A Question

The question that has always interested me is not merely whether God exists and has a determinate contour apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, but whether or not it is ultimately meaningful to make such a claim.  Simply put, what would the truth conditions be of the claim that God exists and has a definite contour apart from awareness, perception, conception and language?  That God exists and has a definite contour apart from awareness, perception, conception and language?  But what is this?   "Not words," you say, "but the reality of that existence and contour apart from awareness, perception, conception and language. . ."  But what is that?

When thinking about truth conditions one wants to think about entities, properties, and relations apart from words.  But how precisely do we think of such things?  How do we think of that which makes true divine existence and contour apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language?  What is it precisely that makes true this and does not make true a divine existence and contour that is, but is not apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language?

The Ruins of Christendom

The Institute of Lutheran Theology will sponsor a theological conference on October 23-24 at its administrative offices located at The Old Sanctuary in Brookings, South Dakota, called "The Ruins of Christendom."

The conference description reads:  "Like post-modernity, this post-Christian era features a retreat into the self, a retreat from objective truth, and a retreat from the objective reality of God as distinct and separate from the self.  This conference will explore how the preaching of God's Word as Law and Gospel breaks through the curvatus in se, establishes Christ as the Way, as the Truth and the Life; and reveals the one true God as an objective reality capable of theophysical causality."

ILT faculty members Dr. Jonathan Sorum, Dr. Jack Kilcrease, Dr. Mark Hillmer, Dr. Dan Lioy, Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt and Dr. George Tsakiridas will offer papers, and there is ample opportunity for discussion.    

At a time when the scandal of the Cross has become for many theologically supine, this ILT conference seeks to return to the pith of Christianity itself: the truth of the Divine's incursion into time, His diremption into suffering and death, and His reconciliation of the world unto Himself. This is all scandalous, of course.  How is it that a particular, concrete historical man suffered, died, was buried and then was resurrected, and that this particular One carries universality?   How does preaching Law and Gospel to our ontologically feckless and insouciant generation discomfit the refractory self?  How does the "wording of the Word" finally avoid theological irrealism?  All and more will be discussed.  Come and join us here!
  

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.

Why the ILT Theological Commitments are Important for the Parish

This address was given at the ILT Theological Conference at Mt. Carmel on June 7 - 10.

Introduction

I want to say something today about the theological direction of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, and how that direction relates to preaching and teaching in the parish. This is a very important issue for those, like me, who still believe that seminary and graduate theological education should be effective in making students better teachers and preachers. Accordingly, I will begin by describing briefly what has now become the five theological emphases of the Institute. I will then relate these principles to what I take to be the “hermeneutical horizon” of those we shall likely encounter within the pews of North American churches in this early part of the twenty-first century. I use the term “hermeneutical horizon” to describe the set of interpretive presuppositions and principles of these early twenty-first century Americans and Canadians who are listening to sermons, participating in liturgies, and attending theological educational opportunities in their congregations.

The Five Theological Tenants of ILT

A few years ago I put together a list of what I believed were fundamental theological assertions or claims for the future of a robust Lutheran theology. The list included a number of assertions about the nature of church, the relation of the infinite and the finite, and the sufficiency of the agency of the Holy Spirit in the process of salvation. Since that time, however, it has become increasingly apparent to me that the first three claims that are not strictly speaking theological are nonetheless the most important of the claims for our time. The first speaks of the reality of God, the second about how we might objectively talk about God, and the third pertains to the nature of God’s relation to the universe. Since those first days of what was called then “the fundamentals,” I have had discussions with numerous people - - including the very able staff of the Institute of Lutheran Theology - - and I have accordingly refined the list to five. I offer the following as critical assertions for a robust Lutheran theology:

•Theological Realism. This is the assertion that God does exist and has a particular, determinate nature apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. While it may be surprising to some that a theologian would have to specify a commitment to theological realism rather than merely presuppose it, the truth is that theological realism is by no means any longer assumed within mainline Protestant theology. The explanation for this takes a bit of time to develop, and its full development is unfortunately beyond what I can do here today. However, I should say that I did do a Ph.D. in Contemporary Theology and Theological Thinking at the University of Iowa in the 1980s, and I found very few theological realists in those days either in the theological books I read and reflected upon, or the students, faculty, and professional theologians with whom I had the opportunity to work and speak.

•Semantic Realism. This asserts that our language about God has truth-conditions, that is, that there are features about the world, or more generally about what ultimately is, that make our language about God true or false. While it may be again surprising that theologians would not simply presuppose semantic realism, there are a host of very technical reasons - - some of which are scarcely understood by the theologians themselves - - why semantic realism is not widely subscribed to within leadership circles of faith communities within mainline Protestant denominationalism. Semantic realism claims the possibility of evidence transcending truth conditions, that is, it claims that language about God and God’s being is either true or false regardless of whether or not divine being is perceptually and publicly manifestable to us. This is widely assumed to be a very controversial philosophical claim. There are several alternatives to semantic realism, some of which claim that our talk of God is entirely in error, meaningless, or ultimately about features of ourselves or the world, features of which many users of the language are not aware. It is my contention that most theological education in the last fifty years has either explicitly or implicitly rejected the very possibility of semantic realism.

•Theophysical causation. This asserts that God can actually do things in the world. Beginning with the assumption that “to be real is to have causal powers” theophysical causation states that God’s actions must be understood causally, and that God’s agency is involved in causal relations. For instance, to say ‘God creates the universe’ is to assert a causal relation between God and the universe; it is to say, minimally, that the universe would not have come about as it did were it not for the activity of God. Moreover, to claim that “God redeems His creation” or that “God sustains His creation” is to say that creation would not have been redeemed without God’s action, nor would it have been sustained. Talking about theophyiscal causation, however, involves us in a very tricky matter: We have to be able to assert some kind of relationship between the infinite and the finite, between eternity and termporality, between the nonphysical and physical. Clarifying the nature of such a relationship is enormously difficult and fraught with numerous philosophical problems. For instance, how can something nonphysical be said to cause a change in the physical when the causal chains of the physical do not terminate in the nonphysical?

