Oftentimes we miss the things that are most obvious. This is true in all areas of life, and in theology especially. What is obvious, but not often enough clearly thought through, is the way in which the meaning of 'Jesus Christ' has changed in the past couple of centuries. There are vast differences in the way Bultmann and Irenaeus understand 'Jesus Christ', differences so vast that Irenaeus and Bultmann could best be said to understand 'Jesus Christ' in radically different ways. Unfortunately, theology has often failed to realize this and to address the fact and nature of the difference. In order to see this all more clearly, let us reflect upon an example from baseball.
A pitcher in a baseball game is someone who throws the ball past the batter. He would not be a pitcher if he were not to do this. The implicit rule is something like this, "If x is a baseball pitcher, then ceteris paribus x will occupy a position y feet from home plate, and x will attempt to throw the ball over home plate such that the batter will either not hit the ball on three hitable pitches, or hit the ball in the air such that it can be caught, or on the ground such that a throw can be made to first base prior to the batter reaching first base after hitting the ball."
Now I don't for a moment think this is a very accurate stating of the rule in question, but it should at least show what it is that I am thinking when I say that within the game of baseball, there are clear rules governing the role of pitcher. If I am talking about the rules governing actual pitchers and batters and actual games, I could be said to be speaking of the rules in the material mode. However, if I am talking about the way that the term 'pitcher' relates to other terms like 'hitter', 'catcher', 'innings', I could be said to be speaking of the rules in the formal mode.
One of the great advances of twentieth century philosophy was to see that much language we take to be in the material mode can be more deeply studied, and its nature clarified, if we interpret such language to be in the formal mode. The shift from talk in the material mode of objects and properties to the formal mode of terms and predicates is sometimes termed "semantic ascent." (For instance, we might cease talking about whether unicorns exist and began talking about whether the word 'unicorn' has any useful role to play in our theory.) While undertaking a semantic ascent in baseball may have negligible ontological significance, doing so with respect to pi mesons certainly does. How so?
If we are operating in the material mode and say that a pi meson is a hadron with bayron number of 0, we are declaring (probably) that for all x, x is a pi meson just in case x is a hadron with the bayron number of 0, and there is some such x. In the formal mode, and after taking proper semantic ascent, we claim merely that in our background meta-language the term 'pi meson' can be substituted salve veritate with the locution 'a hadron with the bayron number of 0' and that the term 'pi meson' has a useful role to play in our assumed fundamental particle theory.
I like to talk about simple semantic matters in the philosophy of science as a way into discussion within theology generally. Take the classic definition of Chalcedon on the two natures of Christ:
"We also teach that we apprehend this one and only Christ-Son, Lord, only-begotten
— in two natures; and we do this without confusing the two natures, without
transmuting one nature into the other, without dividing them into two separate categories,
without contrasting them according to area or function. The distinctiveness of each nature
is not nullified by the union. Instead, the "properties" of each nature are
conserved and both natures concur in one "person" and in one reality
[hypostasis]. They are not divided or cut into two persons, but are together the one and
only and only-begotten Word [Logos], God, the Lord Jesus Christ."
Now one could regard this to be a class of statements in the object language making a batch of ontological statements about the person of Christ. According to this interpretation, we must hold that there are such things as 'natures' comprised of classes of properties that append to the person (hypostasis) of Christ. These natures are distinctive classes of properties that are famously neither confused, transmuted or divided, contrasted, but nonetheless somehow "united" in the one person. It has be notoriously difficult to try to clarify the ontological situation here.
But one could perform a semantic ascent and place such discourse into the formal mode. Now the Definition gets read as a specification of the rules by which one will use a particular language. It is permitted that the term 'human' and term 'divine' both be predicated of the name 'Jesus Christ' even though the term 'human nature' has a set of entailments normally not in the set of entailments from 'divine nature'. (One could perform this semantic ascent in myriad and sundry ways, so please excuse my clumsiness here.)
In the formal mode, the ontological commitments of material mode interpretation are jettisoned, and the issue devolves to one of proper application of rules. Can a coherent set of rules be specified which permits the correct Christological affirmations and disallows those termed heretical? If such rules can be specified, then we are in a position - - with much of the tradition actually - - to talk about a specific theological grammar. The issue has become one of syntax. How are the words of theological theory used?
Now I want to introduce another topic that will connect with what I have just said. Notice how differently one investigates the ontological and the soteriological? While a causal analysis is not entailed in the first, it is in the second. Take, for instance, a set of abstract (existing) objects and the relationships that hold between them. The set of all triples does exist and, for all I know, it may be identical with the number '3'. One can make ontological assertions about these objects and no causal connection between them - - or between them and me - - is presupposed. But notice how different it is to speak about Jesus Christ. Here the very logic of discourse about Christ presupposes a causal connection with humanity - - including me. Christ could not be Christ without there being a saving causal relationship with respect to me. (Or at least this was true up until quite recently in the theological tradition. Clearly a Tillichian could hold that the symbol of the Christ existentially empowers without saying that the symbol has in itself causal power. The symbol in itself could be causally inert, yet a particular subject could respond to it in a particular way. This would make the symbol an abstract object. This understanding of 'Christ' is, I would argue, quite different from that of the tradition.)
Now I wish to introduce a final topic. Philosophers of science routinely distinguish realist from nonrealist interpretations of scientific theory. A realist with respect to pi mesons would regard the material mode presentation of pi meson theory - - theory in the object language - - to be making ontological claims about the way that the world is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. An irrealist interpretation would note the way that the object language of the theory behaves and understands that this behavior could have explanatory and predictive power - - in terms of the ways the rules work - - but would nonetheless not want to claim that in the nature of the case the world has such objects, properties and causal relationships specified by the theories.
Finally we come to the point. The semantics of 'Jesus Christ' at the time of the Definition assumed a material mode reading which was thoroughly soteriological. As the tradition developed and, in particular, was transformed by the Enlightenment, this original material mode ontological interpretation was increasingly transformed to a formal mode interpretation. (This argument can be made, I think, though there are a great many prima facie objections to this generalization that must be met.) As we moved away from the nineteenth century and its penchant for various forms of reductionism in theology, we entered into a phase of twentieth century theology that would assume - - whether it said so or not - - a regnant formal mode interpretation of theological language. What was important was the regular ways in which theological language was employed and the use to which it was put, not the ontology associated with a classical understanding of that language. (How else could metaphysics become disassociated from theology?) Theological irrealism could be made completely consistent with the correct use of theological language. As Wittgenstein trenchantly remarked, "What is important here is that the language-game is played."
The thing that is closest to Lutheran theology is the meaning of 'Jesus is the Christ'. It is this meaning, I argue, that has been fundamentally changed over the past centuries. Though the language-game continues to be played, and the rules can remain in principle specifiable, an unnoticed move to the formal mode has in reality happened. That this has happened is evidenced by how ontology has become divorced from eschatology. Eschatological/soteriological interpretations of theological language that are confidently assumed to not be ontological clearly evidence that the previous material mode interpretation of theological language has become in actuality a formal mode interpretation. No longer even is it deemed theologically central that theological realism hold, a realism that would have seemed necessary to the tradition if one were to have any real soteriology.
What has happened on our watch is that we have allowed the language of theology to remain formally correct while we have come to deem it relevant that it in fact refers! But clearly in the theological tradition reference was central to the question of the semantics of theological language. Unlike irrealist interpretations of scientific theory, realism in theology becomes necessary to hold the semantics of theological language consistent with the theological tradition.
Showing posts with label semantics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label semantics. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
An Interpretive Center
People sometimes remark that I oftentimes seem to write about putative philosophical issues rather then staying directly on task and use the theological language of our great Lutheran tradition. Why would this be? Is it that I somehow am not interested deeply in the traditional objects of Lutheran theological reflection?
No, this is not true. I believe that the center of Lutheran theology is the proclamation of the free grace of Jesus Christ appropriated in faith. When serving in the parish, I preached this each and every week. I believe that the external Word interprets itself, striking the human heart both as Law and Gospel, and that through this Word we are justified and made free lords before God and dutiful servants to one another. I believe that the great ecumenical creeds of the Church make definite truth-claims, and I routinely confess their truth. I believe that Jesus Christ was true God and true man, and believe in Lutheran fashion in the genus maiestaticum, as well as the genus idiomaticum and genus apotelesmaticum. So why talk about all of the philosophical issues if this theological core of beliefs is at the center of things?
The reason I am interested in discussing philosophical issues (mostly semantic and ontological) is because while Lutherans can still say all of the right things, they don't necessarily mean by these things what Lutherans once meant.
But why should this be a problem if all the same things are confessed? Surely there can be different philosophischen Rictungen among confessing Lutherans. After all, did not Wilhelm Hermann famously argue that metaphysics (and its variations) are irrelevant to solid, Lutheran confessional theology? Did not the young Luther scholar Wilhelm Link, (who died much too soon in the war) argue that Luther claimed the same thing? Isn't the greatness of Lutheran theology found in the freedom of interpretation in one's confessions? Surely, we ought not to confuse the left hand and the right hand of God, the hand of reason, law and philosophy, and the hand of faith, grace and theology!
Luther in his various disputations would occasionally quip that what was finally important in disputing was an agreement not merely in speech, but in the things (in res). An agreement as to what is held or asserted has been crucially important in the development of doctrine generally and within the Lutheran Confessions specifically. The question is this: How does this Lutheran commitment to the truth of propositions from the tradition and the Confessions get appropriated in our time? My considered opinion is that there is a great deal of confusion here, and my fear is that this confusion could be disastrous for the future of Lutheran theology.
When one plays baseball, one plays by baseball rules. There are three outs per side, both teams batting once constitutes an inning, and there are nine innings in a game. (I am thinking about the major and minor leagues with respect to this last point.) Proper theological language has rules as well. One must know how to use the word 'Father' and the word 'Son'. Specifically, one must be able to say 'The Son is God', 'The Father is God', without saying 'The Father is the Son'. Rules permitting the right expressions in the right linguistic circumstances and prohibiting the wrong ones in the wrong circumstances are notoriously difficult to formulate, but there is little doubt that there exist some set of rules that undergird the modus loquendi theologicus.
So far so good. One could in principle formulate a theological game as well as a game of black hole theory. Within contemporary cosmological theory, certain terms occur in particular statements and not within others. Prima facie there does not seem to be much different between the formal structure of a Trinitarian language and that language of any heavily theoretical discipline. There is a proper and improper way of using terms and phrases. The question now confronts us: Are the semantics of the two games the same?
On this there is much difference of opinion, of course. Many would say that there is extra-linguistic set of referents to which the language of black holes is anchored that is not available for the theoretical language of the Trinity. But why would this be so? Why would one think there is some res that black hole theory has the theology does not have? One would not think this - - unless one had previous opinions about what is possible ontologically for the Trinity over and against black holes.
Since the time of the Enlightenment, there has been an increasing sense in the former Christian West that the language of theology does not make truth claims. While most within popular culture - - I am not talking here about philosophers of science - - would claim that there are clear truth conditions for black hole theory, they would not, if they reflected some, claim easily that there are similar truth conditions in theology. The reason, of course, is that for tens of millions of people theological language simply can't be making truth claims because such language is an expression of individual and cultural value. There simply is no realm of theological facts such that the rules of theological language can govern a linguistic usage that can bring the language into contact with a domain of extra-linguistic referents. The fact/value distinction is wholly enshrined within contemporary culture, and this descendent from the Enlightenment must be dealt with before theological language is afforded the same opportunity to refer as the language of black holes.
