Musings on Causality, Divinity and Resurrection

It took a very long time before I could see things clearly.  

Growing up, I contemplated both God and science.   They always seemed in tension.  It did not help, of course, that my eighth grade confirmation pastor made me recite Luther's explanation to the First Article in from of the church with the prefix added, "In defiance of the theory of evolution, I believe that God has created me and all creatures . . . "

Although I did not know it at the time, I was already struggling with some pretty deep issues in the logic of explanation.   If one could explain why something was the case by pointing to laws and antecedent physical events and processes, what exactly was there left for God to do?  If I explained x both by divine intentionality D and some set of physical events E coupled with physical laws L, then in what sense is D, or perhaps E and L superfluous?  If x would not have happened without D, then surely E and L cannot form a complete explanation of x.   But E and L do form a complete explanation of x, therefore by modus tollens, x would have happened without D, and thus D is causally irrelevant.

The general problem is one of causal overdetermination, and confronts us as well in the philosophy of mind.  If mental event M1 explains M2, and M1 is physically realized by a set of brain events P1, and P1 causes a set of brain events P2, and P2 is the physical realization of M2, then in what sense is M1 qua M1 -- that is, M1 in so far as it is M1 -- causally efficacious in producing M2?  Does not the mental become merely epiphenomenal on neurophysiology, a "wheel idly turning" (Wittgenstein) as it were?  Is this not clearly a situation in which mental explanation fails to articulate the deepest causal map of the universe, and thus is in principle reducible to brain explanation or, better yet, can be eliminated in favor of the latter?

Consider the healing of Mary from stage four liver cancer.  This event -- let's call it m -- is supposedly effected by God's intentionality and power D.  If God healed Mary, then clearly D causally produces m.  But Mary's healing is physically realized as some set of micro-physical actualizations S.   While there was once a time -- e.g., in pre-physicalist ages -- when one might have said that D causally produces S without means, that option is not available to most people today.   Our time assumes the principle of the causal closure of the physical,  for each and every physical event p, there is some set of physical events E that causally produces p, and for each and every physical event p, p cannot and does not produce events that are not physical.  But if D does not produce m without means, then there is some set of physical events that is the physical realization of D such that these events cause m.  

It has been axiomatic in theology since the late Enlightenment to conceive God-talk non-causally.   What I mean by this, is that the giving of an interpretation to theological language such as 'God creates the universe' does not involve one in the drawing of a causal relation across the disparate ontological domains of supernature and nature.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America slogan, "God's work, our hands," nicely captures the situation:  Divine agency is physically realizable!   God's working of Y is realizable through the means of some set of individuals P acting in particular ways -- let's say that the set of individuals P instantiates a complex set of relations Q.   Thus, when P instantiates Q -- or perhaps when P acts Q-ly -- then Y obtains.   But the question is obvious: How is Y qua Y a divine act when it is physically realizable as P acting Q-ly?   More simply put, how is divine agency possible in means, when causal explanations in terms of the means is sufficient?   Do we not have a case of causal overdetermination here when allowing the divine explanation to track alongside the physical?  

The solution to all of this is to offer a model of theological language in which prima facie causal terms are given a non-causal analysis.  This worked very well in ages dominated by idealist pre-suppositions.  Accordingly, 'God creates' is a way of talking about some reality deeper than the causal.  Perhaps there is a reality of "Being-itself" that is deeper than the realm of particular beings, a realm that is somehow more profound than the causal, an ontological depth of being presupposed by the ontic structure of being in which beings are causally related to other beings.  Maybe although causal talk here is in some sense misapplied, the language of the causal somehow illuminates the depth dimension of the human such that the language is nonetheless theologically vindicated.  Thus, while God does not really cause the bringing about of Mary's healing, the saying of 'God healed Mary' does illuminate or make sense out of one's existential situation and the seeming mystery of grace, the getting of that which one is ultimately not earned or deserved.   Saying that 'God healed Mary' seems to say more than there is some set of physical events that occurred -- though they cannot be fully specified -- that when instantiated brought about some set of physical events in Mary such that the term 'healed' could be applied to her.