•A Lutheran Theology of Nature. This asserts that Lutheran theology, if it is to be sufficiently robust to survive within future generations, must reclaim a strong connection to daily life and living. The days of philosophical idealism are over. While previous generations of Lutherans may have rested content in the assumption that their theology and physics did not mix - - and were confident that such a non-mixing was good for theology - - I believe that this is no longer the case. We live in a time dominated primarily by physicalist assumptions. We believe, after all, that all things are made of atoms, and that such atoms are themselves very complex wholes whose parts are leptons and hadrons, etc. While we admit that the quantum world is quirky, we are not ready to admit that it is spiritual, that it is finally somehow mind. In such a world as ours, separating the actions of God from nature leaves people confused. How can one talk about the mighty acts of God without talking about the mighty acts of God in nature? The problem, of course, is that we Lutherans, along with many within mainline Protestantism, have been quite successful in talking about God without talking about nature. The notion of God, we have intoned, is after all finally something that connects to the realm of human value, not the world of physical and metaphysical fact. It is my contention that our slavish commitment to the fact/value distinction has marginalized theology and its language; it has made such language basically language about the self and what it values, rather than language about the world and what ultimately obtains.

•The Clarity of Scripture. This asserts that Lutheran theology must again return to a robust understanding of sola scriptura. Luther and the reformers presupposed that the Bible had a clarity making possible the apprehension of its content without the need of sophisticated and profoundly scholarly methods of ascertaining it. After all, Luther criticized the tradition’s four-fold method of Biblical interpretation, whereby all of Scripture was thought to carry a literal/historical sense, a hidden allegorical sense, a morally-relevant tropological sense, and finally an eschatological anagogical sense. Luther and kin realized that having such a method virtually guarantees that the Bible can mean anything that the interpreter wants it to mean, that is, that the sense of Scripture is merely a projection of the human interpreter upon the text. Such a view of things, of course, undercuts the very authority of Scripture. Accordingly, it is not Scripture that has the authority, but the various human readings of Scripture that has it. Luther and the Reformers also spoke of the internal clarity of Scripture, the clarity that Scripture had for the hearts of men and women in bondage to sin and not able to free themselves. The external clarity of Scripture grounds and internal apprehension by the faithful, an activity that presupposes the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Why Not the Classic Lutheran Tenants?

These fundamental assertions have been sometimes attacked because they do not seemingly talk about what is essential for Lutheran theology, that is, the centrality of Christ, the distinction between law and gospel, the theology of the cross, the simul iustus et peccator, the finite bearing the infinite, etc. But this is an unfortunate misunderstanding of these assertions. I have stated clearly and repeatedly from the beginning that our theology presupposes and affirms these traditional Lutheran motifs, as well as traditional Christian motifs generally. The reason that this set of assertions is highlighted is precisely because the fissure in the modern theological context is not primarily on the question of the putative centrality of Christ in salvation, but rather pertains to the reality of Christ Himself. Granted that Christ is central in salvation, the critical question is whether it is our idea of Christ, or the culturally-transmitted symbol of, or language about, the Christ that is central, or Christ Himself. Is Christ a real being that can sustain causal relationships with other beings in the universe, or is it merely a question of our ideas about Christ that are causally efficacious - - if ideas can be efficacious at all?

Lamentably, in this lecture today, we can only deal with the first three issues. I want to claim that the notions of theological realism, semantic realism, and theophysical causation are central and crucial to life in the parish. I want further to suggest that committed lay people have, in general, always had the good common sense to affirm these notions. The problem has been, I believe, in the educational system that produces pastors and teachers in the mainline Protestant denominations: These people have not been trained in ways that are sympathetic to these three affirmations. Instead much theological training has assumed theological irrealism, semantic expressivism, and the causal impotence of the divine. There is, accordingly, a theological disconnect between those who teach and preach in mainline Protestant denominations and the committed lay people within them.

But another disconnect arises as well. While committed lay people often simply regard theological realism, semantic realism, and theophysical causation as entailments of the Christian tradition generally, the dominant “cultural default” position within North America is not a position that supposes any of these to be true - - or, at least, does not suppose them to be true in any profound sense. The situation within mainline Protestantism whereby pastors and teachers not espousing theological and semantic realism are supposed to evangelize a group of people themselves not holding such realisms is not a happy one for the perpetuation of the Protestant tradition. While there does not exist a profound presuppositional disconnect between the horizon of leadership and the group to be evangelized on issues of theological and semantic realism, the tacit agreement of horizons between the two groups unfortunately offers no real reason for those to be evangelized to become committed lay people living out their faith within Protestant denominations throughout North America.

Why Theological Realism is Important in the Parish

The classical model of God in the western tradition presupposes certain Greek notions about perfection. In Greek thought influenced by Plato - - Whitehead has said that “all of philosophy is a footnote on Plato” - - God is figured as timelessly eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, simple, and impassible. God is, as Anselm was to say centuries later, “that which none greater can be thought.” God is accordingly regarded to be a necessary being, a being that does not merely happen to exist, but one who could not have not existed. Such a being is thought to exist apart from human being; indeed God has never not existed. This means, of course, that God existed for eternity before His creation of the world. The Triune God exists for eternity within the immanent Trinity prior to God’s expression into that which was other than He. What is important to see is that on the classical model the order of being (ontology) is unaffected by the order of knowing (epistemology). According to the classical view, God’s determinate being is what it is apart from our ability to perceive, conceive and understand it. God exists determinately before all worlds. The traditional view of God thus presupposes that ontology is logically prior to epistemology.

The Kantian revolution of the late 18th century radically transformed thinking about God. Because the notion of God has no “empirical intuitions” falling under it, Kant regarded it not to be the kind of being that could either be a substance nor could be known to be causally related to anything else that is a substance. Kant thereby relegated God to the status as merely an ideal of pure reason. Accordingly, God has in principle no causal efficacy, nor can He be said to exist apart from human awareness.

After Kant, theologians had to work out various “post-Kantian options for doing theology.” Instead of God-language being about some reality existing over and apart from human being, such language must ultimately be cognized as relatable to the self and its experience. With Kant, epistemology takes primacy over ontology. Accordingly, Schleiermacher identifies God not as a being existing external to human being, but rather “the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence.” Within the nineteenth century, we see various attempts to think God anew. For Schleiermacher, God is somehow reducible to, or identifiable with, the human feeling of absolute dependence. For Kant himself, and certainly his disciple Fichte, God becomes reducible to, or identifiable with, the human moral drive generally. For Hegel, God is somehow reducible to, or identifiable with, human reflection upon reflection, that is, with human thinking generally. Accordingly, as human beings progressively understand the historical identity of being and their thinking of being, they grasp that their thinking of being is itself the thinking of God as God comes to know Himself historically and temporally.

