Philosophical Impediments to Proclamation

Theology was once a lofty discipline whose practitioners were among the brightest and best of their age.  In Luther's day candidates for the Doctor of Theology had first to receive a Masters of Arts in philosophy.  They knew the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and they had exposure to the quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music).  They understood Latin deeply and some learned Greek and Hebrew as well.   Luther knew his Aristotle well enough to realize that the Aristotle he encountered in the text was not the Aristotle that many theologians embraced in the High and Late Middle Ages.  Like in every age, Luther's era was a time in which philosophy and theology were deeply related.

Our age also is a time in which theological and philosophical matters are deeply connected.   The relationship between the two is so profound that many thinkers (often very deep theological thinkers) often overlook or miss it entirely.  But theologians today ignore philosophical issues at their own peril.  Deeply-educated in the Biblical text, its historical and social context, its history of reception, and effective homiletical techniques to proclaim it, theological thinkers often fail to examine and appreciate deeply enough the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon into which the text is preached.  In failing to grasp the differing philosophical assumptions between textual origination and reception, they overlook the presuppositional issues making it difficult for the text to be properly understood be contemporary readers and hearers.  These issues, I believe, our explicitly philosophical.  They involve such traditional and meaty philosophical concerns as ontology (the study of being), epistemology (the study of knowing), and semantics (the study of meaning).

In the following series of posts I will spell out what I believe to be some of the philosophical impediments to Biblical proclamation in our time.  I will deal with such issues as the fact/value distinction, the loss of normativity, the problem of truth-conditions for religious and theological language, the problem of the external world as it relates to the divine, the question of agent motivation, the problem of reductionism, and, of course, the question of freedom.  (Of course, the discussion will be necessarily brief and undeveloped.)  Throughout, the questions of dualism, physicalism and idealism will be engaged.   The overarching issue is semantic.  What does (or can) the Gospel mean in an age where the horizon of understanding of the reader or listener is pluralistic, therapeutic, and anti-realistic?  What can God-talk mean to those today (particularly the young) who neither know the intellectual tradition, nor are normatively determined by 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.  

Transcendentality

I must admit that I have always rather liked the transcendental option.   When the skies seem especially dark, it is tempting to think of divine presence on the transcendental horizon of our own experience.   This way of proceeding supposedly avoids the problems of subjectivism and pyschologism without committing one to finding God as an object among objects in the world and history, or looking for Him in some supernatural transcendent dimension lying out beyond the world and history.

I admit that I have not thought much about the transcendental starting point in recent years.   Instead I have been pondering how it is that in order to avoid an eliminativism of the theological, one must ascribe to it a robust semantics, one that is realist in its orientation. 

I want to relfect here a bit upon transcendentality and the semantic questions that arise when trying to articulate the position.   While the transcendental starting point is prima facie promising in trying to locate a place for God, the position requires a type of realist semantics that is difficult to formulate.   I will try to lay this out nascently below.

Transcendental Thomism was part of a general effort within mid-twentieth century Roman Catholicism to read Aquinas in ways that were not Neo-Scholastic in orientation.    The idea was to retrieve the Augustinian element in Thomas' thinking which would allow God to be found grounding the activity of human intentionality itself. 

Reflect for a moment on the grasping of any being.   The necessary condition for grasping determinate being is, for Karl Rahner - -  the most famous of the Transcendental Thomists - - that one have a pre-understanding, or a fore-grasping of Being in itself.   In every act of knowing any object, there is a transcendental condition consisting in the a horizon of pure being.   This horizon is the term of the Vorgriff, the end point of any fore-grasping.   The idea is very simple and maybe an analogy helps.  In order for a person to know that she is incarcerated in a particular cell, she must grasp beyond the cell to know what area she could be occupying if she were not limited by the cell wall to be in the particular cell she is in.  Without a fore-grasping of the "beyond," the incarcerated one would not know themselves as incarcerated at all.   Whereas Heidegger said that projecting into no-thing was the necessary condition for the thing to be thing - - and hence "nothingness is the face of being" - - Karl Rahner claimed that the totality of Being is the face of being.

