Calling a Thing What It Is: Two Points

I admit that I have thought before about being utterly honest in a post or two about the trends that I am seeing in western culture, particularly in the so-called North Atlantic countries.  Criticizing the prevailing culture is in the Biblical tradition being prophetic, and being prophetic is not generally a very stable or highly-regarded activity, either in the days of Jeremiah or in our day.  Why?  Well, of course, one can always be wrong about what one says. But that is not the main irritant, for people don't much want to hear prophetic things even if one might get things right. Criticizing one's contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon is always disruptive, appearing to some to be a deranged activity, like being "anti-vax."  "What is it about these people?" some would say.  "Clearly, they have gone off the deep end, believing conspiracy theories and all kinds of other nonsense.  It's a shame that people like this guy (me?), have fallen for such BS." 

Being prophetic demands a certain grasp of history.  Cicero once said that the study of history allows us to escape the tyranny of the present.  To critique one's culture demands one can envision other ways that one's culture might have gone. Unfortunately, we know very little history these days, and we have forgotten what we once knew about the effects of history upon our own self-understanding. Truly, in America in this very cold third decade of the 21st century it is as if Dilthey and Gadamer had never lived. We, who our products of the historical development of culture and its civilization, now operate as if we have reached a position above history and can thus ahistorically morally judge objectively (somehow) the historical processes from which we are birthed.  This has taken us in the direction of censoring history for the sake of a good that somehow lies above history.  But I get ahead of myself, for truly most of the new men and women of our age -- the young mostly in the cities -- have no way to conceive or make sense out of a good that putatively lies above history, a good that operates as its source and goal.   

Let's be honest, folks. The best days of the West, and maybe the world itself, are likely behind us. Before you think that I rant as an old guy, let me offer evidence for my claim. The two points I make below are the results of my own thinking which, like all thinking, thinks within a stream of thinking. I know generally what many others have thought and think, but I have not here cited the specific thinking of particular thinkers. This is what I think, given that no thinking is entirely one's own.  

Here are the two points about which this post is concerned: 

1. Human power and facility are diminishing.
2. Since human beings no longer can appeal to anything above or beyond life to ground their life of diminishing power, they increasingly regard traditional existential questions as irrelevant.  

1) We are faced with an accelerated diminution of human power and facility.  Once upon a time in the west, there were a few that were educated. They could read books and, having gone to college or the university, they could think and write books. Accordingly, they could talk to each other.  The educational idea once embraced was that the kind of informed discussions that could happen with the few might happen with the many if civilization were to adopt universal literacy. The idea was that if more people went to college, there would be more people who thought like people that once went to college.  

But clearly this did not, and could not, happen.  Just as there are few people that can hit a baseball 400 feet or play a Beethoven sonata beautifully, there are few people who can really read Newton, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Einstein, etc. While it is exceptionally hard work and it takes great discipline to think like the great thinkers, hard work and discipline are, nonetheless, not sufficient to think like these people. One must have a bit of genius, and there is nothing so rare and anti-democratic as genius.  Some people have it but most don't. Since most in our universities and colleges don't have much genius, the conversations they now undertake are generally neither deep nor penetrating. Discussions within our universities now must moor themselves to the current cultural consensus because there are few in the conversation who can see to the very heart of the contingency of that consensus. 

It is a simple matter of mathematics. Suppose that genius is distributed at a rate of one in 10,000.  (I will regard 'genius' here to mean the ability to apply creativity of a certain kind and imagination of a certain kind to a whole range of issues.) Suppose that many people of genius find themselves in deep conversations about fundamental issues. When there were perhaps 3,000 people in the conversation when there were 50,000,000 people, there was a supply of 5,000 people of genius to potentially be in that small conversation of 3,000. But now let us imagine 10,000,000 in the conversation in an underlying population of 500,000,000. There is now potentially 50,000 people of genius in a conversation of 10,000,000.  While before there were 1.6 people of genius for every conversational partner, now there is .05 for each partner.  

What I am saying is that the conversation now is arguably very diluted with respect to creativity and imagination with respect to what it once was.  Emerson once quipped, "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  As the number of people available to think deeply falls, the form of the conversation is elevated over substance. The idea is simple enough: If we can get a very determinate arena to investigate and and agreed-upon rules for that investigation, then real work of an academic nature can advance even if the people engaged in such work are not particularly creative, imaginative, brilliant or insightful. Under the conditions of what Kuhn called "normal science," most who are educated in what passes for education now in the west can potentially make significant scientific contributions.  The task of thinking deeply in "normal periods" seems to be counter-cultural and potentially disruptive of the public good. Genius is not needed, and can even seem dangerous, when the task is pedestrian. 

None of this is to suggest that great scientists don't have genius. Clearly, they do and they are great because of it. It is just that many in the conversations no longer have the genius to appreciate the greatness of the great scientific minds. They cannot see the creativity and the synthesis involved in laying out a theoretical vision of the world. Since they cannot see this, they are lulled into thinking that science is a continuous project of discovering what really exists in the world. They think this without thinking how problematic it is to claim that what really exists can be discovered at all.  What means the phrase, "what really exists?"  

While there are fewer geniuses in the important conversations these days, there are many in the conversations who, judged by earlier standards, should not be in these conversations at all.  One hundred years ago, I would argue, most in scientific discussions were pretty good at basic mathematics. Euler continued to do thousands of mathematical computations in his head after he lost his eyesight.  We once as a culture had to master basic mathematical skills to survive.  

But all of that changed with the invention of calculating devices and now computer programs.  Many people now, both within and outside science, are incapable of performing simple mathematical calculation either in their minds or on paper.  Since they need a calculator to calculate, they cannot autonomously see probabilities, inferential schemas or even functions. They can occupy the mathematical landscape only by placing themselves within mathematical machine space. They come armed now with machine guns where the fight used to be among gentlemen with swords.  They genius of the mathematical sword fight has been replaced by the use of mathematical machine guns.  Thinking mathematically on one's own has become as irrelevant for mathematical progress as learning the art of thrust and parry for winning twenty-first century wars.  We all know that many of our young cannot calculate basic things such as how to make change, and we understand that this would have been disastrous in an earlier age for success in business. But we act as if this is no longer the case. After all, one can get a MBA from an Ivy League school without knowing how to calculate. But despite this, I claim that the loss of basic mathematic skill is a fundamental diminution of human power and facility.  Doing business demands that one can work the numbers wherever and whenever one needs to do so. One cannot do it from the outside, as it were, from a position mediated by an external machine.  One needs to see the numbers, not have them reported to you.  

But what else is around the corner, dear friends? Think about it a moment. AI will do for human writing and reasoning what the calculating device did for basic mathematical computational skills! AI programs already write well, and we are in our infancy with such programs. Soon our secondary school students will learn that they have programs that will actually write the paragraphs and give the reasoning. Just as mathematics has marginalized simple mathematical calculation, thinking and writing will soon marginalize simple rational justification. Giving reasons in logical space for positions adopted can be turned over to computer programs. In fact, must means-ends thinking can so be turned over. Technical reasoning, including both mathematical calculation and the giving of reasons in logical space can be done through the writing and implementation of appropriate algorithms. Just as the invention of large machines during the industrial era meant that there was less and less work to do by hand, so too the invention of AI machines during this computational era will mean that there will be less and less work to do by human thinking.  So what will be left for humans to do? 

In any means-ends algorithm, the ends are already given. Paul Tillich called ontological reason that activity of human thinking by which the ends are first established on the basis of which the proper means are selected for success.  Computational machines and AI programming cannot reason to what ought be the ends of human thinking and calculation. Traditionally, questions such as these have fallen within the province of religion, value, morality and philosophy widely-conceived. Deeply pursuing these questions would seem to be an important activity for our time. But unfortunately, it is becoming increasing difficult for human beings to recognize that the questions of the ends of human life are important questions and ought to be pursued in their own right.  Maybe it takes some genius to see this, and there are few today with genius. These considerations bring us to the second point:

2) We are faced with the increasing conviction by many that the traditional questions of human existence are not legitimate and not worth pursuing. There are vast cultural regions, mostly urban, where a type of unthinking scientism prevails. To see this, let us look to the lives of the young urban elite and attempt to generalize to their values from the specifics of that form of life. 

For many in what might be called "safely blue areas" within contemporary urban life, religious life is considered mere superstition.  Sirens of the new atheism, which is neither new and arguably still commits to some of the old gods, claim that the physical is all there is and that religious people are deluded, and quite possibly weak and devoid of courage, not to embrace what is: The world is all that is the case.  Accordingly, there is no "more-thanness" (Jaspers) to which we are related and must deal. Since no values are simply given in an unthinking universe, any values that we have must be constructed and perhaps have been sedimented into the genes through our evolutionary history. While nature often takes the long way to get to where it needs to go, it eventually gets there, and one ought to be able to provide an explanation for what seems to be the universal nature of some human values by pointing to stories about what furthers or hinders human survivability in the face of natural environmental pressures.  

The young in cities know that the values they are likely to encounter in life will have to be constructed by themselves in ways that are basically consonant with their own survivability.  In this environment, it makes no sense to hold abstract views on human life that do not immediately connect to their survivability and that of their friends. Questions like, "Is it morally permissible to engage in sexual activity with members of one's own sex?" make no sense at all. Why, they wonder, would anyone ever be concerned with this? Since, there is no God to judge this or abstract metaphysical principle for which homoerotic behavior is disconsonant, the question can only be interpreted by them as posed by people being somehow intrusively interested in something that clearly makes no difference to anybody's everyday life. The only question that arises for them is why would somebody be concerned about this.  

