On the Fundamentals - - Response to Menacher

On the Logia website (www.logia.org), Mark Menacher has taken aim at the "fundamentals" I offered up a couple of years ago. A couple of clarifications and some response is in order, I think.

These "fundamentals" were published on the WordAlone website over two years ago. My interests then and now are not the reform of the ELCA, whatever 'reform' might mean in this context. I was struggling in early 2007 to clarify some of the presuppositions of the "working theology" of the WordAlone Network. I wrote these both as descriptive of those presuppositions, but also as prescriptive. In reading Mark's response to them, it is obvious that he questions whether WordAone is worthy even to exist. I will not deal here with that issue, but rather with some of the specific claims he makes about these assertions in themselves, that is, in abstraction from the WordAlone context.

All need to realize that this attempt at fundamentals presupposed that we begin Lutheran theology solidly in the Second Article; we presuppose that Jesus is the Truth and Life. To claim as I did that theological language has truth-conditions is not to claim that Jesus is not the Truth. By talking about theological language having truth conditions, I am saying that Mark's own critique of my work can be either true or false. Unfortunately, much theological discourse seems to have abandoned this basic presupposition. I affirm it.

I am rather puzzled by the other points that Mark makes. To say that God is "causally related to the universe" is not to say that is all we say about God. It is to say that we presuppose that relatedness when making statements about God's acts in the orders of creation and redemption. I find no points of disagreement in his critique of theses (3) and (4). In thesis (5), I was thinking about the Apology, and subsequent reflection on these matters within Lutheran Orthodoxy generally. I find no substantive difference in what Mark says in theses (6) or (7) either. One might not like the term 'orientation', but one needs to look beyond the use of the term, and try to understand what the author might mean by it. I clearly mean that men and women are at enmity with God whether, as Luther says, "they eat, sleep or drink." In (7) I accede that the Holy Spirit works freely and verbally. These are properties of the Holy Spirit's working, presumably. I was talking about a relational fact about human beings, however. The question is whether or not human work contributes in any way to the freeing of human beings from sin, death, and the power of the devil. I am merely affirming what has been the dominant tradition within Lutheranism on this matter.

Fundamental semantic presuppositions have been at work within vast portions of the Lutheran theological landscape that are quite alien (and antithetical) to the semantic horizon upon which the Reformation originated. This is why we have thousands of preachers who can talk confidently about what God has done, but no longer believe that "having done" connotes a causal relationship: X causes Y if and only if were X not to have happened, then Y would not have happened. Failure to attend to what is basic here has raised up a generation of Lutheran preachers and teachers who can talk confidently of God's "mighty acts in history" and yet not mean that God affects nature. That is to say, 'God divided the waters' no longer is parsed to mean that there is a divine being, there are waters, and that the waters would not have been divided were God not to have acted.

I thank Mark for his comments, and I say to him that it seems we really are in agreement on most of these issues.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Internal Clarity of Scripture II

The question of the internal clarity of Scripture links to the question of a theology of nature. Just as the Book of Nature can be read with a providential divine being at its center really existing apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and causing the distribution of a least some natural properties, so too can the Book of Scripture be read with a salvific divine being at its center, externally acting to save human beings from sin, death, and the power of the devil. While the providential divine being has causal power within the order of creation, the salvific divine being is the Word which presents Himself in words, carrying the Spirit which knows the Word in these words.

Christian faith confesses the ontological reality of God's presence in nature, though God is unclear to the human gaze. Human beings see through a glass darkly when they dare at all to recognize the Being of the creator God in the divers, sundry, and disconnected events of history. Similarly, this faith confesses the ontological presence of God's Word in the divers, sundry, and apparently disconnectable events of the Biblical texts.

To say that God appears not to be at work in nature, is an honest statement of the natural man and woman., She cannot find God unambiguously present in nature, though faith catches glimpses here and there, and from time to time. Similarly, to say that the Bible does not in its entirety seem to be bespeaking, and speaking about the Christ is an honest confession of natural man and woman. She cannot find Christ unambigously present in the texts, through faith catches glimpses of that presence here and there, and from time to time.

