture itself, or rather the Holy Spirit speaking in scriptures or through it, is the legitimate and independent interpreter of itself."(9)

The internal clarity of Scripture is thus supposed to steer between the Scylla of the external authority of a teaching magisterium and the Charybdis of internal private “enthusiasm.” By asserting it, Luther and the Reformers put an end to the fanciful interpretations of both the tradition’s fourfold method of scriptural interpretation and the privately “enthused” interpreter. The problem is that both alternatives could always claim to discern a deeper “spiritual truth” behind the shallow vulgar letter of the biblical text, a “truth” that Luther and his colleagues recognized is likely merely the result of the wishful projection of sinful man and woman.

In conclusion, we must point out that the internal clarity of Scripture is profoundly tied to the notion of objectivity: Indeed, the necessary condition of Scriptural clarity is semantic objectivity. While we can perhaps model the sentences of Scripture, we cannot grasp how these models correspond to the actual divine world. For this the Holy Spirit is needed, for it is His presence that makes possible understanding what is clearly asserted in the text. The Word of the text, externally clear and objective, becomes internally clear as well when the Holy Spirit grants internal appropriation of that external Word. In other words, the model of the sentences of Scripture is now grasped as characteristic of how the divine is, especially how the divine is with respect to us.

_________________________

(1) Luther, Martin: Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan (Hrsg.) ; Oswald, Hilton C. (Hrsg.) ; Lehmann, Helmut T. (Hrsg.): Luther's Works, Vol. 33 : Career of the Reformer III. Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 1999, c1972 (Luther's Works 33), S. 33:25. Compare the following from Quenstedt: “But the articles of faith and the moral precepts are taught in scripture in their proper places, not in obscure and ambiguous words, but in such as are fitted to them, and free from all ambiguity, so that every diligent reader of scripture who reads it devoutly and piously, can understand them” [Quenstedt (1617-88), Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 81].

(2) LW 33:26

(3) LW 33:27

(4) LW 33:28

(5) LW 33:28

(6) LW 33:28

(7) Quoted in Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 83-4.

(8) Ibid., 86.

(9) Ibid.

Some Questions about Divine Agency

2009-04-01T23:10:00.003-05:00

As a college student thirty years ago I read John Wisdom's "Gods" and was struck by the the Parable of the Invisible Gardener. Twenty-five years ago as a Ph.D. student, I read Flew, Hare, and Mitchell on the conditions for the meaningfulness of theological language. Flew had used the example of Wisdom's Invisible Gardener to show how theological claims "die the death of a thousand qualifications." Any claim that is consistent with any way that the world might have gone is a claim without semantic content. What claim is made, after all, when one says that "an invisible gardener comes and tends this mountain meadow" and that "this gardener is invisible and wholly incapable of detection"? What claim is made when one says 'God loves the young girl" and yet the young girl is suffering from throat cancer and is in severe pain? What strange ways religious people use words! How can one apply 'love' meaningfully after one admits that divine love is wholly unlike human love?

Twenty-five years ago, I was convinced by Flew. In fact, I was still convinced by Flew five years ago. However, I am no longer convinced by Flew. He supposed that any claim consistent with any way the world might have gone is no claim at all. I no longer agree. In fact, if one thinks deeply enough about this, one would expect a claim about God to be consistent with any way the world might be. Why? Well, if God is not a contingent being like other contingent beings, then the relational and non-relational properties of God would not be assigned by the way properties are distributed in the actual world. The properties of a necessary being would be based upon the way properties distribute in all possible worlds.

We can, of course, distinguish many senses of necessity. Of interest here is not logical or conceptual necessity, but metaphysical necessity. Whereas logical and conceptual necessity governs how states of affairs must be in all possible worlds and is thus a priori, metaphysical necessity speaks about what states of affairs must obtain on the basis of finding some other state of affairs obtains. For instance, "I think, therefore I am" is not true in all possible worlds, because one can imagine thinking without there being one that things. (Sartre presumably accomplished this.) However, given the fact that one is thinking, one is clearly being. That is, given the a posteriori fact of one thinking, one cannot not be present to think. Similarly, given the contingent fact that gold has an atomic number of 79, gold cannot not have such an atomic number. When one finds that about a thing that cannot otherwise be if the thing is to be the thing, one has found what is metaphysically necessary about the thing.

The point is that if God should exist, God could not not have the divine nature that makes God, God. Just as gold could have not existed, but did with an atomic number of 79, so could God have not existed, but does with a divine nature of love. Just as it is metaphysically necessary for gold to have an atomic number of 79, it is metaphysically necessary for God to love His creation. Finally, just as gold having the atomic number of 79 is consistent with any way worlds with gold present might have been, so too God loving his creation is consistent with any way those worlds with God present might have been. If God necessarily loves, this loving should be expected to be consistent with any way that the world might have been. Far from dying the death of a thousand qualifications, claiming that God love's His creation is to say something like humans loving after all. The modal status of love should not confuse us into thinking that God does not love, rather it should instruct us as to look not at the "moves in the game" but rather " at the rules of the game." Divine love is to human love as the rules of the game are to moves in the game. Just as the rules of the game are consistent with any moves within the game, so too is divine love consistent with any spatio-temporal acts of loving. Finally, just as the rules of the game show the spectrum of possible moves in the game, so does divine loving show the range of possible occasions of concrete, earthly loving.

Perhaps we have been thinking about divine agency wrongly. Perhaps we should not expect to find such agency as moves within the game, but as rules promulgated for the game. If so, such agency might show the spectrum of possible occasions of concrete human agents doing certain things. Perhaps we have been bewitched into thinking divine agency a contingent matter, rather than a matter of metaphysical necessity. In all worlds in which God is, God cannot not be at work. His being at work creates the very possiblity for human agency.

It is the mark of a necessity that the necessary thing be in all possible worlds. If divine agency is metaphysically necessary, it is in all those worlds in which there is God, worlds distinguished by the distribution of their worldly, contingent events. Perhaps if we could detect divine love like we discern human love, we would not have divine love at all. Making a macro-move in a game does not change the way that the game is played. Maybe Flew has been wrong all of these years; perhaps a claim that is consistent with any way the world might have been is not a pseudo-claim, but a more profound kind of claim. Perhaps we are not expecting such a claim, because we can undersand no longer what it would be for God to be.

On the Fundamentals - - Response to Menacher

2009-03-07T06:27:00.004-06:00

On the Logia website (www.logia.org), Mark Menacher has taken aim at the "fundamentals" I offered up a couple of years ago. A couple of clarifications and some response is in order, I think.

These "fundamentals" were published on the WordAlone website over two years ago. My interests then and now are not the reform of the ELCA, whatever 'reform' might mean in this context. I was struggling in early 2007 to clarify some of the presuppositions of the "working theology" of the WordAlone Network. I wrote these both as descriptive of those presuppositions, but also as prescriptive. In reading Mark's response to them, it is obvious that he questions whether WordAone is worthy even to exist. I will not deal here with that issue, but rather with some of the specific claims he makes about these assertions in themselves, that is, in abstraction from the WordAlone context.

All need to realize that this attempt at fundamentals presupposed that we begin Lutheran theology solidly in the Second Article; we presuppose that Jesus is the Truth and Life. To claim as I did that theological language has truth-conditions is not to claim that Jesus is not the Truth. By talking about theological language having truth conditions, I am saying that Mark's own critique of my work can be either true or false. Unfortunately, much theological discourse seems to have abandoned this basic presupposition. I affirm it.

I am rather puzzled by the other points that Mark makes. To say that God is "causally related to the universe" is not to say that is all we say about God. It is to say that we presuppose that relatedness when making statements about God's acts in the orders of creation and redemption. I find no points of disagreement in his critique of theses (3) and (4). In thesis (5), I was thinking about the Apology, and subsequent reflection on these matters within Lutheran Orthodoxy generally. I find no substantive difference in what Mark says in theses (6) or (7) either. One might not like the term 'orientation', but one needs to look beyond the use of the term, and try to understand what the author might mean by it. I clearly mean that men and women are at enmity with God whether, as Luther says, "they eat, sleep or drink." In (7) I accede that the Holy Spirit works freely and verbally. These are properties of the Holy Spirit's working, presumably. I was talking about a relational fact about human beings, however. The question is whether or not human work contributes in any way to the freeing of human beings from sin, death, and the power of the devil. I am merely affirming what has been the dominant tradition within Lutheranism on this matter.