The new urban dweller understands death or disease as a bad thing because both carry with them concomitant human suffering, and suffering is unpleasant.  But many activities, they believe, can be pursued which don't issue in human suffering.  While it is interesting to study the actual sexual activity of the young -- it is up slightly with significant increases in those reporting "none at all" -- what they regard as morally permissible of proscriptive seems to be changing.  There are many indicators of this, although I must admit that the data can be read in different ways.  However, I will boldly claim that the reports that most young people believe that their friends are sexually active and that they ought not judge them for it, means something. The reports buttress the notion that sexual activity is increasingly regarded as a physical thing that carries with it little of relevance to the traditional loci of love, marriage, family, and God that were once associated with it. Young women increasingly speak of "body count" as a good or empowering thing, endeavoring in such speaking to catch up with the historically greater promiscuity of the male. The logic seems to be this: Males have been traditionally more promiscuous than woman and males have had the power in society over and against women. Thus, if women become more promiscuous, then they will have greater power in society over and against men.  Clearly, this is a fallacy of denying the antecedent and affirming the consequent, but logic is powerless to break the spell of the association. 

The new life of the new urban man or woman is a life without God or overall purpose in which pleasure can be pursued for its own end. Clearly, there is a prima facie rationality to this view. If we are physical beings only, then what is important for us ultimately is our having of pleasant or unpleasant physical sensations. It is arguable that having sex without guilt is more pleasurable than experiencing unpleasant psychological experiences associated with misplaced guilt and regret about something that is quite natural.  And that which is true of sex is true of many other things we do in life. Why exactly would one sacrifice?  For what reason would one be loyal if it does not issue in increasing the pleasantness of life?  It is clear that a predilection towards hedonism, though not necessarily crude hedonism, likely accompanies for many commitments towards physicalism and a denial of God and the life of the spirit. While questions of individual suffering and happiness make sense to those without God, questions as to the rightness or wrongness of sexual practice (extra-marital sex, polyandry, etc) make little sense.  It all depends, one hears, of who the people are and what makes them happy.  

The questions of life (abortion, euthanasia, etc) are not likely to weigh heavily upon those who regard themselves as fully physical and who believe that physical pleasure and displeasure constitute the barometer of morality. Why exactly does one not terminate the fetus -- even if the fetus is nearing nine months?  After all, having a baby will like contribute to the pain and suffering of the mother's existence and the fetus will not recall not existing. While it might have some unpleasantness at termination it does not have the complicated psychological structure to recall and live again its suffering. In fact, while it is sad to have to put down a dog, this sadness ought not limit the happiness of the dog's owner if he or she thinks about matters properly. What is good for the dog is also good for the fetus. To regard the two in fundamentally different ways is to presuppose some external point that allows us somehow properly judge human activity like terminating pregnancies. But if there is no external point, then why not let one's life and experience judge it? And who is anybody else to walk in the shoes of the one to have to make this choice.  

In the absence of religion, who properly determines our ends?  Clearly us!  And to the point: There is no abstract view from the top or from nowhere (Nagel) that can make this judgment for another.  The ends to which one ought to strive are highly individual.  The answer to the question of "What are the ends of human life" is easy: "It depends upon who is asking the question."  But this answer undermines the very force of the question -- at least in how it has been traditionally asked.  

In this time where most who think and write are not men and women of genius, two things are clear: (1) We have machines now that help us carry out the means by which we reach an end, and (2) the ends of human life are now highly individual, connectable finally to the particularity of the men and women in question.  

We no longer live in the days where moral questions arise for us clearly.  We can no longer as a society think them through.  This is why the ends of human life are increasingly given to us by those who would think for us.  We hear that "Everyone knows that global warming is a bad thing," and we are taught somehow that sacrificing here for "the good of the planet as such" is a wonderful virtue. We are taught this despite the fact here that the science on global warming is not settled, and the models show that increasing renewable energy sources in the North Atlantic countries will have little effect on greenhouse emissions or global temperature over the coming decades. The new urban young believe that global warming must be slowed by any means possible without connecting that belief to the other beliefs that they might have regarding the basic physicality of life and their propensity to maximize physical pleasure as the good of that life.  

We knew that "wearing masks is a good thing," and that "we ought be vaccinated," though the science upon which this was based was flimsy or nonexistent. The young seemingly believe these judgments without giving them serious thought about their ultimate support or the degree to which they properly cohere with their other views.  

Traditionally, death has been viewed in the North Atlantic countries as a bad thing. Lutherans have talked for 500 years about reality of "sin, death, and the power of the devil." Luther wrote passionately about how in the midst of life there is death. If ever there was an end to human life it was, for most of our experience, that death is not our friend and that we can be saved from death.  But now there is no death to be saved from because increasingly we are coming to believe that death is part simply of the great cycle of life. There is no tragedy in death. Rather, death is just a natural part of life and should not be given more importance than it has. If we could but grasp that death is part of life, then we would be freed to make the important personal decisions that give to us physical beings a greater quantity and quality to life.  It makes no sense to think that some religious conversion on the way to death has any more importance than simply giving to the person a greater chance for pleasure in the life that one has yet to live.  

So this is our plight: We are increasingly losing our capacity to think lucidly, the percentage of truly imaginative people of genius is diminishing within most important conversations, and as a society we are finding it difficult to find a place from which properly to judge our experience. Simply put, how is it possible now to arrive at the proper ends of human existence when all such putative ends are simply reducible to the pleasure or displeasure of the individuals asking the question?  

I want anyone reading this to understand that I myself am not a hedonist, and that I do believe that moral reasoning and even moral knowledge is possible. I am speaking here about what is happening in North Atlantic culture right before our eyes. I invite people to take issue with what I have written not by pointing out that hedonism is a very unsatisfying position intellectually, but by showing that I have misread the current cultural and intellectual presuppositions of the life of the urban young.  

What does it mean to be the Christ School of Theology?

As many readers might know, the Institute of Lutheran Theology's seminary and graduate school is called the Christ School of Theology, and we are all about the accreditation of this institution. 

When checking our accreditation with the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE) find us under The Institute of Lutheran Theology.  View our ABHE fact sheet here: https://app.weaveeducation.com/publicFiles/institutionprofilepdfs/Institute_of_Lutheran_Theology-ABHE_-_Association_for_Biblical_Higher_Education_Fact_Sheet.pdf.  We have been a full member of ABHE since initial accreditation in 2018.  We successfully achieved our first ten-year accreditation with ABHE at the 2023 February meeting of ABHE's Commission on Accreditation. 

When checking on us on the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) website, always look for Christ School of Theology. Christ School of Theology is the accreditable entity as for as ATS is concerned.  You can find us on the ATS website here: https://www.ats.edu/member-schools/christ-school-of-theology-of-the-institute-of-lutheran-theology.  While we have not been officially accredited by ATS's Commission on Accreditation yet, we are already Associate members of the ATS, and are engaged in many activities with them.  We are working hard to get our self-study complete this year, and anticipate an ATS visit in February of 2024.  

My thoughts in 2005-06 was that a new Lutheran House of Studies was needed that would serve all Lutherans -- especially ELCA Lutherans. This House of Studies, I argued, should be independent, autonomous and accredited, should assume the basic hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation on Scripture, and should be straightforwardly realist in its understanding of God and of theological language generally.  ILT, I thought, should be fully engaged with the question of truth, particularly the question of how to connect the truth of theology with the truths of the special sciences.   

ILT will begin its fifteenth year of offering classes in the fall of 2023 and, I must say, we are moving forward nicely. I always knew that ILT could produce pastors because we have from the beginning been blessed with great students and a renowned faculty. However, because we are not a LCMS, ELCA or Wisconsin Synod seminary, we don't have an already established market for students studying to be pastors. As our Wikepedia page says, we do prepare pastors for the Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations, the Augsburg Lutheran Churches, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).  We are happy to have such important work to do. 

However, other seminaries compete with us, particularly within the LCMC and the NALC.  While we believe we have the deepest program for students in these two church bodies, our program is quite traditional, with heavy doses of Biblical Theology, History of Theology, Systematic and Pastoral Theology.  It takes time to achieve an ILT education and not everybody wants to take the time, or perhaps has the time, to go through a program like ours. But I believe that our age demands more deeply prepared pastors than has perhaps been the case in the past.  Accordingly, we shall always serve these constituencies, and we shall always try to grow our ministry programs.  

To really effect change in the contour of Lutheran theology in North America, we would need to train perhaps 1,000 pastors over the next 10 years. 1,000 very well-educated pastor-theologians who would take very seriously the traditional truth claims of theology would likely alter the course of the church bodies we serve and the North American Lutheran traditions from which they were born.  ILT's Christ School of Theology will always take seriously the task of raising up the next generations of Lutheran pastors, and we hope to train 1,000 pastors -- though to do so in 10 years would demand that more markets become open to us. 

From the beginning, however, ILT has had another task, a task parallel to that of raising up the next generation of Lutheran pastors.  As I wrote already in 2007, we must raise up the next generations of Lutheran professors and teachers.  We must tend to our theological traditions theologically.  We need people involved in an effort that will issue in the making of a new class of theologians, theologians who know the the great Christian deeply as it has been understood by the Lutheran Confessions, people who have a profound grasp of the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon and who can adroitly relate this tradition to the contemporary horizon.  

From the beginning we have created opportunities in ILT for advanced study, but now we are experiencing something at ILT we could maybe not have expected 17 years ago.  Although I knew that ILT must train future theologians, I did not realize in 2005-06, the degree to which God would bless our efforts at building a real theological institute.  