One might, of course, complain that my concerns with 'God heals Mary' are somehow merely a problem for the philosopher.  While philosophers are concerned with semantics, the meaning of terms and the truth-values of the propositions comprised by them, semantics is not a problem for the believer reading the Bible.  Why allow the abstractions of fundamental theology (proto-theology), a theology that is most immediately relatable to First Article concerns, to transgress upon the hallowed domain of Christology and the proclamation of Christ's life giving death and resurrection?   Why not simply preach Christ and let semantics take care of itself?

Imagine listenting to preacher Pete proclaim that Christ is risen from the dead and that because of this the future has been conquered and that salvation is at hand.   One could, I suppose, simply listen to Pete and not think deeply about what his pronouncements mean and what the truth-conditions of the propositions he utters are.  (The truth-conditions of a proposition are those which must obtain in order for the proposition to be true.)  One might somehow be able to say, "OK, I don't know exactly what Pete's meaning when he talks of Christ's resurrection, but I will regard the resurrection to be true."  But this strategy does not work well when Molly asks what is meant by 'resurrection'.   At this point, one must either give some truth-condition for 'Christ is resurrected', or simply say that one does not know.  But if the latter, then Molly will say, "If you don't know what is meant by 'Christ is resurrected', then you don't know what it would mean for Christ not to be resurrected, and if you don't know that, then clearly to say "'Christ is resurrected' is true" is to say nothing at all."

To this, one simply has to change the subject.   While one might hope that one is meaning something even if one is not sure what one is meaning, there is no basis for the hope: Without knowing precisely what situation must obtain for 'Christ is resurrected' to be false, one knows not what 'Christ is resurrected' means.  Therefore, despite emotions to the contrary, to be told 'Christ is resurrected' is not to be told anything in particular -- and thus a fortiori not anything at all.  Sometimes for the sake of the Gospel one must say things as they are.  What is at stake is too important to do otherwise.

In the early days of Christianity, disciples knew that Christ's resurrection was tied to an empty tomb.  'Christ is resurrected' is false if the tomb is not empty.  The assertion had falsifiability conditions.   While the tomb being empty is not sufficient for Christ's resurrection, it is nonetheless necessary for it.  Christ's resurrection thus had a physical realization, and because that resurrection was tied to both the future and salvation, there was a physical dimension to both the future and salvation as well.   Just as Jesus Christ was physically raised from the dead, so too will all who sleep in the Lord be physically resurrected as well.   The coherence of soteriology depended up the physical realization of salvation.  While death was real, Christ's resurrected life could conquer it.

What I am saying is something quite sensible: Christ's physical resurrection and God's causal action producing it was itself understood in the tradition as causally-productive of human salvation.   Human salvation was an effect of divine agency, a causal action drawn across disparate ontological domains.  After all, there is no physical realization of 'Molly is dead' that in itself can causally produce 'Molly is alive'.  While 'God's work' can be realized perhaps in the work of human hands, 'Molly is being raised from the dead' has no known physical realization.

Simply put, while 'God creates the heavens and the earth' can be given a non-causal analysis it is not clear that a similar non-causal strategy can be given for 'God resurrects Jesus'.  The latter connects with the notion of salvation in a very intimate way -- as long as salvation is thought to be physically realized.  Of course, we are living in a time in which people are increasingly thinking that death is not an enemy.  If 'death' and 'life' are taken as descriptions of how we live rather than the fact that we live, then there may come a time when 'Mary's salvation' in no way depends upon the fact that she will live.  That time, which is increasingly our time, does truly recall the time of the Gnostics and their heresies.  

The first step in seeking treatment is realizing that one is sick.  If we do not realize the importance of semantics in theology, we shall not grasp the important theological work that must now be done.  It is irrational to hope for something of which it can be said that one does not know if one has it.

Thinking about Causation

I have recently written a paper entitled 'Creatio ex Nihilo in Luther's Genesis Commentary and the Causal Question'.  The paper argues, inter alia, that the most straightforward way of reading Luther in the Genesis Commentary is to claim that he holds: 'God causally brought about the creation of matter from nothing'. 

In itself this does not seem a particularly controversial claim.  However, when understood within the dominant theological paradigm since Kant, this statement seems highly suspect.   "Of course," the paradigm claims, "God created the heavens and the earth.  Everyone believes that.  It is just that God did not cause the earth to be.  To claim that would be a pernicious category mistake!"