Fundamental semantic presuppositions have been at work within vast portions of the Lutheran theological landscape that are quite alien (and antithetical) to the semantic horizon upon which the Reformation originated. This is why we have thousands of preachers who can talk confidently about what God has done, but no longer believe that "having done" connotes a causal relationship: X causes Y if and only if were X not to have happened, then Y would not have happened. Failure to attend to what is basic here has raised up a generation of Lutheran preachers and teachers who can talk confidently of God's "mighty acts in history" and yet not mean that God affects nature. That is to say, 'God divided the waters' no longer is parsed to mean that there is a divine being, there are waters, and that the waters would not have been divided were God not to have acted.

I thank Mark for his comments, and I say to him that it seems we really are in agreement on most of these issues.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Internal Clarity of Scripture II

2009-03-04T22:14:00.007-06:00

The question of the internal clarity of Scripture links to the question of a theology of nature. Just as the Book of Nature can be read with a providential divine being at its center really existing apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and causing the distribution of a least some natural properties, so too can the Book of Scripture be read with a salvific divine being at its center, externally acting to save human beings from sin, death, and the power of the devil. While the providential divine being has causal power within the order of creation, the salvific divine being is the Word which presents Himself in words, carrying the Spirit which knows the Word in these words.

Christian faith confesses the ontological reality of God's presence in nature, though God is unclear to the human gaze. Human beings see through a glass darkly when they dare at all to recognize the Being of the creator God in the divers, sundry, and disconnected events of history. Similarly, this faith confesses the ontological presence of God's Word in the divers, sundry, and apparently disconnectable events of the Biblical texts.

To say that God appears not to be at work in nature, is an honest statement of the natural man and woman., She cannot find God unambiguously present in nature, though faith catches glimpses here and there, and from time to time. Similarly, to say that the Bible does not in its entirety seem to be bespeaking, and speaking about the Christ is an honest confession of natural man and woman. She cannot find Christ unambigously present in the texts, through faith catches glimpses of that presence here and there, and from time to time.

The presence of the God in nature, like the presence of Christ in Scripture, is an ontological assertion. God is present in nature even if man and woman can not know him; Christ is present in Scripture even if man and woman do not recognize it. Human beings are epistemically limited with respect to their apprehension of the divine in nature; human beings are similarly limited with respect to their apprehension of God's Word (Christ) in Scripture. God's mighty acts in history, and Christ's presence at the center of Scripture are externally obscure for sinful man and woman. To say, then, that Scripture is internally clear is to say that it has this property in se, not in relationship to human apprehension of it. Similarly, to say that God's mightly acts in history are perspicuous is to say that these mighty acts clearly happened and continue to happen, even iv there are nu humans capable of recognizing this to be true.

Prologemonena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Internal Clarity of Scripture I

2009-03-02T01:06:00.004-06:00

It may come as a surprise that the notion of the internal clarity of scripture arises only at the end of a treatment claiming to be a Prologomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology. Should it not be placed at the beginning? Should we not start with a statement of the general reliability of Scripture in terms of a special revelation, and then proceed to a consideration of the divine and its relationship to us? Should be not begin in time-honored fashion with what we can know, and then move forward to being, to what there is?

However, leaving consideration of the internal clarity of scripture to the end was done purposefully, because we are interested primarily in understanding this doctrine ontologically and not epistemically; we are interested in the being of the doctrine of the internal clarity of scripture, and not primarily in an epistemological method by which we are putatively given reliable means on the basis of which we can be confident in the truth of Scripture.

My interest with retrieving the notion of the internal clarity of Scripture is three-fold: 1) The doctrine is crucial for Lutheran theology because it protects against willful and capricious interpretations of Scripture, 2) It is a doctrine that all Lutherans should be able in principle to affirm, 3) It is a notion that, properly understood, creates parallels between understanding God's action and presence with respect to both the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. I wish to treat this last point briefly.

Just as it may be externally obscure to us that God is at work in the universe, and yet Lutherans may affirm that God is at work in nature, so may it be externally obscure to us that God is at work creating and sustaing his Word within cannonical Scripture, and yet God is clearly Triunely present in His Holy Scriptures. The Triune God is present in His world even though humans often do not see it. One might say even that there is an internal clarity to God's work in nature. God is ontologically present at the center of Nature although humans often have trouble discerning it to be so. Correspondingly, Christ is present at the center of Scripture although humans have trouble oftentimes seeing this to be true.

What is important here is to understand God in His Trinitarian nature. Just as it is true that God creates and sustains the universe, incarnates Himself in the world, and bears testimony to that incarnation and the identity of God as Creator Father, Incarnate Word, and Loving Spirit, so too is it true that God the Son is present as Word in and through the Biblical text attesting to the Father, and attested to by the Spirit. Just as the Trinitarian God stands over and against Himself in Word and Spirit in nature, so too does the same Trinitarian God stand over and against Himself in witness to the Word in and through the text.

Prologomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - A Lutheran Theology of Nature

2009-02-24T23:15:00.027-06:00

Does God exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language? Is God causally efficacious in the universe? Is it possible to be justified in believing that God is at work in nature?

In order to make progress on these questions, we must distinguish between a natural theology and a theology of nature. A Lutheran natural theology claims that natural events and states somehow strongly justify belief in God. A Lutheran theology of nature, on the other hand, asserts that natural events and states merely weakly justify belief in God. It is important, obviously, to distinguish weak and strong justification.

Proposition P is strongly justified for S just in case it would be irrational for S not to believe P. On the other hand, proposition P is weakly justified for S just in cane it would not be irrational for S to believe P. A Lutheran theology of nature must claim that assertions of God's relationship to the universe are weakly justified, in other words, that it is not irrational for S to believe that God is at work in the universe. In the flight to avoid a natural theology, Lutheran theology has omitted that which is essential to it: A Lutheran theology of nature. While a Lutheran theology of nature is not interested in proving the existence of God (strong justification), it is vitally concerned to show the compatibility of God's existence with nature (weak justification).

In carrying out a Lutheran theology of nature, semantic realism is presupposed, a realism that allows for the "evidence-transcending truth-conditions" of theological language. Presumably, 'God is real' is not a publicly verifiable statement. Therefore, many philosophers have said that the statement is not just false, but meaningless. Without getting into technical detail here, however, we must assert that ontological statements of this type can be meaningfully asserted even if they are not confirmable or infirmable in experience. (I leave aside for now all of the issues that surround this last phrase.)

What is important is that we not understand 'God exists' merely as 1) a report or expression of one's subjective psychological or existential states, 2) as an undecipherable metaphor for the mystery of life itself or a quality of life itself, 3) or finally, as a linguistic custom one uses in belonging to a tribe of language-users who use such locutions at particular communal/tribal times or places.

To do a Lutheran theology of nature presupposes a beginning in revelation, a beginning that takes seriously the scriptural witness to a real God that causally affects the world by 1) creating and sustaining it, 2) electing and protecting God's chosen people, 3) and sustaining all of His people through God's real historical incursion in the resurrection and subsequent witness to that resurrection. It must take seriously the salient fact that Scripture thoroughly rejects a causally inert, causally impotent deity. Simply put, it must seriously engage the question that if Scripture is to be regarded as a trustworthy witness, then there must be warrant for the claim that God is real, that God has causal powers, and that God is more than mere idea.

The cosmological, ontological and teleological arguments for the existence of God are not successful in demonstrating the existence of the divine. However, if they are properly understood, they are effective in showing that it is not irrational to believe that God exists. In other words, while they cannot show that it is irrational not to believe God exists, they can show that it is not irrational to believe that God exists. Clearly, the Book of Nature can be interpreted either as having a globally-designing deity or as not having one. At issue here is the retrieval of the doctrine of divine providence. A Lutheran theology of nature can claim that a providential God is weakly justified on the basis of Scripture and experience.

Applying Bayes Theorem to the universe and the question of intelligent design cannot make God's existence probable, but clearly such application can show that God's existence is more probable than it might have been if the universe did not have the characteristics it seems to have. Even though the existence of God may not be in itself likely, on the supposition of God's existence, one would very much expect more a universe like ours rather than on the supposition of God's nonexistence.