My claim has been and continues to be that the interpretive center has been lost within much of Lutheran theology in the first part of the twenty-first century. The problem has been that a general cultural/intellectual commitment to the Enlightenment paradigm, especially Kant, has led millions to presuppose different semantic possibilities for that language than that which generally characterized the tradition. I am not saying that much of this is explicit. (Increasingly few people even know the name 'Kant'.) But middle school children learn that science is about facts and religion is about values. They don't know the torturous intellectual history that brought civilization to this "insight." They are taught this fact/value distinction as if it fell from the heavens. It is part of the Enlightenment paradigm, a paradigm that functions as the default ontological posit of our time. What I am saying is this: To continue to divorce theology and metaphysics and to allow the fact/value distinction to stand inviolate, is to allow theological language not to be about truth, and it is thus to allow theological language to assume a different semantics than it previously had.
The Institute of Lutheran Theology is grounded in Scripture and Confessions. It holds assiduously to classical confessional Lutheran theology. Professors at ILT are passionate about their commitment to Scriptural truth and authority as it is known and understood through the hermeneutical lens of the Confessions. While students are exposed to the great Biblical exegetes and the great theologians of the tradition, they learn the most important thing, I believe, that a school of theology can impart: ILT believes that it is true that God was in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and that because of this truth we have good grounds to preach and teach in His Name.
No, this is not true. I believe that the center of Lutheran theology is the proclamation of the free grace of Jesus Christ appropriated in faith. When serving in the parish, I preached this each and every week. I believe that the external Word interprets itself, striking the human heart both as Law and Gospel, and that through this Word we are justified and made free lords before God and dutiful servants to one another. I believe that the great ecumenical creeds of the Church make definite truth-claims, and I routinely confess their truth. I believe that Jesus Christ was true God and true man, and believe in Lutheran fashion in the genus maiestaticum, as well as the genus idiomaticum and genus apotelesmaticum. So why talk about all of the philosophical issues if this theological core of beliefs is at the center of things?
The reason I am interested in discussing philosophical issues (mostly semantic and ontological) is because while Lutherans can still say all of the right things, they don't necessarily mean by these things what Lutherans once meant.
But why should this be a problem if all the same things are confessed? Surely there can be different philosophischen Rictungen among confessing Lutherans. After all, did not Wilhelm Hermann famously argue that metaphysics (and its variations) are irrelevant to solid, Lutheran confessional theology? Did not the young Luther scholar Wilhelm Link, (who died much too soon in the war) argue that Luther claimed the same thing? Isn't the greatness of Lutheran theology found in the freedom of interpretation in one's confessions? Surely, we ought not to confuse the left hand and the right hand of God, the hand of reason, law and philosophy, and the hand of faith, grace and theology!
Luther in his various disputations would occasionally quip that what was finally important in disputing was an agreement not merely in speech, but in the things (in res). An agreement as to what is held or asserted has been crucially important in the development of doctrine generally and within the Lutheran Confessions specifically. The question is this: How does this Lutheran commitment to the truth of propositions from the tradition and the Confessions get appropriated in our time? My considered opinion is that there is a great deal of confusion here, and my fear is that this confusion could be disastrous for the future of Lutheran theology.
When one plays baseball, one plays by baseball rules. There are three outs per side, both teams batting once constitutes an inning, and there are nine innings in a game. (I am thinking about the major and minor leagues with respect to this last point.) Proper theological language has rules as well. One must know how to use the word 'Father' and the word 'Son'. Specifically, one must be able to say 'The Son is God', 'The Father is God', without saying 'The Father is the Son'. Rules permitting the right expressions in the right linguistic circumstances and prohibiting the wrong ones in the wrong circumstances are notoriously difficult to formulate, but there is little doubt that there exist some set of rules that undergird the modus loquendi theologicus.
So far so good. One could in principle formulate a theological game as well as a game of black hole theory. Within contemporary cosmological theory, certain terms occur in particular statements and not within others. Prima facie there does not seem to be much different between the formal structure of a Trinitarian language and that language of any heavily theoretical discipline. There is a proper and improper way of using terms and phrases. The question now confronts us: Are the semantics of the two games the same?
On this there is much difference of opinion, of course. Many would say that there is extra-linguistic set of referents to which the language of black holes is anchored that is not available for the theoretical language of the Trinity. But why would this be so? Why would one think there is some res that black hole theory has the theology does not have? One would not think this - - unless one had previous opinions about what is possible ontologically for the Trinity over and against black holes.
Since the time of the Enlightenment, there has been an increasing sense in the former Christian West that the language of theology does not make truth claims. While most within popular culture - - I am not talking here about philosophers of science - - would claim that there are clear truth conditions for black hole theory, they would not, if they reflected some, claim easily that there are similar truth conditions in theology. The reason, of course, is that for tens of millions of people theological language simply can't be making truth claims because such language is an expression of individual and cultural value. There simply is no realm of theological facts such that the rules of theological language can govern a linguistic usage that can bring the language into contact with a domain of extra-linguistic referents. The fact/value distinction is wholly enshrined within contemporary culture, and this descendent from the Enlightenment must be dealt with before theological language is afforded the same opportunity to refer as the language of black holes.
My claim has been and continues to be that the interpretive center has been lost within much of Lutheran theology in the first part of the twenty-first century. The problem has been that a general cultural/intellectual commitment to the Enlightenment paradigm, especially Kant, has led millions to presuppose different semantic possibilities for that language than that which generally characterized the tradition. I am not saying that much of this is explicit. (Increasingly few people even know the name 'Kant'.) But middle school children learn that science is about facts and religion is about values. They don't know the torturous intellectual history that brought civilization to this "insight." They are taught this fact/value distinction as if it fell from the heavens. It is part of the Enlightenment paradigm, a paradigm that functions as the default ontological posit of our time. What I am saying is this: To continue to divorce theology and metaphysics and to allow the fact/value distinction to stand inviolate, is to allow theological language not to be about truth, and it is thus to allow theological language to assume a different semantics than it previously had.
The Institute of Lutheran Theology is grounded in Scripture and Confessions. It holds assiduously to classical confessional Lutheran theology. Professors at ILT are passionate about their commitment to Scriptural truth and authority as it is known and understood through the hermeneutical lens of the Confessions. While students are exposed to the great Biblical exegetes and the great theologians of the tradition, they learn the most important thing, I believe, that a school of theology can impart: ILT believes that it is true that God was in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and that because of this truth we have good grounds to preach and teach in His Name.
Monday, January 09, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Can a Lutheran Semantics be Recovered?
For some time now I have been interested in theological semantics. Reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus thirty years ago, made me acutely aware of the problems we encounter when we try to talk about extra-worldly" things. (I include any talk about a talking about extra-worldly things as itself an extra-worldly thing.) Wittgenstein's distinction among propositions having Sinn (sense), those that are sinnlos (senseless), and those having nicht Sinn (nonsense), was for me very convincing that theology encounters significant problems in its speaking. Because I thought in those days that getting clear on semantics could be done independently from affirming or presupposing a metaphysic, I thought that there was some global problem with theological semantics. The language simply could not refer properly, it could not clearly affirm a state of affairs that one could falsify. Because I was hoping to become a theologian, the idea that the language of the trade was strictly speaking nonsense, caused me considerable discomfort.
While I am still somewhat uncomfortable with the general problem of theological language, over the the years I have gradually come to understand that a deep relationship exists between semantics and metaphysics and/or ontology. There simply are no semantic facts and judgments that can be made (or presupposed) independently of what one believes is that case. For the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, a metaphysical atomism nicely accompanies his semantic nominalism. If it is true that facts comprise the world - - "Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsache, nicht der Dingen - - and if there are not ethical, philosophical, aesthetic and theological facts, then the propositions purporting to talk about these things must be "pseudo-propositions." They look like they are making factual claims, but are finally not doing so.
Because of the press of many matters, I have not developed adequately what I regard to be the case: The Lutheran Reformers were unreflective theological realists and the presupposition of such a realism made them theological semantic realists as well. For those who wrote, read, debated, and signed the various confessional documents, there was simply no question that the language of the documents referred to divine entities, properties, events and states of affairs. Furthermore, because they believed that a divine realm exists outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language, the language could rather unproblematically connect to it, and state what is the case (or not the case) with respect to it. Confessions-talk is thus talk "in the material mode;" for the Reformers it made truth-claims of the world, for the world of the Reformers was filled with facts about which Wittgenstein would be astonished. His judgment that human language was unable to picture in logical space the transcendent was simply an admission of what philosophers since the Enlightenment presupposed: Talk of the divine was, in general, on very problematic epistemological footing.
This epistemic liability is related to ontology: One either says that we cannot affirm p because we cannot know that p is, or that we can affirm p even though we don't know for sure that p is - -or perhaps that our criterion of "for sure" has changed. In the Reformation period, when what it meant to know "for sure" was different than the Enlightenment, one could reasonably hold metaphysical facts that later became quite unreasonable. As it goes with metaphysics, so it goes with semantics. If it is unreasonable to hold a particular metaphysics, then it is reasonable to revise our language or, like Wittgenstein, claim that there is something about our natural language that makes it the case that it naturally can refer to states of affairs of a materialist or physicalist nature, but cannot picture a theological order at all.
We theologians who learned that the theological task must go through Kant learned to neglect certain questions and to prioritize others. The possibility of theological semantics (including theological truth) had to begin with a rejection of the very possibility of theological and semantic realism. Trained in the post-Kantian theological tradition, we looked at the texts of the Lutheran Confessions with quite different eyes than those who formulated, debated, and signed them. The questions that were of interest to us were naturally about things that could be of interest to us.
None of this is, of course, necessarilya bad thing. Classic texts have a deep fecundity; their history of interpretation takes them sometimes far from the contexts in which they are written. However, when the Churches of the Augsburg Confession find themselves no longer able deeply to recognize each other, then the question arises: When has the interpretation ceased any claim to normativity? How does one determine what is normative about such normativity in this case? Is there a set of presuppositions or affirmations that grounds a normative stance on the Confessions?
My sense is that Lutherans will continue to talk past each other as long as they are unwilling to articulate their ontologies. We live in a far different context than that of Wilhelm Hermann who claimed the independence of theological assertion from metaphysics. In a time where society and culture no longer grant a continuity of theological practice and expression (through a difference of ontological interpretation), people are searching again for authentic claims. They are not looking to find some way to justify the continued use of a theological language in the face of modern philosophical and scientific developments, but rather they search for a ground or reason to employ such language at all. As it was in the beginning of the Christian tradition, so it is now: The only reason to employ the language is that we Christians regard something to be true that non-Christians do not so regard. But the question of truth is always connected to the question of being. So it is that we Lutheran Christians must ask, "What is it that we hold to be so that others don't so hold, that is what it is apart from us, and that we sense the need to tell others about? What is this thing?
The Reformers could not have entertained this question without presupposing a rather explicit theological realism. The question for us is simply this: Can we? I used to think we could, but I no longer believe this. If Christ has not risen from the dead, than we Christians are the most to be pitied.
While I am still somewhat uncomfortable with the general problem of theological language, over the the years I have gradually come to understand that a deep relationship exists between semantics and metaphysics and/or ontology. There simply are no semantic facts and judgments that can be made (or presupposed) independently of what one believes is that case. For the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, a metaphysical atomism nicely accompanies his semantic nominalism. If it is true that facts comprise the world - - "Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsache, nicht der Dingen - - and if there are not ethical, philosophical, aesthetic and theological facts, then the propositions purporting to talk about these things must be "pseudo-propositions." They look like they are making factual claims, but are finally not doing so.