Later post-Kantian options turned more existential in their orientations. Barth and Tillich could both hold basic Kantian presuppositions, yet talk a great deal about God not being a mere idea. The trick here was to regard God relationally as the other of a human encounter, an encounter with a phenomenon that is not of their own conjuring or projection. Yet Barth’s commitment to the eschatological breaking into history of a reality that could not be part of history made it the case that God’s “mighty acts in history” could not be “mighty acts within nature.” Moreover, Tillich’s radical separation between God as the ground and depth of being and the human structure of being made it the case that, for Tillich, God’s existence could not mean that God was simply a member of the domain of existing things, that is, that an “ontological inventory” would include within it that being we call “God.”

Interestingly enough, people in the pews - - and I would say even mainline Protestant pews - - have never really made the Kantian turn fully. They seem yet to believe that to be real is to have causal powers. I would argue that in the present context, with so many options for belief, most people find that there are really no compelling reasons to attend church simply to remember or venerate an idea, ideal, or any other abstract object - - no matter how lofty that idea or object might be. One can, after all, venerate an idea or attune oneself to an abstract object without being in church. For the great numbers of people presupposing that the notion of God somehow clarifies the highest and noblest sentiments of human being, attending church services often grants no profound utility. Reading and discussing one’s noble sentiments is probably more useful than going to a church service where one’s sentiments are only obliquely referenced.

I think that the “cultural default” position on God in modern North American culture is probably not far from what Christian Smith has recently called “Moral Therapeutic deism”. In his recent Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Life of American Teenagers, he offers the following summary of this view:

• A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
• The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself.
• God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die.

It is important to analyze this a bit, for on first blush it would appear that this cultural default view suggests theological realism after all. As Smith and company point out, the teenagers they have interviewed do mostly hold that a God does exist outside human awareness. Indeed, they espouse a rather vaguely platonic belief that they have a soul and it goes somewhere good when they die. After this, however, things get complex in a hurry. God is not thought to be causally active in the world, and theological language is not thought to be capable of sustaining truth-conditions. The idea is that people use the language that they have inherited, and somehow this language helps in being both moral, and in achieving some peace and happiness in one’s life.

In analyzing this view, it is important to note that those holding it have not, in general, thought deeply enough about it to assure any kind of theological coherency. While the first tenet of “moral therapeutic deism” suggests theological realism, I am not sure most holding this view would want to assert that some determinate divine being exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. To claim that ‘God exists and watches over the world’ is consistent with the great religious traditions of the world, is clearly to deny the Triunity of God. A general God cannot both exist and watch over the world and a specific Triune God also so exist. Moreover, it cannot be the case that both ‘God is not particularly involved with one’s life’ (as moral therapeutic deism asserts) and that God is triunely active in quickening the hearts of dead sinners. The two cannot exist simultaneously.

Even if one could somehow assert that moral therapeutic deism does presuppose theological realism, it is simply not the case that such a realism would be a Christian realism. The critical claim for Christians is that Christ has been resurrected, and that somehow that resurrected Christ now exists independently of human awareness, perception, conception and language.

It seems to me all important that the Christian theological realist assert the reality of Christ apart from human being. In the absence of such a realism, language of Christ merely becomes symbolic language of empowerment, language that helps the person achieve greater moral direction and existential peace. But, of course, this moral therapeutic deistic trajectory is completely consistent with the Kantian turn in theology: The idea of God functions importantly to ameliorate human life. God is somehow identified with human moral striving and human existential health. God’s being is not a being that is prior to human being, but God’s being is only assertible on the grounds of human being. For moral therapeutic deism, epistemology is prior to ontology.

It is obvious that Christian discipleship is very difficult on such a view. While God is thought to exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, the Triune God is not. This means, of course, that Christ is not important in and of Himself as He whom one must follow. While talk of Christ is fine within a tradition of reflection on the problem of human being, fear of committing to Christian exclusivism makes even putatively committed Christians not want to be realists with respect to the second person of the Trinity. Of course, Christ has always been a stumbling block.

Why Semantic Realism is Important

Traditional theological language was truth-conditional, and robustly so. While the tradition always understood that one could perhaps not know what it is that one was talking about when talking theologically, the specificity of the talk was deemed nonetheless crucial in order to refer properly to the divine. Specific Trinitarian formulas were necessary to state the truth about the Trinity. It was not merely a game of having to say the same things as the rest of the tribe, it was rather the assertion that these things were true, and because they were true the whole tribe should say them. Traditional theological language held to the possibility of evidence transcendent truth-conditions. Language about God and God’s relationship to human beings is true or false because of the nature of God and His relationship to human beings. Such language while said by human beings, is not thought to be true because of human beings and the way in which such language is said.

There has been, however, quite a revolution in our thinking about theological language. This is an area where there is perhaps the most profound disconnect between the presuppositions of mainline Protestant pastors and teachers, and the presuppositions of committed lay people. It is an area where there is perhaps the deepest sharing of presuppositions between the “cultural default” view and the horizons of pastors and teachers.

Revisionist views of theological language assume that semantic realism can either not be defended in theology, or if defended, that the assertions of theology must be reduced to the assertions of some other area of discourse entirely. Opponents of theological semantic realism have various options. One can be a semantic realist and claim that no states of affairs exist which make true the sentences of theology. Such opponents say that semantic realism is committed to error theory, to a view of things that simply does not obtain.

Other detractors of semantic realism include semantic expressivism, the view that all language about the divine really is a projection or an expression of the self. This view is quite widely accepted, I believe, and often accompanies the moral therapeutic deism previously mentioned. That God wants humans to be happy and peaceful is perhaps best understood as an expression of the self upon the world. If God is not causally engaged in the world, what is the best analysis of the assertion that “God wants humans to be happy?” I would argue that it is best seen as a mere projection upon the cosmos of our own desire to be happy.

Other options for opponents of theological semantic realism include reductionisms of various stripes. Maybe talk about God really just is talk about the self, as Feuerbach claimed. Maybe all such talk is either semantically or theoretically reducible to psychology, economics, or sociology. It should be obvious that the rejection of semantic realism is consistent with, and probably entailed by, a rejection of Christian exclusivism.

If language about the divine is not really about the divine over and apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, then such language is really culture-bound and its “truth” must be asserted in ways that are quite different from the the truth-conditions of the tradition. For instance, one might assert that the various religious languages of the differing traditions are true in that they express or empower human beings in various ways. Statements about Christ thus are true because of the effect of the symbol, language, or concept of Christ within human experience generally.

