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.

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.

The Power of Words

lI am always am disquieted when I hear theologians talk confidently about the "power" of the Biblical word and then go on to claim that Biblical language is not referential, but rather performative. The reason for my disquiet is simply that such an understanding of language does not distinguish well between the performance itself, and the context in which that performance must perform.

Think about Julie saying to Bob, "I love you." This certainly can be said in a number of different instances. But to really empower Bob, the hearer of the word, there must be some sense in which Julie's remarks aptly display what psychological states she is in. If Julie tells Bob that she loves him, it is all-important to Bob that there is a Julie and she actually possesses the property of having love towards Bob. It is highly unlikely for Bob to be empowered by the words, 'I love you', when there is no Julie possessing an attitude of love toward Bob. There must be some basis upon which the locution empowers. It just does not make sense for human beings that performative utterances nakedly empower. A computer program spitting out 'I love you' fails to empower because we do not believe the program is an agent that could possess the relevant propositional attitudes that would make the locution even relevant.

So how can it be that so many theologians want to talk about the powerful effect of words without supposing that those words refer? The answer is quite simple. If one begins with the presupposition that God cannot be an entity causally involved in the life of the universe, then one's semantics must be adjusted accordingly. Words cannot refer because there is nothing to which those words can refer. What they can do is empower; they can free us; they can heal us; they can give us life; they can open up for us new possibilites. The theological trajectory that assumes a power in the words without a reference is a trajectory that allows for very good preaching, and a very good bedside manner.

The problem, of course, is that one cannot come clean on one's semantics to those with whom one speaks. The problem is that the man and woman in the pew are likely being empowered by the words only because they are assuming a referential, and not donational, semantics. One must have a high degree of existential sophistication, I suppose, to be empowred by a naked 'I love you' from a Julie who is not an agent and cannot have any propositional states. It may not be impossible to find some Bob so empowered, but his kind are clearly not found in abundance. In a parallel fashion, I suppose it would take a high level of theological sophistication to be empowered by 'You are saved by grace because of Christ's love,' in the absence of there being any God with a propositional attitude of wrath from whom to be saved. It is a rare bird whose existential anxieties are quelled by 'God loves you' who nonetheless believes that God is not an agent that can in principle possess a propositional attitude, or even an intent towards human beings.

Is it not time that we think deeply about these presuppositions in theology that allow us to use the language of a sacred canopy long after we have come of age to the fact that the skies are forever black? Maybe it is time to either eliminate the discourse or give it robust truth-conditions. Maybe the time is long overdo that we take God-talk very seriously.

Confusing the Epistemic and Semantic Primacy of Christ

As some may know, I am the author of the so-called “WordAlone Fundamentals,” a set of affirmations that I think get at the heart of some basic agreements and differences within contemporary Lutheran theology (http://www.wordalone.org/docs/wa-fundamentals.shtml). I conceive these “fundamentals” really as proto-principles for Lutheran theological engagement. Given the centrality of the cross within Lutheran theology - - and the accents of law/gospel, the theology of the cross, the simul iustus et peccato, and the infinite being carried by the finite - - why is there such a plethora of methods and approaches (even real differences) within contemporary Lutheran theology? Why is the “real working theology” of the LCMS so very different from that of the ELCA? How does the working theology of the WordAlone Network differ from that encountered within many ELCA churches?

The “fundamentals” acknowledge a real parting of the ways within the Lutheran theological ethos, and locate that parting with respect to the following assertions:

1) Theological Realism: God exists and His existence and nature are logically independent from human awareness, perception, conception and language.

2) Semantic Realism: Assertions about the divine have definite truth-conditions. Language about the divine is not merely expressive of the individual uttering it, or merely rule-governed linguistic customs of a community.

3) Theophysical Causation: There is a causal connection between God and the universe. It is logically and metaphysically possible for God to bring about an event in the universe that would not have occurred had God not brought it about.