Because of the press of many matters, I have not developed adequately what I regard to be the case: The Lutheran Reformers were unreflective theological realists and the presupposition of such a realism made them theological semantic realists as well. For those who wrote, read, debated, and signed the various confessional documents, there was simply no question that the language of the documents referred to divine entities, properties, events and states of affairs. Furthermore, because they believed that a divine realm exists outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language, the language could rather unproblematically connect to it, and state what is the case (or not the case) with respect to it. Confessions-talk is thus talk "in the material mode;" for the Reformers it made truth-claims of the world, for the world of the Reformers was filled with facts about which Wittgenstein would be astonished. His judgment that human language was unable to picture in logical space the transcendent was simply an admission of what philosophers since the Enlightenment presupposed: Talk of the divine was, in general, on very problematic epistemological footing.
This epistemic liability is related to ontology: One either says that we cannot affirm p because we cannot know that p is, or that we can affirm p even though we don't know for sure that p is - -or perhaps that our criterion of "for sure" has changed. In the Reformation period, when what it meant to know "for sure" was different than the Enlightenment, one could reasonably hold metaphysical facts that later became quite unreasonable. As it goes with metaphysics, so it goes with semantics. If it is unreasonable to hold a particular metaphysics, then it is reasonable to revise our language or, like Wittgenstein, claim that there is something about our natural language that makes it the case that it naturally can refer to states of affairs of a materialist or physicalist nature, but cannot picture a theological order at all.
We theologians who learned that the theological task must go through Kant learned to neglect certain questions and to prioritize others. The possibility of theological semantics (including theological truth) had to begin with a rejection of the very possibility of theological and semantic realism. Trained in the post-Kantian theological tradition, we looked at the texts of the Lutheran Confessions with quite different eyes than those who formulated, debated, and signed them. The questions that were of interest to us were naturally about things that could be of interest to us.
None of this is, of course, necessarilya bad thing. Classic texts have a deep fecundity; their history of interpretation takes them sometimes far from the contexts in which they are written. However, when the Churches of the Augsburg Confession find themselves no longer able deeply to recognize each other, then the question arises: When has the interpretation ceased any claim to normativity? How does one determine what is normative about such normativity in this case? Is there a set of presuppositions or affirmations that grounds a normative stance on the Confessions?
My sense is that Lutherans will continue to talk past each other as long as they are unwilling to articulate their ontologies. We live in a far different context than that of Wilhelm Hermann who claimed the independence of theological assertion from metaphysics. In a time where society and culture no longer grant a continuity of theological practice and expression (through a difference of ontological interpretation), people are searching again for authentic claims. They are not looking to find some way to justify the continued use of a theological language in the face of modern philosophical and scientific developments, but rather they search for a ground or reason to employ such language at all. As it was in the beginning of the Christian tradition, so it is now: The only reason to employ the language is that we Christians regard something to be true that non-Christians do not so regard. But the question of truth is always connected to the question of being. So it is that we Lutheran Christians must ask, "What is it that we hold to be so that others don't so hold, that is what it is apart from us, and that we sense the need to tell others about? What is this thing?
The Reformers could not have entertained this question without presupposing a rather explicit theological realism. The question for us is simply this: Can we? I used to think we could, but I no longer believe this. If Christ has not risen from the dead, than we Christians are the most to be pitied.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
"Signum Philosophicum est Nota Absentis Rei, Signum Theologicum est Nota Praesentis Rei."
The words mean "the philosophical sign is a mark of an absent thing; the theological sign is a mark of a present thing." The proposition is recorded in the Tischreden of Luther (WATR 4.6666.8f), and it is used by Oswald Bayer (Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Introduction to state a general principle in Luther's semantics: "The signum itself is already the res; the linguistic sign is already the matter itself (52). For Bayer, the promissio that is the center of Luther's theology is unpacked by equating the word in language with the reality itself. In promises, words are not given either extensional (or even intensional) interpretations, but themselves are their own reality. This view of things - - which I have elsewhere termed the donational view of language - - is thought by Bayer to be the deepest presupposition of Luther's theological semantics, a view which Bayer claims is akin to the view countenanced by Austin in his 1955 Harvard lectures later published as How to Do Things with Words: the notion of performative language. Bayer writes:
"In contrast to every metaphysical set of statements that teach about the deity, this assertion [e.g. "To you is born this day a Savior"] declares that God's truth and will are not abstract entities, but are directed verbally and publicly as a concrete promise to a particular hearer in a specific situation. 'God' is apprehended as the one who makes a promise to a human being in such a way that the person who hears it can have full confidence in it" (53).
In evaluating this we must remember, of course, that it has proven difficult in practice actually to distinguish clearly performative and constative assertions. Bayer's position, however, supposes they can be compartmentalized. He goes on to say, in fact, that the performative sentences of promissio, for Luther, must be sharply distinguished either from the descriptive or the imperative. Quoting again:
" . . . one cannot take the promise, which is not a descriptive statement, and transform it into a descriptive statement. Secondly, one cannot take the promise, which is not in the form of a statement that shows how something ought to be done, and transform it into an imperative. . . . the truth of the promise . . . .is to be determined only at the very place that the promise was concluded; more accurately, where it was constituted. This means it is located within the relationship of the one who is speaking . . . . and the one who hears. . . . If it is correct that the one individual is in the position of hearer in the relationship that is constituted by this promise, and if that is verified, it excludes the possibility that he himself can verify the promise. . . . To seek to verify this oneself would be atheism; it would be no different than for me to try to verify myself in my own subjective piety or if I would seek to verify myself by means of a defined atheism. In such situations a human being wants to speak his own truth about himself, but he makes God into a liar in the process" (54-55).
There are a number of claims made here that must carefully be distinguished and examined. That there are such statements as "I promise to pay you $1000" is, of course, true. That such statements cannot be fully analyzed into a set of descriptive statements is true as well. Reporting is a different linguistic activity than promising. And that such statements are not themselves reductively analyzable into a set of imperative statements is true also. However, one must distinguish between a reduction of the performative to the descriptive and the imperative, and an unpacking of the palpable presuppositions that the performative has, presuppositions that are statable in terms of the descriptive and imperative.
In "I promise to pay $1000", the following statements are putatively presupposed: "I exist," "you exist," "$1000 exists," "I ought to pay you $1000." The first three sentences are descriptive, and the fourth imperative. Now notice that here the verba of the sentence do not themselves constitute the rem, but presuppose definite res: the existence of two agents, and the taking on of an obligation. This is not to say that 'x promises z to y' can be reduced to the existence of x, y and z, and a set of imperative statements concerning the three. There is more to promising than the taking on of an obligation. However, an obligation is nonetheless presupposed in the promising.
With regard to the promise of salvation "to me," it would seem that the same structure of presuppositions obtain: God exists, I exist, and some state of affairs to which 'salvation' properly applies exists (at least in a possible world) such that God is under obligation to bring about salvation to me. (This is rather jarring, of course, to think of God being under obligation, but it does seem like promising demands it. Maybe it is "analogical obligation" . . . . It seems that if God were to retain impassibility, promising could maybe not be attributed to God at all.)
But let us examine more close what Bayer has to say about truth and verification. He claims that the "truth of the promise is determined where it is constituted," in the one speaking and hearing. But what exactly, is this to mean? Clearly, Bayer here is not talking about a correspondence, coherence, or even pragmatic notion of truth. In fact, we are told, that the individual cannot verify the truth of the promise. To do so, moreover, would involve one in atheism. This claim demands analysis.
If 'Bob promises to pay me $1000 on April 1' and does not do so, he has broken his promise. This much is clear. Moreover, we would not normally say that his promise is true or false. It was, to use Austin's language, an "infelicitous' performative utterance, but it was not false. Truth or falsity does not append to promises qua promises. So it is not clear what the "truth of the promise" is supposed to mean. One could say that the promise was made, the promised being kept presupposed some state of affairs S, such that if S does not obtain then the promise is broken. Or alternately, one might say that the descriptively-stated presupposition for the keeping of the promise did not obtain such that that statement is not true. But this is not to say that the promise was false; it merely was not broken. One could then state whether it was true that the promise was broken. Such statements about promises have definite truth conditions; we can easily verify when they might be true or false. Bayer does not seem interested, however, in the truth-value of statements about felicitous performative promise statements, but rather about promises themselves.
Bayer's discussion of verification is quite an independent issue from putative presuppositions of promise-making. It might be atheism, I suppose, to claim that we can verify the truth of the descriptive statements that state of affairs S obtains such that S makes true the truth of the statement, 'God has kept promise P'. But I am not sure anything could finally count against the claim that God's promises are kept. One might, in fact, claim this as an analytical truth, or better, a rule by which we play the language-game of the Christian God. Clearly, there are a number of issues that Bayer needs to clarify.
Personally, I have always been chary of the move to an exclusive analysis of fundamental theological assertions in terms of performative utterances, a move that does not presuppose metaphysical and philosophical assertions like these:
What Luther was talking about in the Tischreden concerns the ontological situation, not the semantic one. Luther knows that the language of theology must always refer to that which is present because, God truly is ubiquitously present in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Later in the text, Bayer makes clear, for Luther, that philosophy knows neither the efficient or final cause of this world. Perhaps Luther's statement quoted at the beginning of this post has more to do with this, than a general denial of extra-linguistic signification in the primary assertions of theology.
"In contrast to every metaphysical set of statements that teach about the deity, this assertion [e.g. "To you is born this day a Savior"] declares that God's truth and will are not abstract entities, but are directed verbally and publicly as a concrete promise to a particular hearer in a specific situation. 'God' is apprehended as the one who makes a promise to a human being in such a way that the person who hears it can have full confidence in it" (53).
In evaluating this we must remember, of course, that it has proven difficult in practice actually to distinguish clearly performative and constative assertions. Bayer's position, however, supposes they can be compartmentalized. He goes on to say, in fact, that the performative sentences of promissio, for Luther, must be sharply distinguished either from the descriptive or the imperative. Quoting again:
" . . . one cannot take the promise, which is not a descriptive statement, and transform it into a descriptive statement. Secondly, one cannot take the promise, which is not in the form of a statement that shows how something ought to be done, and transform it into an imperative. . . . the truth of the promise . . . .is to be determined only at the very place that the promise was concluded; more accurately, where it was constituted. This means it is located within the relationship of the one who is speaking . . . . and the one who hears. . . . If it is correct that the one individual is in the position of hearer in the relationship that is constituted by this promise, and if that is verified, it excludes the possibility that he himself can verify the promise. . . . To seek to verify this oneself would be atheism; it would be no different than for me to try to verify myself in my own subjective piety or if I would seek to verify myself by means of a defined atheism. In such situations a human being wants to speak his own truth about himself, but he makes God into a liar in the process" (54-55).
There are a number of claims made here that must carefully be distinguished and examined. That there are such statements as "I promise to pay you $1000" is, of course, true. That such statements cannot be fully analyzed into a set of descriptive statements is true as well. Reporting is a different linguistic activity than promising. And that such statements are not themselves reductively analyzable into a set of imperative statements is true also. However, one must distinguish between a reduction of the performative to the descriptive and the imperative, and an unpacking of the palpable presuppositions that the performative has, presuppositions that are statable in terms of the descriptive and imperative.
In "I promise to pay $1000", the following statements are putatively presupposed: "I exist," "you exist," "$1000 exists," "I ought to pay you $1000." The first three sentences are descriptive, and the fourth imperative. Now notice that here the verba of the sentence do not themselves constitute the rem, but presuppose definite res: the existence of two agents, and the taking on of an obligation. This is not to say that 'x promises z to y' can be reduced to the existence of x, y and z, and a set of imperative statements concerning the three. There is more to promising than the taking on of an obligation. However, an obligation is nonetheless presupposed in the promising.