It should be obvious that pastors and teachers presupposing this view of things do not really have a reason to evangelize the masses who are already accepting the “cultural default” view. What is it about the particularity of Christian claims that makes it the case that one would want others to adopt them? The tradition said that such claims were true, but in the absence of clear truth conditions, this assertion devolves merely to an assertion that such language is effective in the moral and existential lives of human beings.
Why Theophysical Causation is Important

The tradition assumed that God really does create, redeem and sustain the world. While there was much reflection on the relationship between the being of God and the being of contingent being, there was never a denial of God’s actions as somehow causing the distribution of natural events. The whole premise of the supernatural/natural distinction is that God can and does work in the world, whether through divine primary causality coursing through all things, or via special interventionist causal action.

However, since the time of Kant, the effort has been to think of God primarily in noncausal terms. God is not the kind of being that can be appealed to as the terminus of any causal chain. God’s being is not like contingent being, so whatever contingent causality is, it is not divine causality. As I pointed out previously, in periods deeply in debt to idealism, this is not as profoundly problematic as it is in our time, a time governed by physicalistic assumptions, a time where people widely regard it to be the case that “to be real is to have causal powers.” In our time, when people do decreasingly come to worship out of cultural inertia, there has to be some compelling reason to do so. If pastors and teachers suppose that God is not real in the sense of being causally efficacious in one’s life, then they can finally only offer God as a great idea, as the embodiment of justice, goodness, power, etc. But it is difficult to see why one would go to church to encounter such a God unless the pastor or teacher can say things that ultimately make the church-goer happy or more at peace. But this puts the pastor or teacher in the same business as the counselor or the writer of self-help books.
On the issue of divine causality, there exists again the profound disconnect between the loyal lay people who regularly pray to God and expect God to do things in the world and the pastors and teachers who know that God is not the kind of thing that can be in principle a being that can do things in the world. Here the pastors and teachers have to teach and preach in such ways that do not cause the really committed to leave the faith community. Yet, in their preaching and teaching, they are to preach and teach to an audience that does not believe that God is causally efficacious but somehow still desperately wishes it were so.

The question of the causal efficacy of the divine is, in my opinion, the fundamental fissure between Christian Protestant expressions. While we can argue the fine points of theology among Reformed, Lutheran, Tudor, and Anabaptist traditions, the question of whether or not God is the kind of being that can in principle change the distribution of worldly events and properties is far more fundamental. It is, after all, quite difficult to frame a non-causal account of divine redemption. If Christ does not exist over and apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and if divine things are in principle not able to be causally linked to worldly things, then in what sense can Christ “save” us? That we have been able to proceed for so many years within mainline Protestantism as if this were not a deep and significant question merely shows the theological bankruptcy of our time.

Conclusion & Summary

There was once an emperor who was convinced that he had clothes though no one else saw them. All except the most unsophisticated were able to affirm that the naked emperor had clothes, but not so the children.

When I was a child I marveled at the world and asked questions about how there might be a God that somehow hooked up to it. After six years of Ph.D. work in theology, I was ready to put away childish things and do real theology. But I know now that some questions from children our childish and some quite profound. I think that the question of whether or not the emperor has clothes is the profound question of a child. Jesus told us to be as little children. So that is why I am here today. I believe that the emperor is naked; I cannot find a stitch of clothing on him. I can’t see a way ahead theologically without first coming to terms with the nakedness of the emperor.

The Institute of Lutheran theology thinks the emperor is naked as well. It steadfastly and boldly asserts that God is real, that our language about God is true, and that God really does create and redeem His world. The Institute believes that these commitments are of fundamental importance in the parish. The pastor and teacher must, after all, have a good reason to evangelize. If her God is real, her God causally active, and her language about God true, she has every reason to evangelize. If this is not the case, then things are much more complicated. In fact, if not, one would expect to see a rather confusing situation in parishes across North America; one would, in fact, expect to see the situation we are in fact witnessing today.

Prologomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - A Lutheran Theology of Nature

Does God exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language? Is God causally efficacious in the universe? Is it possible to be justified in believing that God is at work in nature?

In order to make progress on these questions, we must distinguish between a natural theology and a theology of nature. A Lutheran natural theology claims that natural events and states somehow strongly justify belief in God. A Lutheran theology of nature, on the other hand, asserts that natural events and states merely weakly justify belief in God. It is important, obviously, to distinguish weak and strong justification.

Proposition P is strongly justified for S just in case it would be irrational for S not to believe P. On the other hand, proposition P is weakly justified for S just in cane it would not be irrational for S to believe P. A Lutheran theology of nature must claim that assertions of God's relationship to the universe are weakly justified, in other words, that it is not irrational for S to believe that God is at work in the universe. In the flight to avoid a natural theology, Lutheran theology has omitted that which is essential to it: A Lutheran theology of nature. While a Lutheran theology of nature is not interested in proving the existence of God (strong justification), it is vitally concerned to show the compatibility of God's existence with nature (weak justification).

In carrying out a Lutheran theology of nature, semantic realism is presupposed, a realism that allows for the "evidence-transcending truth-conditions" of theological language. Presumably, 'God is real' is not a publicly verifiable statement. Therefore, many philosophers have said that the statement is not just false, but meaningless. Without getting into technical detail here, however, we must assert that ontological statements of this type can be meaningfully asserted even if they are not confirmable or infirmable in experience. (I leave aside for now all of the issues that surround this last phrase.)

What is important is that we not understand 'God exists' merely as 1) a report or expression of one's subjective psychological or existential states, 2) as an undecipherable metaphor for the mystery of life itself or a quality of life itself, 3) or finally, as a linguistic custom one uses in belonging to a tribe of language-users who use such locutions at particular communal/tribal times or places.

To do a Lutheran theology of nature presupposes a beginning in revelation, a beginning that takes seriously the scriptural witness to a real God that causally affects the world by 1) creating and sustaining it, 2) electing and protecting God's chosen people, 3) and sustaining all of His people through God's real historical incursion in the resurrection and subsequent witness to that resurrection. It must take seriously the salient fact that Scripture thoroughly rejects a causally inert, causally impotent deity. Simply put, it must seriously engage the question that if Scripture is to be regarded as a trustworthy witness, then there must be warrant for the claim that God is real, that God has causal powers, and that God is more than mere idea.