But why should this be?  Why would it be problematical to claim that God causally brought about the universe from nothing?   Is this not straightforward?

It is only straightforward, it seems, if one does not think too deeply about the notion of causality.  Prior to the Enlightenement, it seems, philosophers often mistook reasons and causes.   Within and after the Enlightenment, philosophers have tended to understand causality empirically.  Physical things causally bring about other physical things.  This is the causal game properly played.   To say that the game itself was caused is to violate the rules of the game.  

Thinking about causality has tended to cluster around three views:  1)  Regular theories of causation, 2) Subjunctive and countracausal theories of causation, and 3) Intrinsic relational theories of causation. 

Accordingly, (1) claims 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'A precedes B', 'A-things are constantly conjoined to B-things' and some other conditions about which there is disagreement.  (2) holds that 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'if A were not to occur, B would not occur', or many other candidates.   Finally, (3) holds that there is some intrisic connection between A and B such B is directly produced from A.  (Let us not attend to the air of circularity at this point.) 

Clearly, if one were to want to claim that the universe was brought about by God, they could not hold a regularity theory of divine causation because the production of the universe is a singular event.  This leaves only option (2), (3) or some hybrid thereof.   Now the question arises as to what general tactic is better:  Is divine creatio ex nihilo best understood counterfactually or intrinsically?   My purpose in this blog is to explore a bit the notion of an intrinsic causal relation and ask whether it is possible for it to be utilized as the best analysis of divine causality creatio ex nihilo.  I will leave discussion of counterfactual divine causation to another time. 

The notion of an intrinsic causal relation takes aim at any Humean account of causation claiming that causality must be understood in terms of constant conjunction, temporal priority and spatio contiguity.   Accordingly, such an "externalist" account presupposes a widespread patterns of occurances.  In contravention to this, an intrinsic view of causality holds that cause is an intrinsic relation of power, energy or necessary connection.  I believe that the distinction between intrinsic/extrinsic relationality matter maps well to the distinction between singular causal statements versus "non-singularist" proposals.

According to a singularist approach the truthmaker for a single causal claim is a local relation holding between singular instances.   On this reading, the causal relation does not depend upon occurence of events in the neighborhood of the event in question; the causal relation is intrinsic to the relata and their connecting processes.  Instead of regularities as the truth makers of singular causal statements, local connections are.

The critical point in thinking about an intrinsic relation is this:  'A is intrinsically related to B' if and only if 'the relation is wholly determined by A and B'.   Over and against accounts that would unpack a relationship between A and B as determined by the regularities among a wide set of events and processes, the intrinsic connection of A and B supposes that there is something in A and something in B such that 'A causes B' cannot help but obtain.  

But now let us think about 'God causally brings about the existence of the universe'.   What properties of God and the universe obtain such that it is indeed necessary that 'God causally produces the universe'?

The obvious answer, of course, is that God has as God's very nature -- one might say His natural property -- a production of initial matter/energy and the subsequent formation thereof.  One might then say of the universe that is has its natural property of being produced by divine agency.   Accordingly, 'God creates the universe' is true because there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create, and a universe whose nature it is to be created.  To claim that 'God creates the universe ex nihilo' is simply to claim that there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create all things from absolute nothing, and a universe whose nature it is to be causally produced by the divine from absolute nothing. 

Now all this at one level might seem trivial.   Have we not simply performed some crude semantic joke?  Is it not the cause that we simply have moved the causal problem of divine/universe interaction from relations and placed it in entities having properties? 

At this point one must remember what the point is.   The point is to try to give an account of causality that is philosophically defensible.   Clearly if cause is an extrinsic relation, then we cannot give an account of the singular causal statement 'God creates the universe.'   What I have suggested is that this singular causal statement is captured by appeal to an intrinsic relation which itself is captured by the natural properties of the relata.  

The question whether or not their are any philosophical grounds for asserting the truth of the single causal statement is not one I wish to entertain here.   I take it that theology has always claimed that 'God creates the heavens and the earth'.  My point here is simply to show that it is conceptually coherent to think such divine/universe causality.   As it turns out, it is no category mistake.  

Singular Divine Causal Statements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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