It took a very long time before I could see things clearly.
Growing up, I contemplated both God and science. They always seemed in tension. It did not help, of course, that my eighth grade confirmation pastor made me recite Luther's explanation to the First Article in from of the church with the prefix added, "In defiance of the theory of evolution, I believe that God has created me and all creatures . . . "
Although I did not know it at the time, I was already struggling with some pretty deep issues in the logic of explanation. If one could explain why something was the case by pointing to laws and antecedent physical events and processes, what exactly was there left for God to do? If I explained x both by divine intentionality D and some set of physical events E coupled with physical laws L, then in what sense is D, or perhaps E and L superfluous? If x would not have happened without D, then surely E and L cannot form a complete explanation of x. But E and L do form a complete explanation of x, therefore by modus tollens, x would have happened without D, and thus D is causally irrelevant.
The general problem is one of causal overdetermination, and confronts us as well in the philosophy of mind. If mental event M1 explains M2, and M1 is physically realized by a set of brain events P1, and P1 causes a set of brain events P2, and P2 is the physical realization of M2, then in what sense is M1 qua M1 -- that is, M1 in so far as it is M1 -- causally efficacious in producing M2? Does not the mental become merely epiphenomenal on neurophysiology, a "wheel idly turning" (Wittgenstein) as it were? Is this not clearly a situation in which mental explanation fails to articulate the deepest causal map of the universe, and thus is in principle reducible to brain explanation or, better yet, can be eliminated in favor of the latter?
Consider the healing of Mary from stage four liver cancer. This event -- let's call it m -- is supposedly effected by God's intentionality and power D. If God healed Mary, then clearly D causally produces m. But Mary's healing is physically realized as some set of micro-physical actualizations S. While there was once a time -- e.g., in pre-physicalist ages -- when one might have said that D causally produces S without means, that option is not available to most people today. Our time assumes the principle of the causal closure of the physical, for each and every physical event p, there is some set of physical events E that causally produces p, and for each and every physical event p, p cannot and does not produce events that are not physical. But if D does not produce m without means, then there is some set of physical events that is the physical realization of D such that these events cause m.
It has been axiomatic in theology since the late Enlightenment to conceive God-talk non-causally. What I mean by this, is that the giving of an interpretation to theological language such as 'God creates the universe' does not involve one in the drawing of a causal relation across the disparate ontological domains of supernature and nature. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America slogan, "God's work, our hands," nicely captures the situation: Divine agency is physically realizable! God's working of Y is realizable through the means of some set of individuals P acting in particular ways -- let's say that the set of individuals P instantiates a complex set of relations Q. Thus, when P instantiates Q -- or perhaps when P acts Q-ly -- then Y obtains. But the question is obvious: How is Y qua Y a divine act when it is physically realizable as P acting Q-ly? More simply put, how is divine agency possible in means, when causal explanations in terms of the means is sufficient? Do we not have a case of causal overdetermination here when allowing the divine explanation to track alongside the physical?
The solution to all of this is to offer a model of theological language in which prima facie causal terms are given a non-causal analysis. This worked very well in ages dominated by idealist pre-suppositions. Accordingly, 'God creates' is a way of talking about some reality deeper than the causal. Perhaps there is a reality of "Being-itself" that is deeper than the realm of particular beings, a realm that is somehow more profound than the causal, an ontological depth of being presupposed by the ontic structure of being in which beings are causally related to other beings. Maybe although causal talk here is in some sense misapplied, the language of the causal somehow illuminates the depth dimension of the human such that the language is nonetheless theologically vindicated. Thus, while God does not really cause the bringing about of Mary's healing, the saying of 'God healed Mary' does illuminate or make sense out of one's existential situation and the seeming mystery of grace, the getting of that which one is ultimately not earned or deserved. Saying that 'God healed Mary' seems to say more than there is some set of physical events that occurred -- though they cannot be fully specified -- that when instantiated brought about some set of physical events in Mary such that the term 'healed' could be applied to her.
