The Scandal of the Theology of the Cross

I

The cross has been a scandal in every age.  It subverts our dreams and overturns our idealisms.  Human nobility and spirituality die upon this cross.[1]  It stands in opposition to the values of the world, the values summed up in the expression “theology of glory.”  Because, as Luther says, “Crux sola est nostra theologia” (“the cross alone is our theology”), it follows that the cross is opposed to all theologies of glory.[2]  But what is a theology of glory, and how must it be understood over and against a theology of the cross?

As soon as we reflect upon this, other questions naturally arise.  What is the best in man?   What is it that makes human beings noble?  What gives men and women dignity?  In answering this, we might start with the following catalog of human virtues, those characteristics seemingly separating us from the other primates.  Human beings:

·        have an eternal soul.

·        are bearers of reason.

·        possess free will and inhabit a moral order.

·        can actualize their potentiality.

·        have a taste for the Infinite.

·        can know the truth, do the good, and appreciate beauty.

·        understand justice and law as their highest good.

·        know God to be the foundation of truth, goodness and beauty. 

Theologies of glory understand that human and divine being stand on a continuum with human being either participating in divine being, or instantiating properties normally associated with the divine.  Theologies of glory can be stronger or weaker to the degree to which they instantiate divine being or divine attributes.  My favorite expression of a theology of glory comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson whose poem “Worship” has these memorable lines:

This is [He], who, deaf to prayers,

Floods with blessings unawares.

Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line,

Severing rightly his from thine,

Which is human, which divine.

The line between the two is difficult to draw because human beings are the embodiment of the highest aim of God, and God is the projection of the highest sentiments of humanity.  Thus, it is a challenge to know where the one leaves off and the other begins.  

Human beings are created in imago dei and, although this divine image is now tarnished by the waywardness of sin, it still shines forth weakly within human hearts.  Accordingly, human beings, through greater or lesser degrees of effort and divine succor, must work to polish up that which is now tarnished.     

An historically important theology of glory was bequeathed to us by a famous philosopher living over 400 years before Christ. The Greek philosopher Plato claimed that while the human soul bears the marks of the divine world from which it fell, e.g., indestructibility, simplicity and eternity, and while its essence is to be without a body, it has unfortunately been joined to matter in the veil of tears of this life.  At death, however, the sickness of the soul’s involvement with the body is healed as it sheds the corporeal forever and lives in eternity beyond the temporal.   Throughout the ancient world, the Greek idea of the immortal soul formed the intellectual backdrop on which Christ’s death and resurrection were understood. 

While time does not permit me to sketch out representative theologies of glory in the western tradition, one must at least point to a dominant early one: Neo-Platonism.  This philosophy held that all things are ultimately ONE and that this ONE in the course of history flows out of itself into Nous, then into the World-Soul, and finally into the alienated world of matter. Salvation demands that material men and women become more spiritual as they are freed from the corruption of the flesh and returned to the ONE from which they have been separated but to which they essentially belong.  Christian variations emphasized that God sends grace which is infused in believers so that they might become more spiritual and return to God.   

By the sixteenth century, Neo-Platonism had waned, but the impulse of the theologian of glory remained. The idea was that God gives human beings particular laws and that humans must act in accordance with those laws in order to be close to God.  To act in accordance is to be just; to not act in accordance is to be unjust.  In Luther’s time it was widely thought that as a person is just when he acts in accordance with divine law, so is God just when he rewards likes for likes.  God’s justice demands He punish sin and save the sinless. 

However, because humanity is not sinless, God had to give grace that either makes the believer sinless enough for God not to punish, or which “covers” sinners such that if somebody makes some small effort towards God, an effort within the power of the person (‘fac quod in se ipsum’), God does not deny His grace (‘facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam’).  God justly acts to reward the sinner who has worked merit congruent with his or her ability (meritum de congruo) as if he or she had actually worked a merit worthy of salvation itself (meritum de condigno).  Because of Christ, the wretched faltering steps towards God the believer makes in this life are regarded by God to be as if they were worthy of salvation.    

It is not important that we follow all the specifics here. The theological tradition is rich in reflection on the nature of justification.  Suffice it to say that, for Lutherans, a person’s justification and salvation are coninstantiated.  Conceptually, it is impossible for one to be justified and not saved, or for one to be saved and not justified.  Accordingly, it is a necessary truth that ‘x is justified just in case x is saved’.  A theology of glory understands that proximity to God is a function of the worldly instantiation of properties that perfectly and properly apply to God.  

II

What then is a theology of the cross?  While a theology of glory understands the presence of God as a worldly manifestation of properties like those of God, a theology of the cross finds the divine presented sub specie contrario, that is, underneath its contrary.  Thus, a theology of the cross finds God where one least expects to find God: in weakness, in suffering, in death, in finitude.  Whereas the theologian of glory locates God in the divine apathei of detachment, peace and impassibility, the theologian of the cross finds God in despair, suffering, and emotional turmoil.  

In 1518, 35 year-old Martin Luther gave a presentation at the Augustinian monastery in Heidelberg in which he provided a classic distinction between a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross.    

(19) Non ille digne theologus dicitur, qui invisibilia Dei per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspicit.  (20) Sed qui visibilia et posteriori Dei per passiones et crucem conspecta intelligit.   [(19) That person is not worthy to be called a theologian who perceives the invisible things of God as understood through things that have occurred.  (20) But who understands the visible and “back side” of God through the perception of his passion and cross.]³ 

The theologian of glory in thesis 19 is one who looks at how the world is in order to get a clue about how God is. Since God is like the world in that both are measured by goodness, the better the world is, the better or closer the divine source and goal of existence itself is. This theologian expects to find God where there is maximum goodness.  Luther says that this theologian of glory is not worthy to be called a theologian. 