The transcendental starting point fits nicely within the Augustinian key, within the general orientation of "the ontological thirst," that is, the thematization of the assertion that "my heart is not at rest until it finds its rest in Thee, O Lord."   Human beings are a dynamism towards Being.   This dynamism towards Being is the transcendental condition for the possibility of grasping the realm of determinate beings.

Very important in this approach is the overcoming of Neo-Scholastic dualisms between nature and supernature, the finite and infinite,  and nature and grace.   The transcendental horizon making possible human knowledge is not merely a thing of nature, nor merely a thing of grace, but it is a horizon of a continuum of nature and grace, a continuum where natural human striving gives way to the grace of God as pure Being, as that which is the authentic end of human striving.   For Rahner and followers nature is already graced; God is always already related to nature.  Grace thus is ingredient in the transcendental constitution of natural human striving; there is no authentic nature without grace.

Now the question I wish to entertain pertains to the semantics of the language I have just used to articulate the position in the previous three paragraphs.   What are the conditions for the possibility of meaning and truth of that language used to articulate the structure of the transcendental horizon of human natural being? 

This is a very difficult question, of course; one that seems far more difficult than articulating the conditions for the possibility of the meaningfulness of language referring to the world of nature and history, or a putative transcendent realm existing beyond nature and history. 

I have argued that we must adopt semantic realism in theology for three reasons: 1) If our time is to take the truth claims of theology seriously again, theology must make serious truth claims; 2) If theology is a discipline that is so important that one's very being and the meaning of one's being is at issue in it, then we should work with a view of theological language that makes the most robust theological assertions; 3) It turns out to be very difficult to give theological language a self-consistent semantic interpretation that is finally not realist - - at least if one wants to retain theological language.  Because semantic realism seems best for referring to God in the world and beyond it, it is tempting to think that semantic realism is the best construal of language about the transcendental horizon as well.   However, for reasons soon apparent it proves to be very difficult indeed to provide such a semantics.  Why?

Imagine language L having a standard intension and extension such that the intension of a name is its sense and its extension is its reference, the intension of a monadic predicate is a property and its extension a set of objects satisfying that property, that the intension of a polyadic predicate is a relation and its extension the set of ordered n-tuples satisfying this relation, and the intension of a sentence is the proposition expressed and the extension its truth-value.   Now assume the L is going to articulate the transcendental horizon T. 

The first question to ask is what are the names that refer to objects and entities, and what are the predicates that refer to classes of objects and entities?   Whereas a particular being is an object, it is not clear that the horizon of being is itself an entity or object.   But what is it?   Is it precisely that which is forgotten in any predicate of the predicate to the name?   This sounds sufficiently profound, but what could be actually said by saying that there is something that is not a being or thing but still nevertheless is somehow, and that this which is but is not any particular being is that which is forgotten in the very semantics of L? 

Now one might say that the particular dynamism toward Being itself is a series of events that could be specified in principle by names, and that the property of "driving beyond" refers to the class of those events comprising the dynamism.   On this construal, the dynamism and its salient properties could be in principle referred to by L,  But notice what can't be referred to?   It is precisely the term of the Vorgriff, the end or being towards which the dynamism flows. 

But I hear the objection.   Have you not in this proto-analysis presupposed a dualism between self and other, with the otherness of Being Itself now somehow existing outside the dynamnism as that to which the dynamism flows?   Don't you realize that it is precisely, as you earlier said, a continuum that exists between the dynamism and its terms, and thus between nature and grace?   But unfortunately pointing this out is no ultimate help at all to the semantic task.   Why?

The reason why is analogous to the problem Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus.   After he pointed out that language can have sense only when it refers to objects in the world, he raised the question of the meaningfulness of the assertions which themselves refer to the relation between language and world.   Obviously, they must be senseless.   Wittgenstein thus concludes the Tractatus with the suggestion that the propositions of the Tractatus are elucidations, that they are like the rungs on the ladder, the entire ladder of which must be thrown away when the relationship between world and language is rightly grasped.