The cosmological, ontological and teleological arguments for the existence of God are not successful in demonstrating the existence of the divine. However, if they are properly understood, they are effective in showing that it is not irrational to believe that God exists. In other words, while they cannot show that it is irrational not to believe God exists, they can show that it is not irrational to believe that God exists. Clearly, the Book of Nature can be interpreted either as having a globally-designing deity or as not having one. At issue here is the retrieval of the doctrine of divine providence. A Lutheran theology of nature can claim that a providential God is weakly justified on the basis of Scripture and experience.

Applying Bayes Theorem to the universe and the question of intelligent design cannot make God's existence probable, but clearly such application can show that God's existence is more probable than it might have been if the universe did not have the characteristics it seems to have. Even though the existence of God may not be in itself likely, on the supposition of God's existence, one would very much expect more a universe like ours rather than on the supposition of God's nonexistence.

A Lutheran theology of nature makes explicit reference to God as acting in and through nature. Obviously, the discussion between science and theology is important in developing a Lutheran theology of nature. Because a theology of nature is important for the future of Lutheran confessional theology, the discussion between science and theology is important for the future of Lutheran theology. Accordingly, Lutheran theology must reject the causal closure of the physical and assert the real existence of God. It must claim that there are natural events that are not finally wholly caused by congeries of other natural events. Finally, it must examine the nature of that which could serve as a causal joint connecting the divine to the universe.

To claim that God is real is to admit one fundamental dualism: the dualism between the divine and the natural universe. Thus, there is a realm of natural entities, properties, relations, events and states of affairs that does not include the divine. There is also a realm of divine entities, properties, relations, events and states of affairs the does not include the natural order. Lutheran theological realism simply cannot hide from this dualism.

In order to have a coherent view, Lutheran theology must seek to relate talk of God to the discourses of the sciences. Not to do this is finally to assign theology to the realm of value; it is to make theology subjective and ultimately irrational.

The cash value of this view for piety is apparent. After all, people in the pews have for generations prayed to God, assuming that God is different than the self and that God can act in the world. Theological realism best undergirds this practice. Such people have thought that God is active in the world, that God creates, redeems, and sustains the world, and that God answers prayer. Again, theological realism best undergrids this practice. Clearly, a Lutheran theology of nature must presuppose theological realism.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Theological Realism II

While there are many forces driving pop culture towards antirealist views, the driving force behind the movement of the theological community to antirealism is quite easy to discern. Theological antirealism emerged in its present form because of the adoption by the intellectual world of the argument and results of the Immanuel Kant’s epochal 1781 Critique of Pure Reason. In this most important and influential philosophical work since the days of Plato and Aristotle, Kant argued that the necessary condition for something being a substance, is that human beings can have sense perception of it. The mind, as it turns out, is always organizing experience, and that the experience of any substance is the result of the mind’s organization of sense particulars. Kant advocated a paradigm shift in philosophy: instead of thinking that the being of objects are what they are on their own, and the human mind revolves around them - - this is the traditional assertion of the order of being itself being externally related to the knower - - Kant advocated a “Copernican Revolution” where the being of objects are what they are because they revolve around the human knower - - the assertion of their internal relatedness to the subject.

Kant claimed that space and time were “pure forms of sensibility,” the a priori grid upon which sense particulars were possible. Moreover, he claimed that the “empirical concepts of the understanding” made possible the reality of empirical objects. Accordingly, an object was “that by concept of which the manifold of sense is united.” The rabbit object is constituted by the empirical concept of rabbit uniting and synthesizing both synchronically and diachronically sense particulars. Substance and causality for Kant were conceived as categories of synthesis. Empirical objects “fell under” these pure concepts of the understanding. All empirical objects were substances because of the fundamental way in which they were synthesized. Only substances could causally relate to other substances, because the mind worked to synthesize substances as so causally-relatable. Just as ideas organize thoughts, substances organize sense perception.

Kant’s profoundly important gift and curse to theology was his conviction that God is not a substance. Because there can be no “sense intuitions” (perceptions) falling under the concept ‘God’, God cannot be a substance. The ramifications for this are far-reaching: This meant that God cannot be an entity, that God cannot be a being among other existing beings. Rather, for Kant, God becomes a mere regulative ideal of human reason, a notion necessary to think when we are organizing our thoughts, but not a notion that can refer to a being within the universe of beings that can in principle be causally related to any of those beings. For Kant, God becomes an idea!

While this Kantian conclusion may seem to be a very bad thing for theology, it was embraced by many in the academic theological community as a way ahead. After all, the Enlightenment criticisms of theology were leading many to think that there was no room at all in the universe for God, that assertions of God’s being were not justified. Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion clearly shows that there is nothing necessary or universal in the assertion of God’s putative designing activity. The universe perhaps didn’t even need a clockmaker!
After Kant, academic theology struggled to give an account of theological language that did not commit it to violating Kant’s relegation of God to the status of a regulative ideal of human reason.

We discern this particularly in Schleiermacher’s relegation of God to the “whence of the feeling of absolute dependence.” But we also find it in Hegel’s notion of the Absolute, and later in the phenomenological theology used by Bultmann and carried later into hermeneutical theology. Tillich’s contention that God is not a being within the structure of being, but being-itself at the depth of being, is another example of Kantian-inspired theology presupposing antirealism.

It is time to reclaim theological realism. Lutheran theology must again work out of a paradigm presupposed by the Christian tradition, a paradigm of theological realism. After all, the Reformers assumed such a realism. To reclaim the tradition is to reject the Kantian antirealist paradigm that has dominated theology for the last two hundred years.

Lutheran theology must again proclaim a theological realism that asserts that God is real if and only if God exists and has the properties God has (call them P) apart from human awareness, perception, conceptual schemes, beliefs, and linguistic practices. We must distinguish, however, the existence of God and divine properties P apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and the independence of God and P apart from these things. While God either exists or does not, the independence of His being apart from human awareness is a matter of degree. Realists come in many varieties, and there is little reason to think that the options for antirealism (and realism) are any less for theologians than thinkers in any other discipline.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Theological Realism I

There is a common perception in the pews that is not widely held in the theological world. Most laypeople actually think that their pastors and the teachers of their pastors hold that God exists. By ‘existence’ they mean that God is an entity that has being outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language.