Rather, the one worthy to be called a theologian is he or she who understands that what can be known of God is available only by looking at the cross.  The theologian of the cross finds God precisely where one would not expect Him to be found: in His ignoble suffering and death on the cross.    

The ancient notion of the anologia entis claims that there is an analogy between the being of God and the being of the world.  When the world is a particular way, then God must be a particular way.  But the one who searches for God in this way always misses Him, says Luther.  Instead of moving from how the world is to how God is, the theologian of the cross finds God in how the world is not.  She finds God in how Christ is!  God is not discerned by looking lovingly at the world, but by looking at the One who, by his crucifixion and death, looked lovingly at us.  God is found in Jesus Christ and only there, and this is precisely not where we would expect to find him. Luther says it clearly in thesis 21:

 (21) Theologus gloriae dicit malum bonum et bonum malum, Theologus crucis dicit id quod res est.  [The theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil; the theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is.]⁴   

While the theologian of glory sees through creation and finds God at the ground or source of it, the theologian of the cross finds God revealed in the desolation of the cross.  While the theologian of glory uses analogy in order to reason to what God is like, the theologian of the cross admits that God remains hidden in his worldly actions, and that He reveals Himself only when and where he wills it: on the cross and in the proclamation of that cross. The theologian of the cross proclaims God’s presence in the midst of His apparent absence.  

Instead of the soul being liberated by divine grace to fly closer to God, the theologian of the cross declares the death of the soul and the dissolution of the self.  While the theologian of glory assumes some continuity between the divine and human, the theologian of the cross exploits their discontinuity.  The old being dies and the new rises and takes its place.  It is not that the eternal essence of a man needs readjustment, it is rather that the old Adam in us is put to death and the New man in Christ is constituted in his stead.  There is no perdurance of individual substance across the domains of the old and new.  

III

So we have now sketched the salient difference between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory.  What is the problem?   Clearly, the cross is unpopular and does not fit well into the intellectual and cultural horizon of our time. Could we not say, in fact, that there is a “crisis of the cross” in our time?  Few any longer understand this distinction.  Theologians who should know better tacitly yet assume a profound relation between moral goodness and the divine.  It is as if one climbs up one’s own ladder high enough one can jump over to heaven itself!  Why is it that we find theologies of glory plausible?  Is it that we no longer understand the distinction between the theology of the cross and that of glory?

I don’t believe that the crisis is found in our not seeming to understand this crucial distinction. Lutherans from many different theological trajectories seem to grasp it. The problem, I shall argue, is that certain moves within Lutheran theology have made it difficult to state meaningfully the truth-conditions upon which the distinction between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory must ultimately be grounded.  How is it that this is possible? 

Theology is a discourse, and like other kinds of discourses, it is concerned with meaning and truth, the realm of semantics.  Classically, the semantics of theological propositions was assumed to be more or less realist. Terms like ‘God’ were thought to refer to a determinate being, while relational terms like ‘creates’ referred to a relational property of that divine determinate being by which that being brought that complex state of affairs referred to by ‘world’ into being.   Prima facie, to say that a person does not deserve to be called a theologian who “looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were perceptible in those things that have actually happened," is to deny the statement claiming that there is some divine being such that humans perceive something of the existence and properties of that being by perceiving some set of events within the universe.  

At this point it is necessary to make things very precise.  The theologian of the glory palpably holds that there is a divine being, and there is a universe that is not divine but created by that divine being, and there are sentient human beings such that these beings can perceive some set of events in the universe, and their perception of this class of events within the universe rationally justifies these human beings to hold that a particular set of properties is instantiated by that divine being.  I shall term this the epistemic formulation of the theology of glory because it refers both to events and the perception or the knowing of those events.   Let us make this even more perspicuous: 

(1)  There is some x such that x is divine, and some y such that y is the universe, and x is not y, and there are some z such that z perceive events E in y, and z are rationally justified to hold that x has property set S on the basis of z’s perception of E in y.   

Those holding to (1) are theologians of glory, while those denying (1) are not.  This much is clear.  Luther would hold that theologians of glory and theologians of the Cross constitute an exclusive disjunction.  Accordingly, not to be theologian of glory is to be a theologian of the cross, and vice versa.  This epistemological formulation concerns states of knowing and is a weaker formulation of the theology of glory than the following: 

(1’) There is a divine being and a universe distinct from that being, such that a particular class of events within the universe is manifest if and only if a particular cluster of properties is present within the divine being. 

This ontological formulation of the theology of glory can be clarified as follows:  

(2)  There is an x such that x is divine and a y such that y is the universe, and x is not y, such that property set P obtains in y if and only if property set S obtains in x.  

It is this stronger ontological formulation of which I am most interested.  It is crucial now to notice that the theologian of the cross can deny (2) in either of two ways I will call (3) and (3’). 

(3)  It is not the case that there is an x such that x is divine and a y such that y is the universe, and x is not y, such that property set P obtains in y if and only if property set S obtains in x.  

(3') There is an x such that x is divine and a y such that y is the universe and x is not y, such that it is not the case that property set P obtains in y if and only if property set S obtains in x.  

Clearly, (3’) does not simply deny the entire ontological formulation, but rather a part of it.  Accordingly, one affirming (3’) would claim:

(4) There is a divine being and a universe distinct from that being, such that it is false that a particular class of events within the universe is manifest if and only if a particular cluster of properties is instantiated by that divine being. 