One might, of course, complain that my concerns with 'God heals Mary' are somehow merely a problem for the philosopher. While philosophers are concerned with semantics, the meaning of terms and the truth-values of the propositions comprised by them, semantics is not a problem for the believer reading the Bible. Why allow the abstractions of fundamental theology (proto-theology), a theology that is most immediately relatable to First Article concerns, to transgress upon the hallowed domain of Christology and the proclamation of Christ's life giving death and resurrection? Why not simply preach Christ and let semantics take care of itself?
Imagine listenting to preacher Pete proclaim that Christ is risen from the dead and that because of this the future has been conquered and that salvation is at hand. One could, I suppose, simply listen to Pete and not think deeply about what his pronouncements mean and what the truth-conditions of the propositions he utters are. (The truth-conditions of a proposition are those which must obtain in order for the proposition to be true.) One might somehow be able to say, "OK, I don't know exactly what Pete's meaning when he talks of Christ's resurrection, but I will regard the resurrection to be true." But this strategy does not work well when Molly asks what is meant by 'resurrection'. At this point, one must either give some truth-condition for 'Christ is resurrected', or simply say that one does not know. But if the latter, then Molly will say, "If you don't know what is meant by 'Christ is resurrected', then you don't know what it would mean for Christ not to be resurrected, and if you don't know that, then clearly to say "'Christ is resurrected' is true" is to say nothing at all."
To this, one simply has to change the subject. While one might hope that one is meaning something even if one is not sure what one is meaning, there is no basis for the hope: Without knowing precisely what situation must obtain for 'Christ is resurrected' to be false, one knows not what 'Christ is resurrected' means. Therefore, despite emotions to the contrary, to be told 'Christ is resurrected' is not to be told anything in particular -- and thus a fortiori not anything at all. Sometimes for the sake of the Gospel one must say things as they are. What is at stake is too important to do otherwise.
In the early days of Christianity, disciples knew that Christ's resurrection was tied to an empty tomb. 'Christ is resurrected' is false if the tomb is not empty. The assertion had falsifiability conditions. While the tomb being empty is not sufficient for Christ's resurrection, it is nonetheless necessary for it. Christ's resurrection thus had a physical realization, and because that resurrection was tied to both the future and salvation, there was a physical dimension to both the future and salvation as well. Just as Jesus Christ was physically raised from the dead, so too will all who sleep in the Lord be physically resurrected as well. The coherence of soteriology depended up the physical realization of salvation. While death was real, Christ's resurrected life could conquer it.
What I am saying is something quite sensible: Christ's physical resurrection and God's causal action producing it was itself understood in the tradition as causally-productive of human salvation. Human salvation was an effect of divine agency, a causal action drawn across disparate ontological domains. After all, there is no physical realization of 'Molly is dead' that in itself can causally produce 'Molly is alive'. While 'God's work' can be realized perhaps in the work of human hands, 'Molly is being raised from the dead' has no known physical realization.
Simply put, while 'God creates the heavens and the earth' can be given a non-causal analysis it is not clear that a similar non-causal strategy can be given for 'God resurrects Jesus'. The latter connects with the notion of salvation in a very intimate way -- as long as salvation is thought to be physically realized. Of course, we are living in a time in which people are increasingly thinking that death is not an enemy. If 'death' and 'life' are taken as descriptions of how we live rather than the fact that we live, then there may come a time when 'Mary's salvation' in no way depends upon the fact that she will live. That time, which is increasingly our time, does truly recall the time of the Gnostics and their heresies.
The first step in seeking treatment is realizing that one is sick. If we do not realize the importance of semantics in theology, we shall not grasp the important theological work that must now be done. It is irrational to hope for something of which it can be said that one does not know if one has it.
