Theologians are oftentimes too lax in getting clear on the types of claims they make. Take, for instance, the claim that the East and West made theologically equivalent claims about the Trinity, although they divided philosophically in their conceptuality about universals: The East assuming that a universal could be numerically one and multiply instantiatable, and the West denying this. Is it indeed true that the East and West make equivalent trinitarian claims?
Theoretical equivalency is understood differently on syntactical and semantic approaches. According to syntactical approaches, theories T1 and T2 are equivalent if they have, as their extension, the same or equivalent set of models. This syntactical approach to understanding theories and their equivalency was dominant through much of the twentieth century, and is oftentimes referred to as "the classical view" or "the received view." On this approach, a theory is a set of uninterpreted axioms in a specified formal language using a set of correspondence rules that provide a partial empirical interpretation to the theory by linking observable entities and processes to particular non-logical terms. A theory is true just in case its interpreted axioms are all true.
The semantic approach to understanding theories and their equivalency has developed over the last four decades. While syntactic approaches are interested in deducibility from axioms, semantic approaches focus upon the notion of "satisfaction." Objects which satisfy the axioms are models of those axioms. According to the semantic approach, the axioms comprise part of a theoretical definition. Whether or not such a definition is true of the world depends upon theoretical hypotheses. A theory is true just in case all of its associated hypotheses are true. In the words of F. Suppe, the semantic view "construes theories as what their formulations refer to when the formulations are given a formal (semantic) interpretation" (Suppe, The Semantic Conception of Theories and Scientific Realism, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, p. 4). This model-theoretic view identifies theories with the set of models that satisfies the theoretical laws of the theories. The models can be understood as being a pure structure: abstract entities and relations. Theories T1 and T2 are equivalent if and only if they are satisfied by sets if models M1 and M2 respectively, such that M1 and M2 are isomorphic to each other.
Applying this to the Trinitarian question, we might say that sentence "God is both one and three" is satisfied by two different sets of models, one employing a multiply instantiable universal, the other a property particular overlapping the compresent bundles of properties constituting the persons. If two separate sets of model structures satisfy the same set of Trinitarian propositions, these structures are equivalent and they are isomorphic with respect to each other.
It is ironic to find that East and West Trinitarian controversies may have been argued by people holding equivalent or almost equivalent Trinitarian views. Perhaps one is not making a different theological claim at all when "starting with the persons" or "starting with the essence." Maybe, in fact, the new social Trinitarianism is finally equivalent to older, more traditional Trinitarian positions.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Trinitarian Confusions between East and West?
Richard Cross has argued that the East and West do not really "adopt radically divergent accounts of the Trinity" (Richard Cross, "Two Models of the Trinity," HeyJ XLIII (2002) 275-294). I believe Cross is fundamentally correct, though I do have some observations.
It is often claimed that the Eastern view (following the Cappadocian Fathers) starts from the diversity of the persons and then moves to account for the unity of the essence, while the Western view (following Augustine) starts from the unity of the divine essence and then attempts to account for the diversity of the persons. Clearly, much has been made of this distinction in the secondary literature. One finds characterizations of the difference between East and West such as the following: The Thomistic tradition originating in Augustine assumes this order of logical priority: Relation, Person, and the Processions; the Cappodocian tradition understands the logical priority this way: Processions, Person, the Relations. (e.g., See Knuuttila & Saarinen, "Innertrinitarishe Theologie in der Scholastik und bei Luther, " pp. 243-264, Caritas Dei: Beitraege zum Verstaendnis Luthers und der gegenwaertigen Oekumene.) Cross argues persuasively that the difference between the Eastern and Western traditions has little to do with theology, but everything to do with different philosophical assumptions operating in the East and West. "The Eastern view does, and the Western view does not, generally accept a sense in which the divine essence is a shared universal" (275). Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, claims that the divine essence is a singular multiply-instantiatable universal; Augustine denies this.
Cross begins his analysis by giving the standard metaphysical options on universals and particulars. He first distinguishes the substrate/property view of the constitution of substance from that of a congeries of properties having what Russell called "compresence." Secondly, he distinguishes properties as particulars from properties as universals. Accordingly, if properties are particulars, then the indiscernible properties of numerically distinct substances are themselves numerically distinct. However, if properties are universals, then the indiscernible properties of numerically distinct substances are identical (and thus by Leibniz's law) the same property. If two particulars have the same shade of blue and if these shades of blue are particulars - - one shade of blue is exactly like the other - - , then the shades of blue are numerically diverse. However, if the two particulars have the same shade of blue and the shades of blue are literally the same shade, then the blue is a universal. A universal is, by definition, a property that can be a constituent in more than one substance. Particular properties, by definition, cannot be constituents in more than one substance. Accordingly, the only real metaphysical possibility for overlapping substances on a bundle theory (the view that a substance is a compresence of properties) is that there are universal properties that are ingredient in each and every compresence.
This insight is crucial for understanding the putative divergence between the Eastern and Western views. For purposes of analysis, allow 'substance', 'hypostasis' and 'person' to be used interchangeably, and futher assume that 'divine essence' is an overlapping property (a property common to the three substances), and must thus be, on the previous analyis, a universal. This divine essence is termed the 'ousia' by the East. As to the question of whether this divine essence is one simple universal property, or a bundle of such properties, Cross follows Augustine: "God however is indeed called in multiple ways great, good, wise, blessed, true and anything else that seems not to be unworthy of him; but his greatness is identical with his wisdom . . . and his goodness is identical with his wisdom and greatness, and his truth is identical with them all; and with him being blessed is not one thing, and being great or wise or true or good, or just simply being (esse), another" (Trin. 6.7.8 CCSI., I, 237).
Gregory of Nyssa clearly articulates the view that the universal divine essene (ousia) is a unviversal that is multiply instantiated in the three divine persons:
"If now of two or more who are [man] in the same way, like Paul and Silas and Timothy an account of the ousia of men is sought, one will not give on account of the ousia of Paul, another one of Silas andd again another one of Timothy; but by whatever terms the ousia of Paul is shown, these same will fit the others as well. And those are homoousioi to each other, who are described by the same fomular of being" ("Human Nature in Gregy of Nyssa: Philosophical Background and Theological Singnificance," Supplements to Vigilae Christianae, 46, p. 709, p. 70).
The universal which is the divine essence is clearly numerically singular:
"But the nature is one, united to itself and a precisely undivided unit (monas), not increased through addition, not decreased through subtraction, but being and remaining one (even if it were to appear in a multitude), undivided, continuous, perfect, and not divided by the individuals who participate in it" (Gregory, Abl. GNO, III/I, 40.24-41.7).