The last three years have shown very strong growth in our post-M.Div programming: the STM, the Doctor of Ministry, and especially the PhD.  People are seeking us out to study because they trust us to allow them to encounter the great texts of the tradition in creative and fruitful ways.  We don't tell the students that the great texts of the tradition must be avoided because they are not sufficiently sensitive to issues of class, sex, race, orientation, etc.  We are not deeply suspicious of the western canon as some are.  Paraphrasing Barth, we believe that we should take the presuppositions of that canon at least as seriously as our own.  Since we trust the tradition, we encourage our students to engage it deeply. 

What does ILT's Christ School want to be when it grows up?  While I cannot predict exactly what the Christ School will look like in fifty years, I do hope that I know what it will mean to be the Christ School then.  To be the Christ School of theology is to take very seriously the Holy Scriptures and the traditions of interpreting those Scriptures.  To take these Scriptures seriously means that this texts are not something of the past, but living and breathing documents of today, documents which engage us and open for us possibilities of our being. God's grace is, after all, something he dispenses each and every day, even as we living within the paradigms of the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.  Simply put, the documents confront us with the very question of salvation, the question that separates human beings from the beasts below them and the angels above, the question that will always remain orthogonal to the concerns of AI and the "machining of our culture."  

The Christ School of Theology is growing rapidly, particularly at the D.Min and PhD levels.  How big might we be next year?  If the trends I am seeing continue, we will have between 30-35 PhD students studying in the fall of 2023,  20-25 D.Min students, and 10-15 STM students.  This means that 60-75 of our students next fall will likely be doing advanced work in theology.  

We celebrate this! It is a God thing! The students are coming from almost all of the Lutheran traditions and beyond these traditions as well.  Our ATS headcount of 96 in the fall of 2022 could see another 15% increase next fall.  We are building the Christ School of Theology not by watering down who we are, but by embracing it the more deeply.  We are not a divinity school, but a flesh-and-blood Lutheran seminary dedicated to taking seriously Lutheran truth claims.  In a time in which seminaries are shrinking, ours is growing.  

I have been discussing here our seminary and graduate school and have not addressed our undergraduate school, Christ College. Nor have I talked about ILT's library and all of the publishing planned to flow from it.  These demand separate posts.  Here I have simply wanted to remind all what it means to be the Christ School of Theology.  We live the commitment to our heritage while at the same time being wholly vulnerable to our intellectual and cultural horizon.  This way of living is, we think, what the theology of the Cross is all about.  

Model-Theoretic Considerations for Theological Semantics

I

I have for many years been convinced that the theological enterprise cannot survive in our age without affording to its language robust truth conditions.  Contemporary men and women presuppose what Jaegwon Kim once called Alexander's Dictum, that is, "to be is to have causal powers."  We don't live in the 19th century where ideas themselves are thought to have a kind of reality; we don' t live in a time in which the conceptuality of God can remain important for vast numbers of people. 

In our days, people are not generally searching to find some overarching concept or principle that grounds our rational thinking about life and existence, a notion that might somehow explain why human experience is given as it is, and accordingly, somehow ground the preciousness and value of that experience.  While Madonna once sung of a "material girl," we generally acknowledge that, even in our churches, the cultural primacy of the physical reigns.  The new atheism talks breathlessly of its discovery of a worldview without divine agency and causality -- as if such a view of things is in any way new.  There is an assumption of the causal closure of the physical among many unwashed in the complexities of the actual relations holding among experience, theory and truth, among those who simply believe that the theories of the natural and social sciences simply state the way things are.  

The idea is easy enough to grasp.  Consider this structure <{x | x is a natural event}, C>.  This is a structure consisting of the set of all natural events and a causal operator C relating members of this set of events to each other.  This structure can satisfy these two assertions:  1) For all x, there is some x (or other) that causes x, and 2) For all x, if x is caused, then it is caused by some x (or other).  What is precluded by this structure is that there is an x that can be caused by some event or agency that is outside the set {x | x is a natural event}, or that x causes some event or state of affairs outside the set {x | x is a natural event}.  Simply put, there are no non-physical events causing physical events, nor no physical events causing non-physical events.  

In addition to the causal closure of the physical assumed by many impressed with the results and progress of the natural and social sciences, it is also supposed, though not always as clearly, by the heralds of late nineteenth century radical criticism, that human beings are somehow alienated when they fail to come to terms with the physicality of their fate.  Feuerbach, Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, all, in their own way, argued that the illusion of the traditional God connects with the fundamental alienation of men and women.  Marx, for instance, argued that human value and ideology is determined by underlying economic processes, and that the concept of God simply operates to block human beings from understanding the basic materiality of their existence.  The God concept sanctions prevailing ideology and functions to keep in place value ideologies grounded in the unequal distribution of economic materiality.  

Most people that continue to practice the Christian life believe that there is a God and that God is active in the world, i.e., they assume that "to be is to have causal powers" and that God has causal powers.  They speak about the divine design of the universe, and about the power of prayer, particularly prayers of petition.  They assume that there are things that have come about that would not have come about were there no God, and that there are events and processed that have not come about that would have come about were there no God.   

The structure they assume is perhaps this: <{x | x is an event}, g, C, D> where there is a set of natural events and there is God, and that there is a binary natural causal operator C linking natural events to other natural events, and a binary divine causal operator D, linking natural events to divine agency, e.g., 'Dgp' means God divinely produces event p, with p being a member of the set of all natural events.  

Metaphysics remains crucial in theology because claims about that beyond the physical are by nature metaphysical, and assuming God to be with causal powers means that something beyond the physical is bringing about something physical.  This is clearly a metaphysical claim. To afford to theological language robust truth conditions in an age that assumes that to be is to have causal powers means that theology must be self-consciously and boldly metaphysical.  There must be intellectual honesty here.  Either theological language is broadly expressive of the self, its experiences and existential orientations and possibilities, or it is a rule-governed customary discourse by and through which human communities function and operate in the world, or it is a type of discourse that non-subjectively donates possible ways of being, or perhaps it is realist in its motivations; it states what its utterers believe is the ultimate constitution of things.  

One needs to think through these issues very clearly.  What are either the truth or assertibility conditions of theological language if one eschews realism?  Are sentences in the language rightly assertible simply because my tribe (the theological tradition) has traditionally asserted them?  But clearly the assertibility condition cannot simply be 'x is properly assertible' if and only if x has been asserted by normative theologians of tradition T over time t.  Why? In order even to begin to evaluate that claim we must know the identity conditions of 'normative theologian' and 'tradition' and 'time'.   

Are the assertions of theology then either descriptions of the self -- its experience and existential orientations -- or are they expressions of the self?  Clearly, embracing the latter is to give up on truth,  for it entails that assertibility must be understood broadly in terms of a "boo hurrah" theory of theological language.  But the former alternative is not much better, for on its assumption the truth-makers of all theological language are not theological.  On this view, models satisfying a set of theological assertions are not theological models at all because the sets, functions and relations of the models deal with the human.  Since human dispositions, experiences, and orientations are operated upon by relations and functions, these functions and relations ultimately concern the human. The fact that such models can satisfy a class of theological statements, should give us pause about what it is we are doing when we provide theological models. 

But there is another alternative, for we might hold that theological language somehow operates to disclose truth, that language, the Word, in its wording grants world and our place within it must itself be given a theological model.  But it is to me unclear exactly how this model can be constructed coherently.  Models or structures concern domains with functions and relations drawn upon those domains. But what can be the domain of the creative Word?  Remember that revelation is not insight.  Insight concerns an intellectual grasp of that which is already present.  Revelation, on the other hand, is a daring grasp of what is not present, but which shows itself eschatologically.  There is so much that can be said here, but I cannot in this brief essay say it.  We must move to the central issue of the influence that model-theoretic arguments might have for one who in her theological semantics, is broadly speaking realist. 

II

While I could only sketch briefly in the last section my prima facie reservations with non-realist construals of theological language, I will assume in this section that the reader is sufficiently persuaded by what I have said to give theological realism a try.  Theological realism, simply put, is the view that God, and divine states of affairs generally, exist and have the particular contour they have apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   Theological realism is thus a species of external realism, the view the world consists of entities, properties, events, relations and states of affairs which, broadly speaking, exists independently of our human perceptual and conceptual processing, or, more to the point, apart from our epistemic structures and capabilities.   We might call this the independence thesis with regard to external realism. 

I am convinced with many others that external realism makes two other important claims as well.  The first is the correspondence thesis which claims that statements about the world are true if and only if they correspond in appropriate ways with how the world actually is. (Clarifying what 'correspondence' and 'appropriate' might mean here is notoriously difficult.)  The other thesis of external realism one can be called the Cartesian thesis which states that although our theories about the world might meet all theoretical and operational constraints of an ideal theory, we could still be wholly wrong in our theory.  Since the theory is made true (or false) by how the world is apart from us, it is always logically possible to be wrong about everything that we might say about it.  Satisfying all theoretical and operational constraints does not a theory true make.  Only the way the world is can make the theory true or false.  The external realist thus seems committed to all of these: the independence thesis, the correspondence thesis, and the Cartesian thesis.  