With regard to the promise of salvation "to me," it would seem that the same structure of presuppositions obtain: God exists, I exist, and some state of affairs to which 'salvation' properly applies exists (at least in a possible world) such that God is under obligation to bring about salvation to me. (This is rather jarring, of course, to think of God being under obligation, but it does seem like promising demands it. Maybe it is "analogical obligation" . . . . It seems that if God were to retain impassibility, promising could maybe not be attributed to God at all.)
But let us examine more close what Bayer has to say about truth and verification. He claims that the "truth of the promise is determined where it is constituted," in the one speaking and hearing. But what exactly, is this to mean? Clearly, Bayer here is not talking about a correspondence, coherence, or even pragmatic notion of truth. In fact, we are told, that the individual cannot verify the truth of the promise. To do so, moreover, would involve one in atheism. This claim demands analysis.
If 'Bob promises to pay me $1000 on April 1' and does not do so, he has broken his promise. This much is clear. Moreover, we would not normally say that his promise is true or false. It was, to use Austin's language, an "infelicitous' performative utterance, but it was not false. Truth or falsity does not append to promises qua promises. So it is not clear what the "truth of the promise" is supposed to mean. One could say that the promise was made, the promised being kept presupposed some state of affairs S, such that if S does not obtain then the promise is broken. Or alternately, one might say that the descriptively-stated presupposition for the keeping of the promise did not obtain such that that statement is not true. But this is not to say that the promise was false; it merely was not broken. One could then state whether it was true that the promise was broken. Such statements about promises have definite truth conditions; we can easily verify when they might be true or false. Bayer does not seem interested, however, in the truth-value of statements about felicitous performative promise statements, but rather about promises themselves.
Bayer's discussion of verification is quite an independent issue from putative presuppositions of promise-making. It might be atheism, I suppose, to claim that we can verify the truth of the descriptive statements that state of affairs S obtains such that S makes true the truth of the statement, 'God has kept promise P'. But I am not sure anything could finally count against the claim that God's promises are kept. One might, in fact, claim this as an analytical truth, or better, a rule by which we play the language-game of the Christian God. Clearly, there are a number of issues that Bayer needs to clarify.
Personally, I have always been chary of the move to an exclusive analysis of fundamental theological assertions in terms of performative utterances, a move that does not presuppose metaphysical and philosophical assertions like these:
- There is a God
- This God has intentionality towards His creation
- One attitude of divine intentionality is promising, and promising keeping
- Agents exist who are so constituted as to be cable of being promised to by God.
- The ontological and semantic situations are different than epistemological one: Truth is logically distinct from verification
What Luther was talking about in the Tischreden concerns the ontological situation, not the semantic one. Luther knows that the language of theology must always refer to that which is present because, God truly is ubiquitously present in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Later in the text, Bayer makes clear, for Luther, that philosophy knows neither the efficient or final cause of this world. Perhaps Luther's statement quoted at the beginning of this post has more to do with this, than a general denial of extra-linguistic signification in the primary assertions of theology.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - The Problem III
In theology, truth ought always to be at issue. Yet in many Protestant congregations, it seems like it is no longer important what people believe. Many Protestant pastors, and some lay people, no longer regard theological language as in principle either true or false. Instead, what is held up as being important is how the people in the congregation get along, how they feel, and what they do, or shall do, in the community. Although all might confess the same creed, what is meant be their confessions can vary from person to person and from community to community. It is not clear what is being asserted, or whether anything at all is being asserted. For some, theological language clearly operates as if it expresses no propositions at all.
To make matters even more confusing, we live in a very relativistic age. If two people disagree upon what is beautiful, must one of them be wrong? Most would agree that clearly "beauty lies in the eye of the beholder."
But what about goodness and truth? If two people disagree upon what is good, must one of them be wrong? Twenty years ago my college students would divide upon whether one person must be wrong in such a situation. But times have changed. Now my informal surveys of student opinion show that almost 90% now think that "goodness lies in the hand of the doer'. Just as aesthetics has been subjectivized, so too has ethics. What is right for me is no longer what is right for you - - yet somehow there is something right for each of us.
Truth itself is under attack: At least within the undergraduate university population, truth has been relativized along with beauty and the good. What is true for x may not be true for y. While A is true for x, not-A is true for y. All of this is extremely problematic, for it is not at all clear we can even use 'right' and 'true' correctly, if we strip each of any normative status. Accordingly, it is not at all clear that 'x is true for A, but not-true for B' does not express a contradiction, an assocation of words that cannot pick out a class of objects or actions in any possible world.
The problem is a very profound one. Even if we can hold onto truth, and even if we do believe that classes of statements do succeed in stating the facts, we are confronted with the old distinction between facts and values. Grounded in the work of Logical Atomism, and the harder edge of the Enlightenment critique, this distinction succeeds in placing all of the big questions, the theologcal questions, in the realm of subjective value.
Some statements are said to express facts, and facts are supposed to be objective, about the world, and concerned with truth and reason. Values, on the other hand, are thought to be subjective and about ourselves. Values concern our feelings, and are neither right nor wrong. Accordingly, value judgments are neither true nor false.
While many regard scientific language as having truth-conditions, many deny that the sentences of theology have the same truth conditions. An expression has a truth condition if and only if it states the contour of the world were it to be true. Thus, 'the cat is on the mat' is true if and only if there is a cat, a mat, and the cat is on the mat - - these are its truth-conditions. But does theological language actually state what the world must be like if the statements of theology are to be regarded as true? Is 'God is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' true if and only if there is a God, this God is in Christ, and this God is reconciling the world unto Himself, or does theological language lack truth conditions entirely?
The dominant theological tradition within academic theological circles the last 60 years has uniquivocally said, 'No' - - our theological language lacks truth conditions entirely. And even if it were somehow to retain them, the theological language is not really about the divine after all. This certainly would have surprised Martin Luther, who believed one could actually claim certain things true and certain things false of the divine. (Luther was, as it turns out, a semantic realist - - but more of that later.)
There are so many confusions we face. People profess belief in God, but do not know what they mean by the term 'God'. They use theological language, but yet regard their assertions as being merely "true for them." They pray to God to change things, but do not really believe that God is, or even can be, causally active in the universe. Many people, usually with some deeper theological orientation, deny God's presence in nature even though they claim that he remains readily available in His Word. The effect, of course, is to disconnect the Word of God (Christ) from the reality of nature completely. Finally, people believe that that Scripture has authority, that it confronts us as witnessing to the Lordship of Christ, but they really don't think through what could be the grounds of that authority. Why is this book authoritative because it witness to Christ and another ancient book not because it witness to another God?
It is time that we re-think the issues. We simply must as Lutherans reflect again upon the very presuppositions of our theology. Such a "thinking after" (Nachdenken) theology shall demand deeper ontological, semantic, and epistemological reflections than has recently predominated in theological thinking. In order to get clear about what claims are made in theology - - or even that any claims are made - - we must return again to the basics. We must ask ourselves what the possibilities of the world are upon which we map our theological language. We must ask ourselves about the mapping function itself: What is the naming function by which our theological language putatively refers to elements in the world? Finally, we can ask how we might know that the world has a definite ontological contour, and how this world might be referred to by theological language.
We shall not begin as we have begun theology in the recent past; we shall not begin with the epistemological question. Instead, we shall return to the presuppositions of the Reformers themselves: We shall ask the ontological and semantic questions first, seek clarity on them, and only afterwards move to other questions. In theology, at least, we must affirm the ancient view that epistemology recapitulates ontology, and not the converse. How the divine world is, is not itself constituted by our knowing of it, but rather our knowing of it, is conditioned by how the divine world is.
To make matters even more confusing, we live in a very relativistic age. If two people disagree upon what is beautiful, must one of them be wrong? Most would agree that clearly "beauty lies in the eye of the beholder."
But what about goodness and truth? If two people disagree upon what is good, must one of them be wrong? Twenty years ago my college students would divide upon whether one person must be wrong in such a situation. But times have changed. Now my informal surveys of student opinion show that almost 90% now think that "goodness lies in the hand of the doer'. Just as aesthetics has been subjectivized, so too has ethics. What is right for me is no longer what is right for you - - yet somehow there is something right for each of us.
Truth itself is under attack: At least within the undergraduate university population, truth has been relativized along with beauty and the good. What is true for x may not be true for y. While A is true for x, not-A is true for y. All of this is extremely problematic, for it is not at all clear we can even use 'right' and 'true' correctly, if we strip each of any normative status. Accordingly, it is not at all clear that 'x is true for A, but not-true for B' does not express a contradiction, an assocation of words that cannot pick out a class of objects or actions in any possible world.
With the problem of truth now raised in such a stark matter, the tension between relativism and the possibility of doctrine arises. It seems that theology has always held certain things to be true of God, and claimed other things not to be turue. The Apostle's, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds have historically made truth-claims about God and His relationship to human beings. But what exactly does 'claiming these creeds true' now mean. Does it mean these creeds merely strike us well, that we simply like how they somehow make us feel, or that we are members of the Lutheran tribe, and Lutherans say such things?
The problem is a very profound one. Even if we can hold onto truth, and even if we do believe that classes of statements do succeed in stating the facts, we are confronted with the old distinction between facts and values. Grounded in the work of Logical Atomism, and the harder edge of the Enlightenment critique, this distinction succeeds in placing all of the big questions, the theologcal questions, in the realm of subjective value.
Some statements are said to express facts, and facts are supposed to be objective, about the world, and concerned with truth and reason. Values, on the other hand, are thought to be subjective and about ourselves. Values concern our feelings, and are neither right nor wrong. Accordingly, value judgments are neither true nor false.
While many regard scientific language as having truth-conditions, many deny that the sentences of theology have the same truth conditions. An expression has a truth condition if and only if it states the contour of the world were it to be true. Thus, 'the cat is on the mat' is true if and only if there is a cat, a mat, and the cat is on the mat - - these are its truth-conditions. But does theological language actually state what the world must be like if the statements of theology are to be regarded as true? Is 'God is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' true if and only if there is a God, this God is in Christ, and this God is reconciling the world unto Himself, or does theological language lack truth conditions entirely?
The dominant theological tradition within academic theological circles the last 60 years has uniquivocally said, 'No' - - our theological language lacks truth conditions entirely. And even if it were somehow to retain them, the theological language is not really about the divine after all. This certainly would have surprised Martin Luther, who believed one could actually claim certain things true and certain things false of the divine. (Luther was, as it turns out, a semantic realist - - but more of that later.)
There are so many confusions we face. People profess belief in God, but do not know what they mean by the term 'God'. They use theological language, but yet regard their assertions as being merely "true for them." They pray to God to change things, but do not really believe that God is, or even can be, causally active in the universe. Many people, usually with some deeper theological orientation, deny God's presence in nature even though they claim that he remains readily available in His Word. The effect, of course, is to disconnect the Word of God (Christ) from the reality of nature completely. Finally, people believe that that Scripture has authority, that it confronts us as witnessing to the Lordship of Christ, but they really don't think through what could be the grounds of that authority. Why is this book authoritative because it witness to Christ and another ancient book not because it witness to another God?
It is time that we re-think the issues. We simply must as Lutherans reflect again upon the very presuppositions of our theology. Such a "thinking after" (Nachdenken) theology shall demand deeper ontological, semantic, and epistemological reflections than has recently predominated in theological thinking. In order to get clear about what claims are made in theology - - or even that any claims are made - - we must return again to the basics. We must ask ourselves what the possibilities of the world are upon which we map our theological language. We must ask ourselves about the mapping function itself: What is the naming function by which our theological language putatively refers to elements in the world? Finally, we can ask how we might know that the world has a definite ontological contour, and how this world might be referred to by theological language.