Cross points out, however, that Gregory's universal is not ante rem. The divine essence does not exist uninstantiated, but is rather immanent in the persons; it is that "of which" the persons are (Cross, 281). The divine essence is shared by the persons, but the divine persons as overlapping bundles of properties do not share their own personal properties.
According to Cross, the Western theologians implicitly accept the view of the shareability of the divine essence by the persons even though they explicitly criticize this position. The western theologians deny that the divine essence is a universal "in the sense of 'universal' accepted by the West, not the sense accepted by the East" (Cross, 281). Though they deny this, they accept that the essence is shared by the persons. Augustine writes:
"In the simple Trinity one is as much as three are together, and two are not more than one, and in themselves they are infinite. So they are each in each and all in each, and each in all and all in all, and all are one" (Trin. 6.10.12, CCSL, L, 243).
Over eight centuries later, Aquinas echoes Augustine:
"In God, the essence is really identical with a [viz., each] person, even though the persons are really distinct from each other" (ST 1.39.1, c).
Yet the western theologians explicitly reject Nyssa's view on universals. Quoting Augustine again:
"If essence is species, like man, and those which we call substances or persons are three, then they have the same species in common, as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have in common the species which is called 'man'; and if while man can be subdivided into Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it does not mean that one man can be subdivided into several single men - - obviously he cannot, because one man is already a single man - - then how can one essence be subdivided into three substances or persons? For if essence, like man, is a species, then one essence is like one man" (Trin. 7.6.11, CSSL, L, 236).
Augustine's criticism assumes that if the divine essence is a species, and if a species is divisible, then the divine essence is divisible. But since this cannot be so, he concludes that the divine essence is not a species. But if it is not a species, then it is not a universal at all. Cross believes that Augustine holds that a universal (species) is divisible because he assumes that Neoplatonic notion of in re universals. Neoplatonists are nominalists here; they claim that universals (species) are merely aggregates of particulars.
Although Aquinas is not a Neoplatonic nominalist, his Aristotelian realism agrees on this point: "No universal is numerically the same in the things beneath it" (Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum 1.19.4.2). Cross concludes: "Unlike the Eastern tradition, . . . the Western tradition accepts - - as a matter of philosophical fact - - that universals, even in re universals, are not such that they are numerically identical in each exemplification" (Cross, 284). Thus, while the Cappadocians assumed that all universals, not just the divine essence, "are numerically singular, and . . . the particulars are collections of such universals" the Western tradition rejected the claim of the numerical singularity of universals and the consitution of particulars from universals (ibid.). While both the East and the West claimed that the divine essence is a singular property formed by the intersection of the properties of the persons, the West disagreed with the East in claiming that this intersection could be accounted for by claiming the existence of a numerically identical universal. The divine essence as a universal in re is not logically or metaphysically prior to the persons, but dependent and posterior to the persons. Yet, this essence is something more than its instantiations in the persons; for this essence is what makes possible the identity of these persons.
To the objection that Eastern and Western views must be theologically distinct because social trinitarian views can be grounded in the former and not via the latter, Cross claims that such views actually cannot be grounded in one tradition more properly than the other. It is just not the case that the Western view adopts a Trinity of subsistent relations between persons disallowing a social trinitarian approach, and the East a theory of personal processions completely compatible with a robust social trinitarianism.
The Western notion of subsistent relations claims that the persons are individuated with respect to dyadic relations holding between the persons. These dyadic relations are not constitutive of the persons themselves; they do not inhere in things, but somehow "hang between" their relata. Aquinas writes:
"Distinction in God arieses only through relations of origin . . . But a relation in God is not like an accident inherent in a subject, but is the divine essence itself. So it is subsistent just as the divine essence is subsistent. Just as, therefore, the Godhead is God, so the divine paternity is God the Father, who is a divine person. Therefore 'divine persons' signifies a relation as subsistent" (ST 1.28.1, c).
Cross points to Augustine as the source of this view, for it was Augustine who denied that God can be a subject for accidents, and thus rejecting accidents, identifies relations as the non-inherent "things" whose distinction does not entail a distinction in substance: "What is stated relationally does not designate substance. So although begotten differs from unbegotten, it does not indicate a different substance" (Trin. 5.5.6, CCSL., I, 210). Because accidents require a substrate, and because the presence of a substrate is incompatible with simplicity, the assertion of simplicity requires a denial of accidental personal properties. However, "a divine person can include a relation without that relation thereby entailing composition" (287). Thus, for the West, the divine persons cannot be pyschological subjects, for such psychological subjects are necessarily individuated by their non-relational properties.
Cross believes that Gregory of Nyssa effectively also embraced the category of subsistent relations. In the following quote, the distinguishing features of the persons are clearly the causal relations they possess with respect to each other:
"While confessing that the nature is undifferentiated, we do not deny a distinction in causality, by which alone we seize the distinction of the one from the other: that is, by believing that one is the cuse and the other is from the cause. There is the one which depends on the first, and there is that one which is through that which depends on the first" (Abl. GNO, III/I, 55.24 - 56.6).
So, as it turns out, the East is close to a doctrine of subsistent relations, and the West assumes that the divine essence is shareable among the three persons. Accordingly, both East and West deny social trinitarian accounts which hold the three persons as distinct pyschological subjects. While Eastern and Western views are consistent with social accounts of the Trinity - - a shareable divine essence among persons clearly allows for pyschologically distinct subjects - - both reject those accounts because of the need to individuate persons on the basis of something other than the accidental (non-relational) properties of the persons (Cross, 288).
What is to be said of this analysis? Clearly Cross has clarified matters greatly. That God is one and three, does seem to entail that the divine essence can be shared by persons. The Western view, that this essence is a numerically singular property shared by the persons, is not at all incompatible with the Eastern view that this essence is a universal that, while it is immanent in the persons, is none the less numerically one and multiply instantiatable in them. If this is so, then the unity from which the West begins is just the shareable property/universal. While the West might ground their talk of personal diversity upon the ground of divine unity, the shareable property of divine unity is nontheless dependent upon the bundled properties constituting the persons. Alternately, while the East might ground their talk of divine unity upon the grounds personal distinctiveness, this unity clearly, like the West, remains dependent upon the existence of the persons.
Cross's analysis, if true, suggests that while the Eastern and Western views have their own metaphysical models, each satisfies the same set of theological propositions. If this is so, then there is no theological differences between the two.