Hilary Putnam in his famous "Models and Reality" distinguishes among three positions in the philosophy of mathematics.  These positions deal with both truth and reference in mathematics, and are thus, for him and for us, relevant to considerations of truth and reference with respect to external realism generally.  These positions are: 

• Platonism which, according to Putnam, "posits nonnatural mental powers of directly 'grasping' the forms" (Models and Reality, p. 24). This notion of grasping is primitive and cannot be further explicated.  Those familiar with Husserl's description of phenomenological intentionality will understand this quickly.  
• Verificationalism replaces the classical Tarskian notion of truth with verificational processes or proof.  Mathematic assertions are not true in any deep sense, but they are assertible on the basis of other mathematical procedures. Verificationist proposals within the philosophy of science of the last century are connected to this. 
• Moderate Realism, for Putnam, "seeks to preserve the centrality of the classical notions of truth and reference without postulating nonnatural powers" (Ibid.).  The idea here is that mathematical assertions are true, but that their truth does not involve one in a deep process of grasping or understanding the structure of some Platonic heaven.  

Putnam believes that arguments built upon the "Skolem-Paradox" are germane to a moderate realist perspective within mathematics and the external realist perspective in metaphysics generally.  These arguments are known in the literature as "model theoretic" arguments, and they basically exploit the difference in model theory between what might be intended and what might be said.  If one is a non-naturalist when it comes to semantics -- that is, if one thinks that semantic objects, properties, relations and functions are natural objects and does not involve non-natural magic -- then one has a problem with reference, because many models can make true the very same class of sentences.  This means, that one cannot naturally fix reference, that is, what the sentences say is logically independent from what one might mean to say in their saying.  

Putnam draws conclusions from this that are quite far reaching.  For instance, he claims that metaphysical realism (external realism generally) in incoherent, and that 'brain in vat' or 'evil demon" (Descartes) scenarios cannot even be coherently stated.  Putnam throughout tries to show that, because of the problem of reference, one cannot even state the conditions necessary to formulate the brain-in-vat/evil demon hypothesis. In other words, the necessary conditions for the possibility of posing the brain-in-vat scenario cannot obtain because a certain type of reference must be had by the language in stating the scenario, and since this type of reference cannot be had, the scenario cannot be coherently stated.  In other words, while it might appear that we could be a brain in a vat, we really can't be one, for to be one demands that we can refer to being a brain in a vat, and this we cannot do.  

Putnam employs a bit of a technical branch of logic known as model theory and there are considerable arguments in the literature about the effectiveness of his employment of these resources.  There are arguments as to the number and effectiveness of distinct model-theoretic arguments that Putnam uses, and their ultimate effectiveness in attacking metaphysical realism. All of this, I will lay out at another time.  What is important for us, however, is this question: Why is any of this important for theology? 

III

I believe that theological language must be given a realist construal if we are to retain it.  Long ago, I argued that the arguments for the elimination of theological language are strong, and that only a realist interpretation of theological language will likely stem the collapse of such language into reduction and ultimate elimination.  I can't rehearse that here, but know that I believe that theological realism best coheres with the principle that to be is to have causal powers. 

Notice now that if we afford to theological language realist truth conditions we seem to be interpreting it in ways that best connect to the classical Christian tradition.  Believers throughout the centuries assumed that there is a God, that one could refer to God, and that once could talk meaningfully about God's relationship with His universe, both in terms of creation and redemption.  It is extremely difficult, I think, to argue that the horizon of the Reformation is one in which one of the three following is not presupposed: theological realism, semantic realism, and theophysical causation.  The Reformers thought that God exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, that our language about God is true or false apart from the ways in which we verify or come to hold it true or false, and that God is in principle capable of causal relations with nature and the historical realities of nature.  

So on the assumption of external realism when it comes to theology, what are the repercussions of model-theoretic arguments on theological semantics?  

At this point we must appreciate how important reference is for theological language.  We are using theological words and phrases, and if we must ultimately give a realist construal to theological language then reference turns out to be the key to theological semantics generally.  'God is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' is true only if 'God' refers, 'Christ' refers, 'world' refers, and the relation of 'reconciling' can be drawn between the world and Christ.  But now the question, if reference is so important, why cannot it be something intended?  Why can we not simply say that intentionality fixes reference and that we don't need to worry about model-theoretic considerations at all?   Remember, Putnam had said that model-theoretic arguments really apply to the moderate realist in mathematics and the metaphysical realist; they are not aimed at one who holds that intentionality can be fixed nonnaturally by something like Husserl's "ego rays."  If one wants to hold intentionality as a nonexplicatable primitive, then can't we simply say that our intentionality determines reference in the theological order, as well as the mathematical and metaphysical orders? 

Here is the problem with this response.  While one might hold that one can intend cherries or trees by nonnaturally fixing one's gaze upon them, one cannot seem easily to do that when it comes to God or the inner workings of the Trinity.  After all, "nobody has ever seen God."  How can one intend that which has no clear content?  The theological tradition knew the apophatic nature of God-talk.  We can never be given the proper content to think God, because the content of our thoughts pertain to the finite order and God is infinite. Our thoughts of God do not thus determine our reference to God; our intentionality cannot issue in reference, because we cannot be given that by virtue of which reference is determined. Instead of intentionality granting an intensionality that determines reference, our theological language -- the language of the tradition -- speaks about God and God's relationship to His creation.  The ways of talking about God are very important indeed!  God's name is that by virtue of which reference is established, and maybe for Christians -- or perhaps all the monotheistic religions of the west -- this happened at the burning bush.  (Recall here Kripke's "initial baptism" of the tretragrammaton at the burning bush in Exodus.) 

It is important here to grasp what is at stake. If intentionality cannot fix reference to the divine, and if we don't want to give up truth to some verificationist-inspired theological position -- that is to say, if we want to be realists in theology -- then we seem to find ourselves in theology with no other option than to have to take the model-theoretic arguments seriously with regard to theological realism.  This means that not only are model-theoretic arguments relevant to theology, they might be crucial to its very future.  If model-theoretic arguments yield a knock-out blow to external realism, of which theological realism is a species, and if realism is essential in providing a defendable semantics for theology, then model-theoretic arguments may pose a much deeper threat to theological discourse than we previously might have thought. 

So what is at stake with respect to model-theoretic consideration in theological semantics?  I think it likely that the future of theology itself might be at stake. But consideration of this must await another time.  It is upon that which I am toiling a new manuscript.  

Extensionality, Description and the Question of Good Works: Towards An Anomalous Monergism?

 The great American philosopher Donald Davidson (1917-2003) wrote the following about causality:

The salient point that emerges so far is that we must distinguish firmly between causes and the features we hit upon for describing them, and hence between the question whether a statement says truly that one event caused another and the further question of whether the events are characterized in such a way that we can deduce, or otherwise infer, from laws or other causal lore, that the relation was causal ("Causal Relations," The Journal of Philosophy, 64 (1967), 691-703).  

Davidson's point in this famous article is that causality has an extensional nature.  If a causes b, it is, in fact, the event a that causes b to obtain, and this is a causal relation that obtains apart from however a and b might be described.   

Compare the following: 

1. Jack fell down and broke his crown.
2. That Jack fell down explains the fact that Jack broke his crown. 

Clearly, (1) bespeaks extensionality and (2) intensionality.  Very simply put, extensionality concerns what there is, while intensionality deals with how we might pick out or refer to what there is.  For example, in f(x) = y +2 for natural numbers N where 1< y < 5, the intension is the rule 'y +2' applied to either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, while the proposition's extension is {<1, 3>, <2, 4>, <3, 5>, <4, 6>, <5, 7>}. 

What is there a difference between (1) and (2) above?  (2) is concerned with the relation between two descriptions, 'Jack fell down' and 'Jack broke his crown'. These two sentences are related by the operation of causally explaining.  Notice, however, that (1) does not connect to descriptions at all, for the 'and' in (1) is concerned with the actual events of Jack falling down and Jack breaking his crown.  

Assume that d is the event of Jack falling down and c is the event of Jack breaking his crown. Notice that event d  may cause event c without any recourse to modal terms.  Clearly, the singular event d and the singular event c, both denizens of the extensional, cannot be connected by a modal operator, for modality applies to events only in so far as they are properly described.  Modality is de dicto and not de re.  In Humean terms, it concerns the relations of ideas, not the matters of fact.  

One could, I suppose, have a general law claiming that for all x, if x falls down then x breaks x's crown.  Such an occurrence may be so regular that one might, I suppose, claim that it is necessarily the case, that for all x, if x falls down then x breaks x's crown. But this modal operator which concerns relations between ideas (or language) might be replaced by a far more modest operator in intensional contexts, the causal explanation operator.  We have our stories about the world and the behavior of objects within it.  We know that there are features instanced in Jack's falling down and Jack's breaking his crown, such that the features of the first causally explains the features of the second.  Thus, it is true that Jack's falling down causally explains the breaking of Jack's crown.  

But Jack is the man most to be pitied on Beecher Street, and while his falling down is the most unfortunate event of his lifetime,  his breaking of his crown is that that issued in his wife leaving him. Does causal explanation still work as we substitute descriptions for singular events salve veritate?

3. That the man most to be pitied on Beecher Street suffered the most unfortunate event of his lifetime causally explains the fact that his wife left him. 

Clearly, any law connecting fallings and breakings is now no longer at issue. Here the connection is between unfortunate events happening to guys on Beecher Street and their wives abandoning them.  While one might think the causal explanation operator in (2) is apt, its use in (3) seems much more problematic.  But how can causal relations depend upon the descriptions of d and c?  Is it not simply about the relations between these two events however they might be described? 

Davidson developed a theory of token identity in the philosophy of mind that exploits the difference between causal relations and causal explanation.  Imagine that there is some event e such that it can be given both a neuro-physical and psychological description.  The neural event that e is is presumably related to other neural events, but the mental description of that event -- perhaps a particular thinking of one's particular mother when she was 36 -- cannot seemingly be relatable to other mental events causally in the same way.  After all, neural events do not swim in the waters of the normative.  My thinking of my mother when she was 36 might be followed by a particular thought of the appropriateness of my love for her, and this is clearly a matter of normativity.  One ought to love one's mother, after all; it is right to do so.  