The presence of the God in nature, like the presence of Christ in Scripture, is an ontological assertion. God is present in nature even if man and woman can not know him; Christ is present in Scripture even if man and woman do not recognize it. Human beings are epistemically limited with respect to their apprehension of the divine in nature; human beings are similarly limited with respect to their apprehension of God's Word (Christ) in Scripture. God's mighty acts in history, and Christ's presence at the center of Scripture are externally obscure for sinful man and woman. To say, then, that Scripture is internally clear is to say that it has this property in se, not in relationship to human apprehension of it. Similarly, to say that God's mightly acts in history are perspicuous is to say that these mighty acts clearly happened and continue to happen, even iv there are nu humans capable of recognizing this to be true.

Prologemonena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Internal Clarity of Scripture I

It may come as a surprise that the notion of the internal clarity of scripture arises only at the end of a treatment claiming to be a Prologomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology. Should it not be placed at the beginning? Should we not start with a statement of the general reliability of Scripture in terms of a special revelation, and then proceed to a consideration of the divine and its relationship to us? Should be not begin in time-honored fashion with what we can know, and then move forward to being, to what there is?

However, leaving consideration of the internal clarity of scripture to the end was done purposefully, because we are interested primarily in understanding this doctrine ontologically and not epistemically; we are interested in the being of the doctrine of the internal clarity of scripture, and not primarily in an epistemological method by which we are putatively given reliable means on the basis of which we can be confident in the truth of Scripture.

My interest with retrieving the notion of the internal clarity of Scripture is three-fold: 1) The doctrine is crucial for Lutheran theology because it protects against willful and capricious interpretations of Scripture, 2) It is a doctrine that all Lutherans should be able in principle to affirm, 3) It is a notion that, properly understood, creates parallels between understanding God's action and presence with respect to both the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. I wish to treat this last point briefly.

Just as it may be externally obscure to us that God is at work in the universe, and yet Lutherans may affirm that God is at work in nature, so may it be externally obscure to us that God is at work creating and sustaing his Word within cannonical Scripture, and yet God is clearly Triunely present in His Holy Scriptures. The Triune God is present in His world even though humans often do not see it. One might say even that there is an internal clarity to God's work in nature. God is ontologically present at the center of Nature although humans often have trouble discerning it to be so. Correspondingly, Christ is present at the center of Scripture although humans have trouble oftentimes seeing this to be true.

What is important here is to understand God in His Trinitarian nature. Just as it is true that God creates and sustains the universe, incarnates Himself in the world, and bears testimony to that incarnation and the identity of God as Creator Father, Incarnate Word, and Loving Spirit, so too is it true that God the Son is present as Word in and through the Biblical text attesting to the Father, and attested to by the Spirit. Just as the Trinitarian God stands over and against Himself in Word and Spirit in nature, so too does the same Trinitarian God stand over and against Himself in witness to the Word in and through the text.

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 - - Theophysical Causation

Kant argued that only those objects formed in a synthesis of sense perception can be objects that are in principle causally related to other objects. Only "substances" so formed can be causally-connected. Accordingly, if there are no substances, there can be no causality. An important result of Kant's work is the separation of the notion of 'cause' from that of 'reason'. One substance can cause the modification of another, but one substance cannot serve as a rational ground for the other. Conversely, one idea can serve as a rational ground for the other without the first causing the second.

Kant thus concluded that since there are no sense particulars falling under the concept of God, the divine cannot be a substance causally connected to another substance. Instead God is placed within the Ideas of Pure Reason. Human beings have, according to Kant, a natural metaphysical drive that can only find its resting place in the idea of the Unconditioned, the idea which contains "a therefore for every wherefore" (A585/B613). The demands of systemtatic unity and completeness find completeness in the Ideal of God: "A concept of an individual object which is completely determined through the mere idea" (A574/B602). As an Ideal of Reason, this being is not real: "This unconditioned is not, indeed, given as being in itself real, nor as having a reality that follows from its mere concept; it is, however, what alone can complete the series of conditions when we proceed to trace these conditions to their grounds. This is the course which our human reason, by its very nature, leads all of us" (A584/B612).