The theologian of the cross affirms the existence of God and a universe distinct from God, but nonetheless denies the analogy of being, that is, that the presence of a set of events in the universe is tied to the instantiation of divine properties.  Any covariance in property distributions across the temporal and eternal is denied.  A world of perfect moral order does not a better God make, nor does a perfect God make a better world.  The cross forever undercuts the natural human proclivity to identify God as the mathematical limit of the maximization of the Good, the True and the Beautiful. 

At this point a dizzying variety of senses of the epistemological and ontological formulations might be investigated as to their meaning in order to make possible precise senses undergirding Luther’s thesis 19.  However, this is not the issue about which I am concerned.  What I am concerned with is that my semantic formulation here presupposes a particular ontological contour, a contour that much of Lutheran theology no longer assumes. 

IV

Since the time of Kant academic theology on Lutheran soil has denied both the epistemological formulations and ontological formulations of theology of the cross.  Why is this?  I believe it is because it has assumed that God is not a substance that in principle can possess properties or be engaged in important kinds of relations – particularly the relation of causality.  But if God is not a being having properties, then what is God? 

Schleiermacher famously claimed that God is the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence.  Fichte talked of God as the infinite striving of the ego in positing the non-ego, and ultimately the world as the backdrop of moral striving.  Hegel understood God to be the Absolute Spirit coming to consciousness of Godself in time through human consciousness: God is God in Spirit coming to consciousness of itself through relating to what is seemingly other to it.  Ritschl and his school downplayed metaphysical assertions about God and spoke only of the effect of that which is other than the world.  Barth was strongly opposed to the liberal theology of Ritschl, Harnack and company, and spoke of God as the totaliter aliter, the “wholly other” of human experience.   God is thus “wholly other” than being, just as He is “wholly other” than non-being.  Other theologians have spoken of God in such ways as the infinite fore-grasp of the illimitability of Being in every act of thinking particular being (Rahner), or as a type of being of God such that God is not being God (Scharleman), or as a primal matrix (Reuther).  

The problem here is that even if one could clarify what it is that one is meaning by “God being God only when God is not being God” or God as Henry Nelson Wieman’s “primal event,” it is not clear why such diverse referents should be called by the same name, nor is it clear what exactly could be meant by Luther’s thesis 19 when the referent of ‘God’ changes so radically under different interpretations. 

The problem here is that theologians have not paid sufficient attention to the “depth grammar” of their statements.   ‘Jack fishes from a bank’ means quite different things when ‘bank’ means ‘an institution allowing the deposit of money’ on the one hand, and ‘that which abuts a creek’ on the other hand.   While the surface grammar of ‘God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’ can be held constant in various languages in which the locution is used, the depth grammar, the propositions actually expressed or the states of affairs actually named vary greatly across theological schools. 

What I am talking about is the need to specify clearly semantic models for theological statements.  Such models would include the domain of those entities about which we are speaking, and predicates which clearly delineate to which entities they properly apply. What theological model is specifiable either for the ontological interpretation of the theology of glory or its theology of the cross denial if God is not a substance – that is, a being that perdures through time – and God cannot be causally related to any entities within the universe? 

V

Imagine a Bultmannian view of things where there is no being having divine properties or attributes and no being that is the second person of the Trinity that actually has the properties of divinity and humanity.  Further imagine a Bultmannian view of things in which the proclamation of certain locutions is itself a performative use of language in which existential empowerment can occur in the listener.  On this view of things, the semantics of the statement ‘Christ is raised from the dead’ does not refer to a state of affairs in which there is a particular being such that this being had the property of death then afterward life.  The semantics instead has meaning on the basis of transformed existential horizons in its hearing.  

While Bultmann could speak of a theology of the Cross, and could even accept Luther’s thesis 19, he would not be meaning by that either the epistemic or ontological formulations given above.  He would be meaning by it something quite complicated pertaining to horizons of expectation and empowerment in a succession of historical beings having particular existential constitutions.  Perhaps we might rework (3’) into (3’’) as follows:

(3'’) Although there is no x such that x is divine and a y such that y is the universe and x is not y, one can use locutions like ‘God’s power is found in weakness’ in order to effect a particular existential empowerment, or ground a use of proclamation language to effect existential empowerment, in some sentient hearer S, such that S is empowered in the face of fundamental anxieties to still discern some future open for S, that is that S’s facticity is not wholly determinative of S’s being. 

The attempt to specify the distinction between the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross is not easy at all for the Bultmannian who has abandoned traditional semantic theological models. 

We have no time here to work any of this out, but the point should be clear enough. In the absence of a traditional, realist semantics of theological language, it is very difficult to state clearly the distinction between the theologian of the cross and the theologian of glory.  However, the last 200 years of academic theology has tended not to work with a realist semantics for theological language.  It has indeed tacitly rejected semantic realism, the assertion that theological statements have truth values even when we are in no position evidentially to ascertain their truth.  On the rejection of a semantics that talks about states of affairs and property instantiation, then how might one characterize what a theology of the cross is?  Is it merely an expression of existential orientations or psychological attitudes?  Does it not then merely reduce to human expressions of engineering our futures or allowing our future to bestow itself graciously upon us?

Much more needs to be said to establish this clearly, but maybe this can get the ball rolling.  My contention is that the distinction between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory cannot be sustained if a realist semantics is not presupposed.  However, for almost 200 years a realist semantics has not been presupposed.  Therefore, the distinction is no longer clear to us.  This is the scandal of the theology of the cross.  It is a formal, not a material scandal.  The necessary condition for the latter scandal is for the former scandal to be assuaged.  Since I believe in the theological importance of the material scandal, my hope is ultimately to undercut the ground on which the formal scandal appears to rest. 

---

[1] ‘Cross’ here means the entire narrative of the crucified and risen Jesus.   See Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1997), 1.  