It is important to note that the tradition of theological reflection beginning with Kant, if consistent, must deny all three of these assertions. For Kant, God is an idea of human reason, and not an “empirical concept of the understanding.” Accordingly, God cannot be conceived as a substance sustaining causal connections with events within the universe. Post-Kantian options within theology begin with the assumption that theological language cannot have truth-conditions where God is figured as a substance sustaining properties, some of which are relational causal properties. Accordingly, theological language must be “doing something else.” It must be a discourse expressive or disclosive of human feeling (Schleiermacher), thinking (Hegel), or doing (late 19th century Protestantism).

To speak of these “fundamentals” as fundamental assertions within a Lutheran context, however, immediately brings charges that one has become “un-Lutheran.” A recent e-mail says that I have committed the cardinal transgression of not beginning my theology with the revealed God - - Jesus Christ. It says that if one starts with the existence of God without clarifying the nature of God, then one might end up with a “definition of God that then shapes what we can say about Christ.” It goes on to declare that things should be the other way around: Christ should determine “what we can know and say about God.” We must start theology where God wants himself to be known: the revelation of Jesus Christ.

In responding to this charge it is critically important to distinguish ontology, epistemology and semantics. I agree with the claim that Lutheran theology must begin with God as revealed in Christ. No Lutheran would want to deny Luther’s contention in The Bondage of the Will that God remains hidden in His aseity and that human beings gazing upon this deus absconditus shall be deeply perplexed and thrown into despair.

Yet this epistemic priority of Christ ought not be confused with ontological priority. Luther’s Trinitarian thought is continuous with that of western theology generally; he holds timeless eternity of the three persons within the inner-Trinity. Christ has epistemic priority for the believer, even though Christ does not have ontological priority with respect to God Himself.

Moreover, this epistemic priority of Christ must not be confused with a semantic priority. I deny any “theological atomism” which can find isolate meaning in the Christ event disconnected entirely from the semantic context within which that event arose. Years ago Pannenberg, in Jesus, God and Man, detailed the importance of the horizon of late Jewish apocalyptic thinking for the original understanding of who Christ was. The original event of Christ took place over and against a background of beliefs and values making possible the identification of Jesus with the Christ. (I speak here of necessary, not sufficient conditions for the identification.) Clearly, the epistemic priority of Christ is compatible with a semantic dependency upon context.

My claim is that, for Luther, Christ has epistemic primacy even though the identity of Christ is dialectically relatable to the hidden God whom Christ reveals. For Luther, what Christ means is conceptually linked to the God that stands over and against him, the God whom he fears. Luther’s question is this: How can I find a gracious God? That this God is revealed in Christ in no way undercuts the claim that there is first presupposed a meaningful category of ‘gracious God” conceptually linked to God as transcendent of human finitude.

Imagine what it would be like were Christ to have both semantic and epistemic priority. Presumably, humans confronting Christ would for the first time think about the dialectic of time and eternity, i.e., the very notion of the dialectic of time and eternity would flow from the encounter with Christ. Moreover, the notion that God is hidden in His aseity would have to arise, as would all thoughts of the divine, in the existential encounter with Jesus the Christ. But this would be to entirely reject any category of general revelation in Luther. There would be no human experience of order, history, goodness or beauty that would allow formation of the “God concept” independently of encounter with Christ. Furthermore, were this true, the witness of the various religious traditions with respect to the finite and infinite would have somehow themselves to be grounded in the revelation of Christ. (This would make the very notion of theism somehow dependent upon the revelation of Christ. But this is a falsifiable position because theism was around long before Christ was revealed.)

The assertion of theological realism and theophysical causation are meant only to recover the “God concept” Luther presupposed in his assertion of the epistemic primacy of Christ. Knowing a thing to be is quite a different thing than to have the semantic capacity to know the thing to be. My claim is this: There has been a gradual shift over the last two centuries in the concept of God, in the very meaning of ‘God’. This change has brought with it a shift in the underlying implicit “theory” upon which the discovery of Christ as Savior is possible. For moderns and postmoderns, Christ does not, and cannot mean the same thing as was meant in Luther’s time. (I speak of the meaning of Christ, but should this be problematic, one can easily construe it as the meaning of statements about Christ.) The upshot of all of this is that we now say the same things about Christ, but really mean quite different things about Him. In other words, our ontological claims are a function of the semantic fields we inhabit when making these claims. This state of affairs is fully compatible with the assertion of the epistemic primacy of Christ.