Analogically here, the transcendental horizon of the graced natural dynamism towards being (T) grounds the very possibility of the language used to talk about that transcendental horizon.  In the human dynamism towards Being in its totality, the transcendental horizon T is known in the surpassing towards being.   However, since Being in its totality cannot be an other to the subject of the transcendental dynamism, Being in its totality becomes the face of Being in its totality, that is, the articulating of the transcendental structure presupposes the transcendental structure.   Language about being which grasps determinate being having the transcendental horizon as a condition cannot itself grasp indeterminate being, that is, it cannot grasp the transcendental structure having as its ultimate term the totality of being.

Nothing what I have said here should be deeply surprising.   Why would one expect language to be able to refer to something as inchoate an unthematic as the transcendental horizon of being?   My embryonic point here is simply this: If transcendentality is the ultimate location of God, then the infinite regress of transcendentality in knowing transcendentality is a problem for any language that attempts to state this.  Clearly, language L is not adequate to the task of referring to the transcendental horizon.   If this is so - - and I do know that much more argument is needed - - then hopes appear dim for a semantic realism with regard to transcendentality, and accordingly, for the robust truth of the existence and contour of transcendentality itself. 

Semantics and Correlative Theology

There was once a time when I did not worry too much about how talk of God and talk of the universe as such connected.   In those days I solidly subscribed to a correlative theology which linked the semantics of theological language to the semantics of human existential/phenomenological/ontological language. Theological truth and meaning had to do with human truth and meaning.   The language of each could be mapped to an appropriate background language such that the discourse of theology was commensurate with that of theology.   While the logical geography of fundamental ontology differed from that of theology, they could be compared.   Existential questions could be given theological answers, and theological answers would invite existential questions.

Over the years I have come to regard this effort as being more or less misguided.   It is not that existential questions cannot be correlated with religious answers, it is simply that when this is done, the religious answer correlated has a different meaning than it would have had were it not so correlated.   How is this so?

Religious and theological answers pertain to soteriology, and what is salvific with respect to our immediate situation in the universe is not likely the same thing as what is salvific when our immediate situation is worked up existentially-phenomenologically-orntologically.   (I realize that this statement needs a considerable amount of unpacking.)  A corollary to what I am saying is simply that a problem with the method of correlation is that it cannot save the one that correlates.  This method is to the philosophy of science what lived salvific immediacy is to the practice of science.

It is finally a question of semantics.   For C (the one correlating), existential question E has a definite meaning that can in some way be addressed by theological answer T.  E and T have more or less definite semantic conditions for C.  Think, however, about one who has not adopted the reflexive standpoint of C.  Let us call such a non-reflexive one U (standing for unable of willing to occupy the standpoint of C).  For U, T has different meaning and truth conditions than for C because the truth conditions for T are ontological - - one might better say 'ontic' here because I am talking about being not the be-ing of beings - - in a way that they are not for C.

How is this so?  Clearly, the truth conditions for T with respect to U are tied to what is the case in a way that T is not for C.  Accordingly for C, T is true just in case T obtains.  But this need not be so for C.  Here T is true just in case it is appropriately linked to E.   For U, T is true just in case a relationship R holds appropriately of some state of affairs S.   For C, T is true just in case a relationship R' hold appropriately of some religious or theological description D that is pertinent to E.  For U, T is true because of some reality that is what it is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.  This is an extensionalist  interpretation of T.  For C, since T is true just because there is a reality which is what it is because of human awareness, perception, conception or language, the description of this reality becomes the most important matter.   Now we have moved to an intensionalist context.   (This needs more unpacking as well.) 