[2] WA 5, 176:32 (Operationes).  

[3] WA 1, 350:17-20. 

[4] WA 1, 350: 21-22. 

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The Institute of Lutheran Theology: Second Decade

In the fall of 2009, the Institute of Lutheran Theology began offering graduate classes to future pastors.  It took a little over four years from the birth of the ILT idea to the offering of actual ILT courses within a curriculum issuing in a degree.

As I look at the course offerings in the fall of 2019, I am struck by how constant and stable our course of development has been over the last decade and more.  In the summer of 2007 in the basement of ILT's "Old Sanctuary" main building, I wrote our first ILT Business Plan that claimed the following as the five emphases of ILT:

• Educate the next generation of Lutheran pastors 
• Educate the next generation of Lutheran teachers and professors
• Provide quality educational opportunities for the laity
• Provide quality continuing educational opportunities for pastors and teachers
• Engage in a continuing research agenda that seeks to connect theologically to the semantic and ontological horizon of the Lutheran Reformation. 

This fall we shall be finally doing all of this, from our lay academy offerings, to our Ph.D. courses, with everything in between.  Interested in what we are teaching in the fall of 2019 at ILT? Here are just a few of the offerings:

• Biblical Hebrew II
• The Penteteuch and Histories
• Epistles and Formation of the New Testament
• A Secular World
• Proclamation in the 21st Century
• Ethics in Lutheran Perspective
• Faith, Knowledge and Reason
• Theology and World Religions
• Theological Methods
• The Lutheran Confessions
• The Theology of Karl Barth
• Pastoral Care I, II and III
• Theology and the Practice of Worship 

All of our courses are delivered via video-conferencing in order to recreate the experience of the residential classroom.

Some might say, "Well this is an awfully fast development.  Why do they try to do so much and do it so quickly."

The answer simply is that there is no time at all to waste.  The acceleration of the forces of secularity, particularly of what Charles Taylor calls "secularism as a social imaginary" makes it crucially important to teach the tradition so it again can be an active dialogue partner with the present.  Taylor asks, "Why is it that 500 years ago it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, while today believing in God is virtually impossible, even for those who profess such a belief?"

The limits of our language are the limits of our world, and if we no longer encounter texts which bespeak transcendence and authentic hope, we will begin to think that reveling in the myoptic day-to-day is, in fact, the good life.  Lamentably, to aim to live a life defined by superficial conventionality as if it were a life of value and purpose, is the only aim left when the thesaurus of the past is arbitrarily disconnected from the emptiness and desolation of our present.

So how do the course offerings address the five goals of ILT originally enunciated?

• Twenty-four courses offered this fall are courses within the following pastoral preparation programs: Pastoral Ministry Certificate, Youth and Family Certificate, Masters of Ministry, Masters of Divinity, and Masters of Military Chaplaincy.  
• Fifteen courses this fall directly prepare students to teach at the undergraduate level while six courses prepare students for graduate level instruction.  These serve our Masters of Arts, Masters of Sacred Theology, Doctor of Ministry and Ph.D. programs.
• Six courses provide continuing education experience for pastors and teachers already having masters of divinity.
• Three courses are designed for the general person not necessarily seeking a vocation of teaching or preaching.  
• Three courses grant students a unique opportunity to do in-depth research within the ILT research paradigm.  

I have been blessed to lead the Institute of Lutheran Theology from its inception to its present state of development.  It has been a meaningful and productive journey.  So what is left?

•  While the Ph.D. is up and running starting this fall, we will be developing emphases within this program over the next years.  Check back often to see the growth!
• Some of us have lately been dreaming about a Center for Religion and Science in Rural Life (CRSRL).  We believe that one of the unexplored areas of the religion and science discussion has been that of how the relationship between the two is drawn within rural contexts.  Scientific and technological revolutions have occurred that have transformed rural America, and we believe that some sustained discussion of the relationship between these changes and religious belief and practice needs to occur.  We are envisioning a robust research agenda within CRSRL. 
• Finally, we hope soon to be able to offer undergraduate credit for some of our programming.  Up and until this point, ILT has been strictly a graduate institution.  We believe that God might be calling us to a little broader mission.  More of this to come!

ILT has from its inception sought to be faithful to its original charge of faithfully preaching and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.  We seek to advance this mission in all that we do.    Visit us at www.ilt.edu.  We are accredited and credible!

Getting Outside the World

Once I came to understand Heidegger's account of "world" and "the world-ing of the world" in Sein und Zeit, I have thought it fundamentally correct.  If one begins with Descartes' cogito, there simply is not a way to "build a bridge" to the world.  (Descartes famously tried to justify the existence of, and the determinate shape of, the external world on the fact that God is not a deceiver, and we are justified in asserting God because we have an idea of perfection.)  Far better to begin with Heidegger with the fact that our be-ing is always already be-ing-in-the-world, that consciousness is always consciousness of a world. 

Husserl famously developed the method of phenomenological inquiry that putatively bracketed the metaphysical questions of materialism and naturalism and advocated an ad fontes return to the things themselves in introspection, grasping, as it were, through the eidetic reduction things in their essential thingness.   The method was to choose an object, vary imaginatively the features of it, and ultimately grasp what it is that cannot be eliminated if the object is to be the object it is. 

While Husserl's phenomenological reduction of bracketing judgments about the ultimate nature of the world in favor of describing carefully one's experience of the world was supposed to leave in abeyance the metaphysical question of materialism and idealism, it is pretty clear that an argument can be built plausibly claiming that Husserl is committed to a type of idealism.  (The transcendental reduction abandons our natural attitude on the world in favor of a description of the intersubjective space of the transcendental ego.) 