One might generalize from these reflections into the philosophy of action.  What is the best explanation why Bob gets in his vehicle and drives the 25 miles to the airport at 4:50 p.m. on April 23?  It is that Bob believes that his wife Jan is flying home on the 6:00 p.m. plane from Chicago, and that Bob has a desire to see her.  Causal explanations for why we do what we do our routinely cast in the language of beliefs and desires, and not in the language of neural states.  It would be odd, after all, to say that Bob is getting in his vehicle at 4:50 on April 23 because Bob's neurophysiological states coupled with appropriate external sensations caused it to be so. What kind of causal explanation for Bob's behavior refers simply to brain states and perceptual inputs?  How could knowing the neural events of Bob causally explain the purpose he had when entering his auto? 

Davidson's token identity theory of the mental and physical simply points out that our mental life with its complexities of purpose in beliefs in desires is physically realized, that is to say, that some set of neuro-events realizes our mental states.  Davidson is not a substance dualist, after all, claiming that there is an ontic realm of mental events, entities, properties, relations or functions that can exist on its own, and whose processes are simply coordinated with physical events, entities, properties, relations of functions in the brain, and that, in principle, one might be able to draw causal connections between the mental and the physical.  By claiming a token identity between mental states and some brain states or other realizing these mental states, Davidson believes he can protect the anomalousness of the mental while not acquiescing to dualism.  His position is appropriately called anomalous monism.  The point is that one event can have different descriptions, and that there is a certain irreducibility of the mental to the physical.  Accordingly, the complexities of our mental life cannot be either explained or predicted by pointing to the existence of strict scientific law -- if there actually is such -- at the neuro-level.  

Whether or not Davidson's position of anomalous monism is finally defensible is not my concern here.  I advert to this only because I want to show again the importance of description when it comes to events. Causal explanation is possible because of the descriptions we give to a particular event.  Causal explanation involves language, in our use of language to highlight features of events we want to explain.  Causal relations, however, are ultimately extensional, they are drawn between events however they might be described.  That event e causes event e', is a feature of the world, not a feature of our description of the world -- or so one might argue.   But what might any of this have to do with theology? 

In the Lutheran tradition there has been since the beginning profound controversy about the status of good works in salvation.  Classically, one might ask, "are good works necessary for salvation?"  An unreflective quick response is simply "no!"  "Good works do not save us before God, so good works are not necessary for salvation."  It is perhaps a response like this that underlies the suggestion by Amsdorf and others that good works might even be harmful for salvation. 

But reflecting on the logical form of the statement, 'Good works are necessary for salvation' does not mean 'if good works, then salvation'.  If 'if A then B' obtains, then A is sufficient for B, and B is necessary for A.  The proper translation of 'good works are necessary for salvation' is 'if salvation, then good works', that is, 'if not good works, then no salvation'. Those claiming that good works are necessary for salvation are clearly not claiming that by doing good works, one might be saved; they are not saying that good works are sufficient for salvation.  Good trees bear good fruit.  If God makes the tree good, then good fruit will follow.  Therefore, good works are necessary for salvation. 

But merely pointing to the logic, does not seemingly solve the controversy.  Those espousing monergism, that we are saved wholly by God apart from our own agency, want to protect divine autonomy.  They are deeply suspicious of language having to do with human working and doing, of language having to do with human discipling, for such language suggests human agency; the language itself suggests synergism.  Luther was profoundly critical of the category of created grace, the notion that God through his agency might create in human beings ontologically-extended dispositions to behave, and thus that there might be something in human beings on the basis of which the divine imputation of righteousness rests.  Luther accordingly rejects the notion that human beings have been made right, and on that basis, they are pronounced right; the Gerechtmachung grounds the Gerechtsprechung.  But if this were so, were we given such goods, then why and how could we who have benefitted so deeply utter as did Luther in his final hours, "Wir sind bettler, hoc est verum?"  

There are standard moves in this debate, a debate that is connected to the so-called "third use of the law." My purpose here is not to get into the debate and follow the lines of reasoning that have a certain plausibility no matter upon which side one finds oneself.  My purpose here is simply to propose something new that might move the conversation forward.  

What if we took seriously the distinction between the event of the person doing a good work and its description?  Let me be more clear, what if we took seriously the distinction between d, the event of a person behaving in a particular way, with its description as to what the person was doing in that event d?  After all, Paul's ingredience in d could be described as both the doing of a good deed through Paul's own agency or as a divinely-gifted doing where it is no longer I who live but He who lives in me.  The point is this, the same event d is multiply describable. It can be described on the basis of a human agent believing that he must do the act and desiring so to do it, or it can be described as a behavioristic input/output function, or it can be described as wholly caused by the Holy Spirit. Our background assumptions and theories deeply influence how the event might be described.  The same event can be given a description in terms of beliefs and desires and the intent by the person to "do what is within them."  It can be described, solely in monergistic terms; the event is that work that is worked by God in us propter Christum and by grace through faith; or the event could be described perhaps without averting to so-called "folk psychological ascriptions" at all.  If we were to give a neuro-description to the event, it would make no sense in giving a casual explanation to the event to speak of the Holy Spirit's causality or the desire to be saved and the belief that that a particular doing, a suitable description of d, motivates the doing.  

The language of discipleship -- what is it to be a fisherman that follows -- is clearly a different language than the language of apostolicity -- what heralds does God establish in His Wording of the world.  Both languages can be developed quite thickly, with language available to speak of all sorts of events, and both languages can provide causal explanations.  This being said, however, there still is some underlying events that are what they are because of causal relations they sustain with other events. The fact that no language can mime the contour of these causal relations does not tell against their presence.  The extensionality of causal relations of such d doings by Paul might not be able to be articulated in the languages by which events like d are described.  Here we are talking about propositional attitudes, about the believings of people doing d.  Here we are at the level of the intensional.  

Although I have not defended anamolous monism, in closing I want to open up the possibility of an anamolous monergism.  What if Davidson is right, and that there are simply causal relations at the neuro-level that support mental descriptions where causal explanation is possible?  What if one could be a nonreductive physicalist of such a kind?  Does this have relevance for the theological issue at hand? 

Imagine that the Holy Spirit has a causality such that some human events are caused by the Holy Spirit.  After all, maybe Luther is right in that we are either ridden by the devil or Christ.  If the Holy Spirit causes that event we might describe as a good work, then clearly no human agency is determinative in its doing.  Clearly, this is an embrace of monergism.  But what about our description, our own self-understanding of that event?   

Surely, we could causally explain that act in terms of beliefs and desires.  We could have an intent to do what God would have us do, and we could believe that that doing is meritorious somehow before God.  We live lives that are thus pleasing to God, and we try in all we do to keep God's commandments.  We learn more about God and we attempt to follow Christ in all we do.  All of this description of our life of faith, as thick or thin as we might want, could be seen as realizable within the underlying divine causality upon human events. Clearly, the language of belief, desire, intentionality, and following is not reducible to the language that describes the Holy Spirit's causality upon our behavior.  From the standpoint of the extensional, God authors are events, but from the standpoint of the intensional, are doings realized by those events can be explained in therms of the motivations of living the Christian life.  

What I am suggesting here is an anamolous monergism that neither undercuts the reality of monergism, nor does it downplay the complex experience of living out the Christian life. There are deep philosophical and theological objections to this view, of course, but I do think that the main point might be defendable: The penchant to good works is a way of talking or describing Christian lived existence, and this way of talking or describing does not have to contradict the reality that I cannot cause that event that might be described as a Christian following.  Similarly, third use of the law talk need not contradict the reality that there are only two proper uses.  But this topic must await a later treatment.   

On Rabbits and Christology

The philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine schooled us on the indeterminacy of translation using the example of a tribesman speaking the unknown language Arunka employing the locution 'gavagai' whenever he saw what we might think is a rabbit.  But while we might think that 'gavagai' refers to the object rabbit, we can never know for sure what the tribesman is actually referring to when employing 'gavagai'.  There is, after all, an inscrutability of reference.  

I can imagine a culture, that does not individuate the world like my own does.  Perhaps the tribesman's culture actually has no rabbits, but does work the world up by thinking in terms of temporal rabbit stages.  Let S be a linguist from culture X and P be a tribesman from culture Y.  X sees the world as a place where there are unified rabbits while Y understands that the world is a place where there are rabbit parts, some detached and some undetached.  When P utters 'gavagai', P is referring to a set of undetached rabbit parts, but when S hears P utter 'gavagai', S thinks in terms of rabbits.  So what is there really?  Does the world come with rabbits as a basic ontological category, or is it a place where rabbit parts proliferate and where 'gavagai' refers to a collection or set of rabbit parts suitably ordered? 

Suppose Q from culture Z uses 'gavagai' only to talk about a set of temporal rabbit stages.  Culture Z is extremely time sensitive, and they "see" the world as a place where the temporal slices of things are ontologically primary. The linguist S hearing 'gavagai' could scarcely imagine that Q associates the term with a set of temporal slices of a particular kind. Again Q's culture finds temporal slices of things ontologically primary to the collections in which they are ingredient. So what is there really?  Does 'gavagai' properly refer to rabbits or to temporal rabbit stages?  Or does it rightfully refer to spatially extended, undetached rabbit parts?  

Mereology is concerned, of course, with the unities that parts comprise.  Culture X finds a unity in the rabbit which is made up of parts. But cultures Y and Z seem to find unities in the parts that comprise collections.  Our question really boils down to a question of what the proper unities there are of things, and if there are no such unities in themselves, what unities we seemingly commit ourselves to when experiencing and articulating the world. 