If I have not made myself sufficiently clear in the proceeding paragraph, let me try again.   The theologian who believes there is some extra-linguistic, extra-subjective ontological situation that obtains from which one must be saved, will regard the meaning of that which saves to be of a different type than the theologian who does not believe this.   The move to the reflexive level is indeed a move out of the primary soteriological context.  The one making the move likely has reinterpreted the meaning of the soteriological context in ways that make it true that a real ontic answer no longer is necessary or warranted in addressing that context. 

The question of which we are dealing concerns the identity conditions of theological and religious statements.   What makes one theological proposition semantically identical to another?  Identical syntax does not an identical semantics entail, for theological propositions have different meanings within different contexts.   Semantics does not supervene upon syntax unless the syntax is defined to include the very form of life of the one using the syntax.   (One might then talk about a global supervenience of semantics upon syntax.)  The identity of theological propositions is clearly not externally related to the philosophical (ontological) context in which they find themselves and to which they are related.  The point is that the context of reflexive correlation is a very different context than immediate lived existence.

A related question of identity within theological semantics arises for the theologian who believes that the content of preaching Christ and Him crucified is somehow identical across various philosophical and metaphysical worldviews.   Wilhelm Hermann argued famously that metaphysics is irrelevant to theology.   That is to say, presumably, that the semantic identity of a certain set of theological statements is invariant across different ontological worldviews, across worldviews as different as nineteenth century materialism and teleological Aristotelianism.  The semantics of theological propositions are indifferent to the greater philosophical context, that is, to alternate sets of philosophical presuppositions.

But this cannot possibly be the case.  What a theological proposition means is fundamentally connected to the context in which it finds itself, that is, to the wider philosophical context.  It is very easy to see this is true, for the truth conditions of a theological proposition does in fact change across different ontological horizons.   Why? 

Imagine I hold that the proclamation that I am forgiven from my sins in spite of my sin is a performative utterance issuing in the perlocution of existential empowerment in the face of fundamental anxieties.   Clearly, the semantics of the declarative utterance is related to the context of a linguistic/existential structure of human existence.  The meaning of the declarative statement is not related to some kind of theological states of affairs, but rather to the human existential/linguistic structure.  In this way, one might say that the Word is what it does.

However, the critical question is and has always been, is the Word only what it does.   Is the perlocution itself the result of a belief about the world, or can the perlocution happen without such a belief?   It has always seemed clear to me that the possibility of the perlocution occurring is tied to human belief in a very proximate way.  Without the belief being the belief that it is, it is not the case that the perlocution is the perlocution that it is.   Responding to the gospel declaration is not like hearing the words "excuse me."  While the conventions of the social situation are present in the former, they do not determine the use and response to the gospel address in a similar way.

But the deeper question has to do with truth conditions themselves.   If one says "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself," is it not quite different to say that the truth conditions are that God is in Jesus Christ, or alternately that they are somehow in the existential empowerment of the listener?   Consider how different these two truth conditions are:

1)  'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' is true if and only if God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. 

2)  'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' is true if and only if the utterance of 'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' effects a particular hearer H (appropriately structured so as to be effected by the utterance), in such a way as to have existential empowerment of an appropriate kind, 

While one could spend a great deal of time and effort trying to clarify (2), it should be apparent what the salient difference between (1) and (2) is.   The meaning of the latter has to be defined relationally with respect to the human linguistic/existential structure; the meaning of the former can be defined by its relationship to a world that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.

The Big Problem for Lutheran Confessionalism

Thinkers like to think about things towards which progress can be made. Philosophers of a materialist or physicalist persuasion find it relatively easy to understand how properties at higher levels might covary as a function of properties at lower levels.

For instance, biological properties distribute as a function of chemical properties, which distribute as a function of molecular properties, which themselves distribute as a function of atomic properties or subatomic properties. While there are some problems relating levels, the big problem concerns how it is that psychological properties covary with respect to neurophysiological properties.