So why is it that the ELCA and LCMS divide when they seemingly make the same confession? Why is WordAlone theology “different” than that currently regnant within the ELCA? My claim is that different notions of God, of time and eternity, lurk in the background, determining the content (Gehalt) of Christ as “that which shows itself as itself.” Simply put, the identity conditions of Christ are not wholly established by the phenomenon of Christ Himself, but are partly determined by the background theory upon which the “observation” of Christ occurs. The “fundamentals” humbly wish to bring to the light this background theory so that there can be some continuity within Lutheran theology as to the most important thing: the reality of Christ and Him Crucified.

Realism in Theology

Every discipline has its fundamental assertions and assumptions, those principles without which the discipline cannot proceed as the discipline it is. This is true as well for theology. We find, in fact, that particular fundamental assertions demarcate trajectories of the theological tradition. This is clearly true of what I call the realist fundamental: "God exists independent of human awareness, perception, conception and language." Whether or not one accedes to this fundamental determines the meaning of an entire matrix of theological assertions. Theology can proceed whether or not one postulates the realist fundamental. The point is that the ontologies of realist and antirealist theologies are quite different, even if they both proclaim similar religious and theological statments.

Since the time of Kant, the theological penchant has been towards antirealism generally. Kant famously held that God is merely a regulative ideal of human reason. While thinking God is perhaps inescapable, and while God can function as a postulate of pure practical reason (guaranteeing happiness to the one who does his/her duty), God cannot be a substance entering into causal relations with any other objects in the universe. Kant only grants substance status to those objects which have concomittant sense impressions; he only allows causal relations to hold among substances. Because God is not the kind of object having sense impressions, then God is not a substance causally relatable to entities within the universe, or the universe generally.

The problem for theology after Kant was to try to provide a meaningful account of theological assertions when that referred to by 'God' was not a substance, and that referred to by 'creates' was not a causal relation. Although the theological tradition was not always consistent, it basically asserted that talk of God must be parsed in terms of something besides divine objects, properties, events or states of affairs. Schleiermacher, for instance, spoke of God as the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence. Hegel located God in the reflexivity of human thinking. Later liberal Protestantism found God talk most germane to the arena of ethics, of human doing. Even the twentieth-century backlash to liberal theology worked with a basic antirealist notion of God. While theologians talked a great deal about God's "mighty acts in history," God remained unable to causally interact with nature. But how is action in history possible without action in nature?

While neo-reformational theology "preached well," it, and later theological developments, have proved unable to assert robust causal connections between God and the universe. The result has been lamentable for theology, for a causally impotent God is clearly irrelevant for most postmodern men and women. What kind of question is the Christ the answer for when the God, to whom Christ reconciled the world, is causally inert? If God is not connectable to the universe, then Christ becomes merely a symbol for the liberation of human beings from anxiety, despair, and ultimate suffering. Antirealist assumptions lead one into a basic projectionist strategy. The universe is presumably what it is apart from us, but God is "put" into the universe because of human value and interest. Finally, Feurbach is correct at this point: We project God onto the universe. Therefore, God is internally related to us; His being is determined by the relation we assume towards Him. Antirealism is a definite trajectory of theology thinking, a trajectory that has been, in my opinion, the dominant motif in academic theology.

But how different it all becomes if one asserts that there is some being, such that that being has robust divine properties, properties not affected by the relationship humans have towards that God! On the realist assumption, causality is put back on the table. Now one can speak again about God actually creating, actually acting such that something came into being that would not have come into being without that acting. Now one can speak again about real redemption and real sanctification. Now one can speak again about the possibility that God really can act to answer prayer. That the evangelical tradition has tended toward realism, does not mean, of course, that realism entails other evangelical positions. Conversely, while the Lutheran tradition has tended toward antirealism, this does not mean that antirealism entails other Lutheran positions. Of this we shall have much more to say later.

Dennis Bielfeldt