But there are other possibilities than those of P and Q and their cultures. What if R and his friends read so much Plato that they actually see the world as the "shadowy place" where the primary forms are dimly instantiated?  R and his culture U work the world up such that rabbithood has ontological priority over rabbits, over any concrete instantiation of that  rabbithood. But while we might say that rabbithood is instantiated in rabbits, culture U might simply say, "there is rabbitthood here."  Each and every time R uses 'gavagai', S uses 'gavagai', but they are not meaning the same thing in their using of the term.  S means rabbits, after all, while R means that rabbithood is present.  So what is there really?  Does the world come with rabbits pre-made, as it were, or is their existence ontological dependent upon something more basic: the form of rabbithood? Is the particular ontologically dependent upon the universal, or does the universal ultimately depend upon the particular?

Finally enter T of culture V who sees the world quite differently than the rest. Everything is made up of processes for the denizens of V.  Perhaps it is not the raindrops that a culture knows, but the entire process of raining.  Perhaps rain drops are ontologically dependent upon the event of rain. A fortiori, perhaps rabbits are mere distillations of rabbiting.  When T utters 'gavagai' she means that it is rabbiting.  What is there really?  Does 'gavagai' refer to rabbits, undetached rabbit parts, temporal rabbit stages, the form of rabbithood, or the event of rabbiting itself?  If people in cultures X, Y, Z, U and V use 'gavagai' in similar ways and on similar occasions, then how could we ever tell what S, P, Q, R and T really mean when employing the term?  Is there not an inscrutability of reference here? How can S ever really know what P, Q, R and T are referring to when they use 'gavagai' each and every time they are in the presence of what S assumes is a rabbit? 

Quine's indeterminacy thesis has been around for many decades. The statement of the thesis is consistent with reflection within the last seventy years on language and its relationship with the world. How does language anchor to the world?  What is the world?  Does it come as a set of self-identifying objects, properties or events?  Are there natural kinds, or do human beings gerrymander the world, imposing through their individuation their own ontological prejudices upon it?  Whose power is served by understanding the world to have rabbits at its deepest level rather than rabbithood?  Who is marginalized by seeing rabbiting instead of undetached rabbit parts?  If the world has no objective ontology, but rather receives the ontology of our prejudice, then does not ontology become a projection of our interest and power, specifically as pertains our race, sex, class, sexual orientation, etc.?  

Indeed. One might say that if the world has no ready made ontological structure, then the world is really worldless, for it becomes merely the field that the self projects.  Accordingly, the world cannot sustain an over and againstness with respect to the self to which it relates. Here, the self devours the world.  

But as the last hundred years of reflection has taught us: there is no privileged access to an objective self that can be full of itself. The self that is not full of itself, is itself a battle ground of different cultural, linguistic and conceptual ideologies.  The self is dispossessed, and the worldless world now finds itself in relation to a dispossessed self. The world and self each have lost their inseity, and must now be understood ecstatically. We now suspect that while the putative determinacy of the world rests upon the putative determinacy of the self, the putative determinacy of the self rests upon that which is not itself and can never be itself.  So in these late postmodern days there is ripening the realization that world and self, the original Dyad, has breathed illusion since the Beginning.  But I digress.  

It is important for theology to know the ontological contour of the land it must work. Theology must relate the kerygma to the concrete historical-cultural situation in which it finds itself.  Theology must concern itself with proclaiming and understanding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in a time of a worldless world and a dispossessed (self-less) self. Accordingly, it must understand how to do christology in this time of rabbits. 

Looking at christology in this time of the absence of presence of world and self -- this time of the indeterminacy of reference and translation -- it is clear that we are going to have to specify what we mean in ways we have never had to do before in the history of theology.  Because meaning is no longer "in the head" -- we have no immediate access to a cartesian self with pure intent -- we are only going to gain clarity as to what we mean by employing the tools of semantic modeling.  

Language is syntax and theory, and theory refers semantically to that which is not language.  There must be something that language is about if there is ever going to be the possibility of truth and objectivity.  If language is not to collapse into itself -- or into the black hole of the self -- it must specify something in the world that it means, something on the basis of which it is true or false.  As we have seen, that to which language refers can be expressed set-theoretically.  What is necessary is that we start with a domain of objects, and then define relation and function operators on this domain. In this way we, we provide the possibility of an extra-linguistic reference to language.  (At least this is the hope.  Clearly, if one holds that sets and operations are affairs of language, then we are thrust back into Derrida's position of language being an "infinite play of signifiers.). 

So what do we do with christology in a time of the relativity of rabbits?  Clearly, just as we are able to specify the salient differences between undeatached rabbit parts, temporal stages of rabbits, and the instantiation of rabbithood, we must be able to specify the differences in meanings of 'person', 'nature', 'happy exchange', 'justification' or 'theosis' when it comes to Christ.  But what are the conditions for the possibility of difference?  What makes if possible that "gavagai" could apply to such different things?  More to the point, what are the conditions for the possibility that differences of meaning of 'person' and 'nature' could obtain?  

Some theology proceeds, I think, on the assumption that if one can use language in the same way and in the same situations, then there is substantial agreement about meaning in that language.  If one can say, "it is true that Christ is one person in two natures," then do we have to say anything more about persons and natures?  Why provide some set-theoretic interpretation to theology theory, if "this game is played," that is, that the language of theology is used appropriately and consistently whether used by person S or P above?  

But this objection misses the point. That a game is consistently played does not entail that meaning is consistently had. In a time when an unbridgeable chasm has opened between what is intended and what is said, we have no choice but to provide the relevant models for christological language, pointing out that language's possible interpretations and evaluating those interpretations in terms of their overarching theological plausibility.  In this time of the worldless world and the self-less self, language itself must police itself such that the proclamation of the wording Word is pronounced with clarity.  

Doing christology in a time of rabbits demands we understand profoundly the challenges to christological reflection in the twenty first century. Our naivety is gone.  Even the stability of what Quine called "stimulus meaning" is seemingly absent for theology. While linguist S sees and understands the stability of P, Q, R, and T's occasions of uttering "gavagai' in the face of some experience which can be understood differently, what constitutes the stability in uttering 'person' christologically, an uttering that seemingly is not linked deeply to experience at all?  

There is ultimately no other choice here for finding stability in the occasions of use of 'person', than to locate that stability within the Bibical-historical tradition of the Christian community.  In this time of the worldless world, and self-less self, there can be only the linguistic event of the utterance of 'person' consistently and stably throughout the Christian tradition.  While Quine could speak of the stimulus meaning of 'gavagai' in a field of perception, christological reflection must locate a meaning of 'person' within the revelatory event of the Biblical-historical tradition itself.  Only when we can make sense of the stability of occasions of using 'person' can we begin the task of providing models for the interpretation of 'person' christologically.  

Clearly, there is a great deal of work that must be done.  However, the first step in moving forward is to no what direction is presupposed in the semantics of 'forward'.  Beginning with rabbits can help us in christology, but the path forward is not at all easy.  In fact, some of the way forward will not look like a path at all.  But this is how it must be if we are going to do christology in this time of rabbits.  

Worlds and Difference: Theology in an Ecstatic Age?

I. When the World Was What it Was

Once upon a time in the west we believed that there was a world that existed apart from us.  There were many versions of how this was so, but the paradigm was clear: Entities and the properties that they instance are what they are apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.  

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) spoke of primary substances as the basic building blocks of the world. These substances have properties that are either present in them or can be said of them.  Those properties that are present in the primary substances are called accidents.  They inhere in primary substances, and constitute the way that the substances can be modified.  Accidents are always parasitic on substances; they cannot obtain other than being in a primary substance.  Aristotle identified nine accidents that primary substances could have: quantity, quality, relation, habit (state), time, location, position, action and passion.  

Primary substances and their nine accidents constitute the ten categories Aristotle discusses in his book, The Categories.  The important point is that the accidents do not individuate one substance from another.  Rather, individuation of substances happens at an ontological level prior to accidents.  Substances come already individuated, and these already individuated substances sustain accidents that that modify it; they constitute at any time how the substance is being the substance that it is. 

For Aristotle, however, substances are more than their mere accidental properties.  Certain things can be said of these primary substances, and that which can be said of primary substances are not accidental to these substances.  For instance, 'man' can be said of Socrates, and the predication of 'man' to 'Socrates' is not an accident of Socrates, because while Socrates could presumably be Socrates and not have his snub nose, Socrates cannot be Socrates without being a man.  In The Categories, Aristotle asserts that the secondary substance man is said of the primary substance Socrates.  This said of relation concerns what is essential to Socrates, that without which Socrates could not be Socrates.  

Secondary substances in Aristotle are clearly a reworking of Plato's notion of the forms.  For Plato, the form man is instantiated at the location of Socrates and is accordingly that which is known when one knows Socrates as a man.  Plato famously gives ontological priority to the forms (universals) over the concrete particulars that instantiate them. Aristotle's secondary substances, however, do not have the ontological priority Plato had given to the forms. For Aristotle, concrete primary substances are more real than the abstract secondary substances that can be said of them.  Accordingly, the world for Aristotle is comprised of concrete primary substances having essential properties by virtue of the said of relation and accidental properties by virtue of the present in relation. 