While we may have no difficulties in general in countenancing a view of things where neurophysiological actualizations are finally metaphysically dependent upon mircrophysical causation, the notion that thoughts and decisions might ultimately metaphysically depend upon mircophysical processes is disquieting. While moderate reductions seem unproblematic throughout physical reality, the countenancing of reductions between the mental and physical involves some rather paradoxical claims, e.g., the notion that my writing these words in this blog right now themselves metaphysically depend somehow upon microphysical actualizations of various kinds.

While some philosophers here warmly embrace the "downward causality" of the mental into the physical on a mereological basis, the fundamental problem remains: If mental event m1 causes neurophysiological actualizations p2, then it seems that m1 must either itself have a physical realization or not. If it has no physical realization, then the advocate of downward causation must finally advocate a substance dualism - - something they want to avoid - - or she or he must admit that the physical realizer of m1 - - let us call this p1 -- itself causes p2, and there is no real downward causation. So the big problem is simply this: How is genuine freedom possible for an agent when the agent and his/her acts are metaphysically dependent upon microphysics? The problem is so big and intractable, that philosophers generally work on easier problems, providing in other ways the work that can advance a physicalist agenda.

We confessional Lutherans also have a problem that is so big that we really don't want to entertain it. We want to work on things that can be worked upon profitably, e.g,, Law/Gospel matters, not problems that seem intractable, problems that pertain to the truth of our theological position.

All the standard paths are open for the Lutheran wanting to talk about truth, of course. One could say that proposition p is true if and only if p describes or expresses the feelings, attitudes or the existential orientation of the one so uttering p. Or one might improve this somewhat by saying that p is true if and only if it liberates from sin and grants the freedom for the future (whatever precisely might by meant by "sin" and "freedom for the future" in this context). Or one might say that p is true if and only if it functions as a rule for the specification and use of other utterances by a particular linguistic community. Or perhaps one is less trendy and say that p is true if and only if p obtains. But then one must ask the rule specifying the condition for p obtaining.

Readers will understand that this last option asks that we think about the truth of p in broadly "cognitive-propositional" terms. For one stating that 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself' is true if and only if God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, the question is what conditions must be met in order for God to be in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. This is not an easy question, as we shall see. One could say that that there is an individual God, and individual Christ, and that the two are related by the first being in the second. But this does not help too much either, for what are the conditions for "being in"?

At this point, the discussion of the last few decades about Christian inclusivism, exclusivism and pluralism becomes relevant. One could say that there is some kind of linguistic commensurability across religions such that the same objects and events can be in principle picked out in the various religious worlds. On this view, the Christin and Buddhist would presumably disagree about whether God was in Christ obtains, but they would both understand what it means. However, if a particular kind of holism holds, then the Buddhist could not state that "God was in Christ" in the same way as the Christian, and thus the fact that it obtains for one and not the other would not entail that the very same thing would need to obtain for both in order for truth to be predicated.

The point is a basic one between internalism and externalism. Are there conditions that must be met in order for a proposition to correctly apply to a situation, conditions that are internal to the proposition in question (and its relevant context), or are they external to it? What I am asking is simply whether or not there can be some "bird's eye" factual perspective above and beyond the practico-linguistic worlds occupied by adherents of the various world religions. While this question of the priority of facts over language arises within philosophy generally, theologians must pay especially intense attention to it because, in some sense, much of what the theologian is trying to talk about is beyond what can be said to be factual in any ordinary sense. The theologian who embraces externalism must seemingly hold, as John Hick suggests, to a view that Ultimate Referent of religious and theological language lies beyond the linguistic worlds of any religion and that it is a noumenal reality to which the phenomenal fields of meaning of the various traditions point.

Lutherans do not often enter the fray on what many would regard as a "philosophy of religion" concern, but it is simply the case that some position on the inclusivism, eclusivism, pluralism issue is more cogent and plausible than others, and must thereby be adopted - - either explicitly or implicitly.   While the relationship between grace and nature in some of the Catholic theological tradition sets up nicely for inclusivist views like those of Rahner, Lutheran emphasis on the discontinuity between these two seem to block any argument for being an "anonymous Lutheran."  A tendency towards exclusivism seems to be in the Lutheran theological DNA, but clearly we cannot easily argue like seventeenth century Lutherans did before the "Copernican revolution" of realizing that Christian faith is one belief system among the other world religions, and that the Lutheran take on Christianity does not predominate even there.