We shall not begin as we have begun theology in the recent past; we shall not begin with the epistemological question. Instead, we shall return to the presuppositions of the Reformers themselves: We shall ask the ontological and semantic questions first, seek clarity on them, and only afterwards move to other questions. In theology, at least, we must affirm the ancient view that epistemology recapitulates ontology, and not the converse. How the divine world is, is not itself constituted by our knowing of it, but rather our knowing of it, is conditioned by how the divine world is.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - The Problem II
As we talked about in the last post, "metatheology" is a second-order discourse investigation the meaning, grounds, and truth-conditions of the first-order discourse of theology. Clearly, in order to evaluate theological statements, one first must understand what is meant be them, i.e., one must assign to them a semantics or "intepretation." Furthermore, in order to make any meaningful progress in theology, one must first understand what conditions would have to obtain in order for one's theological assertions to be true.
But many would no doubt claim that agreement on first-order theological statements is difficult enough. Why even try to move to agreement upon second-order statements, when the first-order ones remain nonspecified? While metatheological inquiry into the truth and meaning of theological utterances is crucially important, merely holding to the assertions of the historical faith is difficult enough today. It is precisely because of this difficulty that there have been myriad and divers attempts over the last 150 years ago to state clearly the content of the Christian faith.
In the early 1900s, a trans-denominational Protestant movement, worried about the drift away from a specifiable normative content to Christian faith, produced a list purportedly displaying necessary conditions for the general content of the Christian faith. They asserted that authentic Christianity must believe in these:
◦The virgin birth and deity of Christ;
◦The substitutionary theory of atonement;
◦The bodily resurrection of Christ;
◦The physical return of Jesus Christ in the Second Coming;
◦The inerrancy of Scriptures.
Without these five assertions, they thought, the content of the Christian faith could not itself be defined as Christian faith. (I am not here advocating that belief in Scriptural inerrancy is a necessary condition for Christian belief, but merely reporting what was promulgated by this group.)
In addition to these assertions, Lutherans might add other content statements that specify authentic Lutheran expressions of the Christian faith. George Forell has provided the following list:
—Justification by grace through faith;
—The theology of the cross;
—Law and gospel proclamation;
—The simul iustus et peccator;
—The assertion of the Infinite being available in and through the finite (finitus capax infiniti).
This is a very good list, I believe, and those who advocate all five should probably be regarded as holding to a Lutheran theological position.
It is clear then that one could be concerned about the contour of the faith. Those so concerned about contour locate those assertions necessary and sufficient for Christian faith to be Christian faith. Speaking philosophically, they are concerned with discerning the “identity conditions” of the faith, that is, they are interested in ascertaining those properties of the Christian faith without which it ceases to be Christian faith.
To reiterate, however, the point I am making is not that the general contour of Lutheran confessional is in doubt. Lutheran theologians continue to hold to the specific language of the tradtion. The problem, however, is that that the contour of the tradtion is polyvalent, and Lutheran theology has failed here to pay enough attention to this polyvalency.
Clearly, he central assertions of theology can sustain multiple meanings depending upon what one believes actually obtains, i.e., the possibility of meaning is tied to one’s ontological commitments. If one believes that the universe is a kind of place where there can be a God that exists as a being over and against it, then 'God’ might be understood, as Ockham understood it, to refer to a supreme being having all positive predicates to the infinite degree. However, if one blieves that the universe is not the kind of place where it is either in principle possible, or likely, that there exist a being existing on its own that can in principle exist apart from it, then 'God' might be defined, as Schleiermacher defines it, as the “whence of the feeling of absolute dependence,” or much later, as Tillich understood it, as “the depth of being.”
One's ontological presuppositions deeply influence what can be meant by a true sentence. Standardly, we claim that sentences express propositions, and these propositions are a statement of how the world might be. To say that a proposition is possible is to say that there is a possible world in which the world is the way that the proposition states it. To say that a proposition is necessary is to say that in all possible worlds the world is the way the proposition states it. To say that a statement is true is to say that in the actual world the world is the way the proposition states it, and to say that a statement is false is to claim that in the actual world the world is not the way the proposition claims. Clearly, to know whether a theological sentence is true, false, possible or necessary requires that we know what proposition is stated by the sentence, it is to know how the world must be in order for the statement to be true. The meaning of the sentence consists simply in this grasp of how the world must be in order for the proposition expressed by the sentence to be true.
Luther claims in throughout his disputations that the res (the things denoted by language) are more important than the verba (the words of language themselves) in understanding the articles of faith (articuli fidei). In order to know what an article of faith really is, one must know what is claimed in the article, one must know how the world would have to be were the article of faith to be true. It is to this question of truth that we now must turn.
But many would no doubt claim that agreement on first-order theological statements is difficult enough. Why even try to move to agreement upon second-order statements, when the first-order ones remain nonspecified? While metatheological inquiry into the truth and meaning of theological utterances is crucially important, merely holding to the assertions of the historical faith is difficult enough today. It is precisely because of this difficulty that there have been myriad and divers attempts over the last 150 years ago to state clearly the content of the Christian faith.
In the early 1900s, a trans-denominational Protestant movement, worried about the drift away from a specifiable normative content to Christian faith, produced a list purportedly displaying necessary conditions for the general content of the Christian faith. They asserted that authentic Christianity must believe in these:
◦The virgin birth and deity of Christ;
◦The substitutionary theory of atonement;
◦The bodily resurrection of Christ;
◦The physical return of Jesus Christ in the Second Coming;
◦The inerrancy of Scriptures.
Without these five assertions, they thought, the content of the Christian faith could not itself be defined as Christian faith. (I am not here advocating that belief in Scriptural inerrancy is a necessary condition for Christian belief, but merely reporting what was promulgated by this group.)
In addition to these assertions, Lutherans might add other content statements that specify authentic Lutheran expressions of the Christian faith. George Forell has provided the following list:
—Justification by grace through faith;
—The theology of the cross;
—Law and gospel proclamation;
—The simul iustus et peccator;
—The assertion of the Infinite being available in and through the finite (finitus capax infiniti).
This is a very good list, I believe, and those who advocate all five should probably be regarded as holding to a Lutheran theological position.
It is clear then that one could be concerned about the contour of the faith. Those so concerned about contour locate those assertions necessary and sufficient for Christian faith to be Christian faith. Speaking philosophically, they are concerned with discerning the “identity conditions” of the faith, that is, they are interested in ascertaining those properties of the Christian faith without which it ceases to be Christian faith.
To reiterate, however, the point I am making is not that the general contour of Lutheran confessional is in doubt. Lutheran theologians continue to hold to the specific language of the tradtion. The problem, however, is that that the contour of the tradtion is polyvalent, and Lutheran theology has failed here to pay enough attention to this polyvalency.
Clearly, he central assertions of theology can sustain multiple meanings depending upon what one believes actually obtains, i.e., the possibility of meaning is tied to one’s ontological commitments. If one believes that the universe is a kind of place where there can be a God that exists as a being over and against it, then 'God’ might be understood, as Ockham understood it, to refer to a supreme being having all positive predicates to the infinite degree. However, if one blieves that the universe is not the kind of place where it is either in principle possible, or likely, that there exist a being existing on its own that can in principle exist apart from it, then 'God' might be defined, as Schleiermacher defines it, as the “whence of the feeling of absolute dependence,” or much later, as Tillich understood it, as “the depth of being.”
One's ontological presuppositions deeply influence what can be meant by a true sentence. Standardly, we claim that sentences express propositions, and these propositions are a statement of how the world might be. To say that a proposition is possible is to say that there is a possible world in which the world is the way that the proposition states it. To say that a proposition is necessary is to say that in all possible worlds the world is the way the proposition states it. To say that a statement is true is to say that in the actual world the world is the way the proposition states it, and to say that a statement is false is to claim that in the actual world the world is not the way the proposition claims. Clearly, to know whether a theological sentence is true, false, possible or necessary requires that we know what proposition is stated by the sentence, it is to know how the world must be in order for the statement to be true. The meaning of the sentence consists simply in this grasp of how the world must be in order for the proposition expressed by the sentence to be true.
Luther claims in throughout his disputations that the res (the things denoted by language) are more important than the verba (the words of language themselves) in understanding the articles of faith (articuli fidei). In order to know what an article of faith really is, one must know what is claimed in the article, one must know how the world would have to be were the article of faith to be true. It is to this question of truth that we now must turn.
Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - The Problem I
I claim that there is a deep problem infecting Lutheran theology as it is now commonly conceived and practiced. But what is the problem? Why claim that we must reclaim our Lutheran heritage? Has it been lost? Don't many Lutherans still base their judgments on Scripture, Creed and Confession? Are not many still good Christians, living out their justified life in the world? Why fix something that is not broken?
But it is broken. Within the ELCA we have witnessed the adoption of the Formula of Agreement, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, and Called to Common Mission. The first claims that fundamental theological agreement has been reached with the Reformed churches on the sacraments, even though Lutherans and the Reformed have traditionally claimed a difference on the ontological status of the Christ's "real presence" in the sacraments. The second claims that there is now fundamental theological agreement with the Roman Catholic tradition on the doctrine of justification, even through Lutherans and Catholics continue to disagree on the very nature of justification, the first claiming that one can be totally sinful while justified, the latter disagreeing. The third claims that there is agreement with the Anglican tradition on the conception and practice of the historic episcopate, even though Lutherans and Anglicans continue to disagree even upon what the ontological status of the church really is.
Things are not much better in other Lutheran traditions. The new Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ have successfully structured themselves ecclesially so that all governance is local. Ironically, however, those clammering to leave the ELCA because of its theological drift now find themselves in an ecclesial community where there are vast differences of theology and practice from congregation to congregation. Enthusiasm, the doctrine against which Luther repeatedly inveiged, is practiced and advocated openly within some circles. Far from a "working theology" based in the Lutheran Confessions, the theology of many within LCMC seems more at home in the American Evangelical Movement in general.
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has its problems as well. While the confessional starting point has never been in doubt in Missiouri, we find now an emerging church growth movement and methodology seemingly developing in marked tension with that confessional starting point. Issues of ecclesial authority abound, and the Ablaze program has generated discord and controversy within traditional confessional circles.
It seems that doctrinal pluralism infects much of the expression of North American Lutheranism, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. Many in the pews no longer know even what it is to be Lutheran. Generations of downplaying catechetical content has eventuated in a scores of Lutherans who have not the vaguest knowledge of what classical Lutheran theological teaching really is. Pastors trained weakly in Lutheran systematics and homeletics abandon law and gospel preaching for the greener pastures of prophetic utterance, practical advise, and the sure and steady assertion that "God loves you."
But what exactly is the problem?
—Is it that Lutherans no longer speak of the centrality of Christ?
—Is it that Lutherans no longer speak of the authority of Scripture?
—Is it that Lutherans now set out to reject their traditional Confessions?
—Is it that Lutherans no longer claim to believe in God?
No! Suprisingly, the assertion and profession of beliefs seem quite the same. Preaching and teaching still talk about Christ; church, syodical, and churchwide constitutions still declare the authority of Scripture; and the Confessions are elevated as normative texts for our tradition. Moreover, pastors, leaders and people in the pews generally continue to assert belief in God. Unlike Europe, Americans still overwhelmingly report that they believe that God exists, that there is an after life, and Christ has died for their sins. So what is the difference? What has happened? It is my conviction that while the assertion of beliefs have remained relatively constant, what has changed our the presuppositions about the meaning and truth of these assertions.
Every sudent who has ever taken an introductory logic course knows the difference between syntax and semantics. Syntax deals with the form and structure of language (its "grammar"), while semantics concernces the meaning and truth of language (its "interpretation"). Accordingly, we must distinguish the mere assertion of a locution from that which is meant by the locution. For instance, I can utter the following:
1) I sat in the bank.
2) I sat on the bank.
