Showing posts with label sin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sin. Show all posts

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Flacius and Strigel Revisited

The question between Flacius and Strigel in 1557 was this: How deep is sinfulness in human beings? Flacius thought it was so profound that it determined the very substance of human being. Strigel did not go that far, believing that sin while inevitably present, was nonetheless merely accidental to human being. Much has been written about this controversy over the years. The Formula of Concord attempted to follow the spirit of Flacius, if not the letter of his claim, declaring: 
That original sin (in human nature) is not only this entire absence of all good in spiritual, divine things, but that, instead of the lost image of God in man, it is at the same time also a deep, wicked, horrible, fathomless, inscrutable, and unspeakable corruption of the entire nature and all its powers, especially of the highest, principal powers of the soul in the understanding, heart, and will, so that now, since the Fall, man inherits an inborn wicked disposition and inward impurity of heart, evil lust and propensity. (SD, I) 
The question as to the profundity of human sin, and the attempt to claim that it is of the very substance of human being, involves us quickly in modal claims -- claims about necessity, possibility and contingency. Aristotle famously held a "two tiered" notion of substance. Accordingly, there are certain properties the substance has which are necessary and sufficient for it to be the substance it is, and others that the possess that they might not have.
Unfortunately, the phrase "necessary and sufficient for it to be the substance it is" is ambiguous, trading between the following:
  • Necessarily, it is the case that for any x, x is identical to individual i if and only if i instantiates a particular property group A.
  • Necessarily, it is the case that for any x, x is a member of kind k if and only if x  instantiates a particular property group B.  
The first claims that there is an individual essence A which is instantiated just in case a particular individual i obtains; the second declares that a general essence B is instantiated when some individual or other of kind k obtains.  While Aristotle clearly held that an individual substance has a general essence, most believe he did not countenance individual essences.  Thus, while it is necessary and sufficient for the individual Socrates to possess the essence man, it is more dubious that the individual Socrates possesses an essence of Socrativity.  While more could be said about this, I will not say it here.  

In addition to the essential properties that make a substance the kind of substance it is, there are also properties of the substance that are not necessary for it to be the substance it is. While properties of the first type are essential to the subject, properties of the second type, are contingent and do not constitute the substantiality of the substance.  While the substance Socrates must have the property of being a human being or not be Socrates, Socrates can either be pale or not pale and yet still be Socrates.  Using the language of Aristotle's de Categoria,  'man' is "said of" Socrates, paleness is "present in" Socrates.  'Man' is thus essentially predicated of Socrates while 'pale' is only accidentally predicated.

But this is not the end of the matter.  According to Aristotle, since 'man' is "said of" Socrates, 'mammal' and 'animal' must be "said of" him as well.  These secondary sayings about Socrates form transitive relationships: If the general essence of Socrates is to be human, then in being human Socrates must also be a mammal, be an animal, be a living being, etc.  That is to say, Socrates could not be at all if Socrates were not a living (as opposed to non-living) being. Flacius was arguing, in effect, that sin is essentially predicated of man (human beings), that is, that any substance having the general essence of being human must also instantiate the property of being sinful.  Strigel, on the contrary, claimed that sin is only accidentally predicated of any individual that is a man.  That is to say, the property of being sinful is "present in" primary substances having the essence of being human, but is not "said of" those substances.  'Sin' is accidentally predicated of a particular human being, not essentially predicated. 

While Flacius was trying to emphasize the inevitability of sin in our actual world, his claim that sin is essentially predicated of man (human beings) actually denies the existence of a possible world in which humans do not sin. Since there is no possible world in which a human being does not sin, the notion of 'man' (human being) contains within itself the notion of sin. Thus, just as the notion of square excludes the notion of circle, so too does the notion of 'man' exclude the notion of not sinning. Just as it is inconceivable that a square could be a circle, so it is inconceivable that a man could not sin. None of this can be countenanced, of course, by the Christian holding that God's creation is good. 

But the contrary position that sin is accidental, seemingly suggests a superficiality to sin, as if human beings might not sin because they are not determined metaphysically to do so. The problem in the debate, as I see it, is simply that neither Strigel nor Flavius yet had the notion of a physical law which, on any non-Humean interpretation, determines the distribution of physical properties universally within nature without this distribution holding in all possible worlds.  Human nature is fixed and, as Luther declares, human beings inevitably sin.  Yet this determinate human nature need not obtain in all possible worlds. There are worlds in which human beings do not sin. This, in fact, is necessary for claiming that God's creation is good, and necessary as well for being able to imagine an original paradise from which man and women fell.  One might say, that Flacius' views presuppose the impossibility of the Fall, because they make impossible the existence of a state from which human beings have lapsed.  