The question that concerns me is whether Husserl's student, Martin Heidegger is also finally committed to a type of idealism.  After all, is not his world the sum of significances in which one pre-reflectively finds oneself, a world in which one finds one's way?  Is not this world and its complex relationships of meaning present only for Da-sein (Being-there), a world which is itself a pole of Da-sein and thus forever within its arena of consciousness.  (My apologies to Heidegger for using "consciousness," but I think that an argument can be made that being-in-the-world just is to be conscious.)  We are pre-reflectively always coping with the world, a world that tends to disclose itself when our regular coping breaks down.  (Heidegger famously points out that we don't really know what a hammer is -- what it means -- until we are without it in a relevant context.) 

Heidegger's distinction between Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit is meant to get at the distinction between our everyday dwelling in the world of the "ready to hand" and our occasional examination of objects in this world with a critical distantiation, a distance that allows us to investigate the object as it is in itself.  (We might translate the latter as "present at hand.")  When our hammering no longer happens pre-reflectively, we might instead attend to the properties of the hammer and thus attempt to consider the hammer as it is in itself, as disconnected from the web of significances within our being-in-the-world.  In so doing, we might try to correct the hammer so that it can again recede into the ready-to-hand significances of our primordial dwelling in the world.

But this distinction between Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit seems to be a distinction in and for Dasein in its own consciousness as it attempts to grasp objects in its world in different ways.  The reading off of the objective properties of the hammer is a function of the attitude in which Dasein engages the world, and it is difficult to locate the grounds to claim that the adoption of this attitude of reading off succeeds in getting us to the thing as it might be out beyond the world of Dasein.  If ready-to-hand is a dwelling of Dasein in its being-in-the-world, then is not present-at-hand also a type of comporting, a comporting that is ultimately found in a web of meaning in and for Dasein, and thus not a deworld-ing of the world in favor of the objectivity of the thing? 

Hubert Dreyfus has famously claimed that Heidegger escapes idealism through the de-worlding move of "formal indication" (formale Anzeige).  He points out that Heidegger was really quite interested in questions of what the world is in itself, and that Heidegger thus thought it possible to refer to objects as the objects they are without the nature of the objects being determined within the holism of the context of meaning in which they are ingredient.  Comparing this move to Kripke's notion of rigid designation, Dreyfus argues that Heidegger too could have understood reference to objects apart from their descriptions and contexts.

Kripke talked about an "initial baptism" that connected name to thing, and allowed for increasing understanding of the thing and finally a grasp of the essence of that thing apart from the ways we might describe or pick out the thing.  (The atomic number of gold is essential to gold, its necessity is, however, a posteriori.  That which first allowed examination of gold, those properties by which we might unreflectively pick it out, turn out not to be essential to the thing.  Analogously, water is identified by being H2O, not by the properties of colorless, odorless, and tasteless.)   Dreyfus suggests that Heidegger's formal indication functions like Kripke's rigid designation, and that this move allows Heidegger, like Kripke, to escape the idealist net.  If this is so, then Heidegger like Kripke is committed to the ontology of natural kinds, the notion that there are, as Putnam says, self-identifying objects that exist apart from human perception and conception. 

There is quite a literature on the formale Anzeige in Heidegger, and clearly there is no consensus that such a move takes one to realism.  However, I do like the attempt to connect Heidegger's excellent analysis of what it is to be-in-the-world with resources that would allow the world to be in some sense without our being in it.  But the problem here does seem Kantian.  If the formale Anzeige takes us beyond the fuer sich of the world to the an sich of things, then how exactly does the an sich connect to the fuer sich?  In other words, how exactly is deworlding of the world possible? How are natural kinds possible beyond descriptions when they themselves are articulated in terms of descriptions?  What could a natural kind be apart from the language that articulates the kind as the kind it is, a language that operates both at the deworlding and worlding levels? What kind of faith is necessary to assert theoretical entities as having self-identifying being apart from their ingrediency in theories?  Can we find this primal place before language when, as Heidegger later says, language itself is the house of being?  Ultimately, can we locate essences out and beyond the results of an eidetic reduction?  If so, what would be the grounds of this conceivability?

Recovering Play in Theology

I was a kid once and I enjoyed playing.  Early on I played with most anything, I suppose, though I can't remember much of it. Such playing is what kids do, after all.  After playing with the everyday objects of the house or barn, I remember playing with tinker toys, electrical wires and plugs, mechanical objects, train and erector sets, radios and other electronic items, and stereo equipment and speakers.  I also remember playing with numbers, working out batting, slugging and earned run averages, and speculating about big league home runs per time at bat as a function of parks parks and average yearly ERA.  (It was hard to get baseball information in those days.  There has only been a functional internet for less than half my life, and I lived over 100 miles away from a real library.)

I don't suppose my play was too much different than that of others who lived on Midwest farms in the fifties and sixties.  When not playing with toys or numbers, I played outside.  Like many of my classmates, I thought about such things as the differences between the drawbar and PTO horsepower of various tractors, horsepower as a function of RPMs, and fuel consumption as a function of power.  Anything useful on the farm could be thought about as having a set of measurable properties, and one could, in principle, do quantitative comparisons with machines that other kids' dads had.   (In those days there were no farms operated by women alone, though many women farmed with husbands and spent their days in toil both inside and outside the house.)  All of this thinking was just plainly fun. 

Some who reflect now on the nature of play like to point out that one of its essential qualities of is purposelessness.  By this they mean that a defining feature of play is that one does not play for some other end.  The play is not an instrument one employs to accomplish something else. Play has no extrinsic value to achieve another thing.  If by this they mean that 'purpose' cannot be predicated of something constituted as an end-in-itself -- play thus having intrinsic value -- I would concur, although I am chary flatly to say that on all occasions a thing must lack purpose if it fails to be a means to an end.