It is often claimed that the Eastern view (following the Cappadocian Fathers) starts from the diversity of the persons and then moves to account for the unity of the essence, while the Western view (following Augustine) starts from the unity of the divine essence and then attempts to account for the diversity of the persons. Clearly, much has been made of this distinction in the secondary literature. One finds characterizations of the difference between East and West such as the following: The Thomistic tradition originating in Augustine assumes this order of logical priority: Relation, Person, and the Processions; the Cappodocian tradition understands the logical priority this way: Processions, Person, the Relations. (e.g., See Knuuttila & Saarinen, "Innertrinitarishe Theologie in der Scholastik und bei Luther, " pp. 243-264, Caritas Dei: Beitraege zum Verstaendnis Luthers und der gegenwaertigen Oekumene.) Cross argues persuasively that the difference between the Eastern and Western traditions has little to do with theology, but everything to do with different philosophical assumptions operating in the East and West. "The Eastern view does, and the Western view does not, generally accept a sense in which the divine essence is a shared universal" (275). Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, claims that the divine essence is a singular multiply-instantiatable universal; Augustine denies this.
Cross begins his analysis by giving the standard metaphysical options on universals and particulars. He first distinguishes the substrate/property view of the constitution of substance from that of a congeries of properties having what Russell called "compresence." Secondly, he distinguishes properties as particulars from properties as universals. Accordingly, if properties are particulars, then the indiscernible properties of numerically distinct substances are themselves numerically distinct. However, if properties are universals, then the indiscernible properties of numerically distinct substances are identical (and thus by Leibniz's law) the same property. If two particulars have the same shade of blue and if these shades of blue are particulars - - one shade of blue is exactly like the other - - , then the shades of blue are numerically diverse. However, if the two particulars have the same shade of blue and the shades of blue are literally the same shade, then the blue is a universal. A universal is, by definition, a property that can be a constituent in more than one substance. Particular properties, by definition, cannot be constituents in more than one substance. Accordingly, the only real metaphysical possibility for overlapping substances on a bundle theory (the view that a substance is a compresence of properties) is that there are universal properties that are ingredient in each and every compresence.
This insight is crucial for understanding the putative divergence between the Eastern and Western views. For purposes of analysis, allow 'substance', 'hypostasis' and 'person' to be used interchangeably, and futher assume that 'divine essence' is an overlapping property (a property common to the three substances), and must thus be, on the previous analyis, a universal. This divine essence is termed the 'ousia' by the East. As to the question of whether this divine essence is one simple universal property, or a bundle of such properties, Cross follows Augustine: "God however is indeed called in multiple ways great, good, wise, blessed, true and anything else that seems not to be unworthy of him; but his greatness is identical with his wisdom . . . and his goodness is identical with his wisdom and greatness, and his truth is identical with them all; and with him being blessed is not one thing, and being great or wise or true or good, or just simply being (esse), another" (Trin. 6.7.8 CCSI., I, 237).
Gregory of Nyssa clearly articulates the view that the universal divine essene (ousia) is a unviversal that is multiply instantiated in the three divine persons:
"If now of two or more who are [man] in the same way, like Paul and Silas and Timothy an account of the ousia of men is sought, one will not give on account of the ousia of Paul, another one of Silas andd again another one of Timothy; but by whatever terms the ousia of Paul is shown, these same will fit the others as well. And those are homoousioi to each other, who are described by the same fomular of being" ("Human Nature in Gregy of Nyssa: Philosophical Background and Theological Singnificance," Supplements to Vigilae Christianae, 46, p. 709, p. 70).
The universal which is the divine essence is clearly numerically singular:
"But the nature is one, united to itself and a precisely undivided unit (monas), not increased through addition, not decreased through subtraction, but being and remaining one (even if it were to appear in a multitude), undivided, continuous, perfect, and not divided by the individuals who participate in it" (Gregory, Abl. GNO, III/I, 40.24-41.7).
Cross points out, however, that Gregory's universal is not ante rem. The divine essence does not exist uninstantiated, but is rather immanent in the persons; it is that "of which" the persons are (Cross, 281). The divine essence is shared by the persons, but the divine persons as overlapping bundles of properties do not share their own personal properties.
According to Cross, the Western theologians implicitly accept the view of the shareability of the divine essence by the persons even though they explicitly criticize this position. The western theologians deny that the divine essence is a universal "in the sense of 'universal' accepted by the West, not the sense accepted by the East" (Cross, 281). Though they deny this, they accept that the essence is shared by the persons. Augustine writes:
"In the simple Trinity one is as much as three are together, and two are not more than one, and in themselves they are infinite. So they are each in each and all in each, and each in all and all in all, and all are one" (Trin. 6.10.12, CCSL, L, 243).
Over eight centuries later, Aquinas echoes Augustine:
"In God, the essence is really identical with a [viz., each] person, even though the persons are really distinct from each other" (ST 1.39.1, c).
Yet the western theologians explicitly reject Nyssa's view on universals. Quoting Augustine again:
"If essence is species, like man, and those which we call substances or persons are three, then they have the same species in common, as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have in common the species which is called 'man'; and if while man can be subdivided into Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it does not mean that one man can be subdivided into several single men - - obviously he cannot, because one man is already a single man - - then how can one essence be subdivided into three substances or persons? For if essence, like man, is a species, then one essence is like one man" (Trin. 7.6.11, CSSL, L, 236).
Augustine's criticism assumes that if the divine essence is a species, and if a species is divisible, then the divine essence is divisible. But since this cannot be so, he concludes that the divine essence is not a species. But if it is not a species, then it is not a universal at all. Cross believes that Augustine holds that a universal (species) is divisible because he assumes that Neoplatonic notion of in re universals. Neoplatonists are nominalists here; they claim that universals (species) are merely aggregates of particulars.
Although Aquinas is not a Neoplatonic nominalist, his Aristotelian realism agrees on this point: "No universal is numerically the same in the things beneath it" (Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum 1.19.4.2). Cross concludes: "Unlike the Eastern tradition, . . . the Western tradition accepts - - as a matter of philosophical fact - - that universals, even in re universals, are not such that they are numerically identical in each exemplification" (Cross, 284). Thus, while the Cappadocians assumed that all universals, not just the divine essence, "are numerically singular, and . . . the particulars are collections of such universals" the Western tradition rejected the claim of the numerical singularity of universals and the consitution of particulars from universals (ibid.). While both the East and the West claimed that the divine essence is a singular property formed by the intersection of the properties of the persons, the West disagreed with the East in claiming that this intersection could be accounted for by claiming the existence of a numerically identical universal. The divine essence as a universal in re is not logically or metaphysically prior to the persons, but dependent and posterior to the persons. Yet, this essence is something more than its instantiations in the persons; for this essence is what makes possible the identity of these persons.