A Lutheran theology of nature makes explicit reference to God as acting in and through nature. Obviously, the discussion between science and theology is important in developing a Lutheran theology of nature. Because a theology of nature is important for the future of Lutheran confessional theology, the discussion between science and theology is important for the future of Lutheran theology. Accordingly, Lutheran theology must reject the causal closure of the physical and assert the real existence of God. It must claim that there are natural events that are not finally wholly caused by congeries of other natural events. Finally, it must examine the nature of that which could serve as a causal joint connecting the divine to the universe.

To claim that God is real is to admit one fundamental dualism: the dualism between the divine and the natural universe. Thus, there is a realm of natural entities, properties, relations, events and states of affairs that does not include the divine. There is also a realm of divine entities, properties, relations, events and states of affairs the does not include the natural order. Lutheran theological realism simply cannot hide from this dualism.

In order to have a coherent view, Lutheran theology must seek to relate talk of God to the discourses of the sciences. Not to do this is finally to assign theology to the realm of value; it is to make theology subjective and ultimately irrational.

The cash value of this view for piety is apparent. After all, people in the pews have for generations prayed to God, assuming that God is different than the self and that God can act in the world. Theological realism best undergirds this practice. Such people have thought that God is active in the world, that God creates, redeems, and sustains the world, and that God answers prayer. Again, theological realism best undergrids this practice. Clearly, a Lutheran theology of nature must presuppose theological realism.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Theophysical Causation

2009-02-16T18:18:00.002-06:00

Kant argued that only those objects formed in a synthesis of sense perception can be objects that are in principle causally related to other objects. Only "substances" so formed can be causally-connected. Accordingly, if there are no substances, there can be no causality. An important result of Kant's work is the separation of the notion of 'cause' from that of 'reason'. One substance can cause the modification of another, but one substance cannot serve as a rational ground for the other. Conversely, one idea can serve as a rational ground for the other without the first causing the second.

Kant thus concluded that since there are no sense particulars falling under the concept of God, the divine cannot be a substance causally connected to another substance. Instead God is placed within the Ideas of Pure Reason. Human beings have, according to Kant, a natural metaphysical drive that can only find its resting place in the idea of the Unconditioned, the idea which contains "a therefore for every wherefore" (A585/B613). The demands of systemtatic unity and completeness find completeness in the Ideal of God: "A concept of an individual object which is completely determined through the mere idea" (A574/B602). As an Ideal of Reason, this being is not real: "This unconditioned is not, indeed, given as being in itself real, nor as having a reality that follows from its mere concept; it is, however, what alone can complete the series of conditions when we proceed to trace these conditions to their grounds. This is the course which our human reason, by its very nature, leads all of us" (A584/B612).

By expressly denying any causal relation to God - - and by making God a denizen of of the ideal realm - - Kant denies theophysical causation. Accordingly, predicating terms like 'create', 'redeem', and 'sustain' of 'God' must proceed in a different fashion than it had the antecedent tradition. After Kant, the theological tradition had to find ways to interpret their theological language in ways that did not suppose that God was a substance sustaining causal relations with His universe.

The effects upon religious practice were enormous. If God is causally-isolated from the universe, then God cannot answer prayer. Moreover, God cannot work miracles in the traditional sense of bringing about a state of affairs which would not customarily had come about. God really cannot do anything; He is an ideal to be contemplated. Accordingly, prayer becomes - - if people reflect profoundly enough upon the practice - - a self-centering activity, more like meditation.

Clearly, theology in a Lutheran key is possible on the supposition of denying theophysical causation. One can still preach law and gospel, and refer to the grace of Christ and the freedom Christ grants. However, one must subtly change the rules. It is not that God demands and through Christ's promise saves, it is rather that the idea or phenomenon of God is correlated with the fundamental phenomenon of demand, and the notion of Christ creates in the one experiencing it a sense of bonds being broken and the freedom of the future donated. This move is now in question, I believe, because in a pluralistic culture, why is it that one should insist upon the specificity of the notion or phenomenon of the Christ? And if there is no specificity, then Jesus cannot be the exclusive "Way and the Truth and the Life," a pretty basic assumption within traditional Lutheran theology.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Semantic Realism

2009-02-08T15:42:00.004-06:00

Just as it is important that Lutheran theology get clear again upon whether a God exists that is external to human awareness, perception, conception, and language, so is it important for it to assert again that theological language makes truth-claims, that it is language that is in principle either true or false. The notion that language about the world can be either true or false regardless of whether or not we can confirm or disconfirm it experientially is called semantic realism. Michael Dummett talks about this type of realism explicitly in the following quote:

“Realism I characterize as the belief that the statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us. The anti-realist opposes to this the view that statements of the disputed class are to be understood only by reference to the sort of thing which we count as evidence for a statement of that class . . . The dispute thus concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have” (Dummett, “Realism,” p. 146, reprinted in TRUTH AND OTHER ENIGMAS).

It is my contention that most mainstream academic theology has more or less rejected semantic realism, and that, accordingly, mainline Lutheran theology repudiates it as well. But what are the options for theology if it does not claim semantic realism? I see the following:

1) One might claim that language about God is truth-apt but false. Accordingly, theology instantiates an error theory, that is, since there is no God, all theological language referring to God is false. Clearly, this view is not an option for a theist who wishes seriously to engage the theological task?

2) One might claim that language about God is not truth-apt at all, as some post-Enlightenment, post-Kantian theology has supposed. Accordingly, talk about God is merely a projection of human emotion and sentiment upon the world. But while this view may be an improvement over the previous, it is not a very promising way to proceed theologically. After all, if theological language is a human projection, why would we ever want to get others to project God upon the universe?

3) One might claim that language about God is truth-apt and not false, but not about what people had assumed that language was always about. Some post-Enlightenment, post-Kantian theology has attempted this as well. Accordingly, one might claim that talk about God is true or false given that one understands ‘God’ to refer to something determinate within human existence. This view seems to entail anti-realism, but clearly the converse is not true. There are several ways in which one might be a theological anti-realist. For instance, one could claim that the assertion of the existence of divine reality is justified on the basis of an inference to the best explanation or on the basis a theological consensus that somehow determines theological extension itself. But then how would one explain the person and work of the Christ? Does the salvific work of Christ constitute the best explanation of our human experience? But Scripture and tradition have referred to Christ as a “stumbling block” for human reason. This latter point also seems to undercut efforts to base the matter upon theological consensus.

Many have attacked Semantic realism because it presupposes “evidence transcending truth-conditions.” Many philosophers cannot subscribe to semantic realism because of the manifestation and acquisition challenges. Crudely put, the problem is how we could ever acquire and wield language that was not somehow “hooked up” with the world we experience. How could we be talking about things with a language that we do not know how to connect to our experience? It should be noted, however, that Trinitarian theologians don’t really have this problem. It seems that a theological response to this challenge could be worked out where, through the activity of the Holy Spirit, human beings can be regarded to have the relevant perceptual causal connections to the divine states of affairs making theological statements true.

It is my contention that theology, if it is to survive, must make definite truth claims; it must be able to assert propositions in logical space, the satisfaction of which would be the instantiation of particular divine and divine/temporal states of affairs. To declare that that semantic realism is false, is, in effect, to claim that there are not divine and divine/temporal states of affairs. We will have much more to say about this in another context.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Theological Realism II

2009-02-04T23:27:00.002-06:00

While there are many forces driving pop culture towards antirealist views, the driving force behind the movement of the theological community to antirealism is quite easy to discern. Theological antirealism emerged in its present form because of the adoption by the intellectual world of the argument and results of the Immanuel Kant’s epochal 1781 Critique of Pure Reason. In this most important and influential philosophical work since the days of Plato and Aristotle, Kant argued that the necessary condition for something being a substance, is that human beings can have sense perception of it. The mind, as it turns out, is always organizing experience, and that the experience of any substance is the result of the mind’s organization of sense particulars. Kant advocated a paradigm shift in philosophy: instead of thinking that the being of objects are what they are on their own, and the human mind revolves around them - - this is the traditional assertion of the order of being itself being externally related to the knower - - Kant advocated a “Copernican Revolution” where the being of objects are what they are because they revolve around the human knower - - the assertion of their internal relatedness to the subject.