Indeed, what can have more purpose than a game?  Of course, it does not matter ultimately if the team wins or loses.  Whether the Vikings ever win the Super Bowl -- or even play in it again -- really does not effect anything in the grown-up world except possibly the micro economy around the park.  But, of course, Vikings fans of all ages find all kinds of meaning in Vikings wins and loses, and even at times seemingly derive some purpose for their own lives in the winning or losing of the team.  (One might reflect here more deeply about the nature of play in religion and sports, but this would take this post too far afield.)  

In the late spring, summer and autumn in the upper Midwest, people head out to pasture-like places on hot days to hit a little white ball around, hoping ultimately to get it in a small hole 300 yards away from where they first hit it.  The game has no extrinsic purpose for most, because very few ever can derive income and ultimately a living from it.  Yet people play golf, in fact they spend money to do so.  The game seems completely full of meaning and purpose, although the world is not changed in its playing.

Different people like different kind of games; they simply play differently.  Moreover, people play differently at different times in their lives. Looking back on my life, I now understand that what I always simply wanted to do as my playing changed is somehow to keep playing.  Erector sets were displaced by electronics, and then by something that still remains a passion for me: music.  While I liked sports, I must admit that I was not athletically gifted.  This was not true of music.  With music I could actually play, and even play better as the years went by.  Moreover, as the Pythagoreans knew, music is comprised of numbers! 

At one time in my life, in fact, I thought it might be possible to derive income from such music playing.  But it became apparent to me that the economics of this was not likely sustainable.  I did not want to teach high school music, and it was clear that playing music professionally was a very serious matter indeed.  In fact, while there does remain some play in musical endeavors when one does it seriously, much of the play simply has to be given up in perfecting one's craft.  It seemed clear to me then that as the gravity of one's playing increases. one gradually ceases playing.  This suggests that part of our the criterion for the application of the word 'play' is that one does not have to do the activity in question. I don't have to play Bud Powell jazz on the piano, and this not-having-to-play is an essential feature of that play.  

Play thus has no external compulsion.  When we begin to experience the pull of duty to the craft, our play soon becomes work.  After all, training for boxing matches and practicing to play a recital are very serious matters.  One has to work most of the time every day, if one is going to box professionally or play Bach's Goldberg Variations in concert.

I never really knew what I wanted to do when I grew up, but I knew somehow that I had to keep playing.  In college, I didn't play in my math or science courses -- there were many reasons for that including the Viet Nam War -- but I did play some music, and towards the end of my undergraduate days played by both reading, and reflecting upon, books.  Unfortunately, I did not seriously read until I was almost done with college. Following college there was, of course, serious work to do on the farm.  However, I found that I was able to continue to play by learning Latin, studying mathematics and physics, reading Schopenhauer, and, more frequently, reading theology.

I must admit to coming to theology somewhat late.  The German Lutheran pastor of my childhood church taught us in confirmation class how very serious this all was.  Maybe it is because I had thought that theology was work that I did not read it seriously until I was 24 years old.  My first two books were Elert's Structure of Lutheranism and Tillich's Systematic Theology.  Both captivated me, and the latter seemed to me to be true play.

Tillich had put everything together brilliantly.  It was like he had a giant erector set and he had fabricated an enormous building with pulleys, shafts and worm gears turning in beautiful ways.  Moreover, the subject matter seemed quite disconnected from making a living.  How better could one happily spend one's spare time?  Why not read theology?  How much fun could a human have?  Clearly, reading Tillich was more fun and more engaging than watching the Vikings.  And the subject matter was important because the building Tillich was constructing included the fabric of life itself.  What better way to spend one's time than to do read and write theology?  Here is something one could do that was important in itself without thereby having to scheme as to how to make a living through the doing of it.

But a funny thing happened to me on the way to finding meaning and purpose in the play of theology.  I wanted more time to read theology, but in order to put oneself in a position to be able to spend one's time in such theological activity, I found that I had to study theology seriously, and hence move into an occupation more closely aligned to theology than was farming.  And now came the fateful decision.  Why not do a Ph.D. and thereby get to read, write and teach theology the rest of one's life?

This seemed to make sense.  One could be a pretty good thinker, thought I, without becoming merely a professional thinker, without having to read and write 12 hours a day like the poor pianist memorizing the Goldberg Variations for recital.  (Of course, Glen Gould seemingly simply played them.)  One could, I thought, somehow still do theology playfully, one could do it in the cracks and fissures of the other professional activities of life, i.e., the teaching and research of the college or university campus.  Moreover, being on faculty to think the big questions of man and women might just help a few students think those questions as well.  (I was familiar with Wittgenstein's insight that good philosophical thinking allows us to get over the disease of philosophy, but I did not think it applied to theology.)  And so was hatched the idea to get an income that is connected to the play of theology. 

But life always interrupts play.  Life is serious, after all.  My life had veered into the play of business and capital formation, but the latter activities did not remain ultimately playful.  And there was very serious work to do with respect to Lutheran church bodies, particularly the then nascent Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  It was my experience in the latter that ultimately propelled me to give up play almost entirely, and to work to establish The Institute of Lutheran Theology (www.ilt.edu).

While there has been some play in the last years in envisioning and implementing structures, there has been mostly work.  One needed to be vigilant in budgeting, in developing constituencies, in marketing, in production, and in the building of a functional management structure.  We have worked hard, and we hope we have successfully founded an institution that can serve future generations of those wanting seriously to study the great texts of the western tradition from a Lutheran perspective.  We take the Bible and Lutheran Confessions extremely seriously, but we do not forget the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon, and we realize that meaning and truth in our time must be ultimately located in the playful fusion of horizons between our time and the time of these classic texts.   