To the objection that Eastern and Western views must be theologically distinct because social trinitarian views can be grounded in the former and not via the latter, Cross claims that such views actually cannot be grounded in one tradition more properly than the other. It is just not the case that the Western view adopts a Trinity of subsistent relations between persons disallowing a social trinitarian approach, and the East a theory of personal processions completely compatible with a robust social trinitarianism.
The Western notion of subsistent relations claims that the persons are individuated with respect to dyadic relations holding between the persons. These dyadic relations are not constitutive of the persons themselves; they do not inhere in things, but somehow "hang between" their relata. Aquinas writes:
"Distinction in God arieses only through relations of origin . . . But a relation in God is not like an accident inherent in a subject, but is the divine essence itself. So it is subsistent just as the divine essence is subsistent. Just as, therefore, the Godhead is God, so the divine paternity is God the Father, who is a divine person. Therefore 'divine persons' signifies a relation as subsistent" (ST 1.28.1, c).
Cross points to Augustine as the source of this view, for it was Augustine who denied that God can be a subject for accidents, and thus rejecting accidents, identifies relations as the non-inherent "things" whose distinction does not entail a distinction in substance: "What is stated relationally does not designate substance. So although begotten differs from unbegotten, it does not indicate a different substance" (Trin. 5.5.6, CCSL., I, 210). Because accidents require a substrate, and because the presence of a substrate is incompatible with simplicity, the assertion of simplicity requires a denial of accidental personal properties. However, "a divine person can include a relation without that relation thereby entailing composition" (287). Thus, for the West, the divine persons cannot be pyschological subjects, for such psychological subjects are necessarily individuated by their non-relational properties.
Cross believes that Gregory of Nyssa effectively also embraced the category of subsistent relations. In the following quote, the distinguishing features of the persons are clearly the causal relations they possess with respect to each other:
"While confessing that the nature is undifferentiated, we do not deny a distinction in causality, by which alone we seize the distinction of the one from the other: that is, by believing that one is the cuse and the other is from the cause. There is the one which depends on the first, and there is that one which is through that which depends on the first" (Abl. GNO, III/I, 55.24 - 56.6).
So, as it turns out, the East is close to a doctrine of subsistent relations, and the West assumes that the divine essence is shareable among the three persons. Accordingly, both East and West deny social trinitarian accounts which hold the three persons as distinct pyschological subjects. While Eastern and Western views are consistent with social accounts of the Trinity - - a shareable divine essence among persons clearly allows for pyschologically distinct subjects - - both reject those accounts because of the need to individuate persons on the basis of something other than the accidental (non-relational) properties of the persons (Cross, 288).
What is to be said of this analysis? Clearly Cross has clarified matters greatly. That God is one and three, does seem to entail that the divine essence can be shared by persons. The Western view, that this essence is a numerically singular property shared by the persons, is not at all incompatible with the Eastern view that this essence is a universal that, while it is immanent in the persons, is none the less numerically one and multiply instantiatable in them. If this is so, then the unity from which the West begins is just the shareable property/universal. While the West might ground their talk of personal diversity upon the ground of divine unity, the shareable property of divine unity is nontheless dependent upon the bundled properties constituting the persons. Alternately, while the East might ground their talk of divine unity upon the grounds personal distinctiveness, this unity clearly, like the West, remains dependent upon the existence of the persons.
Cross's analysis, if true, suggests that while the Eastern and Western views have their own metaphysical models, each satisfies the same set of theological propositions. If this is so, then there is no theological differences between the two.
Monday, January 08, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Luther and Ontology I
Metaphysics was clearly a going concern in the late Middle Ages. There was controversy of many kinds related, of course, to issues within medieval semantics. The common belief was that there must be a most general structure of the world presupposed by the categories within language itself. Important questions included the following: What is the nature of wholes and how are they related to parts (mereology)? What is the nature, and ontological status, of relations? How do essence and existence relate (especially within divine reality), and what ontological status does each have? Are there such things as universals, and, if so, in what do they consist? What is being in its most general nature? Is it univocal? Finally, and most importantly, what is the being of God? What does it mean to say that the divine has properties? Are these traditional divine properties compatible?
It would be odd to think that Luther burst on the scene in the early sixteenth century with a sophisticated theological vocabulary and theory that profoundly addressed the human existential situation and yet somehow circumvented (and was hence disconnected from) the traditional metaphysical problems. Unfortunately, although this would be odd, it is exactly what much post-Kantian Luther interpretation has seemed to assume. It has presupposed that the really interesting questions within Luther scholarship are questions as to how Luther's theological language connects to human existence lived coram deo and within the reality of God's promise. That this is important for Luther goes without saying. He did stress the power of the living Word, and emphasized what might be called the "performative" characteristics of language of the divine.
However, Luther always assumed that theological language has truth conditions, that propositions are true or false in so far as the state what is, or what is not, the case. Theological language is constative, not merely performative. God, for Luther, is really triune; there actually are two disconsonant natures within Christ; the physical Body of Christ is really present in the bread and wine at the communion table. The infinite really is somehow in the finite in such a way that the infinite remains infinite while the finite remains finite. What is more, Christ really is present in the Christian such that one can speak of "ein Kuchen." As is the case in the history of theology generally, there is a "unity" or "identity in difference" presupposed within key theological loci. While Luther understood that the assertion of the existence of such identities was justified finally on the basis of revelation, he did not skrink away from calling such such assertions true, and supposing that they are true because they state some state of affairs that actually obtains.
The question is how to conceive these identities. Clearly, Luther believed that Aristotle was a great enemy to theology, and much preferred Plato to his even more precocious student. But what metaphysics is presupposed if the substance/accident metaphysics of Aristotle is incapable of conceiving the res ineffabilis of the two natures of Christ or the three persons of the Trinity? Should one simply assume that there is no way things ultimately stand that make true dogmatic theological propositions? Would one be better off construing dogmatic theological propositions relationally, that is, as expressing or specifying human experience in relation to divine reality. If Kant is right, of course, theological expressions must finally be construed as being about human experience (thinking, feeling, or doing), and about the phenomena of "limit points" within that experience. If Kant is right, then the truth of theological expressions, for Luther, simply can't be determined by objectively existing states of affairs.
But, I would argue, Kant is precisely wrong as an interpreter of Luther. Luther must be understood within his context as an Augustinian trained in the nominalist tradition, an Augustinian knowing standard nominalist semantic theory and metaphysics, an Augustinian who, however, is so moved by the incomprehensibility and ultimate significance of the res ineffabilis that he is willing to be innovative both semantically and metaphysically. About this, I shall have much more to say in subsequent posts.