Although this common perception is widespread, it is not accurate. Surprisingly, many pastors and theology professors do not believe that God exists external to human awareness, perception, conception and language. The reasons why they do not believe this are clearly not because they are insincere, bad, or prone to dissimulate. The reasons are rather more complex than that, having to do with the fact that they have been educated in a particular theological ethos where they share a set of theological assumptions and values with other theologically-trained individuals within the academic community. Accordingly, when thinking theologically they quite naturally don’t think as theological realists; they do not hold that God exists independently from human perception, conception, and linguistic practice.

In order to grasp this clearly, we must draw the important distinction between internal and external relations. Traditionally, people have claimed that God’s existence is externally related to human existence. In order to see what this means consider entity A and entity B connected by relation R. A is externally related R-ly to B if and only if the reality of A does not depend upon the reality of B. For example, the genetics of a father is externally related to the genetics of his son, for the reality of the father’s genetic composition does not depend causally upon the reality of the son’s genetic composition. On the other hand, A is internally related to entity B if and only if the reality of A does depend upon the reality of B. Accordingly, the genetics of the son is internally related to the genetics of the father because the son would not be the son genetically without the father’s genetic composition. Traditionally, Christians have held that God is externally related to the universe and the universe is internally related to God.

Philosophers distinguish between realist and anti-realist positions regarding various domains of inquiry. A realist holds that the thing of concern is externally related to human beings: It is what it is apart from human existence. An anti-realist claims that the thing of concern is internally related to human beings: It would not be what it is apart from human existence.

Realists and anti-realists come in many varieties. One can, in fact, be a realist with respect to some domains, and not others. In addition, there are also degrees of realism: One can either be more or less realist, or more or less antirealist.

Some examples might be helpful. One can be a realist (or an antirealist) with respect to any of these: atomic theory, chemical theory, psychological theory, mathematics, aesthetics, ethics, philosophy, and theology.

Philosophical reflection upon the nature of knowledge is called ‘epistemology’, and the adjectival form of this word is ‘epistemological’ or ‘epistemic’. One is an epistemological realist if one believes that the knower is externally related to the thing known, that is, if the thing known is what it is apart from the knowing of it. Alternately, one is an epistemological antirealist if one believes that the knower is internally related to the thing known, that is, if the thing known is constituted in part by the knowing of it.

It seems that we are epistemic antirealists when it comes to knowledge of God; God is beyond human conception so we don’t know exactly what God is in and of Himself. But Epistemic Antirealism does not entail metaphysical antirealism!

Unfortunately, for many theologians, the inability to know the contour of the divine becomes the claim that there is no definite ontological or metaphysical shape to the divine. They think that because what we know about God is internally related to our act of knowing God, so is the being of God internally related to our act of thinking God. This is the position of theological antirealism.

Theological antirealism clearly denies that God’s being is externally related to our own being. On the contrary, the contour of God’s being depends upon the structure of human consciousness and existence. This view seems consistent with affirming theological relativism: God has one ontological shape for person x and another for y. Clearly, this view of things is consistent with our prevailing democratic ethos - - one can believe whatever they want about God. In addition, it coheres with the notion of the “privatization of God.” Many people today no longer believe that God is the kind of thing that can in principle have intersubjective reality. Just as one’s own mental life if private, so is one’s own God. Accordingly, God becomes for each person the ultimate expression of personal individuality.

With a popular culture unwittingly embracing theological antirealism, and a theological culture presupposing much more sophisticated versions of it, it is important perhaps to point out the obvious: The Reformers denied theological antirealism. We shall return to this point in a subsequent post.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Introduction

Lutheran theology is in a sorry state. There are reasons why it is in a sorry state, and there are ways we might address the state.

It is my conviction that Lutheran theology shall survive only if it reclaims some of the original presuppositions upon which it grew. Specifically, I argue that Lutheran theology needs now to embrace the following five theses:

· Theological Realism
· Semantic Realism
· Theophysical Causation
· A Lutheran Theology of Nature
· The Internal Clarity of Scripture

In the following group of blogs entries, I shall point to what I believe the problem is, and show how each of these help to address that problem.

As always I welcome all comments. I believe that theology must be worked out in conversation and dialogue. Unfortunately, those that might be interested in this discussion are few and they are often separated by great geographical differences. Through the gift of new technologies, however, we can achieve real theological conversation

Types of Theological Non-Realism

Clearly, the question of realism is hotly debated in philosophy, forming one of the standard lines of inquiry in the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of language and logic, and the philosophy of religion. One can be a global or local realist, that is, one can be a non-realist with respect to all subject matters, or merely non-realist with respect to some, while remaining realist with respect to others. For instance, one could be realist about the things talked about in astronomy and non-realist about those specified in ethics and morality. Furthermore, one can be realist or non-realist with respect to degree. There are many ways to be realist and anti-realist, and clearly some views are more robustly realist (or non-realist) than others. Discussing theological realism demands we first get clear on realism in general. Let us call the following position generic realism.

Object a is real if and only if a exists and has the properties it has (call them P) apart from human awareness, perception, conceptual schemes, beliefs, and linguistic practices.

Given this characterization, the first distinction that must be made is between an object, property, or event’s existence from its independence. One might, after all, simply claim that a does not exist. An example of this is the nominalist who denies the existence of platonic universals. All statements presupposing or asserting the existence of a universal would be false because such things simply do not exist.

One might, however, allow the existence of a, yet deny its independence. For example, the transcendental idealist might claim that the object exists apart from us, by that all of its features are dependent upon us, that is, the properties are dependent of their being experienced by the subject. With respect to the question of God, one might therefore reject theological realism by denying the existence of God, or one might merely deny the independence of the divine properties from their being perceived or conceived by human beings.

If one claims that God does not exist, or that God does not instantiate the properties attributed to Him, then all of the theory that talks about God (theology) must be an extended error. Philosophers call accounts putatively referring to domains of non-existing objects, properties or events error theories. For instance, if mathematical objects do not exist, then accounts referring to them are clearly in error; statements within such theories are false. Similarly, if there are no ethical or moral properties, then one might claim that theories about such things also constitute error accounts. So the first question for theology has been, and must always be, is theology itself an error theory? Are any statements of theology true, or are such statements false, just like all statements referring to such questionable entities as ghosts, goblins, and ghouls.

At this point, however, things can get complicated. What do we do with matters of reduction? Do those objects, properties or events exist for which a reduction is possible? Prima facie, we might want to say that all statements about the reductandum (that to be reduced) are false when we can specify the reductantes(those things doing the reducing) necessary and sufficient for the existence of those things to be reduced. For instance, if God is instantiated if and only if the “whence” of the feeling of absolute dependence (Schleiermacher) is instantiated, then one might claim that God just is the whence of this feeling of absolute dependence, that there is nothing more to God than this ”whence” of absolute dependence.