Now that the Institute has been formed, and my businesses have been built, I find that I am at a new time in my life, a time that might be a time to play again, a time for bringing together the bits and pieces of a lifetime of thinkings and doings.  When I was young, all of the pieces of the erector set could conceivably be used to build most anything I wanted to construct.  It strikes me that there is much to be playful about now as I try to put what I have learned into some kind of coherent order. 

But there is great risk in being playful in theology. After all, theology is a profession and it has its guild that adjudicates the sense from the non-sense, the spurious from the relevant, the significant from the trivial.  One gets a good reputation in theology, a non-playful reputation, for doing work that is important, for doing that which has a significant end in something other than in itself.  Good theology, after all, is supposed to keep the Church moving rightly forward.  So perhaps being playful in theology is something one should keep to oneself.  

All this makes me think about the things that I have written.  Have they been expressions of something important in themselves?  I recall that the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor once said that art is a cry trying to get out.  Has anything that I have written ever been the result of such a playful dynamic?  Luther was passionate about what he wrote because salvation itself was at stake.  Has anything been at stake for me?

Here one must be brutally honest.  Perhaps over the years I might have said a couple of things in print that may have helped move an esoteric conversation in a particular way. Clearly, my academic work has been directed to a rather narrow audience, and my more popular writing has happened less frequently in recent years. What is the cause of this?  Have I nothing any longer to say, or have I simply not prioritized writing to general audiences in the way I should have?  Is it that I have worked so much, that I have no time for play? 

When one reaches a certain stage in one's career, there are no more mountains that need to be climbed, no more work that has to be done.  I finished out an academic career, founded a school, and built a number of businesses.  I am happily married with wonderful children.  So what is left?  Does one simply wander off the stage and prepare for the Night? 

I don't think so.  If one thinks about things clearly, one will fathom that the same thing is left at the end of life as was present in life's childhood: There are again days to spend that one no longer has to organize in ways to make a living.  One has time again, and time is the most precious of all things.  After all, with time comes the possibility of play. The older time of one's life is properly the time to play again, but no longer with the limited toys of youth, but with all the experiences of an entire lifetime!    

This blog is designed to be pure play.  I don't write anything here for any greater grave purpose whatsoever.  I write not to get a better position, to build fame, to reform the Church, or to establish another institution of higher learning.  I write not to accomplish anything at all.  I write now to play.  And what is the contour of this play?   

It is time to connect things together and try to build something new.  While my fundamental passion has always been theology, I have always thought that the more preparation in philosophy one has, the better one will be able to do theology.  Over the years, it has become obvious to me as well, that the best preparation for philosophy is likely not history, literature, or the study of a foreign language -- though all of these are helpful.  The best preparation for the doing of philosophy, I believe, is sustained study and reflection upon the tools of thinking in general, and there is no better way to do this than in the study of modern logic, the logic now assumed by many to constitute the foundations of mathematics.

While many will no doubt disagree, this inference is unmistakable:  To do theology well, one should know some logic, that is, one should know one's way around some of the basics in the foundations of mathematics.  As it turns out, the study of logic helps us get clear on the nature of semantic modeling, something which happens all the time in theology, but upon which there is seldom any explicit recognition or reflection.

Getting clear on the nature of theological models should allow us to remain humble when we advance viewpoints about the nature of the design and the relationship of the divine to the created order.  This involves us in mathematics as well, for when we deal with the divine, we must think the concept of infinity.  But as everybody since Plato and Aristotle have known, the concept of infinite is deeply related to mathematics.  It makes sense still, I think, to play by trying to relate the eternal realm of mathematics to the region of the divine. Playful theology should be more self-conscious, or maybe self-assured, about its mathematics.

But the relationship of theology to philosophy has another ramification as well.  Philosophy was the discipline from which the special sciences were derived.  This means that philosophy and the sciences are always related.  Since theology has a relationship to philosophy, it must as well have a relationship to the special sciences.  I have for a very long time believed that drawing the boundaries of theology in ways that they cannot in principle play on the same stage of truth is a really bad idea.  If theology is to retrieve any of its old vigor, it must again know something deeply about the world.  While theologians should understand some history, politics, literature, and critical theory, they should also know something about quantum theory, neuroscience, cosmology, and information theory.

When theological discourse is no longer available in the sciences, then the possibility of theological coordination and explanation is wholly occluded.  Theories of the multiverse become plausible because there no longer is a bound to the questions science asks and speculatively tries to answer.  What is, after all, more likely:  A creating God at the center of the universe, or the bald existence of a multiverse, an existence without explanation, an existence which itself is only hypothesized because one thinks one can now ask and answer questions beyond the bounds of possible experience in the spirit of the regnant naturalism of our day. 

It is time to play, and I intend to so.  This means I will speculate and make connections that perhaps ultimately cannot be sustained.  Theological play is like brainstorming.  We throw ideas against the wall, many of which we shall probably ultimately have to reject.  However, we shall try to ask some interesting questions.

Notice that the professionalism of the guild counts against such play.  One ought, after all, put into print only what one knows.  In the discipline of many hours of work devoted to one thing, one can learn a great deal about that thing and one might thereby become the expert voice when it comes to that thing.  The world deeply needs experts in many areas, but being an expert is no longer playing, and I intend to play. 

Anybody reading this is invited to join the conversation,  My experience has been that the number of readers of my blog posts diminishes proportionally to that which I regard as theologically important. So let me be clear: I am no longer interested in what the guild might regard as important.  Instead I want to play, and I would be deeply honored if some would want to read along and comment.  Theological conversation helps a theologian stay humble and informed.