(1) is clearly true if I mean by 'bank' 'that building where I go to deposit and withdraw money'. It is false if I mean by it 'that upon which I sit when I fish in the creek'. Conversely, (2) is clearly false under the first interpretation ('that building where I go to deposit and withdraw money') and clearly true under the second intepretation. I believe that the elementary distinction between the syntax and semantics of theological expressions has been lost generally within theology, and most decidedly within the practice of most Lutheran theology.
Related to the question of an expression's meaning is the question as to its truth. Again, every introductory logic student is aware of the question of a statements truth conditions, that is, they are aware of the question as to what conditions must exist in order for a statement to be true. Logic students know that the truth conditions for 'p & q' is the truth of p and the truth of q. They learn that standardly the truth conditions for p itself (e.g., 'snow is white') just is that state of affairs such that snow is white. The truth condition of an atomic sentences like 'the cat is black' just is a specification of what the world would have to be like for the sentence to be true.
Although we do not routinely use the term, the word 'metatheology' should be reserved and used for that second-order investigation about the meaning of, and the truth-conditions for, theological assertions. Just as metaethics explores the meaning, conditions and grounds of normative ethical assertions, metatheology deals with the meaning, conditions and grounds of theological statements. For too long within the practice of Lutheran theology, there has been a rush to talk about the truth of theological statements - - and the agreement of such statements with other statements - - without first investigating even what those statements mean, and without specifying what the world would have to be like were those statements to be true.
But it is broken. Within the ELCA we have witnessed the adoption of the Formula of Agreement, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, and Called to Common Mission. The first claims that fundamental theological agreement has been reached with the Reformed churches on the sacraments, even though Lutherans and the Reformed have traditionally claimed a difference on the ontological status of the Christ's "real presence" in the sacraments. The second claims that there is now fundamental theological agreement with the Roman Catholic tradition on the doctrine of justification, even through Lutherans and Catholics continue to disagree on the very nature of justification, the first claiming that one can be totally sinful while justified, the latter disagreeing. The third claims that there is agreement with the Anglican tradition on the conception and practice of the historic episcopate, even though Lutherans and Anglicans continue to disagree even upon what the ontological status of the church really is.
Things are not much better in other Lutheran traditions. The new Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ have successfully structured themselves ecclesially so that all governance is local. Ironically, however, those clammering to leave the ELCA because of its theological drift now find themselves in an ecclesial community where there are vast differences of theology and practice from congregation to congregation. Enthusiasm, the doctrine against which Luther repeatedly inveiged, is practiced and advocated openly within some circles. Far from a "working theology" based in the Lutheran Confessions, the theology of many within LCMC seems more at home in the American Evangelical Movement in general.
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has its problems as well. While the confessional starting point has never been in doubt in Missiouri, we find now an emerging church growth movement and methodology seemingly developing in marked tension with that confessional starting point. Issues of ecclesial authority abound, and the Ablaze program has generated discord and controversy within traditional confessional circles.
It seems that doctrinal pluralism infects much of the expression of North American Lutheranism, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. Many in the pews no longer know even what it is to be Lutheran. Generations of downplaying catechetical content has eventuated in a scores of Lutherans who have not the vaguest knowledge of what classical Lutheran theological teaching really is. Pastors trained weakly in Lutheran systematics and homeletics abandon law and gospel preaching for the greener pastures of prophetic utterance, practical advise, and the sure and steady assertion that "God loves you."
But what exactly is the problem?
—Is it that Lutherans no longer speak of the centrality of Christ?
—Is it that Lutherans no longer speak of the authority of Scripture?
—Is it that Lutherans now set out to reject their traditional Confessions?
—Is it that Lutherans no longer claim to believe in God?
No! Suprisingly, the assertion and profession of beliefs seem quite the same. Preaching and teaching still talk about Christ; church, syodical, and churchwide constitutions still declare the authority of Scripture; and the Confessions are elevated as normative texts for our tradition. Moreover, pastors, leaders and people in the pews generally continue to assert belief in God. Unlike Europe, Americans still overwhelmingly report that they believe that God exists, that there is an after life, and Christ has died for their sins. So what is the difference? What has happened? It is my conviction that while the assertion of beliefs have remained relatively constant, what has changed our the presuppositions about the meaning and truth of these assertions.
Every sudent who has ever taken an introductory logic course knows the difference between syntax and semantics. Syntax deals with the form and structure of language (its "grammar"), while semantics concernces the meaning and truth of language (its "interpretation"). Accordingly, we must distinguish the mere assertion of a locution from that which is meant by the locution. For instance, I can utter the following:
1) I sat in the bank.
2) I sat on the bank.
(1) is clearly true if I mean by 'bank' 'that building where I go to deposit and withdraw money'. It is false if I mean by it 'that upon which I sit when I fish in the creek'. Conversely, (2) is clearly false under the first interpretation ('that building where I go to deposit and withdraw money') and clearly true under the second intepretation. I believe that the elementary distinction between the syntax and semantics of theological expressions has been lost generally within theology, and most decidedly within the practice of most Lutheran theology.
Related to the question of an expression's meaning is the question as to its truth. Again, every introductory logic student is aware of the question of a statements truth conditions, that is, they are aware of the question as to what conditions must exist in order for a statement to be true. Logic students know that the truth conditions for 'p & q' is the truth of p and the truth of q. They learn that standardly the truth conditions for p itself (e.g., 'snow is white') just is that state of affairs such that snow is white. The truth condition of an atomic sentences like 'the cat is black' just is a specification of what the world would have to be like for the sentence to be true.
Although we do not routinely use the term, the word 'metatheology' should be reserved and used for that second-order investigation about the meaning of, and the truth-conditions for, theological assertions. Just as metaethics explores the meaning, conditions and grounds of normative ethical assertions, metatheology deals with the meaning, conditions and grounds of theological statements. For too long within the practice of Lutheran theology, there has been a rush to talk about the truth of theological statements - - and the agreement of such statements with other statements - - without first investigating even what those statements mean, and without specifying what the world would have to be like were those statements to be true.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Towards a Lutheran Theological Semantics III
Imagine two theories T1 and T2 indiscernible with respect to their syntax. To give an interpretation to this syntax is to define an ordered pair <I, n> such that I specifies a domain D of entities named by the individual constants of the theory, some Fx specifies a subset of D, and Fx . . . k specifies a k-ary Cartesian product in D. Let n now designate a naming function from names in the language to D, monadic predicates to subsets of D, and k-ary predicates to k-tuples in D. The function thus assigns for each and every nonlogical symbol an extension in D. What we are doing here is assigning a semantics to our language. Obviously, if both T1 and Ts use the same >, they will mean the same thing. Two theories indiscernible with respect to syntax and having the same interpretation have the same model. We say that M models a theory T if and only if all the sentences of the theory are true given the projection of the language onto the model. Obviously, if M models T1, and T1 and T2 have the same interpretation and mapping function n, then M shall model T2 as well.
Within the practice of science, the syntax of theories change as a function of new empircal data and concomittant theory adjustment. In science generally, the method of projection of the syntax of the theory upon a model is for the most part invariant, and it is this invariancy that makes possible scientific progress generally. Words like 'electron', 'boson', and 'p orbital' retain their interpretation (reference) across different theories generally. (We might say that in a situation of revolutionary change in paradigm, new interpretations and naming functions might arise.)
However, within the practice of theology, things are far different. Scripture and theological tradition has worked to produce a rather loose 'theological theory' whose syntax does not in general change. But as times change, the syntax of this theological theory takes on a new interpretation. Imagine T1 being classical christological formutions at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and T2 be the same classical christological formulations said by Paul Tillich in 1957. Here it is obvious that while the syntax of T1 and T2 remains the same, there is a change of the mode of projection of the syntax upon its model. Because T1 and T2 are both regarded as true, there are distinct models M1 and M2 that model the same syntax. The same syntax is modeled both by M1 and M2, or alternatively, M1 and M2 both model the same theory T1. (Remember that T1 = T2 syntactically.) The situation now is that we have two distinct models for the same syntax, two distinct ways that the world might be ordered that would make possible the truth of T1 = T2.
The question is this: What is the theological theory T1 and is it different then from T2 after all? The answer is, of course, that we do not regard scientific theory as mere syntax, but as syntax + an interpretation. Similarly, I aver, we ought not to regard theological theory as mere syntax but syntax + an interpretation. How can it be then that many today in theology, particularly in ecumenical theology, think that syntax alone does a theology make? How can it be that the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification can claim agreement on 'justification' because the syntax of the language is similar between Lutherans and Rome?
We should remember that Luther said he was not interested in agreement in words (verbis) but in things (in rebus). Although Luther was not using the language, he was, of course, interested in the disparate models the same theological syntax could sustain. When one thinks about it, this is how it has always been in theology. Was this not precisely what happened after Ephesus (431) that two sides used the same words while allowing different interpretations of the same language?
A theology that has lost interest in its interpretation and naming function, is a theology that has lost interest in truth, because only with the assignment of models is truth put in play. While sytax deals with form and structure, semantics deals with truth and meaning. Theology has always been about the latter. It is a mark of the recent theological poverty of our time that we could have been so bewitched for so long, and have not even noticed.
Within the practice of science, the syntax of theories change as a function of new empircal data and concomittant theory adjustment. In science generally, the method of projection of the syntax of the theory upon a model is for the most part invariant, and it is this invariancy that makes possible scientific progress generally. Words like 'electron', 'boson', and 'p orbital' retain their interpretation (reference) across different theories generally. (We might say that in a situation of revolutionary change in paradigm, new interpretations and naming functions might arise.)
However, within the practice of theology, things are far different. Scripture and theological tradition has worked to produce a rather loose 'theological theory' whose syntax does not in general change. But as times change, the syntax of this theological theory takes on a new interpretation. Imagine T1 being classical christological formutions at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and T2 be the same classical christological formulations said by Paul Tillich in 1957. Here it is obvious that while the syntax of T1 and T2 remains the same, there is a change of the mode of projection of the syntax upon its model. Because T1 and T2 are both regarded as true, there are distinct models M1 and M2 that model the same syntax. The same syntax is modeled both by M1 and M2, or alternatively, M1 and M2 both model the same theory T1. (Remember that T1 = T2 syntactically.) The situation now is that we have two distinct models for the same syntax, two distinct ways that the world might be ordered that would make possible the truth of T1 = T2.
The question is this: What is the theological theory T1 and is it different then from T2 after all? The answer is, of course, that we do not regard scientific theory as mere syntax, but as syntax + an interpretation. Similarly, I aver, we ought not to regard theological theory as mere syntax but syntax + an interpretation. How can it be then that many today in theology, particularly in ecumenical theology, think that syntax alone does a theology make? How can it be that the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification can claim agreement on 'justification' because the syntax of the language is similar between Lutherans and Rome?
We should remember that Luther said he was not interested in agreement in words (verbis) but in things (in rebus). Although Luther was not using the language, he was, of course, interested in the disparate models the same theological syntax could sustain. When one thinks about it, this is how it has always been in theology. Was this not precisely what happened after Ephesus (431) that two sides used the same words while allowing different interpretations of the same language?
A theology that has lost interest in its interpretation and naming function, is a theology that has lost interest in truth, because only with the assignment of models is truth put in play. While sytax deals with form and structure, semantics deals with truth and meaning. Theology has always been about the latter. It is a mark of the recent theological poverty of our time that we could have been so bewitched for so long, and have not even noticed.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Towards a Lutheran Theological Semantics II
Being realist with regard to a class of theological statements does not mean one has to commit to metaphysical realism, to a claim that there are self-identifying theological objects, properties, relations, events or states of affairs that obtain apart from human awareness, conceptualization and language. One might allow some ontological contribution on the part of the subject, and still claim that the principle of bivalence holds for theological assertions, that these assertions are either true or false (but not both), and that their truth-conditions are evidence transcendent, i.e., that although, in principle, adequate evidence cannot be found for the truth of statements like 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself', such statements are true or false solely on the basis of whether the conditions do in fact obtain.