Notice, however, that reductions of this type do not formally entail non-realism with respect to the class of objects in question. Water is instantiated just in case H20 is instantiated, but this does not mean that water is not real. One might say that the existence of H20 actually vindicates the existence of water. On the other hand, when we learned that “polywater” is instantiated if and only if water with impurities from improperly washed glassware is instantiate, we thus eliminate polywater from the world of existing objects.

Thus, reductions can be either vindicative or eliminative. If we find that some disjunction of neurophysical properties are instantiated if and only if a particular mental state is instantiated, then do we claim that the mental states have no ontological status, or do we point out that the existence of the neuro-realizers actually makes mental causation possible, and consequently, that mental properties can be said to exist after all?

It seems to me that whether or not a reduction is vindicative or eliminative depends a great deal upon our expectations. If we are expecting mental phenomenon to have ontological status in the way a Cartesian dualist might think about it, then obviously the reduction might lead us to deny ontological status to the mental. However, if our expectations are that the mental is really epiphenomenal, that such properties are in principle unable to enter into causal relations, then the reduction of them to disjunctions of causal neural-realizers might vindicate the existence of the mental to us. Formally, just as thinking of a golden mountain in France is a mental state instantiated if and only some causally efficacious disjunction of neuro-configurations are instantiated , so too is water instantiated if and only if H20 is instantiated.

This question is obviously important for theology and, to my mind, has again much to do with expectation. If we expect that God is a being who has the kind of causal powers that would allow for the answering of prayer and the resurrection of the dead, then we are likely to think that the Schleiermacherian reduction eliminates use of the word ‘God’, for there is no referent to ‘God’ in the way that the language has been traditionally understood. However, if we believe that God-talk already makes no sense whatsoever, finding a reference to ‘God’ as the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence may actually vindicate the term’s use. We might accordingly ascribe ontological status to God, though we are not meaning by ‘God’ what was meant by the term during most of the western theological tradition. So the statements of theology could all be false because the objects, properties, events, and states of affairs referred to by the language of theology do not exist, and yet the putative reductions of the theological to human experience do not entail that theology itself constitutes an error theory. If theology is an error-theory, reduction alone does not entail it to be such.

In addition to the assertion that theology is an error-theory by being comprised of statements that are truth-apt, but nonetheless false, we might want to deny realism in theology be claiming that the language of theology is not truth-apt at all. Perhaps theological language mimics the role of language once widely ascribed to ethical and moral discourse; perhaps theological language is expressivist, and makes no factual claim whatsoever?

Expressivism in theology constitutes itself in parallel fashion to its ethical counterpart. Instead of the putative statements of ethics referring to an objective moral reality, or to subjective but determinate states, ethical sentences merely express emotions of approbation or disapprobation with respect to a particular agent or act. Saying that ‘John is wrong to steal the candy’ thus is analyzed into “‘John stealing candy’, boo!” Ethical sentences merely express one’s emotional response to an ethical situation. They make no more of a truth claim than someone crying.

Pure expressionism in theology is difficult to find in the recent literature for a number of reasons - - one may be courage - - but clearly much theological discussion merely evinces the speaker’s feelings about a particular thing. In liberationist theologies of all kinds, oftentimes it seems that the writer is quite unconcerned with the factuality of the divine, and quite concerned with persuading people about his social/political/economic/cultural agenda. An expressionist account may be the most plausible to offer in such situations.

But what about discourse that is truth-apt, but nevertheless does make claims about the divine - - not all of which are false? Interestingly enough, theological discourse of this type seemingly need not be realist; while one might grant existence to divine entities and properties, one still might deny that such things have independence apart from human perception, conceptual schemes and linguistic practice.

Bishop Berkeley is famous, of course, for his denial that matter exists apart from mind. Although, as he says, “we must talk like the vulgar and think like the wise,” it is nonetheless true that “all the choir of heaven and the furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies that compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind” (Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710). Although our statements about matter and its relationships are either true or false apart from us, matter is wholly dependent upon human being; the contour of matter is clearly dependent upon human perceptual experience. With respect to theology, God may not be independent of human experience, yet sentences about God might still be true or false. Accordingly, one can be an anti-realist with respect to the domain of the divine if one holds that statements about this domain are true or false, but that the entire domain is somehow dependent upon human cognition.

So what are the options for the anti-realist theist who denies expressivism and error theory? In parallel with the contemporary discussion in the philosophy of science, it seems one might hold that postulation of the divine realm, though not independent of human experience, still is needed to account for human experience. This type of argument basically proceeds as an “inference to the best explanation” argument: One asserts that there is a divine being having such and such a nature because the assertion of such a being best explains the kind of experience we have and the kind of world we seem to have. Another possibility is to argue that the consensus of theological opinion is not extension-reflecting of the references of theological language, but rather extension-determining, that is, agreed upon theological statements act to determine the very reality they report. The objects, properties, events and states of affairs of theological theory are judgment-dependent, not judgment-independent.

So what are our options in theology with respect to the issue of realism?

1) One might say that the statements of theology are truth-apt, but because no divine reality exists, they are all false and thus theology constitutes an error theory. Clearly, this view is not an option for a theist engaged in the theological task.

2) might say that the statements of theology are not truth-apt; they are merely expressions of human emotion, value, or orientations. While this view may be an improvement over the previous, it is not a very promising way to proceed theologically. After all, while one seems more or less stuck with ethical language because of the nature of human relationships, this seems not to be true of theological language. This language seems more prone to elimination than the former kind.

3) One might say that the statements of language are truth-apt and not globally false. Simply put, one might say that divine reality exists in some way, yet deny the independence of this reality from human awareness, perception, conception and language. On this view, one could claim that the assertion of the existence of divine reality is justified on the basis of an inference to the best explanation or on the basis a theological consensus that somehow determines theological extension itself. While (3) is more promising than (1) and (2), they run into real difficulties in explaining the truth of discourse about the person and work of the Christ. Does the salvific work of Christ constitute the best explanation of our human experience? It seems unlikely. In fact, scripture and tradition have referred to Christ as a “stumbling block” for human reason. And as regards to any theological consensus, it is precisely at the point of our discourse about Christ that we lose consensus, or at least enough consensus to derail any anti-realist effort presupposing a uniformity of theological opinion.