But if there are not many readers for some of these blogs, I do understand.  Connecting theologically Bohmian mechanics to the Kantian supersensible substrate is perhaps too speculative for most.  (I do realize that when one looks to be too speculative, one can easily come across as simply being childish.)  Yet, I shall try to remain playful.  After all, I believe that our entire lives can be understood from the inside as being a type of game.  It is precisely in the intrinsicality of our existence, in its playful "purposiveness without a purpose" (Kant), that we find the leisure to ask what it has been about and what it means. Theology poses the most significant questions of human existence, and when these questions are no longer asked, then the game ends and we become other than homo ludens, we become other than who we are. 

So I likely won't run after little white balls this summer.  I will, however, try to think theologically and playfully about all manner of things.  Perhaps this theological thinking is at its deepest meditative.  Perhaps it thus can be linked to the "thinking which is a thanking" to which Heidegger alludes.  I am thankful to have this opportunity to do some playful theology.  Now its time to roll up the sleeves and have some fun!

Where can Teleology find a Home?

Section 79 of Kant's Kritik der Urtheislkraft (Critique of Judgment) poses the following question: What discipline ought to treat teleology? Should it be part of natural science or theology? After pointing out that it can't belong to both and still be a science (Wissenbchaft), Kant offers the following: 

It can't belong to theology. Why? Kant declares:

Denn sie hat Naturerzeugungen und die Ursache derselben zu ihrem Gegenstande, und ob sie gleich auf die letztere, als einen ausser und über die Natur gelegenen Grund (göttlichen Urheber) hinausweiset, so that die dieses doch nicht für die bestimmende, sonder nur (um die Beurteilung der Dinge in der Welt durch eine solche Idee dem menschlichen Verstande angemessen als regulatives Prinzip zu leiten) bloss für die reflectirenede Urteilskraft in der Naturbetrachtung.

What is Kant saying? Since teleological considerations here deal with natural objects and their cause (perhaps a divine cause), no determinative judgment of this divine author is possible. We learned in the First Critique that determinative judgments rightly operate through a "synthesis of the manifold of sensation" in Newtonian ways, that is, in the ways of classical mechanics. 

Determinative judgments will take us to mechanism, but a "goettlichen Urheber" can never be the product of the application of the empirical and pure concepts of the understanding to intuitions (perceptions), and cannot thus appear in the mechanistic web. Thus, while one is free to think there is such a Urheber, this is the result of a reflective judgment which operates by allowing a universal to be freely thought, a universal under which the particular can then fall. [Kant explains in Section IV of the Introduction that when the particular is given and judgment must locate the universal under which it falls, then the power of judgment is reflective ("soll ist die Urtheilskraft bloss reflectierend").] Clearly, teleology does not belong to theology. 

Lamentably, teleology does not belong to natural science either. (I don't think Dembski ever takes on Kant head on, but I have only read some of what he has written.) Kant explains: 

Eben so wenig schient sie aber auch in der Naturwisschenchaft zu gehören, welcher bestimmender und nicht bloss reflektierender Prinzipien bedarf, und von der Naturwirkungen objective Gründe anzugeben. In der That is auch für die Theorie der Natur, oder die mechanische Erklärung der Phänomenon derselben durch ihre wirkende Ursachen dadurch nichts gewonnen, das man sie nach dem Verhältnisse zu Zwecke zu einander betrachtet.

Kant points to the reason why explanations in terms of purpose are dubious in natural science: They disclose nothing about the origination and the inner possibility of the natural forms -- "ueber dass Entstehen und innere Moeglichkeit dieser Formen gar keinen Aufschluss giebt" -- about which theoretical science is concerned. So teleology can not belong to natural science either. Has teleology thus no home? 

As it turns out, teleology does not concern doctrine but Kritik. It concerns "zwar eines besonderen Erkenntnissvermoegens, namlich die Urteilskraft." Teleology concerns the a priori, and thus, can accordingly be regulative of our thinking in the sciences, a regulative thinking that is largely negative. After all, we cannot specify final causes as theoretical objects in our mature scientific theory. However, purposefulness must, in a sense, form the context within which the text of mature naturalistic mechanistic scientific theorizing operates. 

We must remember for the mature Kant, teleological and mechanistic reasoning is grounded in the same thing: the Supersensible. This quote from Section 78 makes all of this quite clear: 

Nun ist aber das gemeinschaftliche Prinzip der mechanischen einerseits und der teleologischen Ableiten andrerseits das Übersinnliche, welches wir der Natur als Phänomen unterlegen müssen.

The Supersensible mediately accessible through the pure and empirical concepts of the understanding in the First Critique, and immediately encountered in the determinations of freedom in the Second Critique, is both "an und fuer sich" through the reflective judgments of the Third Critique. (Or one might so interpret it.) 

But were there a principle that dealt not with the simple material denizens of the res extensa nor the simple mental reality of the res cogitans, but with that neutral monistic reality from which both emerge, would it not after all demand a new "Erkenntnisvermoegens," one which drives toward that way that Heidegger would later evoke as a "thinking which is a thanking?" 

At the Institute of Lutheran Theology, we try to think about things, and we try to think about our thinking of things. Without reverence in the face of the Supersensible, gods become ultimately engineered by, and thus, possessed by the thinker. But Kant, who loved autonomy, nevertheless understood that thinking responds to what is deeper. It can never possess that Abgrund over which it has been fashioned to think. To think that it does is, of course, the ground of idolatry, superstition and ultimately blasphemy. Kant was, of course, a staunch enemy of all of these.