It would be odd to think that Luther burst on the scene in the early sixteenth century with a sophisticated theological vocabulary and theory that profoundly addressed the human existential situation and yet somehow circumvented (and was hence disconnected from) the traditional metaphysical problems. Unfortunately, although this would be odd, it is exactly what much post-Kantian Luther interpretation has seemed to assume. It has presupposed that the really interesting questions within Luther scholarship are questions as to how Luther's theological language connects to human existence lived coram deo and within the reality of God's promise. That this is important for Luther goes without saying. He did stress the power of the living Word, and emphasized what might be called the "performative" characteristics of language of the divine.
However, Luther always assumed that theological language has truth conditions, that propositions are true or false in so far as the state what is, or what is not, the case. Theological language is constative, not merely performative. God, for Luther, is really triune; there actually are two disconsonant natures within Christ; the physical Body of Christ is really present in the bread and wine at the communion table. The infinite really is somehow in the finite in such a way that the infinite remains infinite while the finite remains finite. What is more, Christ really is present in the Christian such that one can speak of "ein Kuchen." As is the case in the history of theology generally, there is a "unity" or "identity in difference" presupposed within key theological loci. While Luther understood that the assertion of the existence of such identities was justified finally on the basis of revelation, he did not skrink away from calling such such assertions true, and supposing that they are true because they state some state of affairs that actually obtains.
The question is how to conceive these identities. Clearly, Luther believed that Aristotle was a great enemy to theology, and much preferred Plato to his even more precocious student. But what metaphysics is presupposed if the substance/accident metaphysics of Aristotle is incapable of conceiving the res ineffabilis of the two natures of Christ or the three persons of the Trinity? Should one simply assume that there is no way things ultimately stand that make true dogmatic theological propositions? Would one be better off construing dogmatic theological propositions relationally, that is, as expressing or specifying human experience in relation to divine reality. If Kant is right, of course, theological expressions must finally be construed as being about human experience (thinking, feeling, or doing), and about the phenomena of "limit points" within that experience. If Kant is right, then the truth of theological expressions, for Luther, simply can't be determined by objectively existing states of affairs.
But, I would argue, Kant is precisely wrong as an interpreter of Luther. Luther must be understood within his context as an Augustinian trained in the nominalist tradition, an Augustinian knowing standard nominalist semantic theory and metaphysics, an Augustinian who, however, is so moved by the incomprehensibility and ultimate significance of the res ineffabilis that he is willing to be innovative both semantically and metaphysically. About this, I shall have much more to say in subsequent posts.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Surface Grammar and Logical Form
I am baffled by the tendency I find in theology to place “theological depth” in inverse relationship to rational clarity, consistency and coherency. This surely is not the case in other disciplines. For example, to get deeply into set theory only increases clarity, consistency and coherency. The same is true in chemistry. But, lamentably, it is clearly and consistently not true in theology.
I received an e-mail the other day that displays this theological malady of avoiding precision. The writer was taking issue with something I had written about God. I had said that God’s hiddenness does not entail the rejection of theological realism, semantic realism about God-talk, and the possibility of theophysical causation. In making my point, I had used Luther’s explanation in the Small Catechism to the first article of the Apostle’s Creed. Luther writes, “I believe that God has created me and all creatures, that he has given me my body . . . “ My point was simply that Luther presupposed a causal connection between God and the universe.
The e-mail said a rather curious thing. It claims that one ought to read the First Article in light of what it says about human beings, not what it says about God. The e-mail further suggests, I believe, that to make claims about God places human beings in a post-Enlightenment arena where we stand as neutral observers judging God.
I find this all very puzzling. Why are we Lutherans so convinced that we violate the First Commandment when we say anything about God? Of course, I agree that any attempt to map divine ontology is decidedly un-Lutheran. But this is not done, I think, when we say that God’s creating the world entails that God causes the world to be. Logically, saying that human beings have certain properties with respect to the divine entails that the divine has certain properties with respect to us.
Take the following statements:
1) Bob is a creature
2) God created Bob
Many Lutherans want to see (1) and (2) as making quite different statements. While (1) ascribes the monadic property to Bob of being a creature, (2) says that God has a relational property of causing Bob to be. (1) seems true because of deep Lutheran insights about existential-phenomenological-ontological “placedness,” that is, it is true on the basis of human experience. (2), however, seems to be a metaphysical statement about God that is wholly out of place within the Lutheran context. Many Lutherans want to regard (1) as somehow expressing the existentiality of the self, and (2) as declaring a daring metaphysical theophysical causation. (1) is thus admitted, and (2) denied.
But all of this is conceptual confusion. Take the word ‘creature’. If we are to employ the word in a way consistent with its original meaning, it entails ‘being created’. While we can, of course, change the word into meaning something else, the fact remains that the term is likethe word 'creation' in being related to that which creates. Logically, there can be no creation without a creator. In a similar way, there can be no creature without a creator. To use the word ‘creation’ to apply to things not having been created is to violate the ordinary way in which we use words. Similarly, to use ‘creature’ in such a way as not to entail ‘being created’ is to violate the ordinary usage of these terms.
In reality, (1) can be parsed as ‘Bob is one having been created.’ Since, of course, one cannot be created without there being one to create you, (1) becomes ‘Bob is created by a creator’. Since we identify the creator as God, (1) reads ‘Bob is created by God’. Now, it should be easy to see that (1) and (2) are logically equivalent. I can conceive of no possible world where Bob is created by God, and God does not create Bob, or alternately, where God creates Bob, but Bob is not created by God. In truth, (1) and (2) share the same logical form; they state the same putative fact: ‘There is Bob and God, such that God and Bob are members of the set of all ordered pairs such that the first member creates the second’. (This is the standard extensional understanding of ‘God creates Bob’.)
Now one can object, of course, claiming that one does not mean by ‘Bob is a creature’ the proposition 'he is created by God'. But if this be so, then why use the word ‘creature’? Why not use another word, a word that more precisely states what is being asserted? If the word ‘creature’ is to be applied if and only if certain existential-phenomenological conditions are met, then why not eliminate the term in favor of a precise specification of those underlying existential-phenomenological conditions? This would be far clearer for all involved, and it would avoid useless ambiguity.
Lutheran theology can be precise. The problem is that in order to escape the ontological problems posed by the Enlightenment, Lutheran theology moved to become “deeper” so that its language no longer connoted what the average pewsitter presupposed. It is all a bit disingenuous and, I believe, it is time to come clean.
I received an e-mail the other day that displays this theological malady of avoiding precision. The writer was taking issue with something I had written about God. I had said that God’s hiddenness does not entail the rejection of theological realism, semantic realism about God-talk, and the possibility of theophysical causation. In making my point, I had used Luther’s explanation in the Small Catechism to the first article of the Apostle’s Creed. Luther writes, “I believe that God has created me and all creatures, that he has given me my body . . . “ My point was simply that Luther presupposed a causal connection between God and the universe.