Kant claimed that space and time were “pure forms of sensibility,” the a priori grid upon which sense particulars were possible. Moreover, he claimed that the “empirical concepts of the understanding” made possible the reality of empirical objects. Accordingly, an object was “that by concept of which the manifold of sense is united.” The rabbit object is constituted by the empirical concept of rabbit uniting and synthesizing both synchronically and diachronically sense particulars. Substance and causality for Kant were conceived as categories of synthesis. Empirical objects “fell under” these pure concepts of the understanding. All empirical objects were substances because of the fundamental way in which they were synthesized. Only substances could causally relate to other substances, because the mind worked to synthesize substances as so causally-relatable. Just as ideas organize thoughts, substances organize sense perception.

Kant’s profoundly important gift and curse to theology was his conviction that God is not a substance. Because there can be no “sense intuitions” (perceptions) falling under the concept ‘God’, God cannot be a substance. The ramifications for this are far-reaching: This meant that God cannot be an entity, that God cannot be a being among other existing beings. Rather, for Kant, God becomes a mere regulative ideal of human reason, a notion necessary to think when we are organizing our thoughts, but not a notion that can refer to a being within the universe of beings that can in principle be causally related to any of those beings. For Kant, God becomes an idea!

While this Kantian conclusion may seem to be a very bad thing for theology, it was embraced by many in the academic theological community as a way ahead. After all, the Enlightenment criticisms of theology were leading many to think that there was no room at all in the universe for God, that assertions of God’s being were not justified. Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion clearly shows that there is nothing necessary or universal in the assertion of God’s putative designing activity. The universe perhaps didn’t even need a clockmaker!
After Kant, academic theology struggled to give an account of theological language that did not commit it to violating Kant’s relegation of God to the status of a regulative ideal of human reason.

We discern this particularly in Schleiermacher’s relegation of God to the “whence of the feeling of absolute dependence.” But we also find it in Hegel’s notion of the Absolute, and later in the phenomenological theology used by Bultmann and carried later into hermeneutical theology. Tillich’s contention that God is not a being within the structure of being, but being-itself at the depth of being, is another example of Kantian-inspired theology presupposing antirealism.

It is time to reclaim theological realism. Lutheran theology must again work out of a paradigm presupposed by the Christian tradition, a paradigm of theological realism. After all, the Reformers assumed such a realism. To reclaim the tradition is to reject the Kantian antirealist paradigm that has dominated theology for the last two hundred years.

Lutheran theology must again proclaim a theological realism that asserts that God is real if and only if God exists and has the properties God has (call them P) apart from human awareness, perception, conceptual schemes, beliefs, and linguistic practices. We must distinguish, however, the existence of God and divine properties P apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and the independence of God and P apart from these things. While God either exists or does not, the independence of His being apart from human awareness is a matter of degree. Realists come in many varieties, and there is little reason to think that the options for antirealism (and realism) are any less for theologians than thinkers in any other discipline.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Theological Realism I

2009-02-04T07:29:00.004-06:00

There is a common perception in the pews that is not widely held in the theological world. Most laypeople actually think that their pastors and the teachers of their pastors hold that God exists. By ‘existence’ they mean that God is an entity that has being outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language.

Although this common perception is widespread, it is not accurate. Surprisingly, many pastors and theology professors do not believe that God exists external to human awareness, perception, conception and language. The reasons why they do not believe this are clearly not because they are insincere, bad, or prone to dissimulate. The reasons are rather more complex than that, having to do with the fact that they have been educated in a particular theological ethos where they share a set of theological assumptions and values with other theologically-trained individuals within the academic community. Accordingly, when thinking theologically they quite naturally don’t think as theological realists; they do not hold that God exists independently from human perception, conception, and linguistic practice.

In order to grasp this clearly, we must draw the important distinction between internal and external relations. Traditionally, people have claimed that God’s existence is externally related to human existence. In order to see what this means consider entity A and entity B connected by relation R. A is externally related R-ly to B if and only if the reality of A does not depend upon the reality of B. For example, the genetics of a father is externally related to the genetics of his son, for the reality of the father’s genetic composition does not depend causally upon the reality of the son’s genetic composition. On the other hand, A is internally related to entity B if and only if the reality of A does depend upon the reality of B. Accordingly, the genetics of the son is internally related to the genetics of the father because the son would not be the son genetically without the father’s genetic composition. Traditionally, Christians have held that God is externally related to the universe and the universe is internally related to God.

Philosophers distinguish between realist and anti-realist positions regarding various domains of inquiry. A realist holds that the thing of concern is externally related to human beings: It is what it is apart from human existence. An anti-realist claims that the thing of concern is internally related to human beings: It would not be what it is apart from human existence.

Realists and anti-realists come in many varieties. One can, in fact, be a realist with respect to some domains, and not others. In addition, there are also degrees of realism: One can either be more or less realist, or more or less antirealist.

Some examples might be helpful. One can be a realist (or an antirealist) with respect to any of these: atomic theory, chemical theory, psychological theory, mathematics, aesthetics, ethics, philosophy, and theology.

Philosophical reflection upon the nature of knowledge is called ‘epistemology’, and the adjectival form of this word is ‘epistemological’ or ‘epistemic’. One is an epistemological realist if one believes that the knower is externally related to the thing known, that is, if the thing known is what it is apart from the knowing of it. Alternately, one is an epistemological antirealist if one believes that the knower is internally related to the thing known, that is, if the thing known is constituted in part by the knowing of it.

It seems that we are epistemic antirealists when it comes to knowledge of God; God is beyond human conception so we don’t know exactly what God is in and of Himself. But Epistemic Antirealism does not entail metaphysical antirealism!

Unfortunately, for many theologians, the inability to know the contour of the divine becomes the claim that there is no definite ontological or metaphysical shape to the divine. They think that because what we know about God is internally related to our act of knowing God, so is the being of God internally related to our act of thinking God. This is the position of theological antirealism.

Theological antirealism clearly denies that God’s being is externally related to our own being. On the contrary, the contour of God’s being depends upon the structure of human consciousness and existence. This view seems consistent with affirming theological relativism: God has one ontological shape for person x and another for y. Clearly, this view of things is consistent with our prevailing democratic ethos - - one can believe whatever they want about God. In addition, it coheres with the notion of the “privatization of God.” Many people today no longer believe that God is the kind of thing that can in principle have intersubjective reality. Just as one’s own mental life if private, so is one’s own God. Accordingly, God becomes for each person the ultimate expression of personal individuality.

With a popular culture unwittingly embracing theological antirealism, and a theological culture presupposing much more sophisticated versions of it, it is important perhaps to point out the obvious: The Reformers denied theological antirealism. We shall return to this point in a subsequent post.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - The Problem III

2009-02-02T21:54:00.013-06:00

In theology, truth ought always to be at issue. Yet in many Protestant congregations, it seems like it is no longer important what people believe. Many Protestant pastors, and some lay people, no longer regard theological language as in principle either true or false. Instead, what is held up as being important is how the people in the congregation get along, how they feel, and what they do, or shall do, in the community. Although all might confess the same creed, what is meant be their confessions can vary from person to person and from community to community. It is not clear what is being asserted, or whether anything at all is being asserted. For some, theological language clearly operates as if it expresses no propositions at all.

To make matters even more confusing, we live in a very relativistic age. If two people disagree upon what is beautiful, must one of them be wrong? Most would agree that clearly "beauty lies in the eye of the beholder."

But what about goodness and truth? If two people disagree upon what is good, must one of them be wrong? Twenty years ago my college students would divide upon whether one person must be wrong in such a situation. But times have changed. Now my informal surveys of student opinion show that almost 90% now think that "goodness lies in the hand of the doer'. Just as aesthetics has been subjectivized, so too has ethics. What is right for me is no longer what is right for you - - yet somehow there is something right for each of us.

Truth itself is under attack: At least within the undergraduate university population, truth has been relativized along with beauty and the good. What is true for x may not be true for y. While A is true for x, not-A is true for y. All of this is extremely problematic, for it is not at all clear we can even use 'right' and 'true' correctly, if we strip each of any normative status. Accordingly, it is not at all clear that 'x is true for A, but not-true for B' does not express a contradiction, an assocation of words that cannot pick out a class of objects or actions in any possible world.