So what is left? It seems to me that what is left is theological realism, the assertion that God exists and has His nature apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. The assertion of such a God and descriptions of His nature seem to be clearly evidence-transcending. Human beings simply cannot be in relevant perceptual causal connections to those divine states of affairs that make assertions of the Trinity true. This being said, however, there is another kind of way that such statements might be justified. If these statements’ causal history includes the activity of the Holy Spirit, one might hold that they make claims about the reality of the divine without be wholly evidence transcendent. If the theologian can be a semantic realist without having to assert an extreme position with regard to evidence-transcendence, there may be no good reason fro the theologian not to be a semantic realist. This question is important, I think, and we shall explore it in the next post on semantic realism.

Clarity with Respect to Realism

The issue of realism seems to me to be at the center of the entire question of theology. Traditionally, of course, realism was unproblematically presupposed in theology - - just as it was rather unproblematically presupposed in philosophy generally. But this is no longer the case.

In getting at the issue of realism we need, of course, to clear up a possible confusion. Theology students are often introduced to the medieval question of realism and nominalism as it developed out of the options on universals put forward by Boethius. To be a realist was to assert that universals like 'whiteness' had being either apart from their instantiations in white things (the platonic view), or had being not fully accounted for by their instantiation in white things, but not yet having being apart from their instantiations (the Aristotelian view). To be an extreme realist like William of Chaupeaux was to hold a robust Platonic view; to be a moderate realist like Thomas was to hold an Aristotelian view. To be an extreme nominalist like Roscelin was to hold that general terms did not refer to universals, but simply were different names for the particulars of which they might be predicated. For a nominalist like Ockham, all that exists are particular entities having particular qualities. Realism was thought very important by many because if 'sin' and 'human nature' referred to universals, then Christ's assumption of human nature and his conquering of sin was an assumption of the same human nature that medieval man and women possessed and a conquering of the same sinful nature that they inherited. These issues are still potentially interesting in theology, but few talk of them today. There are, after all, more fundamental issues at state for contemporary man and woman. In an age where the existence of God is problematic at best, more of the hard theology work must be directed to that problematic.

In our age the conflict is not between realism and nominalism, but rather between realism and nonrealism and/or antirealism. I take the thesis of realism to be the assertion that for some putative class of entities T, all x in T exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. Nonrealism with respect to T would claim that it is not the case that for all x in T, x exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. Antirealism with respect to T declares that for all x in T, x does not exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. The question then is this: Can we be realists with regard to class T, the set of putative theological entities and their qualities? Or perhaps more to the point, can we be a realist with respect to the putative entity God? Is God real in that God has existence apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language? Would God exist having basically the properties he is said to have apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language?

But now the question pertains to the locution 'what He is said to have'. What could we even mean by the divine predicates? To say that God is omnibenevolent is one thing, but to try to specify that set of properties necessary and sufficient for omnibenevolence is quite another. Accordingly, one could be a theological realist without being a metaphysical realist. One could deny that there is some set of self-identifying properties comprising God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and still hold that there is some being to God that in confrontation with human cognitive equipment makes it be the case that God has the property of omnibenevolence, or omnipotence, or any other of the divine properties. Hilary Putnam's internal realism is still a realism, but we are now moving more towards nonrealism: While God would still exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, God only has those properties that identify Him in all possible worlds if there is human awareness, perception, conception and language. Though God exists, what God is in God's own self cannot be known or even thought.

I believe that the question of theological realism is very important because I think that if there is no being to God apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, then clearly to the degree that we talk about God we are talking about a projection of the self. Just as there is no beauty in itself apart from human sentiment, so there is no God in Himself apart from human sentiment. While we might talk about the quasi-reality of God - - the "as if" character of God's existence - - clearly there is no divine realm if there are no human beings. Just as human consciousness is the necessary condition for beauty, so too is it the necessary condition for the divine. In my opinion, unless we can finally claim the reality of God, there is no reason to continue to talk about God in more than a historical way. Clearly, the God-thought has been a productive and heady thought to think, but at the end of the day, a thought is not a thing. Laypeople know implicitly that a God that has only ideal reality is not a God that shall have much staying power. There simply is no need to go to church and do the kinds of sacrificial things Christians used to do if it is the case that God does not exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.

This brings us to another kind of realism, that which concerns our language about God. The problem with the contemporary scene is not just that we are confused about whether or not God has been apart from us, the problem runs much deeper and concerns whether or not language about God has any truth-conditions whatsoever anymore. Are our statements about God capable of really being true or false? Now we are dealing with the distinction between semantic realism and irrealism, a distinction nicely given in the following passage from Michael Dummett, himself no friend of realism:

“Realism I characterize as the belief that the statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us. The anti-realist opposes to this the view that statements of the disputed class are to be understood only by reference to the sort of thing which we count as evidence for a statement of that class . . . The dispute thus concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have” (Dummett, “Realism,” p. 146, reprinted in TRUTH AND OTHER ENIGMAS).

The class of theological statements is, of course, “the disputed class” in question. Of concern for any realist is how to answer the objections put forward in the “acquisition argument” and the “manifestation argument.” The first asks how we can know that a statement is true or false if truth or falsity is contingent upon states of affairs obtaining that are in principle undetectable. The second concerns the question of meaning. If a statements meaning is tied to the possession of states of affairs that we cannot detect, then how can we really ever know what a statement means? How can we know what ‘God the Father has begotten the Son eternally” means when we have no access even in principle to what those states of affairs which would make the statement true?

For theological language particularly the question of the possibility of evidence-transcendent truth conditions arises very acutely. Much theological language deals directly with the question of putative states of affairs that are incapable of detection by human perceptual equipment. Because of the challenge of making sense of evidence-transcendent truth conditions, much theology has simply given up the assertion of these putative states of affairs and have accepted either projectivist or quasi-realist solutions to the problem. Accordingly, theological language is either a projection of human emotion, wish, or hope upon the universe, or that the class of theological statements behaves like realist statements because of some consistent method by which human projections are made. The point is this: Without human beings there would be no states of affairs about God and thus no truth.

Semantic realism must deny all of these facile solutions to the thorny problem of theological language. Whether the semantic realist theory can be satisfactorily worked out is really secondary at this point to seeing deeply the problem. There is, however, much in the literature that would give semantic realists courage in the face of the acquisition and manifestation challenges.