The e-mail said a rather curious thing. It claims that one ought to read the First Article in light of what it says about human beings, not what it says about God. The e-mail further suggests, I believe, that to make claims about God places human beings in a post-Enlightenment arena where we stand as neutral observers judging God.
I find this all very puzzling. Why are we Lutherans so convinced that we violate the First Commandment when we say anything about God? Of course, I agree that any attempt to map divine ontology is decidedly un-Lutheran. But this is not done, I think, when we say that God’s creating the world entails that God causes the world to be. Logically, saying that human beings have certain properties with respect to the divine entails that the divine has certain properties with respect to us.
Take the following statements:
1) Bob is a creature
2) God created Bob
Many Lutherans want to see (1) and (2) as making quite different statements. While (1) ascribes the monadic property to Bob of being a creature, (2) says that God has a relational property of causing Bob to be. (1) seems true because of deep Lutheran insights about existential-phenomenological-ontological “placedness,” that is, it is true on the basis of human experience. (2), however, seems to be a metaphysical statement about God that is wholly out of place within the Lutheran context. Many Lutherans want to regard (1) as somehow expressing the existentiality of the self, and (2) as declaring a daring metaphysical theophysical causation. (1) is thus admitted, and (2) denied.
But all of this is conceptual confusion. Take the word ‘creature’. If we are to employ the word in a way consistent with its original meaning, it entails ‘being created’. While we can, of course, change the word into meaning something else, the fact remains that the term is likethe word 'creation' in being related to that which creates. Logically, there can be no creation without a creator. In a similar way, there can be no creature without a creator. To use the word ‘creation’ to apply to things not having been created is to violate the ordinary way in which we use words. Similarly, to use ‘creature’ in such a way as not to entail ‘being created’ is to violate the ordinary usage of these terms.
In reality, (1) can be parsed as ‘Bob is one having been created.’ Since, of course, one cannot be created without there being one to create you, (1) becomes ‘Bob is created by a creator’. Since we identify the creator as God, (1) reads ‘Bob is created by God’. Now, it should be easy to see that (1) and (2) are logically equivalent. I can conceive of no possible world where Bob is created by God, and God does not create Bob, or alternately, where God creates Bob, but Bob is not created by God. In truth, (1) and (2) share the same logical form; they state the same putative fact: ‘There is Bob and God, such that God and Bob are members of the set of all ordered pairs such that the first member creates the second’. (This is the standard extensional understanding of ‘God creates Bob’.)
Now one can object, of course, claiming that one does not mean by ‘Bob is a creature’ the proposition 'he is created by God'. But if this be so, then why use the word ‘creature’? Why not use another word, a word that more precisely states what is being asserted? If the word ‘creature’ is to be applied if and only if certain existential-phenomenological conditions are met, then why not eliminate the term in favor of a precise specification of those underlying existential-phenomenological conditions? This would be far clearer for all involved, and it would avoid useless ambiguity.
Lutheran theology can be precise. The problem is that in order to escape the ontological problems posed by the Enlightenment, Lutheran theology moved to become “deeper” so that its language no longer connoted what the average pewsitter presupposed. It is all a bit disingenuous and, I believe, it is time to come clean.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Objective Guilt and Justification
It is difficult to understand guilt correctly these days. When guilt became "subjectivized" into pyschological states, the ontological contour of guilt simply faded away. In former times, of course, one could make good sense of guilt as a transgression of the laws of God. One was "guilty" for not doing what one ought to do, even if one did not know one was so guilty. People are guilty coram deo (before God) even when they do not know of their transgression of divine boundaries.
In an age that understands guilt objectively, the prophetic voice is crucial. The prophet is one that reminds people of their guilt; he or she tells them what is the case and, by doing so, drives them into subjective apprehension of their guilt. A consonance between subjective and objective guilt is necessary if a person is ever to repent. The necessary condition for an experience of repentance is subjective apprehension of one's objective guilt.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all look to the future for a "day of the Lord." Such a day will be one when the "lion and lamb lie down together" and the "child plays with the adder." This day will be a day when the mountains are leved out and the valleys raised up (Luke 3). In the day of the Lord there shall be no unsatisfied guilt. Objective guilt demands objective satisfaction. Retributive justice requires paying back "likes for likes" (Cicero). The scales of justice must balance in a just society. In the day of the Lord, there shall be proper justice; there shall be no "extra guilt" in the universe. Just as the sum total of all charges in the universe is zero (at least, that is what many physicists say), so too the sum total of all guilt in the universe is zero. In the day of the Lord, all guilt is cancelled by its proper satisfaction.
It is truly wonderful to think of the justice in this "last day." Judaism, Christianity, and Islam long for the just day in which there will be no uncancelled guilt. However, while Judaism and Islam continue to look to the future for the justice of the day of the Lord, Christians claim that this justice has already dawned in the person and work of Jesus the Christ. Unlike the other great monotheisms, God's day of justice is already here! Right now guilt and satisfaction are in proper balance. Right now the mountains have been lowered and the valleys raised. Right now the lion lies peacefully with the lamb.
But how can this be? It should be apparent to everyone that this is clearly not so; there is no objective justice here and now. The "not yet" of the eschaton might bear justice, but surely in the "yet" of time, justice is lacking.
Precisely this, however, is the paradox. Just as we are objectively guilty, though seldom realize it, so are we now living in a state of objective justice, though we cannot see it. The Christian claim is that the justice of the eschatological "not yet" is now "yet" present in the injustice of the world. Simply put, eternal justice is present in the injustice of time.
But how ought one understand this? What is the relation between temporal injustice and eternal justice? How can it be that this world is already just and still not just at the same time? What is the ontology of the justice the prevails now?
There are a number of options. One could, I suppose, simply deny that any justice holds now. We might claim that the world is groaning in travail and waiting for some future rectification. While this seems true empirically, it is inconsistent with the profound Christian claim that the logos (proper order) actually entered history in Jesus the Christ.
One could claim that justice is really present, and no matter how bad things appear, the reality is that God has entered time and that justice has been established. The problem with this view is that it devalues the current situation. Things are good, no matter how they look.
The proper claim is to hold in tension the "yet" and "not yet" by understanding the reality of present justice theo-ontologically. From the standpoing of the divine, justice has been established through the Cross of Christ. However, this is simply not true ontologically, from the human standpoint. Earthly eyes see that the day of the Lord shall someday come; divine eyes know it is already here. How can this be reconciled?