Can I be said to be the cause of a house? Would the house have come to be without me? No. Am I a sufficient cause for the house? No. but I am a necessary. We might say that the means are likewise necessary but not sufficient. I was necessary, but not sufficient, to raise the house from the ground. If Christ's being alive corresponds to a certain physical state P1 and His death to physical state P2, one might say that God raising Christ from the dead requires that God bring P2 to P1. We know, however, this to be false. If Christ were to be brought to P1, He would die again, as we. Something, then, must occur to Christ in a state of P2 that is beyond our understanding of all physical states. If all interactions in our world are between physical entities, if the causal nexus is closed, then a theistic God cannot interact with the world, even as He impossibly was able to bring it into existence. Fortunately, I have no idea what the physical is and what the nonphysical. If the physical is paradigmatically that which has no agency, no will, no choice, no freedom, no consciousness, if the world is wholly "mechanical," what do we make of our caring what it means for Christ to be Resurrected? Are we bound to this thinking and can think no other? Perhaps God is "mechanical"? What exactly is our problem? If brains can think and be conscious, what exactly is our problem? Perhaps the "physical" is capable of more than we imagine. Can God not Resurrect Jesus unless we can trace a causal chain of physical states from beginning to end? Can we really speak of a "beginning"? Can a causal chain, construed as we do the "physical," begin? So is this what distinguishes the "physical" from the "nonphysical": the physical has no beginning, no initiation, while the nonphysical has a beginning? If the Resurrection is something New, it must, then, be nonphysical, for the physical can bring about nothing New. It has never seemed plain to me why this "nonphysical" is prohibited from interacting with the "physical." Is this a matter of definition or meant to entail something ontological? As I build a house, something that is not a house, so mightn't the "nonphysical" initiate and begin something amongst the "physical"? If the universe had a Will according to some pantheism, could we detect it? Only what surprises us calls out for explaining. Surely the Resurrection cries out for explanation. Since our "physical" understanding of the world lacks the resources to account for it, we must look for another understanding. Our "physical" world is wholly inadequate. The problems, then, posed by our inability to see how God could Resurrect Jesus only demonstrate that our understanding of God and the world are lacking. One ought not deny the Phenomena for the sake of theory, but rather seek to adjust and temper theory by the phenomena. So science has always gone from the visible to the invisible and back again. But who will have faith when the Son of Man comes again, when it is transparency and only man's measure that matters?
ReplyDeleteThere are so many issues that arise from your comment, that it is probably best if I take them in some order in a series of responses. My concern in this comment concerns agent causality and its relationship to event/event causality.
ReplyDeleteWe standardly distinguish the "transeunt causation" of one event causing another from "immanent causation" wherein either earlier temporal stages of an entity cause properties at later temporal stages of agent causation in which an agent can be said to cause its actions. Immanent causation thus deals with issues of persistence or action. [A recent article by Nathanael Stein in the JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 51:1 (January 2014), 33-60, nicely discusses this.] The question, of course, is whether immanent causation can be accounted for by transeunt causation -- this seems plausible to many today -- or perhaps whether immanent causation explains transeunt causation (Leibniz). Stein returns to Aristotle in trying to show the causa sui status of immanent causation, arguing that it has explanatory priority due to its connection to the notion of formal causality. As such agent nature is merely accidental to immanent causation.
You assume that my agency is a necessary cause of my house: "I was necessary but not sufficient to raise my house from the ground," and move from there to the general question of divine agency, pointing out that the physical/non-physical distinction is not nearly so clear as I might assume. One of my professors at Iowa, Evan Fales, recently wrote a book you may have read entitled DIVINE INTERVENTION: METAPHYSICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL PUZZLES (New York: Rutledge 2010). In this book he raises many of the general issues of divine intervention connected with agency, particularly issues of how a non-physical agent can have physically realized actions. Fales thinks that transeunt event-event causation must involve a mapping of particular spatio-temporal events to others -- he holds that causation itself is between types of events and that the tokening of these events must have relevant spatio-temporal mapping -- and that agent causation cannot specify the requisite determinate non-physical event/states from which to draw causal relations to the physical. While some of his arguments can be countered -- see Gregory Ganssle's article in SOPHIA 54 (2015), 25-34 -- the general issue remains: Is my agency as the necessary condition for building my house causa sui or not?
Explanations in terms of beliefs and desires are standard in the philosophy of mind. I can explain why I built the house by appealing to my desire to build it and my belief that acting in such and such ways bring about what I desire (Davidson). All of this is clear. The question, however, has to do with the physical realization of my beliefs and desires and whether or not some special contra-causal agency or "spiritual power" is introduced in my believings and desirings, a causal power that is somehow causally efficacious in the bringing about of my house. Davidson, as is well known, can talk about the anomaly of the mental and say that mental explanations have "no echo in physical theory" while at the same time holding that the tokening of physical types realizing the mental are doing the real causal work. In other words, causal explanation is quite a different matter than causality. The first is intension; the second extensional. The causal map of the universe is found at the extensional level, not our intensional ways of describing or referring to the extensional. So my first question is whether my agency being a necessary condition for the making of my house somehow is a denizen of the extensional. The causal relevance of my agency does not its causal efficaciousness make.