To hold to religious pluralism is much easier when one works with an alethia account of truth as unveiling, rather than an account that supposes there is an objective reality identified by Christians as the Triune God.  To the theological realist, of course, truth is not promiscuous, and it is predicated of those propositions that tend to represent most accurately that which can never be known.   (While the paradox here makes this problem seems acute, it is no worse than the problem of the external world generally.)

I believe that the big problem I describe here should be regarded as such by any Lutheran thinking through the options on the table.   We cannot simply decide not to engage the issue.  To do that would be an example of the quietism we have so long been accused of sponsoring.  

On an Infinite Regress of Causes

The general structure of cosmological arguments is well known: Starting from general features about the world (e.g., that there is movement), these arguments proceed by pointing out that these general features must have a cause, and this cause must have a cause, and since if there were no first cause there would not be any subsequent causes, there must indeed be a first cause.

Much has been written over the years about cosmological arguments, and there are, in truth, many different types of such arguments. One must distinguish in esse arguments (arguments in the order of ontological dependency) from in fieri arguments (arguments in the order of temporal becoming). One must distinguish arguments that proceed from the fact of contingency from arguments proceeding from movement or causality. One must distinguish arguments that use the principle of sufficient reason from arguments that do not make explicit use of this principle. To enter into any discussion of the diverse array of such arguments shall not be our concern here. What I want to deal with in this post is an interesting attack by James Sadowsky on the notion that there can be an infinite regress of causes ("Can there be an Endless Regress of Cause," International Philosophical Quarterly, 20-4, 1980).

Sadowky points out that the operative principle in the cosmological argument is that "if each cause of A were itself in need of a cause, then no cause of A could exist and hence A itself could not exist." From this the argument proceeds easily: A (let us say there is motion in the world) exists and thus all of A's causes are not in need of a cause, that is, there is some cause that is itself not in need of a cause. [One thinks here perhaps of Schopenhauer's quote that the law of universal causation is like "a hired cab that one dismisses when one reaches one's destination."]

Critics of cosmological arguments oftentimes point to the obvious fact that in order for A to be, there must be some B which causes A, and in order for B to be there must be some C that causes B, and that this series can run back to infinity. Think for a moment about the infinite series of integers. For every integer I, there is some integer 'I - 1' such that I is generated from 'I - 1' by adding '1'. Any integer can be "caused" by taking the preceding integer and adding one. There is no problem with this series running back to infinity, of course. If it did not, we would have a pretty truncated mathematics.

But proponents of cosmological arguments often make claims about how an actual infinite is not possible - - after all, Aristotle said so - - and that the analogy between an infinite causal series in the world and the infinite series of integers is not great. For the infinite causal series, the operative principle specified previously holds, which does not in the generation of infinite mathematical series: If each cause of A were itself in need of a cause, then no cause of A could exist and hence A itself could not exist.

Sadowsky asks us to compare the statement of the cosmological argument that no causation can take place because each act of causation requires a previous act of causation with the following: no permission can be asked for because each asking of permission requires a prior asking of permission. Consider this statement:

1) No one may do anything (including asking for permission) without asking for permission.

Is (1) true? It seems not, for how could it be that the condition for asking for permission is itself the asking of permission. It seems that permission asking in order to do every X cannot run back to infinity, because X includes the asking of permission. The activity of asking for permission cannot run back to infinity because there would be no first asking of permission and thus no subsequent series of permission asking.

Sadowsky asks us now to consider Ryle's demolition of the so-called "Intellectual Legend": Never do anything (including thinking) without first thinking about it. Consider then (2):

2) No one ought to anything (including thinking) without first thinking about it.