The truth is that no synthesis of the human and divine standpoints are possible. What humans can hope for is a "trickle down" from the justice already theo-ontologically established into the injustice of a world ontologically comprehended by sinful man and woman. The world, like human beings, is both just and unjust at the same time. It is not partially just and partially unjust (partim/partim), but it is wholly both just and unjust (totus/totus). This is the place where the paradox lives, and this paradoxical presence ought not be mistaken for conceptual confusion.
In an age that understands guilt objectively, the prophetic voice is crucial. The prophet is one that reminds people of their guilt; he or she tells them what is the case and, by doing so, drives them into subjective apprehension of their guilt. A consonance between subjective and objective guilt is necessary if a person is ever to repent. The necessary condition for an experience of repentance is subjective apprehension of one's objective guilt.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all look to the future for a "day of the Lord." Such a day will be one when the "lion and lamb lie down together" and the "child plays with the adder." This day will be a day when the mountains are leved out and the valleys raised up (Luke 3). In the day of the Lord there shall be no unsatisfied guilt. Objective guilt demands objective satisfaction. Retributive justice requires paying back "likes for likes" (Cicero). The scales of justice must balance in a just society. In the day of the Lord, there shall be proper justice; there shall be no "extra guilt" in the universe. Just as the sum total of all charges in the universe is zero (at least, that is what many physicists say), so too the sum total of all guilt in the universe is zero. In the day of the Lord, all guilt is cancelled by its proper satisfaction.
It is truly wonderful to think of the justice in this "last day." Judaism, Christianity, and Islam long for the just day in which there will be no uncancelled guilt. However, while Judaism and Islam continue to look to the future for the justice of the day of the Lord, Christians claim that this justice has already dawned in the person and work of Jesus the Christ. Unlike the other great monotheisms, God's day of justice is already here! Right now guilt and satisfaction are in proper balance. Right now the mountains have been lowered and the valleys raised. Right now the lion lies peacefully with the lamb.
But how can this be? It should be apparent to everyone that this is clearly not so; there is no objective justice here and now. The "not yet" of the eschaton might bear justice, but surely in the "yet" of time, justice is lacking.
Precisely this, however, is the paradox. Just as we are objectively guilty, though seldom realize it, so are we now living in a state of objective justice, though we cannot see it. The Christian claim is that the justice of the eschatological "not yet" is now "yet" present in the injustice of the world. Simply put, eternal justice is present in the injustice of time.
But how ought one understand this? What is the relation between temporal injustice and eternal justice? How can it be that this world is already just and still not just at the same time? What is the ontology of the justice the prevails now?
There are a number of options. One could, I suppose, simply deny that any justice holds now. We might claim that the world is groaning in travail and waiting for some future rectification. While this seems true empirically, it is inconsistent with the profound Christian claim that the logos (proper order) actually entered history in Jesus the Christ.
One could claim that justice is really present, and no matter how bad things appear, the reality is that God has entered time and that justice has been established. The problem with this view is that it devalues the current situation. Things are good, no matter how they look.
The proper claim is to hold in tension the "yet" and "not yet" by understanding the reality of present justice theo-ontologically. From the standpoing of the divine, justice has been established through the Cross of Christ. However, this is simply not true ontologically, from the human standpoint. Earthly eyes see that the day of the Lord shall someday come; divine eyes know it is already here. How can this be reconciled?
The truth is that no synthesis of the human and divine standpoints are possible. What humans can hope for is a "trickle down" from the justice already theo-ontologically established into the injustice of a world ontologically comprehended by sinful man and woman. The world, like human beings, is both just and unjust at the same time. It is not partially just and partially unjust (partim/partim), but it is wholly both just and unjust (totus/totus). This is the place where the paradox lives, and this paradoxical presence ought not be mistaken for conceptual confusion.
Friday, December 08, 2006
On Truth-Conditions in Theology
In his influential book, The Nature of Doctrine, George Lindbeck discusses three general semantic approaches to theological and religious language. The cognitive-propositional approach assumes that theological statements have truth values because they either state what is or what is not the case. The experiential-expressivist strategy understands theological statements to be somehow expressive of human attitudes and orientations. Finally, the cultural-linguistic approach believes that theological statements are rules assumed by the theological community, rules that are themselves neither true nor false, but which ground further employment of theological and religious language. Of these three approaches, only the first grants robust truth-conditions to theological language.
Contemporary theology, of course, has deep problems with ascribing truth-conditions to its language. Ever since the days of Kant, the academic elite in Europe has been engaged in the project of doing theology without assuming God to be real - - or at least not "real" in the way that other things in the universe are real. God is either an ideal of human reason or an abstract object who is incapable of having causal relations with the universe. Tillich spoke of such a god as the "ground of being" or the "depth of being" in order to distinguish this being from any beings within the "structure of being." Of course, causal relations hold only among beings within the structure of being. (I will simply ignore the question here as to whether the Tillichian structure of being is a noematic structure or a structure existing apart from the noematic entirely. As it turns out, for our question this distinction is not important.)
Since God is not a being within the structure of being, statements about God cannot have truth-conditions in the way that statements about other objects in the universe can. If statements about such a God are to be true or false, they must somehow correspond to what is so within the structure of being, or be consistent and coherent with the language of other theories that themselves deal with the structure of being. However, if Kant is right, then God cannot be known as a member of the class of all beings, and thus a fortiori cannot be referred to by a language having definite truth-conditions. The assumption, of course, is that giving an extension to theological language involves the specification of a divine domain, divine properties, and relations (ordered n-tuples) having at least one term taking on a divine value, and the other (or others) the value of a member of the class of non-divine things. But dyadic (two-place) causal relations between God and any non-divine entity are clearly precluded by the Kantian starting point.
If theological language has no truth-conditions because it has no non-linguistic, non-mental domain to which it could refer, then it's use must serve some other function. Schleiermacher was perhaps the first clearly to grasp that theological language could be retained but assigned some other function. Instead of it having truth-conditions as if it were about something, it could be expressive or poetical, in its first-order use, and regulative and diagnostic in its second-order use. For Schleiermacher and many after him, theological language is neither true nor false, but rather expressively or regulatively adequate. Simply put, theological language is important not because of what it says about God, but what it expresses about us -- our experience and our condition. Theological language is thus not about God, but rather presents, evokes or displays the self. Instead of theos-logos, it is anthro-logos -- albeit, in a most roundabout way.
The problem with this should be apparent. Theological language that is merely expressive of the self or human experience does not have an extension and hence cannot be semantically relatable to entities within the universe. Such language is "doing something else" than claiming an object or ordered n-tuple is a member of a set; accordingly, it is doing something else than making a claim of truth. But surely this question is crucial: Does the term 'God' refer to a divine entity or does it merely express the self, and its aptitudes and orientations?