What was missing in my reply, and manifest in my floundering about, was any clear understanding of what is at stake. Philosophy matters only when it derives from the living. What it seems to me is at issue is the immanence of God, His evident activity in the world. The felt presence of God has grown dull. Allow me to suggest that the principal cause is the world we outline by what we attend to. Today we are, if not individually then collectively, manipulators of the world, a world known by what we do to it. Less do we see our world as a given, a gift, which were it not given we would have nothing, but more as that which we can bend to our wish and whim. It is this malleable and soft aspect of the world to which we attend, and not the hard unmoving reality that lies below. As such, it is our freedom, power, and creativity that matters most to us; and the world we see is just that aspect which most fits that attention. In so doing, we find the malleable thing, but not God. For these God is found, consequent to what they attend to, what resists their wish and will, a dark unmoving force, something that sanctions no bargains. Such is found in their individual deaths (even in climate warming), and not a God to warm up to. Believing that only that which can be changed and bent to our will can be meaningful, this God, this Death threatens to clog all life with meaninglessness, and crowd us out. Here I am suggesting that it is not so much some firm grand metaphysical commitment that bars God from the world, but rather our attention to what we can master and manipulate. What cannot be so regarded has little value for us. We no longer find our dependence and lives rely upon His gifts, but rather on what we are gods over. What He gifts is merely raw grist for our mills to make better. Were our attention otherwise, I am certain we would find a way for God to daily walk among us bestowing gifts. But the sense of what we are about will not allow it, numb to what we steal from Him to make us strong. It is the weak and troubled who find the God who is always there, but missed by misdirected attention.
DeleteI wish to say something about the physical and its relationship to the non-physical. (I do this with some trepidation, since your a physicist and surely you know more about the physical than I.)
ReplyDeleteFirst, I deny that either "being mechanical" or "being deterministic" are essential to physicality as such. Surely indeterministic (or non-mechanical) physical systems are conceivable. (Aristotle apparently believed that substantial change could be caused by chance.)
I have always liked this definition of the physical: "A system is physical if and only iff the entities to which it appeals are members of that class of entities over which our fundamental particle theories quantify." This definition does not presuppose an absolute ontological divide between the physical and non-physical, but ties the definition of the physical to actual scientific practice.
Notice on this definition the question of the relationship between the non-physical God and a physical universe really becomes the question of the propriety of the appeal to an entity to which appeal in scientific theory is standardly precluded. While the Higgs particle is a theoretical entity, an entity whose establishment (discovery? construction?) is tied to a particular explanatory task within an established scientific practice and theory (paradigm), appeal to God, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of a metaphysical entity already on the shelf, an entity the most important features of which are not an ability to explain within an established scientific theory and practice, but rather an entity whose deepest features are salvific. God is that towards which the human heart yearns, that highest being which is true, good and beautiful, that being who grants meaning because He offers an answer to the anxieties of fate, death, guilt, condemnation, emptiness and meaningless. It is this being who might, of course, also explain why there is something and not merely nothing, whose rational agency might yet be at work in the apparent purposelessness of physical processes. [The fundamental question we are dealing with here is simply this: How is teleology possible in a physicalistic universe?]
Thus, whereas appeal to theoretical non-empirically amendable entities is a physical appeal because the object postulated has some potential or actual mass, energy, extension, etc., as possessing explanatory value within an overarching scientific theory, explanatory appeal to a non-empirically amendable God is a non-physical appeal because God does not have some potential or actual mass, energy, extension, etc.