Is (2) true? It seems not, for how could it be that the condition for thinking is itself based upon thinking? It seems that an infinite series of intellectual reflection based upon intellectual reflection is impossible, for how can it be that one's reflection on something (call it X) must result from X?

Although Sadowsky does not explicitly say so, he supposes that (1) and (2) are unsatisfiable, that is, there cannot be a state of affairs of every act of intellectual thinking being dependent upon anterior acts of intellectual thinking. Why? Because if there is real contingency in intellectual thinking - - if it is possible to consider propositions either shrewdly (intellectually) or stupidly - - and the condition for considering propositions shrewdly (intellectually) is a prior condition of having considered propositions shrewdly (intellectually) and not stupidly, then in order for there to be subsequent acts of intellectual consideration there must have been a first act of intellectual consideration. In other words, there is no possible world in which there can be an infinite regress in the order of prior intellectual operations as a prerequisite of subsequent intellectual operations. There must be a first intellectual operation that grounds subsequent intellectual operations, or there would have been no subsequent intellectual operations. Similarly, there must be a first permission that grounds subsequent acts of granting permission. There can be no possible world in which one cannot do anything without first asking permission, if it is true that "doing anything" includes the seeking of permission.

In (2) it is impossible to break into a series of intellectual considerations without there being an intellectual consideration not grounded in anterior intellectual considerations. In (1) there cannot be a breaking into the series of permissions without there being a first permission granting that needs not anterior permission. We have here the claim that there must be intellectual consideration that is not the result of an intellectual consideration, and a permission seeking that is not the result of a permission seeking. Now the question is simply this: is an infinite regress in the order of causes analogous to these two cases? Is it true that (3) is unsatisfiable?

3) For each and every cause, there must be a cause of that cause.

Is the denial of (3) somehow contraditory? Is it contradictory to have an uncaused causer? Or, put differently, if there must be an an unpermitted permitter, and a nonintellectualized, intellectualizer, why not an uncaused causer? Why should causality be regarded differently?

It seems that the answer to this might lie in the different contexts in which intellectual considerations, permission seeking, and causing inhabit. It strikes me that intellectual considerations and permission-seekings are teleological activities. Take, for instance, the notion of an infinite series of purposes. It seems like an infinite order in the series of final causes is indeed unthinkable. If everything that occurs, occurs for the sake of something else, is it not true that there must be finally something for which all things occur. (Heidegger traces this back to Dasein, of course.) No infinite regress in the order of teleological "reasons for" is possible, for it seems, that in order for there to be subsequent "reasons for" there must be a first "that upon which all reasons are ultimately reasons for."

Most of the time, however, we regard the order of causes as a nonteleological context: A causes B which causes C, etc. In a universe without meaning or purpose, why would an infinite series of causes not be allowed? Of course, there is not a first cause on the basis of which subsequent causes are! That is the point of thinking about an order of causes purely extensionally. There is nothing unsatisfiable about (3), though there might be about (3') below:

3') For each and every reason, there must be a reason for that reason.

I think many people would dispute (3') being satisfiable on the basis of there being finally a 'brute reason or purpose' on the basis of which other reasons find their positions. (Heidegger would agree here.) We often trace human reasoning back to a human telos generally. Why did Bob do x? He had such and such reasons for doing x. But why did he have these reasons? Because he ultimately desired that some y come about, and he reasoned in ways that would eventuate in y. But why did he desire that some y come about? Reasons must stop somewhere, and one might just say that his desire for y just is. Is it reasonable? Perhaps, but it is not reasonable based upon other reasons. It is an unreasoned reason.

Sadowsky has forced us to see more clearly into what we often mean by an infinite regress in the order of causes. We mean something that is quite without meaning. It seems in an unthinking universe without value and purpose there could be an infinite series of causes. Whether a thing is or is not is not the same kind of question as whether a proposition is reasonable or not. While the second concerns a teleological context where an infinite regress is impossible, this is not so of the first. Or at least that is what one might reasonably say.