With the problem of truth now raised in such a stark matter, the tension between relativism and the possibility of doctrine arises. It seems that theology has always held certain things to be true of God, and claimed other things not to be turue. The Apostle's, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds have historically made truth-claims about God and His relationship to human beings. But what exactly does 'claiming these creeds true' now mean. Does it mean these creeds merely strike us well, that we simply like how they somehow make us feel, or that we are members of the Lutheran tribe, and Lutherans say such things?

The problem is a very profound one. Even if we can hold onto truth, and even if we do believe that classes of statements do succeed in stating the facts, we are confronted with the old distinction between facts and values. Grounded in the work of Logical Atomism, and the harder edge of the Enlightenment critique, this distinction succeeds in placing all of the big questions, the theologcal questions, in the realm of subjective value.

Some statements are said to express facts, and facts are supposed to be objective, about the world, and concerned with truth and reason. Values, on the other hand, are thought to be subjective and about ourselves. Values concern our feelings, and are neither right nor wrong. Accordingly, value judgments are neither true nor false.

While many regard scientific language as having truth-conditions, many deny that the sentences of theology have the same truth conditions. An expression has a truth condition if and only if it states the contour of the world were it to be true. Thus, 'the cat is on the mat' is true if and only if there is a cat, a mat, and the cat is on the mat - - these are its truth-conditions. But does theological language actually state what the world must be like if the statements of theology are to be regarded as true? Is 'God is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' true if and only if there is a God, this God is in Christ, and this God is reconciling the world unto Himself, or does theological language lack truth conditions entirely?

The dominant theological tradition within academic theological circles the last 60 years has uniquivocally said, 'No' - - our theological language lacks truth conditions entirely. And even if it were somehow to retain them, the theological language is not really about the divine after all. This certainly would have surprised Martin Luther, who believed one could actually claim certain things true and certain things false of the divine. (Luther was, as it turns out, a semantic realist - - but more of that later.)

There are so many confusions we face. People profess belief in God, but do not know what they mean by the term 'God'. They use theological language, but yet regard their assertions as being merely "true for them." They pray to God to change things, but do not really believe that God is, or even can be, causally active in the universe. Many people, usually with some deeper theological orientation, deny God's presence in nature even though they claim that he remains readily available in His Word. The effect, of course, is to disconnect the Word of God (Christ) from the reality of nature completely. Finally, people believe that that Scripture has authority, that it confronts us as witnessing to the Lordship of Christ, but they really don't think through what could be the grounds of that authority. Why is this book authoritative because it witness to Christ and another ancient book not because it witness to another God?

It is time that we re-think the issues. We simply must as Lutherans reflect again upon the very presuppositions of our theology. Such a "thinking after" (Nachdenken) theology shall demand deeper ontological, semantic, and epistemological reflections than has recently predominated in theological thinking. In order to get clear about what claims are made in theology - - or even that any claims are made - - we must return again to the basics. We must ask ourselves what the possibilities of the world are upon which we map our theological language. We must ask ourselves about the mapping function itself: What is the naming function by which our theological language putatively refers to elements in the world? Finally, we can ask how we might know that the world has a definite ontological contour, and how this world might be referred to by theological language.

We shall not begin as we have begun theology in the recent past; we shall not begin with the epistemological question. Instead, we shall return to the presuppositions of the Reformers themselves: We shall ask the ontological and semantic questions first, seek clarity on them, and only afterwards move to other questions. In theology, at least, we must affirm the ancient view that epistemology recapitulates ontology, and not the converse. How the divine world is, is not itself constituted by our knowing of it, but rather our knowing of it, is conditioned by how the divine world is.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - The Problem II

2009-02-01T11:41:00.006-06:00

As we talked about in the last post, "metatheology" is a second-order discourse investigation the meaning, grounds, and truth-conditions of the first-order discourse of theology. Clearly, in order to evaluate theological statements, one first must understand what is meant be them, i.e., one must assign to them a semantics or "intepretation." Furthermore, in order to make any meaningful progress in theology, one must first understand what conditions would have to obtain in order for one's theological assertions to be true.

But many would no doubt claim that agreement on first-order theological statements is difficult enough. Why even try to move to agreement upon second-order statements, when the first-order ones remain nonspecified? While metatheological inquiry into the truth and meaning of theological utterances is crucially important, merely holding to the assertions of the historical faith is difficult enough today. It is precisely because of this difficulty that there have been myriad and divers attempts over the last 150 years ago to state clearly the content of the Christian faith.

In the early 1900s, a trans-denominational Protestant movement, worried about the drift away from a specifiable normative content to Christian faith, produced a list purportedly displaying necessary conditions for the general content of the Christian faith. They asserted that authentic Christianity must believe in these:

◦The virgin birth and deity of Christ;
◦The substitutionary theory of atonement;
◦The bodily resurrection of Christ;
◦The physical return of Jesus Christ in the Second Coming;
◦The inerrancy of Scriptures.

Without these five assertions, they thought, the content of the Christian faith could not itself be defined as Christian faith. (I am not here advocating that belief in Scriptural inerrancy is a necessary condition for Christian belief, but merely reporting what was promulgated by this group.)

In addition to these assertions, Lutherans might add other content statements that specify authentic Lutheran expressions of the Christian faith. George Forell has provided the following list:

Justification by grace through faith;
The theology of the cross;
Law and gospel proclamation;
The simul iustus et peccator;
The assertion of the Infinite being available in and through the finite (finitus capax infiniti).

This is a very good list, I believe, and those who advocate all five should probably be regarded as holding to a Lutheran theological position.

It is clear then that one could be concerned about the contour of the faith. Those so concerned about contour locate those assertions necessary and sufficient for Christian faith to be Christian faith. Speaking philosophically, they are concerned with discerning the “identity conditions” of the faith, that is, they are interested in ascertaining those properties of the Christian faith without which it ceases to be Christian faith.

To reiterate, however, the point I am making is not that the general contour of Lutheran confessional is in doubt. Lutheran theologians continue to hold to the specific language of the tradtion. The problem, however, is that that the contour of the tradtion is polyvalent, and Lutheran theology has failed here to pay enough attention to this polyvalency.

Clearly, he central assertions of theology can sustain multiple meanings depending upon what one believes actually obtains, i.e., the possibility of meaning is tied to one’s ontological commitments. If one believes that the universe is a kind of place where there can be a God that exists as a being over and against it, then 'God’ might be understood, as Ockham understood it, to refer to a supreme being having all positive predicates to the infinite degree. However, if one blieves that the universe is not the kind of place where it is either in principle possible, or likely, that there exist a being existing on its own that can in principle exist apart from it, then 'God' might be defined, as Schleiermacher defines it, as the “whence of the feeling of absolute dependence,” or much later, as Tillich understood it, as “the depth of being.”

One's ontological presuppositions deeply influence what can be meant by a true sentence. Standardly, we claim that sentences express propositions, and these propositions are a statement of how the world might be. To say that a proposition is possible is to say that there is a possible world in which the world is the way that the proposition states it. To say that a proposition is necessary is to say that in all possible worlds the world is the way the proposition states it. To say that a statement is true is to say that in the actual world the world is the way the proposition states it, and to say that a statement is false is to claim that in the actual world the world is not the way the proposition claims. Clearly, to know whether a theological sentence is true, false, possible or necessary requires that we know what proposition is stated by the sentence, it is to know how the world must be in order for the statement to be true. The meaning of the sentence consists simply in this grasp of how the world must be in order for the proposition expressed by the sentence to be true.

Luther claims in throughout his disputations that the res (the things denoted by language) are more important than the verba (the words of language themselves) in understanding the articles of faith (articuli fidei). In order to know what an article of faith really is, one must know what is claimed in the article, one must know how the world would have to be were the article of faith to be true. It is to this question of truth that we now must turn.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - The Problem I

2009-02-01T10:45:00.005-06:00

I claim that there is a deep problem infecting Lutheran theology as it is now commonly conceived and practiced. But what is the problem? Why claim that we must reclaim our Lutheran heritage? Has it been lost? Don't many Lutherans still base their judgments on Scripture, Creed and Confession? Are not many still good Christians, living out their justified life in the world? Why fix something that is not broken?