This basic way of seeing the world in terms of substances and properties was firmly in place by the thirteenth century with its so-called "rediscovery of Aristotle", and it survived throughout the Reformation and the trajectories of theological development arising immediately from it. The idea of substances possessing properties formed the basic metaphysical background on which both the physical world and the world of the divine rested.  While it was always problematic in the theological tradition simply to think of God as a substance having properties, the idea that God is some thing existing on its own apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language seemed clear enough.  While it might stretch language to call God a 'substance', God nevertheless does, like any substance, exist on its own and is individuated in itself. Accordingly, the world comes ready-made, both with respect to primary physical substances and the most important entity of all: God. Things are what they are apart from human beings.  The ontological order is thus independent from the human epistemological activity of knowing it.  

Aristotle and the tradition prior to the Enlightenment was thus realist with respect to its understanding of substances and the properties they might have.  This realism extended to the notion of causality as well.  Aristotle famously gave a four-fold analysis of causality, citing a material, formal, efficient and final cause for why a substance can give up some of its properties while assuming new ones.  The idea is that any substance is what it is by virtue of it being "formed matter," or "actualized potentiality."  Any object that is, is what it is by virtue of its individuating form which makes it a particular substance.  Aristotle's hylomorphism claims that all substances are constituted by particular actualizations of that which could have been actualized in a different ways.  A substance's nature constitutes the whatness by virtue of which an object is that which it is.  

Change happens in two basic ways. If one substance is to cease and another substance begin, there must be a change in that substance's form.  If a substance is to be modified some of its accidental properties must cease and others must rise.  In both instances, the substances already posses the possibility of these transformations.  What is needed is an efficient cause to collapse the possibility of this transformation into a determinate actualization.  The substance water is potentially ice, but this potentiality is actualized when. temperatures reach a particular level.  

Aristotle, however, saw the universe teleologically, and thus added a fourth cause to the material, formal and efficient causes.  Trajectories of transformation must ultimately be explained in terms of purpose or final cause. The final cause of the acorn is an oak tree, and this cause operates in selecting among efficient causes to actualize substances in particular ways over time. The point of all of this is that Aristotle saw causality as built into the nature of things.  For him, both substances and the causal connections in which they are ingredient have a determinate trajectory apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.  

While the language of substances, properties and causality seemed suited for conceiving the natural world, medieval thinkers knew that problems arose in using the Aristotelian categories to understand the divine.  God clearly exists apart from us, but His having of properties is not like our having of properties, and any changes that might be attributed to Him cannot be the result of external efficient causality.  

Of course, the tradition held that the perfection of God entailed his immutability.  Were God to change, God would need to move from one state to another. But if God is perfect, God cannot move from one state to another because either God would have to move from a state of lesser perfection to a state of perfection -- and thus not be perfect -- or move from a state of perfection to a state of lesser perfection -- and thus not be perfect. 

 Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) following much of the tradition famously argued for the divine simplicity of God by claiming property-talk of God does not pick out in God some properties that God may or may not have, but such talk merely is a way of characterizing, picking out, or referring to the divinely simple substance that is God.  Accordingly, 'God is good' cannot mean that the substance God has the property of goodness, but is a picking out of some being without parts, a being of which one might attribute goodness merely analogically.  Whatever God is in se, God is more like a being to which we might customarily attribute goodness than to a being to which we might customarily attribute evil.  

When it came to Christology in the age of when the world was what it was, Christ had to be understood to be some kind of substance or person who had its own principle of individuality and who is what He is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.  Such a person has natures or batches of properties, some of which are essential and some accidental for Christ being the person He is.  The Trinity and incarnation must be understood realistically.  Just as the world is what it is apart from us, so is Christ and his Trinitarian and incarnational relationships what they are apart from us.  Human salvation too must be understood realistically.  The believer is a person who is who she is, and Christ who is who He is apart from her (and us) effects a transformation of the believer (either intrinsically or extrinsically) such that the properties that the person has are themselves changed.  All of this could be talked about through Aristotelian notions of causality.  On the basis of a final cause, there is an efficient cause that collapses potentiality into actuality; indeterminate matter is formed.  Accordingly, the real ontic unity of theosis must be understood metaphysically.  There are properties of believer and properties of Christ such that parts of the believer change and the believer is not that which the believer once was.  

Since what I am attempting here is merely a sketch of that time when the world was what it was, I will not develop further here a fully metaphysical Christology except to say that Christology had to be understood metaphysically at this time.  This is not to say that this metaphysical understanding was all that there was to Christology.  The relation of sin, justification, faith, and regeneration is complex, and, as Luther taught us, metaphysical categories strain to express the reality of God and his relationship to us.  

II. When the World was What it was For Us 

Kant (1724-1804) famously argued that we have no immediate experience to thing-in-themselves, but only things in so far as they already are for us.  Kant argued that the realm of the thing-in-itself was supersensible because no human senses could put us into touch with this realm.  Knowledge of the world we experience proceeds, for Kant, through our encounter with objects already constituted by us. Conception without perception if void and perception without conception is blind.  

Kant's solution to the problem that had beset Descartes (1596-1650) and had become acute in the British empiricists -- the problem of the external world -- was that while we do not have immediate access to the external world apart from us, we do encounter the external world as already organized by us.  This means inter alia the the "externality of the world," the contour of the world as it is presumably apart from us is already a product of us.  We have mediated access to the external world. Accordingly, when we know the external world, we know our representation (organization) of it. While the realm of experience may be a "joint product" of mind and external world, we only have access to that which is already organized by the mind.  Accordingly, knowing the other -- the otherness of the world -- is to know ourselves profoundly, for we are the ones organizing the world of experience.   

Kant inaugurated the tradition of transcendental reflection: What are the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience itself? Kant argued plausibly that the contingency of the world is grounded both in the necessary structures by which we organize percepts in space and time and those necessary concepts that function as rules by which the manifold of perception is united. 

After Kant the world was not the same. The world does not come as it is in itself, a world so metaphysically regular that we can find general categories by which to comprehend it, rather the world comes bearing the marks of the determining judgments of the human understanding by which objects take on the general features they do.  Famously, the world is not in itself an arena in which self-determining substances are what they are while being causally connected one to the other.  Rather the world reflects the very order we put upon it.  Just as we are autonomous with respect to morality, so are we with respect to the external world. We are the law-makers of each realm!  Since we are law-makers of the moral and worldly, we gain insight into ourselves when we know the world.  Knowing the other happens only in and through knowing ourselves, our capacities and proclivities of organization.  While the world apart from us -- the supersensible realm -- remains hidden in itself, we know something about it by examining the capacities we have to reflect it. 

Kant, and not Fichte, was in many ways the author of German idealism.  Kant knew that the world was reflected in our activity of reflecting upon our own reflecting.  The transcendental world is not like the old world-in-itself.  In the transcendental world, we find not things in the world, but rather things as they show themselves in their aboutness of the world in us.  While the older Aristotelian way of thinking posits primary substances existing on their own, Kant's objects are those by concepts of which the manifold of experience is united.  Transcendental questions don't deal with the world, but the conditions by which the world is the world.  To explore the transcendental horizon is to dig deeper than the world in order to find those structures which make the world possible.  The world as world is made possible by that transcendental unity of apperception by and through which the world in its particularity is birthed.  

The story after Kant is so well known that it scarcely needs repeating.  Fichte denied the cut between the world in itself and the world for us, and thus ridded philosophy of that which cannot be accessed and is not needed to explain the particularity of the world.  Accordingly, when it comes to the world, the spade does not need to stop somewhere in some dull non-conscious things existing somewhere outside us waiting to be known.  For Fichte, all that is necessary is that one thinks, and in one's thinking the world in its particularity is born.  

Fichte's take on Kant motivated subsequent thinkers like Shelling and Hegel to reflect upon their acts of reflection,  an act they called "speculation" from the Latin word for mirror, speculum.  To reflect on reflecting is no longer to access things, but to reflect on those conditions by and through which things are organized before us.   

Kant, Fichte, Shelling and Hegel together constitute a trajectory of thinking that denies the immediacy of the world.  The world is not what it is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and there can be no immediate apprehension of it.  Instead our apprehension of the world is mediated by the particularity of our perceptual and conceptual organizing activity.  But while all of these thinkers knew that knowing the world is mediated by the particularity of that by which the world is known -- the human epistemic apparatus --- they nonetheless followed Descartes in assuming that they can directly know themselves.  We have access to our own ideas, after all!  While our ideas or "representations" constitute a screen through which the world is known, there is no screen at all between us and our ideas.   

Descartes had argued that while I can conceive of a scenario in which my seeming knowledge of the world is not genuine knowledge, I cannot conceive of a scenario in which my seeming knowledge of myself is not genuine knowledge. Since the condition of doubt is that there exists one who doubts, the condition for doubting the immediacy of the world is the immediacy of the self doubting.  While critical thought can dislodge the immediacy of the world in its doubting the world, it cannot dislodge the immediacy of the self as the transcendental condition for the possibility of doubting the world. 

Accordingly, while Kant is wary of trusting that the world really is in se what it appears to be pro nobis, he seemingly gives transcendental reflection a complete pass.  There is a transcendental unity of apperception that makes possible the unity of our experience, and while we can legitimately question whether the unity of our experience rests upon how the world might be apart from us, we cannot question what the transcendental unity of apperception might be apart from our apprehension of it.  Clearly, the game has changed. There is no longer a world that is what it is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.  Human beings give natural laws to the order of nature.  However, the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience as such are what they are apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.  In transcendental reflection we reach an arena of objectivity. While the world is mediately known, we have an immediate apprehension in transcendental reflection of that by which the world is mediately known. 