But the question immediately arises, can Lutheran theology be realist in this sense? Is not Lutheran theology committed to a bundle of paradoxes that become problematic if theological statements are interpreted in a realist way? Can a Lutheran who wants to assert that humans are justified and sinful simultaneously, that the bread really is bread but is the body at the same time, that God is both love and wrath simultaneiously honestly embrace semantic realism. If theological statements are either true or false, then A has a definite truth value (true or false), and if ~A is simultaneously asserted, then A & ~A hold simultaneously, and from a contradiction anything follows whatsover. So is not semantic realism incompatible with Lutheran theological assertion? Must not the assertions of theology be given a different analysis, perhaps as projetions of human emotion, disposition, or existential orientation? If Lutheran theology is commited to paradoxical claims, must it not reject semantic realism, for to accept it is itself incompatible with the assertion of those paradoxical claims?
This question goes to the heart of the problem. If there are paradoxes that must be asserted, and such paradoxes are vicious in and for any ontic divine domain, then to assert those paradoxes must entail that the assertions are not really assertions about an ontic divine domain; they are expressions of, or assertions about, that region of being for which the law of excluded middle is relaxed: human being. Human being is a paradoxical reality, it seems, because it is a being, who in its being has its be-ing at issue, a be-ing where both the projective possibilities of the future, and the remembered facticities of the past are simultaneously consistutive of its present. If I am both who I am (because of who I was), and who I am (because of who I might be) then I am both who I am and who I might be. Since I might be different than I was, then I am both A & ~A simultaneously. From the fact that my present is constituted by both my past and future, I am both who I am (I was) and who I am not (who I might be who is not who I was). The fact that I am both simultaneously gives the Lutheran hope, it seems, to think the simul eschatologically. I really am sinful because I have always been so. At the same time, I am justified because the possibility of being no longer sinful is my possibilty given the life, death and resurrection of the Christ. I am thus both who I am (sinful) and who I am not (sinless on account of Christ) at the same time. Similar moves must be made for the other Lutheran paradoxes; language about objective paradoxes must be traced back to the existentiality of the subject, to the being of that being who lives simultaneously as thrown pro-ject. It is no small wonder why Lutheran theology should find solace in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. It seems, to paraphrase Tillich, that existentialism really is the good luck of Lutheran theology.
But much is lost with this approach. To justify paradox in theology by tracing the paradoxes back to the subject makes theological assertions essentially autobiographical. Talking about God cannot, as Barth said, be achieved by talking about ourselves in a loud voice. Giving a semantic realist construal to theological statements is to assert again what Luther and the Reformers presupposed: that God existed independently of us, and that statements about God are true or false if the truth-conditions of those statements are met. 'God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself' if and only if God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself'. The meaning of the statement is given by its truth-conditions, by specifying those things that must be so if the statement is true. So how can Lutheran theology embrace seeming paradox and still accept semantic realism? The answer to this question, I believe, drives Lutheran theology back into its Catholic origins. Lutheran theology did not spring forth from Catholicism as a separate theological school with its fundamental terms and statements logically disconnected from, or (worse yet) incommensurable with, the fundamental terms and statements of late medieval scholasticism. Lutheran theology is Catholic theology with a few twists. It emerged and grew in the waters of a late medieval scholasticism that was nominalist in its ontology and realist in its semantics. But that the Lutherans could argue that a justified person can remain sinful suggested that something quite ontologically different was at work in Lutheran theological thinking than had been thought before. Coming to an honest appraisal of this difference can help us, I think, in our quest for answering the question: How is a Lutheran realist semantics possible?
But the question immediately arises, can Lutheran theology be realist in this sense? Is not Lutheran theology committed to a bundle of paradoxes that become problematic if theological statements are interpreted in a realist way? Can a Lutheran who wants to assert that humans are justified and sinful simultaneously, that the bread really is bread but is the body at the same time, that God is both love and wrath simultaneiously honestly embrace semantic realism. If theological statements are either true or false, then A has a definite truth value (true or false), and if ~A is simultaneously asserted, then A & ~A hold simultaneously, and from a contradiction anything follows whatsover. So is not semantic realism incompatible with Lutheran theological assertion? Must not the assertions of theology be given a different analysis, perhaps as projetions of human emotion, disposition, or existential orientation? If Lutheran theology is commited to paradoxical claims, must it not reject semantic realism, for to accept it is itself incompatible with the assertion of those paradoxical claims?
This question goes to the heart of the problem. If there are paradoxes that must be asserted, and such paradoxes are vicious in and for any ontic divine domain, then to assert those paradoxes must entail that the assertions are not really assertions about an ontic divine domain; they are expressions of, or assertions about, that region of being for which the law of excluded middle is relaxed: human being. Human being is a paradoxical reality, it seems, because it is a being, who in its being has its be-ing at issue, a be-ing where both the projective possibilities of the future, and the remembered facticities of the past are simultaneously consistutive of its present. If I am both who I am (because of who I was), and who I am (because of who I might be) then I am both who I am and who I might be. Since I might be different than I was, then I am both A & ~A simultaneously. From the fact that my present is constituted by both my past and future, I am both who I am (I was) and who I am not (who I might be who is not who I was). The fact that I am both simultaneously gives the Lutheran hope, it seems, to think the simul eschatologically. I really am sinful because I have always been so. At the same time, I am justified because the possibility of being no longer sinful is my possibilty given the life, death and resurrection of the Christ. I am thus both who I am (sinful) and who I am not (sinless on account of Christ) at the same time. Similar moves must be made for the other Lutheran paradoxes; language about objective paradoxes must be traced back to the existentiality of the subject, to the being of that being who lives simultaneously as thrown pro-ject. It is no small wonder why Lutheran theology should find solace in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. It seems, to paraphrase Tillich, that existentialism really is the good luck of Lutheran theology.
But much is lost with this approach. To justify paradox in theology by tracing the paradoxes back to the subject makes theological assertions essentially autobiographical. Talking about God cannot, as Barth said, be achieved by talking about ourselves in a loud voice. Giving a semantic realist construal to theological statements is to assert again what Luther and the Reformers presupposed: that God existed independently of us, and that statements about God are true or false if the truth-conditions of those statements are met. 'God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself' if and only if God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself'. The meaning of the statement is given by its truth-conditions, by specifying those things that must be so if the statement is true. So how can Lutheran theology embrace seeming paradox and still accept semantic realism? The answer to this question, I believe, drives Lutheran theology back into its Catholic origins. Lutheran theology did not spring forth from Catholicism as a separate theological school with its fundamental terms and statements logically disconnected from, or (worse yet) incommensurable with, the fundamental terms and statements of late medieval scholasticism. Lutheran theology is Catholic theology with a few twists. It emerged and grew in the waters of a late medieval scholasticism that was nominalist in its ontology and realist in its semantics. But that the Lutherans could argue that a justified person can remain sinful suggested that something quite ontologically different was at work in Lutheran theological thinking than had been thought before. Coming to an honest appraisal of this difference can help us, I think, in our quest for answering the question: How is a Lutheran realist semantics possible?
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Towards a Lutheran Theological Semantics I
While syntax deals with the form and structure of a language, semantics deals with its meaning and truth. When considering the general question of the semantics of a language, one must get clear on the meaning of the terms of that language, and the meaning and truth of sentences comprised of those terms. Terms having meaning apart from other linguistic units were called by the medievals categorematic terms. Terms not possessing meaning on their own (e.g, 'is', 'of') were called syncategorematic terms. In establishing the semantics of a language, one has to specify the meaning of a class of primative terms, and then show how the meaning of those terms contribute to the meaning of sentences in which those terms are ingredient.
In ascribing a semantics to theological sentences, one routinely examines their truth-conditions. The truth-conditions of a statement are those conditions which must obtain if the statement is to be true. For instance, the truth conditions of 'the cat is on the map' are those conditions which must obtain if 'the cat is on the mat' is true. These conditions simply are the state of affairs of there being a cat, a mat, and the relation of the cat being on the mat. Simply put, 'the cat is on the mat' is true if and only if the cat is on the mat.
Now in considering these truth-conditions, the question arises as whether or not one can specify evidence transcending truth-conditions. While it is in principle possible to have a perceptual causal connection to cats sitting on mats such that one can truly know when or if the requisite conditions are fulfilled such that 'the cat is on the mat' is true, this is not so with regard to most theological statements. What causal connection can one have to states of affairs like 'there are three distinct persons united in one divine being or essence'? How could one ever be said to know this is the case? Those who for this reason reject the possibility of evidence transcending truth-conditions are antirealist with respect particular classes of statements. While language like 'there are three distinct persons in one divine being or essence' are perhaps warrantably assertible, they have no truth-conditions, for the condition for the possibility of truth-conditions cannot be met. To accept the possibilty of evidence transcending truth-conditions for a class of statements is to be realist with regard to that class of statements. The question is this: Should Lutherans accept a realist construal for their theological language? Over the last 200 years Lutherans have progressively become less and less sanguine that theological language has truth-conditions, and that is thus can be given a realist construal.
In ascribing a semantics to theological sentences, one routinely examines their truth-conditions. The truth-conditions of a statement are those conditions which must obtain if the statement is to be true. For instance, the truth conditions of 'the cat is on the map' are those conditions which must obtain if 'the cat is on the mat' is true. These conditions simply are the state of affairs of there being a cat, a mat, and the relation of the cat being on the mat. Simply put, 'the cat is on the mat' is true if and only if the cat is on the mat.
Now in considering these truth-conditions, the question arises as whether or not one can specify evidence transcending truth-conditions. While it is in principle possible to have a perceptual causal connection to cats sitting on mats such that one can truly know when or if the requisite conditions are fulfilled such that 'the cat is on the mat' is true, this is not so with regard to most theological statements. What causal connection can one have to states of affairs like 'there are three distinct persons united in one divine being or essence'? How could one ever be said to know this is the case? Those who for this reason reject the possibility of evidence transcending truth-conditions are antirealist with respect particular classes of statements. While language like 'there are three distinct persons in one divine being or essence' are perhaps warrantably assertible, they have no truth-conditions, for the condition for the possibility of truth-conditions cannot be met. To accept the possibilty of evidence transcending truth-conditions for a class of statements is to be realist with regard to that class of statements. The question is this: Should Lutherans accept a realist construal for their theological language? Over the last 200 years Lutherans have progressively become less and less sanguine that theological language has truth-conditions, and that is thus can be given a realist construal.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Logic and Semantics in Theology
In the medieval university the study of logic and semantics was part of an education eventuating in the Master of Arts degree. Students studying for their Doctor of Theology learned their craft after having already mastered these important fields. In medieval disputations participants knew the rules of inference and could easily spot logical infractions. Moreover, they knew that words had both a signifcatio (signification) and a suppositio (reference), and they could unpack the meaning of theological sentences on the basis of this distinction. The educational horizon of the budding medieval theologian included profound training in the art of inference and the nature of meaning.
At the dawn of the Reformation, theologians like Luther who would become important purveyors of the new theology at Wittenberg, could also claim a deep education in logic and semantics. Luther participated in faculty disputations throughout his life and he clearly knew how to chop logic with the best of his peers. His training at Erfurt with the nominalists Trutvetter and Unsinn prepared him to understand deeply the truth-conditions of theological language, an understanding thought necessary for theological precision. Disputants were concerned with the question of which theological statements were true and which false. In a time in which it was salvifically important what one believed to be true theologically, sustained effort was made to give students the requisite tools to grasp the truth value of theological statements.