But it is broken. Within the ELCA we have witnessed the adoption of the Formula of Agreement, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, and Called to Common Mission. The first claims that fundamental theological agreement has been reached with the Reformed churches on the sacraments, even though Lutherans and the Reformed have traditionally claimed a difference on the ontological status of the Christ's "real presence" in the sacraments. The second claims that there is now fundamental theological agreement with the Roman Catholic tradition on the doctrine of justification, even through Lutherans and Catholics continue to disagree on the very nature of justification, the first claiming that one can be totally sinful while justified, the latter disagreeing. The third claims that there is agreement with the Anglican tradition on the conception and practice of the historic episcopate, even though Lutherans and Anglicans continue to disagree even upon what the ontological status of the church really is.

Things are not much better in other Lutheran traditions. The new Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ have successfully structured themselves ecclesially so that all governance is local. Ironically, however, those clammering to leave the ELCA because of its theological drift now find themselves in an ecclesial community where there are vast differences of theology and practice from congregation to congregation. Enthusiasm, the doctrine against which Luther repeatedly inveiged, is practiced and advocated openly within some circles. Far from a "working theology" based in the Lutheran Confessions, the theology of many within LCMC seems more at home in the American Evangelical Movement in general.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has its problems as well. While the confessional starting point has never been in doubt in Missiouri, we find now an emerging church growth movement and methodology seemingly developing in marked tension with that confessional starting point. Issues of ecclesial authority abound, and the Ablaze program has generated discord and controversy within traditional confessional circles.

It seems that doctrinal pluralism infects much of the expression of North American Lutheranism, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. Many in the pews no longer know even what it is to be Lutheran. Generations of downplaying catechetical content has eventuated in a scores of Lutherans who have not the vaguest knowledge of what classical Lutheran theological teaching really is. Pastors trained weakly in Lutheran systematics and homeletics abandon law and gospel preaching for the greener pastures of prophetic utterance, practical advise, and the sure and steady assertion that "God loves you."

But what exactly is the problem?

—Is it that Lutherans no longer speak of the centrality of Christ?
—Is it that Lutherans no longer speak of the authority of Scripture?
—Is it that Lutherans now set out to reject their traditional Confessions?
—Is it that Lutherans no longer claim to believe in God?

No! Suprisingly, the assertion and profession of beliefs seem quite the same. Preaching and teaching still talk about Christ; church, syodical, and churchwide constitutions still declare the authority of Scripture; and the Confessions are elevated as normative texts for our tradition. Moreover, pastors, leaders and people in the pews generally continue to assert belief in God. Unlike Europe, Americans still overwhelmingly report that they believe that God exists, that there is an after life, and Christ has died for their sins. So what is the difference? What has happened? It is my conviction that while the assertion of beliefs have remained relatively constant, what has changed our the presuppositions about the meaning and truth of these assertions.

Every sudent who has ever taken an introductory logic course knows the difference between syntax and semantics. Syntax deals with the form and structure of language (its "grammar"), while semantics concernces the meaning and truth of language (its "interpretation"). Accordingly, we must distinguish the mere assertion of a locution from that which is meant by the locution. For instance, I can utter the following:

1) I sat in the bank.
2) I sat on the bank.

(1) is clearly true if I mean by 'bank' 'that building where I go to deposit and withdraw money'. It is false if I mean by it 'that upon which I sit when I fish in the creek'. Conversely, (2) is clearly false under the first interpretation ('that building where I go to deposit and withdraw money') and clearly true under the second intepretation. I believe that the elementary distinction between the syntax and semantics of theological expressions has been lost generally within theology, and most decidedly within the practice of most Lutheran theology.

Related to the question of an expression's meaning is the question as to its truth. Again, every introductory logic student is aware of the question of a statements truth conditions, that is, they are aware of the question as to what conditions must exist in order for a statement to be true. Logic students know that the truth conditions for 'p & q' is the truth of p and the truth of q. They learn that standardly the truth conditions for p itself (e.g., 'snow is white') just is that state of affairs such that snow is white. The truth condition of an atomic sentences like 'the cat is black' just is a specification of what the world would have to be like for the sentence to be true.

Although we do not routinely use the term, the word 'metatheology' should be reserved and used for that second-order investigation about the meaning of, and the truth-conditions for, theological assertions. Just as metaethics explores the meaning, conditions and grounds of normative ethical assertions, metatheology deals with the meaning, conditions and grounds of theological statements. For too long within the practice of Lutheran theology, there has been a rush to talk about the truth of theological statements - - and the agreement of such statements with other statements - - without first investigating even what those statements mean, and without specifying what the world would have to be like were those statements to be true.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Introduction

2009-02-01T10:00:00.004-06:00

Lutheran theology is in a sorry state. There are reasons why it is in a sorry state, and there are ways we might address the state.

It is my conviction that Lutheran theology shall survive only if it reclaims some of the original presuppositions upon which it grew. Specifically, I argue that Lutheran theology needs now to embrace the following five theses:

· Theological Realism
· Semantic Realism
· Theophysical Causation
· A Lutheran Theology of Nature
· The Internal Clarity of Scripture

In the following group of blogs entries, I shall point to what I believe the problem is, and show how each of these help to address that problem.

As always I welcome all comments. I believe that theology must be worked out in conversation and dialogue. Unfortunately, those that might be interested in this discussion are few and they are often separated by great geographical differences. Through the gift of new technologies, however, we can achieve real theological conversation

Types of Theological Non-Realism

2009-01-17T14:23:00.010-06:00

Clearly, the question of realism is hotly debated in philosophy, forming one of the standard lines of inquiry in the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of language and logic, and the philosophy of religion. One can be a global or local realist, that is, one can be a non-realist with respect to all subject matters, or merely non-realist with respect to some, while remaining realist with respect to others. For instance, one could be realist about the things talked about in astronomy and non-realist about those specified in ethics and morality. Furthermore, one can be realist or non-realist with respect to degree. There are many ways to be realist and anti-realist, and clearly some views are more robustly realist (or non-realist) than others. Discussing theological realism demands we first get clear on realism in general. Let us call the following position generic realism.

Object a is real if and only if a exists and has the properties it has (call them P) apart from human awareness, perception, conceptual schemes, beliefs, and linguistic practices.

Given this characterization, the first distinction that must be made is between an object, property, or event’s existence from its independence. One might, after all, simply claim that a does not exist. An example of this is the nominalist who denies the existence of platonic universals. All statements presupposing or asserting the existence of a universal would be false because such things simply do not exist.

One might, however, allow the existence of a, yet deny its independence. For example, the transcendental idealist might claim that the object exists apart from us, by that all of its features are dependent upon us, that is, the properties are dependent of their being experienced by the subject. With respect to the question of God, one might therefore reject theological realism by denying the existence of God, or one might merely deny the independence of the divine properties from their being perceived or conceived by human beings.

If one claims that God does not exist, or that God does not instantiate the properties attributed to Him, then all of the theory that talks about God (theology) must be an extended error. Philosophers call accounts putatively referring to domains of non-existing objects, properties or events error theories. For instance, if mathematical objects do not exist, then accounts referring to them are clearly in error; statements within such theories are false. Similarly, if there are no ethical or moral properties, then one might claim that theories about such things also constitute error accounts. So the first question for theology has been, and must always be, is theology itself an error theory? Are any statements of theology true, or are such statements false, just like all statements referring to such questionable entities as ghosts, goblins, and ghouls.

At this point, however, things can get complicated. What do we do with matters of reduction? Do those objects, properties or events exist for which a reduction is possible? Prima facie, we might want to say that all statements about the reductandum (that to be reduced) are false when we can specify the reductantes(those things doing the reducing) necessary and sufficient for the existence of those things to be reduced. For instance, if God is instantiated if and only if the “whence” of the feeling of absolute dependence (Schleiermacher) is instantiated, then one might claim that God just is the whence of this feeling of absolute dependence, that there is nothing more to God than this ”whence” of absolute dependence.

Notice, however, that reductions of this type do not formally entail non-realism with respect to the class of objects in question. Water is instantiated just in case H20 is instantiated, but this does not mean that water is not real. One might say that the existence of H20 actually vindicates the existence of water. On the other hand, when we learned that “polywater” is instantiated if and only if water with impurities from improperly washed glassware is instantiate, we thus eliminate polywater from the world of existing objects.