By the time of Hegel (1770-1831), however, problems with this picture are emerging.  Hegel knew that the categories by which the world is known are not simply objectively present and ready for the fateful gaze of transcendental reflection. They are not simply "shot from the pistol," but are themselves dynamic and in play historically.  Hegel recognized that the subject's grasp of its own self through its categories were at issue if one could not explain how the dynamism of the categories is itself objective.  Accordingly, Hegel's move to absolute knowledge is a move by which the immediacy of the categories could be restored.  

If knowledge is at all to be possible, there must be a perspective that gets to the thing itself.  If this is not the world, then it must be those transcendental conditions by which the world becomes world.  Since the immediacy of those transcendental conditions cannot be vouchsafed any longer by the subject, these conditions must be guaranteed by the Absolute that "takes up" all conditioned finite perspectives, whose taking up itself is necessary for the writing of books about the "taking up."  The Absolute Idea unfolds through concepts allowing the grasping of transcendental content, a historically mediated grasping that grants an immediacy to that which would otherwise remain wholly mediated. 

Notice that as the world became what it is for us, the world of as it is for us was true both of the manifest image of the world as well as its scientific image (Sellars). The manifest image of the world is clearly not the world as it is in itself. The scientific image which tries to explain those mechanisms by virtue of which the world is manifest, however, is often assumed to be what ultimately is the case.  However, it is clear that if there is no immediate access to the world in itself as the manifest world, there can be no such access to the world in itself as the scientific world of mechanisms by virtue of which the world is manifest.  The scientific world with all of its objective structures is a world that cannot be more immediate than the manifest world.  Accordingly, it is a world for us.  The manifest image of the world and the scientific image of it do not deal with the world as it is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. Simply put, the world bears the marks of that for whom it is a world.  

Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel had theological aspirations, of course.  While much has been written about the the changed metaphysical climate after Kant, not as much has been written about the relevance of this changed climate for theology.  If we cannot know the supersensible world -- if the very notion of the supersensuous drives us beyond the bounds of all possible experience -- we cannot also know any regions of that supersensuous realm, e.g., theology.  Kant, of course, recognized this and claimed that he "had done away with knowledge of God to make room for faith." 

Kant had argued that the categories of substance and causality cannot apply to objects outside the realm of the phenomena.  This means, inter alia, that one cannot apply 'substance' or 'causality' to God.  God cannot be a substance bearing causal relations to other substances because there are no precepts being united to organize experience into one in which there are gods.  Gods do not exist in the phenomenal, and there are no metaphysical arguments showing conclusively that God must exist.  One might believe in the realm of the supersensible, but one cannot ever know those supersensible substances putatively causally connected to other supersensible entities or entities in the world.  

While knowing the external world occurs when we know the ways we have organized that external world -- when we know ourselves properly! -- knowing the supersensible world is not possible even though we are again thinking about our thinking.  Thinking about our thinking with regard to the phenomenal gives discrete knowable experience.  Thinking about our thinking with regard to the noumenal does not issue in any knowable experience, but rather can only put us in touch with our way of thinking.  Theology does not give experience, but it does constitute a way of thinking.  

So how must Christology proceed on the other side of Kant?  Given that we have no epistemic right to claim that we know the divine/human constitution -- nor the causality through which the divine person in Jesus of Nazereth effects salavation -- what do we do when doing theology and thinking our philosophy rightly?  What ought be the ways forward in Christology on the other side of Kant? What does theology become when its world is a world that is only for us?  

Since concepts are rules of possible syntheses, relating concepts in Christology must be a relating of ways in which such syntheses might relate to each other.  What can "two natures in one person" mean in the non-metaphysics of post-Kantian reflection?  After all, to speak of divine and human nature is to speak of that which lies beyond human experience.  Add the notion of 'person' to the mix and we are talking about the ordering of our ideas and not about the synthesis of experience.  Our ideas do not constitute experience, but they are important in how we must think aspects of our experience.  

Kant famously saw Christology as flowing from morality, and understood that human beings are unavoidably in the middle of moral life, even though moral life is not one of experience. There will be much more exploration of this in later posts, but for now we must continue our story beyond when the world was what is was for us to when the world turned ceased to be for us at all.  We must examine what happens when the world becomes worldless.  

III. Beyond the World as it was For Us

When the world was what it was, the world was in itself what it was.  The trajectory of thinking inaugurated by Kant gave a world no longer in itself, but a world now merely for us.  When the world was in itself, the world was known in its immediacy.  When the world became what it is for us, the world was known in its mediacy.  Both the in itself and the for itself of the world nonetheless presupposes that there was an immediacy to that by which the world is known in itself and for itself.  

Transcendental reflection that had dislodged the immediacy of the world nonetheless presupposed its immediate graspability. While Hegel increasingly realized that no Archimedean standpoint for transcendental reflection existed, his creative attempt to understand the various limited standpoints of transcendental reflection as manifestations of an unconditioned Absolute transcendental perspective that yet united the limited, conditioned, historically-mediated acts of transcendental reflection, kept at bay for a time the dawning realization that our acts of reflection are mediated as well, that is to say, there is no immediate access to ourselves.  Our putative privileged access to the contents of our own mind is a chimera.  While Descartes was often deluded about his access to the external world, we thinkers after Kant have been deluded about our access to our own thinking.  

The age that dawned after the age of the world as it is for us, is an age that increasingly took seriously that by virtue of which we thought we knew ourselves: it took seriously the language by and through which we thought we had found ourselves. This attention to language occurred both in the Anglo-American and the Continental expressions of philosophy, though in different ways.  The story here is complex and filled with surprising turns in trajectory.  Simply put, the twentieth century was an age that increasingly came to recognize that our capacities of self-representation are dependent upon others in surprising ways: our concepts, language and values are not our possessions by which we can objectively explore both the world and our own exploration of the world, but are themselves historically-conditioned social products.  

The words we use we did not create, and the concepts by which we think, we have learned from others -- mostly through the words that we did not create.  Every act of thinking employs concepts that have been bequeathed to us by tradition.  The days of thinking of language as a "tool kit" to grasp the objectivity of meaning are long gone.  We know too much.  Our so-called transcendental horizon is not the "unvarnished good news" that Quine once called the "myth of the given."  Just as there is no givenness to experience apart from our historically-conditioned conceptuality by and through which such experience arises, there is no givenness either to transcendental structures of reflection.  Transcendental reflection cannot escape the historicity of experience itself, a historicity that grasps the impossibility of reflecting objectively upon the conditions of reflection itself.  Just as "looks red" presupposes "is red" (Sellars), so does the apprehension of transcendental structures presuppose the conceptuality of such structures, a conceptuality given through language socially.  

Heidegger (1889-1976) famously uncovered the living and breathing ontology through and by which human beings make and live meaning.  We are creatures of meaning embedded within worlds of meaning that we did not construct. We who in our being ask the question of the meaning of being, necessarily ask the question within the historically messy process of the history of being.  Ultimately, Heidegger claimed, our takes on being are themselves a working out of be-ing as it is in and through our thinking.  But, for Heidegger, this Be-ing in its history is no Absolute that can in Hegelian fashion "take up" various understandings of be-ing and somehow come to itself deeply in its own thinking.  The history of Be-ing cannot be the God of the tradition of the Absolute of Hegel, this Be-ing in its history is nowhere and no place, and it cannot be accessed by itself.  It is deeply and necessarily so hidden that Heidegger in speaking it must use the language of "the last God."  

We live in the world beyond the world as it was for us.  This world is not in itself, not for itself, and definitely not in and for itself.  This world is, in fact, worldless.  It is a world suspicious of meta-narratives (Lyotard), of comprehensive attempts to find in the world discrete trajectories of rationality or progress.  

Once there was the a world that really was in itself.  After the death of this world, there was a self that really was in itself.  Post-modernity is the celebration of both the death of the world and the self, a celebration that must be in a certain sense ecstatic because there is no longer a self-possessed self through and by which the self can clearly conceive and pronounce its own death.   Our current time is an age where the screens have overwhelmed the capacity of either the world or the self to manifest themselves clearly upon them. We are without foundations; it is turtles all the way down.  

Living beyond the world in itself is difficult for theology.  God understood along the lines of world or self, could be a God that is still somehow understood.  But when the self lives ecstatically on the basis of concepts and language that are not its own, then there are no places any longer for God to lay His head.  After all, God is by definition incapable of ecstatic existence.  God cannot be carried along or constituted upon differential fields that somehow account for intermittent manifestations of identity.  If anything is, it would seem, God is.  There are no parts to God.  God is that identity by and through which all difference is ultimately understood.  

So what does one do with Christology in an age beyond the age of the world for us?  In our age where all immediacy is blocked, everything that seemingly is, is dependent upon something that it is not.  Just as the identity of the world turned out to be dependent upon that which is different from the world -- its putative transcendental structures -- and the identity of the self turned out to be dependent upon that which is different from the self -- the concepts and language of historically-conditioned social communities -- so too do our fleeting perspectives arising out of particular historically-conditioned social communities find a deeper difference out of which language and thought emerges, a difference that is Other than the historically-conditioned linguistically bequeathed by culture and tradition, a difference that must ultimately be Other than the world and all its putative foundations.  We are very close now to the beginnings of our tradition, a tradition claiming that out of nothing comes something.  

What is needed is to think Christology radically after not only the deconstruction of onto-theology (Heidegger), but the de-structuring itself of that deconstruction.  Thinking Christology beyond the phenomenological presencing that putatively once gave rise to onto-theology, is to bring into focus clearly the Abyss that is either unsupported and provides no support, or unsupported that provides support, or somehow itself supported.  What is Christ in such a situation, and what could a real ontic unity between Christ and the Christian be? But the development of these ideas must await another time.  What is needed is a Christology in a time when the world is not.