The reason why the question is crucial is apparent. Because human beings are beings who can pro-ject ahead of themselves various possibilities of being -- one of whose possibilities is the possibility of there being no more possibilities -- and because the referent of 'God' has traditionally been conceived to be an entity with salvific, causal power -- an entity causally-relatable to the human possibility of there being no more possibilities -- the very reason for employing 'God' is seemingly taken away when an extensionalist theological semantics is denied. One might go so far as to declare that whatever is referred to by 'God' is not referred to properly if the entity in question has no causal power. (On such a non-extensionalist construal, one might say that the entity in question has no causal power in each and every possible world in which it is ingredient.)
Since humans experience their death in the midst of life, the question of the reference of God is all important. Who, or what, can deliver a person from eternal death? Here the word 'deliver' has causal overtones. Only a being having causal power can liberate somebody from death. Why? The reason rests with the meaning of 'liberate'. For P to liberate x from y is for P to bring about a state of affairs of x in regard to y that would not have been brought about without P. (P cannot be said to free x from y if it were in x's power to get rid of y.) It is precisely this notion of bringing about a state of affairs that would not have been brought about otherwise that captures the causal relation. (Giving an analysis of 'cause' is, of course, a very difficult matter and we won't go into it here.)
A salvific, causal being is precisely the kind of being traditionally referred to by 'God'. Since we cannot deliver themselves from death, expressions of the self are improperly employed in combatting the critical salvific issues of human being. Moreover, these expressions may violate the very logic of theological discourse. How might this be so?
Theological language developed with a semantics that specified as its universe of discourse both worldly and divine objects, properties, relations, events and/or states of affairs. The point of such language was to claim satisfiability of a class of ordered pairs (or ordered n-tuples) by elements of this domain. So the question is simple: Does the criterion of application of 'theological language' extend beyond the semantics of traditional theological language to something quite different? I think a strong argument can be made that employment of a wholly different semantics properly precludes application of the term 'theological language' entirely. Accordingly, whatever it is that non-cognitive, non-propositionalist theologians now do, they do not do theology.
Contemporary theology, of course, has deep problems with ascribing truth-conditions to its language. Ever since the days of Kant, the academic elite in Europe has been engaged in the project of doing theology without assuming God to be real - - or at least not "real" in the way that other things in the universe are real. God is either an ideal of human reason or an abstract object who is incapable of having causal relations with the universe. Tillich spoke of such a god as the "ground of being" or the "depth of being" in order to distinguish this being from any beings within the "structure of being." Of course, causal relations hold only among beings within the structure of being. (I will simply ignore the question here as to whether the Tillichian structure of being is a noematic structure or a structure existing apart from the noematic entirely. As it turns out, for our question this distinction is not important.)
Since God is not a being within the structure of being, statements about God cannot have truth-conditions in the way that statements about other objects in the universe can. If statements about such a God are to be true or false, they must somehow correspond to what is so within the structure of being, or be consistent and coherent with the language of other theories that themselves deal with the structure of being. However, if Kant is right, then God cannot be known as a member of the class of all beings, and thus a fortiori cannot be referred to by a language having definite truth-conditions. The assumption, of course, is that giving an extension to theological language involves the specification of a divine domain, divine properties, and relations (ordered n-tuples) having at least one term taking on a divine value, and the other (or others) the value of a member of the class of non-divine things. But dyadic (two-place) causal relations between God and any non-divine entity are clearly precluded by the Kantian starting point.
If theological language has no truth-conditions because it has no non-linguistic, non-mental domain to which it could refer, then it's use must serve some other function. Schleiermacher was perhaps the first clearly to grasp that theological language could be retained but assigned some other function. Instead of it having truth-conditions as if it were about something, it could be expressive or poetical, in its first-order use, and regulative and diagnostic in its second-order use. For Schleiermacher and many after him, theological language is neither true nor false, but rather expressively or regulatively adequate. Simply put, theological language is important not because of what it says about God, but what it expresses about us -- our experience and our condition. Theological language is thus not about God, but rather presents, evokes or displays the self. Instead of theos-logos, it is anthro-logos -- albeit, in a most roundabout way.
The problem with this should be apparent. Theological language that is merely expressive of the self or human experience does not have an extension and hence cannot be semantically relatable to entities within the universe. Such language is "doing something else" than claiming an object or ordered n-tuple is a member of a set; accordingly, it is doing something else than making a claim of truth. But surely this question is crucial: Does the term 'God' refer to a divine entity or does it merely express the self, and its aptitudes and orientations?
The reason why the question is crucial is apparent. Because human beings are beings who can pro-ject ahead of themselves various possibilities of being -- one of whose possibilities is the possibility of there being no more possibilities -- and because the referent of 'God' has traditionally been conceived to be an entity with salvific, causal power -- an entity causally-relatable to the human possibility of there being no more possibilities -- the very reason for employing 'God' is seemingly taken away when an extensionalist theological semantics is denied. One might go so far as to declare that whatever is referred to by 'God' is not referred to properly if the entity in question has no causal power. (On such a non-extensionalist construal, one might say that the entity in question has no causal power in each and every possible world in which it is ingredient.)
Since humans experience their death in the midst of life, the question of the reference of God is all important. Who, or what, can deliver a person from eternal death? Here the word 'deliver' has causal overtones. Only a being having causal power can liberate somebody from death. Why? The reason rests with the meaning of 'liberate'. For P to liberate x from y is for P to bring about a state of affairs of x in regard to y that would not have been brought about without P. (P cannot be said to free x from y if it were in x's power to get rid of y.) It is precisely this notion of bringing about a state of affairs that would not have been brought about otherwise that captures the causal relation. (Giving an analysis of 'cause' is, of course, a very difficult matter and we won't go into it here.)
A salvific, causal being is precisely the kind of being traditionally referred to by 'God'. Since we cannot deliver themselves from death, expressions of the self are improperly employed in combatting the critical salvific issues of human being. Moreover, these expressions may violate the very logic of theological discourse. How might this be so?
Theological language developed with a semantics that specified as its universe of discourse both worldly and divine objects, properties, relations, events and/or states of affairs. The point of such language was to claim satisfiability of a class of ordered pairs (or ordered n-tuples) by elements of this domain. So the question is simple: Does the criterion of application of 'theological language' extend beyond the semantics of traditional theological language to something quite different? I think a strong argument can be made that employment of a wholly different semantics properly precludes application of the term 'theological language' entirely. Accordingly, whatever it is that non-cognitive, non-propositionalist theologians now do, they do not do theology.
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