Thus, reductions can be either vindicative or eliminative. If we find that some disjunction of neurophysical properties are instantiated if and only if a particular mental state is instantiated, then do we claim that the mental states have no ontological status, or do we point out that the existence of the neuro-realizers actually makes mental causation possible, and consequently, that mental properties can be said to exist after all?

It seems to me that whether or not a reduction is vindicative or eliminative depends a great deal upon our expectations. If we are expecting mental phenomenon to have ontological status in the way a Cartesian dualist might think about it, then obviously the reduction might lead us to deny ontological status to the mental. However, if our expectations are that the mental is really epiphenomenal, that such properties are in principle unable to enter into causal relations, then the reduction of them to disjunctions of causal neural-realizers might vindicate the existence of the mental to us. Formally, just as thinking of a golden mountain in France is a mental state instantiated if and only some causally efficacious disjunction of neuro-configurations are instantiated , so too is water instantiated if and only if H20 is instantiated.

This question is obviously important for theology and, to my mind, has again much to do with expectation. If we expect that God is a being who has the kind of causal powers that would allow for the answering of prayer and the resurrection of the dead, then we are likely to think that the Schleiermacherian reduction eliminates use of the word ‘God’, for there is no referent to ‘God’ in the way that the language has been traditionally understood. However, if we believe that God-talk already makes no sense whatsoever, finding a reference to ‘God’ as the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence may actually vindicate the term’s use. We might accordingly ascribe ontological status to God, though we are not meaning by ‘God’ what was meant by the term during most of the western theological tradition. So the statements of theology could all be false because the objects, properties, events, and states of affairs referred to by the language of theology do not exist, and yet the putative reductions of the theological to human experience do not entail that theology itself constitutes an error theory. If theology is an error-theory, reduction alone does not entail it to be such.

In addition to the assertion that theology is an error-theory by being comprised of statements that are truth-apt, but nonetheless false, we might want to deny realism in theology be claiming that the language of theology is not truth-apt at all. Perhaps theological language mimics the role of language once widely ascribed to ethical and moral discourse; perhaps theological language is expressivist, and makes no factual claim whatsoever?

Expressivism in theology constitutes itself in parallel fashion to its ethical counterpart. Instead of the putative statements of ethics referring to an objective moral reality, or to subjective but determinate states, ethical sentences merely express emotions of approbation or disapprobation with respect to a particular agent or act. Saying that ‘John is wrong to steal the candy’ thus is analyzed into “‘John stealing candy’, boo!” Ethical sentences merely express one’s emotional response to an ethical situation. They make no more of a truth claim than someone crying.

Pure expressionism in theology is difficult to find in the recent literature for a number of reasons - - one may be courage - - but clearly much theological discussion merely evinces the speaker’s feelings about a particular thing. In liberationist theologies of all kinds, oftentimes it seems that the writer is quite unconcerned with the factuality of the divine, and quite concerned with persuading people about his social/political/economic/cultural agenda. An expressionist account may be the most plausible to offer in such situations.

But what about discourse that is truth-apt, but nevertheless does make claims about the divine - - not all of which are false? Interestingly enough, theological discourse of this type seemingly need not be realist; while one might grant existence to divine entities and properties, one still might deny that such things have independence apart from human perception, conceptual schemes and linguistic practice.

Bishop Berkeley is famous, of course, for his denial that matter exists apart from mind. Although, as he says, “we must talk like the vulgar and think like the wise,” it is nonetheless true that “all the choir of heaven and the furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies that compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind” (Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710). Although our statements about matter and its relationships are either true or false apart from us, matter is wholly dependent upon human being; the contour of matter is clearly dependent upon human perceptual experience. With respect to theology, God may not be independent of human experience, yet sentences about God might still be true or false. Accordingly, one can be an anti-realist with respect to the domain of the divine if one holds that statements about this domain are true or false, but that the entire domain is somehow dependent upon human cognition.

So what are the options for the anti-realist theist who denies expressivism and error theory? In parallel with the contemporary discussion in the philosophy of science, it seems one might hold that postulation of the divine realm, though not independent of human experience, still is needed to account for human experience. This type of argument basically proceeds as an “inference to the best explanation” argument: One asserts that there is a divine being having such and such a nature because the assertion of such a being best explains the kind of experience we have and the kind of world we seem to have. Another possibility is to argue that the consensus of theological opinion is not extension-reflecting of the references of theological language, but rather extension-determining, that is, agreed upon theological statements act to determine the very reality they report. The objects, properties, events and states of affairs of theological theory are judgment-dependent, not judgment-independent.

So what are our options in theology with respect to the issue of realism?

1) One might say that the statements of theology are truth-apt, but because no divine reality exists, they are all false and thus theology constitutes an error theory. Clearly, this view is not an option for a theist engaged in the theological task.

2) might say that the statements of theology are not truth-apt; they are merely expressions of human emotion, value, or orientations. While this view may be an improvement over the previous, it is not a very promising way to proceed theologically. After all, while one seems more or less stuck with ethical language because of the nature of human relationships, this seems not to be true of theological language. This language seems more prone to elimination than the former kind.

3) One might say that the statements of language are truth-apt and not globally false. Simply put, one might say that divine reality exists in some way, yet deny the independence of this reality from human awareness, perception, conception and language. On this view, one could claim that the assertion of the existence of divine reality is justified on the basis of an inference to the best explanation or on the basis a theological consensus that somehow determines theological extension itself. While (3) is more promising than (1) and (2), they run into real difficulties in explaining the truth of discourse about the person and work of the Christ. Does the salvific work of Christ constitute the best explanation of our human experience? It seems unlikely. In fact, scripture and tradition have referred to Christ as a “stumbling block” for human reason. And as regards to any theological consensus, it is precisely at the point of our discourse about Christ that we lose consensus, or at least enough consensus to derail any anti-realist effort presupposing a uniformity of theological opinion.

So what is left? It seems to me that what is left is theological realism, the assertion that God exists and has His nature apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. The assertion of such a God and descriptions of His nature seem to be clearly evidence-transcending. Human beings simply cannot be in relevant perceptual causal connections to those divine states of affairs that make assertions of the Trinity true. This being said, however, there is another kind of way that such statements might be justified. If these statements’ causal history includes the activity of the Holy Spirit, one might hold that they make claims about the reality of the divine without be wholly evidence transcendent. If the theologian can be a semantic realist without having to assert an extreme position with regard to evidence-transcendence, there may be no good reason fro the theologian not to be a semantic realist. This question is important, I think, and we shall explore it in the next post on semantic realism.

Clarity with Respect to Realism

2009-01-10T09:36:00.004-06:00

The issue of realism seems to me to be at the center of the entire question of theology. Traditionally, of course, realism was unproblematically presupposed in theology - - just as it was rather unproblematically presupposed in philosophy generally. But this is no longer the case.

In getting at the issue of realism we need, of course, to clear up a possible confusion. Theology students are often introduced to the medieval question of realism and nominalism as it developed out of the options on universals put forward by Boethius. To be a realist was to assert that universals like 'whiteness' had being either apart from their instantiations in white things (the platonic view), or had being not fully accounted for by their instantiation in white things, but not yet having being apart from their instantiations (the Aristotelian view). To be an extreme realist like William of Chaupeaux was to hold a robust Platonic view; to be a moderate realist like Thomas was to hold an Aristotelian view. To be an extreme nominalist like Roscelin was to hold that general terms did not refer to universals, but simply were different names for the particulars of which they might be predicated. For a nominalist like Ockham, all that exists are particular entities having particular qualities. Realism was thought very important by many because if 'sin' and 'human nature' referred to universals, then Christ's assumption of human nature and his conquering of sin was an assumption of the same human nature that medieval man and women possessed and a conquering of the same sinful nature that they inherited. These issues are still potentially interesting in theology, but few talk of them today. There are, after all, more fundamental issues at state for contemporary man and woman. In an age where the existence of God is problematic at best, more of the hard theology work must be directed to that problematic.