The Christian story is that human nature which was made good -- contingently, not metaphysically so -- contingently became a determinately corrupt nature contingently fixing the spectrum of human behaviors and responses.  Just as the acceleration of earthly objects downward is 9.8 m/sec2 universally under standard conditions, so too is human nature universally sinful and cannot (physically or through human agency) free itself.  However, just as there are possible worlds with different laws of motion, so are there worlds in which human nature is not corrupt. The depravity of man is metaphysically contingent, but physically (or agentially) necessary. Total depravity does not extend to all possible worlds.

These simple distinctions show that Strigel was correct, no matter how much Flacius may have fumed otherwise.  Somebody might argue, of course, that the modal distinction I am drawing here is still somehow practically unimportant, that Flacius was right in spirit because he was rightly pointing out that for all x, if x is human, then x is sinful.  He was arguing that human beings are inescapably and inevitably sinful, and this physical necessity of each x to sin is the important matter.  So what if Flacius somehow used the language of essentiality.  Was this not all that he had at the time, and would not other language suggest that human beings might proudly somehow escape sin?  

I aver, however, that modal difference makes all the difference.  We now have a clear notion of physical law; we understand determinate causal chains underlying universal regularities in the actual world.  We now know that for something to be contingently so does not mean that it is somehow capriciously so, obtaining sometimes and not other times.  Simply put, we understand that necessities are of different kinds: There are logical necessities, conceptual necessities, metaphysical necessities, physical necessities, etc.  Just because something is physically necessary does not mean that it is metaphysically necessary.  While we may cringe at calling human sin a "physical necessity," it is indeed so: Each and every human being has a set of dispositional properties such that were conditions x, y or z to obtain, h would act in u or v fashion, where u and v are instantiations of what theology has always identified as sin.  Since it is a fact of our world that conditions x, y, or z obtain, it is not possible for a human being to exist having the set of dispositional properties he/she has and not sin.  The fact that this dispositional properties do not hold in all possible worlds should not obviate the obvious: This dispositional set does indeed obtain in the actual world.  Thus, each and every human being necessarily sins given the metaphysically contingent fact of the universal human proclivity to sin.  That we all necessarily sin given this metaphysical contingency should be enough confidently to proclaim, "We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.  We have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone."  What more is needed?  If the creation of the universe is a contingent fact given the freedom of God, surely the existence of a fallen universe is contingent as well.  

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Sin Essential and Contingent

I must admit that I have always thought Augustine fundamentally correct when saying, "My heart is not at rest until it finds its rest in thee, O Lord."  We denizens of the finite are not completed by the finite.  We search inescapably for "more-than-ness."  The problem is that while we search for this "something more than the finite," we look for it in the only place seemingly we can look: in the finite.  So we arrive at the dilemma of human being: An inhabitant of the finite looks for the infinite, but can only apprehend the finite.  Such a situation in which an infinite grasping connects to a finite object or meaning -- "connects" in being prima facie satisfied -- produces the phenomenon of sin.  And so Calvin could claim that the human mind is a factory of idols, for it is of the very being of our being, it seems, to "elevate the conditioned to the level of the unconditioned," to use Tillich's trenchant phrase.

Now all of this is pretty standard fare for the theologian, particularly the Lutheran theologian.  We know that the human mind is a factory of idols -- though we Lutherans don't often employ these words -- and that it is of the nature of human beings that we turn away from God in unbelief, pride, idolatry and concupiscence.  While we have an "ontological thirst" towards God, towards that Infinite which can only satisfy our thirsting after completion, we find ourselves a'whoring (using the traditional language) after false gods, after those seemings within the finite that seemingly satisfy.  In so doing we turn away from the horizon of the infinite, believing that a finite bird in the hand is worth the entire bevy of the infinite.  This is unbelief.  As we turn towards the finite, we realize that the turning is ours.  It is a matter now of our identification of that within the finite that can satisfy our ontological search.  This identification is pride.  That which is not infinite, but is now to satisfy the drive towards the infinite is an idol; it is something conditional now elevated to the level of the unconditional.  And the a'whoring is something done with an almost infinite zest, an excitement of the finite beyond what the finite can support.  Such an excitement is concupiscence, a desire to devour and dominate the infinite as one's own religious and erotic ecstasy.