We Lutherans living almost 500 years after the Reformation find ourselves in a context quite unlike that of the Reformers. While for them the critical questions concerned the truth value of particular theological statements, for us the crucial theological questions don't seem any longer to be about truth. It is as if many Lutheran theologians and pastors have outgrown a robust sense of truth. Of course, they might say, theological statements are in some sense true, but this does not mean that there is some theological states of affairs existing independently from consciousness making those statements true. Such statements are true for other reasons, it seems. Theological statements may express or address the human existential situation such that their meaning and truth are thus connectable to human experience in a very profound sense. Or perhaps such statements are best understood as linguistic customs of a Lutheran community, meta-rules regulating how that community employs other theological statements.
In an age where one cannot claim another's religion false without thereby somehow denigrating the other person or his/her culture, it is difficult to claim that the truth of one's statements have any ontological backing. The reason is obvious: If one's theological statements are true because of some objective feature of the divine and its relationship to the world, then the statements of other religions not referring to these objective features must be false. But these statements cannot be false without denigrating the other person's cutlure and since to denigrate another's culture is wrong, then these statements cannot be false, and if they cannot be false, then one's own theological statements cannot be true. This is how it works logically.
So theology today passes without robust truth conditions. Theology becomes a discourse about the self, about the self within a communal context, about power relationships and marginalization, about racial or patriarchal oppression, about the individual's will-to-power, about almost anything but a divine being existing over and apart from human beings, a divine being who acts on behalf of human beings. Moreover, the purveyors of contemporary theology seem not even to know how differently from previous generations they understand theological terms. In addition, they do not know how deeply problematic contemporary theological semantics has become, a semantics that seems not cable of allowing for standard logical derivations at all.
In this time when theological language seems to have adopted multiple semantic structures, and theological argument has been debased to mere assertion, perhaps it is time again to return to a former time, a time when agreement on semantics and logic allowed for reasoned theological argument and objective truth and meaning. Perhaps if theologians and pastors could again agree on the rules of thought and the nature of meaning, discourse about God could become again a deeply pertinent discourse seeking to discern truth - - a truth that we have not constructed, but rather found, a truth not of our making, but God's.
At the dawn of the Reformation, theologians like Luther who would become important purveyors of the new theology at Wittenberg, could also claim a deep education in logic and semantics. Luther participated in faculty disputations throughout his life and he clearly knew how to chop logic with the best of his peers. His training at Erfurt with the nominalists Trutvetter and Unsinn prepared him to understand deeply the truth-conditions of theological language, an understanding thought necessary for theological precision. Disputants were concerned with the question of which theological statements were true and which false. In a time in which it was salvifically important what one believed to be true theologically, sustained effort was made to give students the requisite tools to grasp the truth value of theological statements.
We Lutherans living almost 500 years after the Reformation find ourselves in a context quite unlike that of the Reformers. While for them the critical questions concerned the truth value of particular theological statements, for us the crucial theological questions don't seem any longer to be about truth. It is as if many Lutheran theologians and pastors have outgrown a robust sense of truth. Of course, they might say, theological statements are in some sense true, but this does not mean that there is some theological states of affairs existing independently from consciousness making those statements true. Such statements are true for other reasons, it seems. Theological statements may express or address the human existential situation such that their meaning and truth are thus connectable to human experience in a very profound sense. Or perhaps such statements are best understood as linguistic customs of a Lutheran community, meta-rules regulating how that community employs other theological statements.
In an age where one cannot claim another's religion false without thereby somehow denigrating the other person or his/her culture, it is difficult to claim that the truth of one's statements have any ontological backing. The reason is obvious: If one's theological statements are true because of some objective feature of the divine and its relationship to the world, then the statements of other religions not referring to these objective features must be false. But these statements cannot be false without denigrating the other person's cutlure and since to denigrate another's culture is wrong, then these statements cannot be false, and if they cannot be false, then one's own theological statements cannot be true. This is how it works logically.
So theology today passes without robust truth conditions. Theology becomes a discourse about the self, about the self within a communal context, about power relationships and marginalization, about racial or patriarchal oppression, about the individual's will-to-power, about almost anything but a divine being existing over and apart from human beings, a divine being who acts on behalf of human beings. Moreover, the purveyors of contemporary theology seem not even to know how differently from previous generations they understand theological terms. In addition, they do not know how deeply problematic contemporary theological semantics has become, a semantics that seems not cable of allowing for standard logical derivations at all.
In this time when theological language seems to have adopted multiple semantic structures, and theological argument has been debased to mere assertion, perhaps it is time again to return to a former time, a time when agreement on semantics and logic allowed for reasoned theological argument and objective truth and meaning. Perhaps if theologians and pastors could again agree on the rules of thought and the nature of meaning, discourse about God could become again a deeply pertinent discourse seeking to discern truth - - a truth that we have not constructed, but rather found, a truth not of our making, but God's.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Towards Theological Sanity
Ever since the time of Kant, theologians having been playing a certain kind of game. It has been, by all accounts, a pretty successful game. Theologians have taught pastors this game, and these pastors have in turn preached sermons to millions of folks while presupposing it. What the folks in the pews did not know is something rather basic to traditional theology. These folks did not know that their pastors were no longer presupposing semantic realism in their use of theological language; they did not know that that their pastors either did not hold, or had never thought seriously about, this rather commonsense view: Theological statements 1) conform to the principle of bivalence - - the statements are either true or false - - and 2) they are potentially recognition-transcendent, that is, they have evidence-transcendent truth conditions.
Kant had famously taught that knowledge of God is impossible, because knowledge depends upon applying the categories of the understanding to the manifold of sense perception. He claimed, in fact, that the two crucially important categories of substance and causality could only properly apply to the manifold of sense perception; they could not be so applied to that which lies beyond the bounds of possible sense experience, e.g., they could not be applied to God. But if the categories of substance and causality could not be applied to God, what is God? If God is not an entity causally related to other entities, what is God?
The theological tradition of the nineteenth century was anxious to explore various post-Kantian theological options. If God is not a real entity, then what can be said of Him? Schleiermacher labored to show that God was properly conceived to be the "whence" of the feeling of absolute dependence. God is not a real being, but that towards which a profound feeling in human beings flows. Moreover, God is not causally connected to anything else; He cannot be so connected even in principle because the category of cause only relates objects which are themselves syntheses of sense perception. Although Schleiermacher uses causal language in talking about God, he clearly is not supposing that there exists some being having divine powers, a being who has the causal power to change the distribution of natural properties in the universe.
Many later thinkers followed either Schleiermacher or Hegel in thinking about God. While Schleiermacher thought that God was the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence, Hegel thought the reflexivity of human thought itself was a manifestation of divine self-conciousness. The upstart of all of this talk about God was that a special theological way of thinking about God sprung up among theologians. This way of thinking supposes what semantic realism denies, that theological statements are either true or false, and that their truth of falsity depends upon how the world is. Instead of semantic realism, the late nineteenth century and twentieth century often assumed that theological language was neither true nor false, and that the statements of theology have no objective truth-conditions. This is to say, they assumed that it makes no sense to talk about mind-independent states of affairs making true (or false) theological statements if these states of affairs were in principle not able to be encountered. The traditional statements of theology thus acquired a new interpretation, a new semantics allowed the syntax of the statement to remain the same, even if the statement's meaning changed. God was understood as noncausally-relatable to the universe, even as the terms 'create', 'redeem' and 'sanctify' were predicated of Him. The problem was to give an account of creation, redemption and sanctification that did not presuppose the category of causality.
For a whole host of reasons, the general post-Kantian attempt to retain theological language must be seen as a dead end. Some of the problem is simply that human beings in the early twenty-first century are looking for something far more causally-robust in God than their late nineteenth century counterparts. How can a divine entity be germane to human existence if that entity cannot affect human beings, nor be affected by them? How is grace possible if it is in principle impossible to state that God can cause anything? Clearly, God cannot really be at work through Christ to reconcile the world unto Himself.
It is time to return to theological sanity and adopt the basic view that our language about God is true or false dependent upon the way that the divine is structured and acts. While we may have no epistemic access to the being of God, and can thus not provide proper evidence for accepting or asserting some theological proposition as true, it does not follow that there is no way that the divine already is, an ontological way that makes our language about God true even if we don't know that it is! It is time to quit playing the two century old game, and replace it again by one much more ancient - - and successful.
What is needed is a return to theological sanity. I shall be arguing that theological language is ultimately incoherent and marginalized if it does not presuppose semantic realism. We shall be examining this thesis in future posts.
Kant had famously taught that knowledge of God is impossible, because knowledge depends upon applying the categories of the understanding to the manifold of sense perception. He claimed, in fact, that the two crucially important categories of substance and causality could only properly apply to the manifold of sense perception; they could not be so applied to that which lies beyond the bounds of possible sense experience, e.g., they could not be applied to God. But if the categories of substance and causality could not be applied to God, what is God? If God is not an entity causally related to other entities, what is God?
The theological tradition of the nineteenth century was anxious to explore various post-Kantian theological options. If God is not a real entity, then what can be said of Him? Schleiermacher labored to show that God was properly conceived to be the "whence" of the feeling of absolute dependence. God is not a real being, but that towards which a profound feeling in human beings flows. Moreover, God is not causally connected to anything else; He cannot be so connected even in principle because the category of cause only relates objects which are themselves syntheses of sense perception. Although Schleiermacher uses causal language in talking about God, he clearly is not supposing that there exists some being having divine powers, a being who has the causal power to change the distribution of natural properties in the universe.
Many later thinkers followed either Schleiermacher or Hegel in thinking about God. While Schleiermacher thought that God was the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence, Hegel thought the reflexivity of human thought itself was a manifestation of divine self-conciousness. The upstart of all of this talk about God was that a special theological way of thinking about God sprung up among theologians. This way of thinking supposes what semantic realism denies, that theological statements are either true or false, and that their truth of falsity depends upon how the world is. Instead of semantic realism, the late nineteenth century and twentieth century often assumed that theological language was neither true nor false, and that the statements of theology have no objective truth-conditions. This is to say, they assumed that it makes no sense to talk about mind-independent states of affairs making true (or false) theological statements if these states of affairs were in principle not able to be encountered. The traditional statements of theology thus acquired a new interpretation, a new semantics allowed the syntax of the statement to remain the same, even if the statement's meaning changed. God was understood as noncausally-relatable to the universe, even as the terms 'create', 'redeem' and 'sanctify' were predicated of Him. The problem was to give an account of creation, redemption and sanctification that did not presuppose the category of causality.
For a whole host of reasons, the general post-Kantian attempt to retain theological language must be seen as a dead end. Some of the problem is simply that human beings in the early twenty-first century are looking for something far more causally-robust in God than their late nineteenth century counterparts. How can a divine entity be germane to human existence if that entity cannot affect human beings, nor be affected by them? How is grace possible if it is in principle impossible to state that God can cause anything? Clearly, God cannot really be at work through Christ to reconcile the world unto Himself.
It is time to return to theological sanity and adopt the basic view that our language about God is true or false dependent upon the way that the divine is structured and acts. While we may have no epistemic access to the being of God, and can thus not provide proper evidence for accepting or asserting some theological proposition as true, it does not follow that there is no way that the divine already is, an ontological way that makes our language about God true even if we don't know that it is! It is time to quit playing the two century old game, and replace it again by one much more ancient - - and successful.
What is needed is a return to theological sanity. I shall be arguing that theological language is ultimately incoherent and marginalized if it does not presuppose semantic realism. We shall be examining this thesis in future posts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)