In our age the conflict is not between realism and nominalism, but rather between realism and nonrealism and/or antirealism. I take the thesis of realism to be the assertion that for some putative class of entities T, all x in T exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. Nonrealism with respect to T would claim that it is not the case that for all x in T, x exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. Antirealism with respect to T declares that for all x in T, x does not exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. The question then is this: Can we be realists with regard to class T, the set of putative theological entities and their qualities? Or perhaps more to the point, can we be a realist with respect to the putative entity God? Is God real in that God has existence apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language? Would God exist having basically the properties he is said to have apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language?

But now the question pertains to the locution 'what He is said to have'. What could we even mean by the divine predicates? To say that God is omnibenevolent is one thing, but to try to specify that set of properties necessary and sufficient for omnibenevolence is quite another. Accordingly, one could be a theological realist without being a metaphysical realist. One could deny that there is some set of self-identifying properties comprising God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and still hold that there is some being to God that in confrontation with human cognitive equipment makes it be the case that God has the property of omnibenevolence, or omnipotence, or any other of the divine properties. Hilary Putnam's internal realism is still a realism, but we are now moving more towards nonrealism: While God would still exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, God only has those properties that identify Him in all possible worlds if there is human awareness, perception, conception and language. Though God exists, what God is in God's own self cannot be known or even thought.

I believe that the question of theological realism is very important because I think that if there is no being to God apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, then clearly to the degree that we talk about God we are talking about a projection of the self. Just as there is no beauty in itself apart from human sentiment, so there is no God in Himself apart from human sentiment. While we might talk about the quasi-reality of God - - the "as if" character of God's existence - - clearly there is no divine realm if there are no human beings. Just as human consciousness is the necessary condition for beauty, so too is it the necessary condition for the divine. In my opinion, unless we can finally claim the reality of God, there is no reason to continue to talk about God in more than a historical way. Clearly, the God-thought has been a productive and heady thought to think, but at the end of the day, a thought is not a thing. Laypeople know implicitly that a God that has only ideal reality is not a God that shall have much staying power. There simply is no need to go to church and do the kinds of sacrificial things Christians used to do if it is the case that God does not exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.

This brings us to another kind of realism, that which concerns our language about God. The problem with the contemporary scene is not just that we are confused about whether or not God has been apart from us, the problem runs much deeper and concerns whether or not language about God has any truth-conditions whatsoever anymore. Are our statements about God capable of really being true or false? Now we are dealing with the distinction between semantic realism and irrealism, a distinction nicely given in the following passage from Michael Dummett, himself no friend of realism:

“Realism I characterize as the belief that the statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us. The anti-realist opposes to this the view that statements of the disputed class are to be understood only by reference to the sort of thing which we count as evidence for a statement of that class . . . The dispute thus concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have” (Dummett, “Realism,” p. 146, reprinted in TRUTH AND OTHER ENIGMAS).

The class of theological statements is, of course, “the disputed class” in question. Of concern for any realist is how to answer the objections put forward in the “acquisition argument” and the “manifestation argument.” The first asks how we can know that a statement is true or false if truth or falsity is contingent upon states of affairs obtaining that are in principle undetectable. The second concerns the question of meaning. If a statements meaning is tied to the possession of states of affairs that we cannot detect, then how can we really ever know what a statement means? How can we know what ‘God the Father has begotten the Son eternally” means when we have no access even in principle to what those states of affairs which would make the statement true?

For theological language particularly the question of the possibility of evidence-transcendent truth conditions arises very acutely. Much theological language deals directly with the question of putative states of affairs that are incapable of detection by human perceptual equipment. Because of the challenge of making sense of evidence-transcendent truth conditions, much theology has simply given up the assertion of these putative states of affairs and have accepted either projectivist or quasi-realist solutions to the problem. Accordingly, theological language is either a projection of human emotion, wish, or hope upon the universe, or that the class of theological statements behaves like realist statements because of some consistent method by which human projections are made. The point is this: Without human beings there would be no states of affairs about God and thus no truth.

Semantic realism must deny all of these facile solutions to the thorny problem of theological language. Whether the semantic realist theory can be satisfactorily worked out is really secondary at this point to seeing deeply the problem. There is, however, much in the literature that would give semantic realists courage in the face of the acquisition and manifestation challenges.

On Law, Nature, and Homoerotic Acts

2008-12-25T22:44:00.005-06:00

There is so much confusion about homosexual behavior within Lutheran circles, that I shall try again to explain what was once thought obvious by Christianity: Homoerotic behavior, like many other human behaviors, is sinful. That this is true ought not to be startling to Lutherans who know that human beings perpetually sin against God in thought, word and deed. Curiously, however, Lutherans have increasing difficulty confessing the sinfulness of such acts, and indeed, of many types of sexual behaviors and practices.

The Lutheran position on the rectitude of homosexual behavior should be straightforward. After all, the great theological tradition has always held that there is an order of creation. The order of creation is the direct artifact of God’s design; it instantiates God’s primary intentionality for existence as such. The Biblical tradition has affirmed that it is part of God’s primary intentionality that a man and woman should leave their parents and dwell in life-long relationships with each other. God is the author of creation so it bears an imprint of his “eternal law” that can be apprehended through conscience as “natural law.” The natural law tradition expresses what God has objectively ordered nature to be.

Under the conditions of existence, the order of creation has fallen into sin from which it cannot free itself. Things that are, are not what they ought to be. Accordingly, human beings by their own natures (fallen human natures) are not, and cannot be, what they are by nature, by that which has been ordered by God. Natural law expresses God’s universal objective ordering; natural human natures instantiate the particular subjective ordering of individuals after their own ends, ends that are not part of God’s primal intentionality.

Given that the Biblical record unambiguously places man and woman together in the paradisical state within the order of creation, the question becomes what can the redeemed church support and proclaim as consistent with this order of creation. Obviously, human beings naturally are not who they are to be by nature. As fallen human beings living the redeemed life, what ought they to think about nature and about their natural acts that are not natural?

There are two choices: One can say that the orders of creation must be adjusted or accommodated to what is naturally possible. Some individuals are obviously natured and nurtured not to desire sexual and romantic relationships with members of the other sex. This is obvious. Moreover, some individuals are obviously natured and nurtured not to be able easily to avoid sexual promiscuity, sexual objectification, masturbation, serial monogamy, premarital sexual activity, etc. This is obvious as well. One can thus say that that which is not attainable, must be not be regarded as sinful, or must be differently understood as sinful.

The other option, of course, is to follow the tradition and claim that what we are sexually not who we ought to be. This option identifies divorce as sin, and understands how humans can be divorced - - particularly in a society like ours. This option identifies the addictive masturbation, pornographic consumption, and sexual promiscuity (especially serial monogamy) as sinful, but still understands how humans could be engaged in these behaviors - - particularly in a society like ours. Finally, this option finally identifies homoerotic behavior as sinful, yet understands how humans can be engaged in these behaviors - - particularly in a society like ours.

The fundamental question is whether we want to regard homoerotic behavior as consistent with the order of creation or not. To my mind, groups like the WordAlone Network have never claimed that divorce is consistent with the order of creation. If they were to have said that, and claimed that homoerotic behavior was inconsistent with it, then the WordAlone Network would be guilty of unfairly picking a particular sin to scorn. Questions about sex and sexuality are driven by society. General cultural forces generate the question of the propriety of homoerotic behavior, and it is this question which confronts the churches now; it is this question that needs a response. I do not believe there are many at synodical and churchwide conventions who want to claim that divorce, masturbation, and sexual promiscuity ought to be blessed within a liturgical context. This point must be seen clearly.

Unfortunately, Lutherans have abandoned any effort to think ontologically about divine law. They squirm at words like 'eternal law' and any attempt to identify a teleologically-ordered creation with divine law. They want to talk about the law only in so far as it confronts us, thus confusing the experience of being curbed by the law with the ontological contour of the law itself. But acting merely in accordance with the law, or acting due to the law does not change the meaning or ontology of the law. The law is the universal objective will of God for His creation, an objective will that is almost wholly obscured under the conditions of existence, an objective will grounding the promulgation of particular divine laws.

The time has come for Lutherans to rescue the divine law from its security within the phenomenology of human existence, and make again the bold and risky claim that the divine law really is God's, and that human apprehension of that law does not that law make.