I have always been fairly comfortable claiming that this is the basic condition of human being.  Although I have read many things about our getting over of transcendence -- Bonhoeffer probably first -- I never seriously thought human beings could or would do it.  The imprint was just too strong. "We are but a little lower than the angels," I thought, "and surely the complexity of our consciousness, of its hopes, aspirations, motivations, reasonings, rationalizations, fears, etc., witnesses deeply to this."  As the years have churned by, it seems, I have not really lost the sense of the striking difference between human self-consciousness and the consciousness of animals.  "There is something different," I tell myself, "and this something different is the divine imprint."  But lately I have been wondering if what I tell myself is accurate, or even of much significance.  Charles Taylor's A Secular Age lays out our western plight pretty well, and there is nothing in the macros of his diagnosis of the human problem that seems to me fundamentally inaccurate.

It seems like human beings in the old North Atlantic world just are quite different now.  Many I meet appear not at all to have an ontological thirst.  While I can always satisfy myself with the hope that they do retain this nonetheless -- even though they don't know it -- this interpretation is getting more difficult to sustain.  When people look with blank eyes when one attempts to uncover the hidden religious dimension of their secularity and/or atheism, the philosopher must take a step back and at least question his assumption.  What if these people don't have an ontological thirst at all?  What if they don't try to satisfy it in all of the wrong places?  What if their seeming drive for pleasure is not prideful concupiscence grounded in idolatry, but merely a drive for pleasure?  What if human beings aren't who we theologians have always assumed them to be?  What then? 

Charles Taylor attempts to show that the ambiguity of our present situation -- there still is some haunting of transcendence, after all -- can strike a significant counterpoise to exclusive humanism, that reveling in the immanent as if the question of transcendence could be jettisoned completely.  He tries to display how certain trajectories within the immanent are cross-pressured by the question of transcendence, though now of a post-modern and "excarnational" type.  So for him, at least, the ontological thirst is still somehow present, though perhaps not directly experienced as thirst.  It is as if one had a physical malady that disallowed the experience of thirst, so that one would identify one's states by certain of one's actions.  So the traditional strategy is not fundamentally different for Taylor.  One still has the condition, after all, even if one is not experiencing it.  So we are left with the question:  What if there is no ontological thirst at all?  What if the having of it was merely a stage in the history of consciousness, and not an element in the structure of consciousness?

I am enough of a philosopher to know that I can't really pull a rabbit out of the hat.  If there is no ontological thirst as an element in the structure of consciousness, then the transcendent fall into sin is problematic.  If this is the case, then the paradise story is not an exemplification of a timeless condition, a story that is true because it states in narrative form what deeply is: We temporal voyagers are existentially not somehow who we essentially are, and the gap between our existence and our essence is manifest as sin.  If there is no universal ontological thirst, even an unexperienced universal ontological thirst, then our sin and salvation, our capacity to thirst, to wander into idolatry, unbelief, pride and concupiscence, is a thoroughgoingly contingent, historical-conditioned state of affairs.  It does not have to be that way, and, indeed, it is becoming less so.  So what then?

At this time all that is left is preaching.  Preaching does not uncover the structures of consciousness so that they are accordingly recognized, but changes the contour of consciousness.  It creates.  Verbum dei manet in aeternum not because of the underlying structures it brings to expression, but because of the new realities it creates, realities of sin and salvation.  Accordingly, preaching the law really does create sin -- or at least what we denizens of the North Atlantic countries have traditionally identified as sin.  (There is much that needs to be said here, but I am not saying it now.)  That there are very sizable tensions here with traditional theological assertions goes without saying.  But theological tensions are nothing new.  Since the time of the Enlightenment, it has been extraordinarily difficult to provide a coherent theological account of God and world.  Tensions abound; it is a question for the theologian of what one can live with.  If one wants to take seriously the possibility that exclusive humanism may become the dominant ethos in our part of the world, and that this humanism is not delusionally occluding a more profound ontological structure, then we have to talk seriously about the contingency of that which we once thought essential.  That this places even more importance on the reality of the preached Word both in law and gospel is not something that Lutheran theologians will find surprising.