We can define what we mean by physical (probably), but is that the right thing to do? It seems to me that when we attempt to do so, we are trying to do more than defining what making a goal in hockey is. We are trying to say something about a world we know and don't yet know. Is the physical that which whose process of observables can be mapped into a mathematics? And this is to imagine some kind go algorithm that associates earlier states to later states. This algorithm must be deductive, we could say decidable. So is this what distinguishes agency from non-agency: decidablility? We might suggest that something like a free agent's behavior is not decidable by any previously specified algorithm. All of this is confusing to me because it is immediately obvious to me that an orderly Creator wouldn't act in a decidable way. While this might not be true in all cases, it seems plausible to me that He might in instances relevant to natural science that God and His behavior be not unlike the character of a "fundamental particle." After all, the nature of a fundamental particle is utterly obtuse and inexplicable. They may as well be gods (or likened unto black holes that some are saying can do all sorts of marvelous things).
DeleteYou say that the fundamental question is whether teleology is possible in a physicalistic universe? It seems that Nagel thinks so. I guess I'm confused. We regard acorns as physical and can we not say that they (as an embryo) have a teleology? The problem is not the teleologic process, but how to account for that imprinting in a "physical" universe. But is this any different from wondering why the world has the character that it has? Nagel suggests that our universe was wound up to produce life and even conscious beings (contra Gould). Fine. Still we are faced with how and why this particular predisposition.
You provide a connection between God and His character (essential properties). Should I regard this as a definition and thus the description of a class, or an attempt to describe an extant entity? This is the same kind of problem that "science" faces. The objects of science have changed over time because its projection of the world was inadequate (too small). Christ likely did the same for God. The relationship between our notions of the world and the world is open ended, at least it ought to be. Surely we do this with regard to God, and have always done so. Naturalistic science (of late?) aims for transparency and completeness, something I believe is necessarily impossible. All of this leaves me, as I began, very confused about the "physical" vs nonphysical. It seems to me that you can choose the "physical" to delineate the scope of a discipline. But if by it you intend reality, I am much less persuaded. Nonetheless, we need some way (I hope) of distinguishing God from what is not God, the creation from the uncreated. Surely we can do this. But to say that the difference is that between the physical and nonphysical is less persuasive to me. We already know that the Uncreated created the creation. I don't think this has to entail that the nonphysical made the physical. Science, as far as I know, never deals with the world as created vs uncreated. It treats both the same and has no way to distinguish between the two. As far as it is concerned, the created are eternal. But then we have that awful Big Bang. What now, I wonder?
"God's work, our hands" does perfectly sum up the betrayal. What they really mean is our work, with a little God-talk pasted on it. The illness is covered up by layers of prevarication, so that is festers and rots and soon we are left with nothing. I'm not sure, however, that we can formulate truth-conditions that could make "Christ is risen from the dead" falsifiable. Of course, if Jesus' body was still there, that would disprove his resurrection. But the fact that his body wasn't there doesn't prove the resurrection either; the disciples may have stolen it. The empty tomb tradition doesn't enter into the kerygma; rather, there is an appeal to the witnesses to saw the risen Jesus. Of course, the resurrection is a real event that actually brought in ("caused," we might wish to say) the Messianic Age. But we live in the Messianic Age now by means of the Word of the resurrection, the gospel, and faith in that Word. "Christ is risen from the dead" is a statement about what actually is the case regarding the future. In other worlds, it is a promise. What are the truth conditions for a promise? That the one promising can fulfill the promise. Hence, the promise brings its own truth condition, faith that the one who promises is able to fulfill--indeed, has fulfilled--the promise. This is justifiying faith that ascribes truthfulness to God, the highest honor we can give him.
ReplyDeleteTo say that God causes the universe seems to annihilate any freedom in the creature. Isn't modernity the revolt against this causality and the co-opting of this divine causation by autonomous human reason for the purpose of mastering and dominating nature for our own purposes? Of course, God's causing of the universe can be finessed in various ways in order to make room for creaturely freedom. But granting us freedom is not something that theology (or philosophy) can do. God has to do it and he does so by speaking the promise. What if, instead of saying, "God causes the universe," we say, "God is the Author of the universe?"
Jonathan Sorum
"God's work, our hands" does perfectly sum up the betrayal. What they really mean is our work, with a little God-talk pasted on it. The illness is covered up by layers of prevarication, so that is festers and rots and soon we are left with nothing. I'm not sure, however, that we can formulate truth-conditions that could make "Christ is risen from the dead" falsifiable. Of course, if Jesus' body was still there, that would disprove his resurrection. But the fact that his body wasn't there doesn't prove the resurrection either; the disciples may have stolen it. The empty tomb tradition doesn't enter into the kerygma; rather, there is an appeal to the witnesses to saw the risen Jesus. Of course, the resurrection is a real event that actually brought in ("caused," we might wish to say) the Messianic Age. But we live in the Messianic Age now by means of the Word of the resurrection, the gospel, and faith in that Word. "Christ is risen from the dead" is a statement about what actually is the case regarding the future. In other worlds, it is a promise. What are the truth conditions for a promise? That the one promising can fulfill the promise. Hence, the promise brings its own truth condition, faith that the one who promises is able to fulfill--indeed, has fulfilled--the promise. This is justifiying faith that ascribes truthfulness to God, the highest honor we can give him.
ReplyDeleteTo say that God causes the universe seems to annihilate any freedom in the creature. Isn't modernity the revolt against this causality and the co-opting of this divine causation by autonomous human reason for the purpose of mastering and dominating nature for our own purposes? Of course, God's causing of the universe can be finessed in various ways in order to make room for creaturely freedom. But granting us freedom is not something that theology (or philosophy) can do. God has to do it and he does so by speaking the promise. What if, instead of saying, "God causes the universe," we say, "God is the Author of the universe?"
Dr. Jonathan D. Sorum
Dean of Academic Affairs
Institute of Lutheran Theology
(320) 304-4985
Jon: you say that that modernity (or postmodernity) is "the revolt against this causality [God's creation of the universe] and the co-opting of this divine causation by autonomous human reason for the purpose of mastering and dominating nature for our own purposes." This touches on what I was trying to say in my second post. The question is how moderns are able to accomplish this feat? I suggested that it is by attention, i.e., by confining the scope of interest and what matters. If we only attend to what we can change and influence, our sense of "empowerment" and autonomy is heightened. What we are (compatibalistically) free to do is attended to. What we are not so disposed, gets, for the most part, missed. This is accomplished by confining the scope of our concerns. With this disposition, how might authority be regarded? It constrains our autonomy and delimits our activity. But it also focuses our activity. Where there is no perceived good, freedom is otiose. The question for modern man is that of meaningfulness. Can the meaningful be created ex nihilo? If we attend only to that which is changeable, and to nothing that is fixed in our mind and world, can there be any meaning?
DeleteWhat I am trying to get at is the way that practice encapsulates and incarnates a world. Any such practice entails a certain set of prerequisite conditions. It is difficult to imagine, for example, a milieu of personal autonomy under feudalism. The physical structure of homes, communities, and cuisine all influence possible practices. What is the relationship of practices and philosophy, even theology? We speak of Christian practice. Why not autonomous practice? These practices instantiate and establish our world. In a world where we today regret the lack of God's presence, even in our own lives, it is worth considering how our practice engenders the very thing we regret, and then perhaps to discover what might realize our desire. The "logic" of practice is not the same as that of philosophy. It is constrained by what can be done. It is ringed in by the possible that is within reach. It is not tested by logical coherence or completeness. I need to think more about this, but they seem very different "disciplines." And yet I think we dwell more in this realm of practice than that of philosophy.
DeleteI was reading an article recently in Philosophia Christi arguing against the possibility of a materialist commitment to human autonomy. His argument appears bound to arguing for a necessary relationship between materialism and atomism. We can immediately see the problem of atomism and some kind of natural types, even of persons. Atoms have no intrinsic allegiance with persons (or individual dogs or pine trees). We can see the same kind of problem when it comes to cosmic teleology: atoms have no natural or intrinsic commitment to living beings, or consciousness. I would suggest however, despite the historical trace of modern science, that it is possible to imagine a physicalism that is not atomistic. Such a physicalism (or materialism) can encompass a larger class of natural types, perhaps even human (or dogs). This notion is close to the ancient notion of substance. This non-atomistic notion of a physicalism is perhaps difficult for us to imagine today. I just wonder, out loud, what such a physicalism would mean for the causal nexus between God and His creation. It seems to me that under an older understanding of a "physical" universe we didn't have this problem, and I'm wondering how much it is consequent of the assumed atomism.
ReplyDelete