By expressly denying any causal relation to God - - and by making God a denizen of of the ideal realm - - Kant denies theophysical causation. Accordingly, predicating terms like 'create', 'redeem', and 'sustain' of 'God' must proceed in a different fashion than it had the antecedent tradition. After Kant, the theological tradition had to find ways to interpret their theological language in ways that did not suppose that God was a substance sustaining causal relations with His universe.

The effects upon religious practice were enormous. If God is causally-isolated from the universe, then God cannot answer prayer. Moreover, God cannot work miracles in the traditional sense of bringing about a state of affairs which would not customarily had come about. God really cannot do anything; He is an ideal to be contemplated. Accordingly, prayer becomes - - if people reflect profoundly enough upon the practice - - a self-centering activity, more like meditation.

Clearly, theology in a Lutheran key is possible on the supposition of denying theophysical causation. One can still preach law and gospel, and refer to the grace of Christ and the freedom Christ grants. However, one must subtly change the rules. It is not that God demands and through Christ's promise saves, it is rather that the idea or phenomenon of God is correlated with the fundamental phenomenon of demand, and the notion of Christ creates in the one experiencing it a sense of bonds being broken and the freedom of the future donated. This move is now in question, I believe, because in a pluralistic culture, why is it that one should insist upon the specificity of the notion or phenomenon of the Christ? And if there is no specificity, then Jesus cannot be the exclusive "Way and the Truth and the Life," a pretty basic assumption within traditional Lutheran theology.

Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Semantic Realism

Just as it is important that Lutheran theology get clear again upon whether a God exists that is external to human awareness, perception, conception, and language, so is it important for it to assert again that theological language makes truth-claims, that it is language that is in principle either true or false. The notion that language about the world can be either true or false regardless of whether or not we can confirm or disconfirm it experientially is called semantic realism. Michael Dummett talks about this type of realism explicitly in the following quote:

“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).

It is my contention that most mainstream academic theology has more or less rejected semantic realism, and that, accordingly, mainline Lutheran theology repudiates it as well. But what are the options for theology if it does not claim semantic realism? I see the following:

1) One might claim that language about God is truth-apt but false. Accordingly, theology instantiates an error theory, that is, since there is no God, all theological language referring to God is false. Clearly, this view is not an option for a theist who wishes seriously to engage the theological task?

2) One might claim that language about God is not truth-apt at all, as some post-Enlightenment, post-Kantian theology has supposed. Accordingly, talk about God is merely a projection of human emotion and sentiment upon the world. But while this view may be an improvement over the previous, it is not a very promising way to proceed theologically. After all, if theological language is a human projection, why would we ever want to get others to project God upon the universe?

3) One might claim that language about God is truth-apt and not false, but not about what people had assumed that language was always about. Some post-Enlightenment, post-Kantian theology has attempted this as well. Accordingly, one might claim that talk about God is true or false given that one understands ‘God’ to refer to something determinate within human existence. This view seems to entail anti-realism, but clearly the converse is not true. There are several ways in which one might be a theological anti-realist. For instance, 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. But then how would one explain the person and work of the Christ? Does the salvific work of Christ constitute the best explanation of our human experience? But Scripture and tradition have referred to Christ as a “stumbling block” for human reason. This latter point also seems to undercut efforts to base the matter upon theological consensus.

Many have attacked Semantic realism because it presupposes “evidence transcending truth-conditions.” Many philosophers cannot subscribe to semantic realism because of the manifestation and acquisition challenges. Crudely put, the problem is how we could ever acquire and wield language that was not somehow “hooked up” with the world we experience. How could we be talking about things with a language that we do not know how to connect to our experience? It should be noted, however, that Trinitarian theologians don’t really have this problem. It seems that a theological response to this challenge could be worked out where, through the activity of the Holy Spirit, human beings can be regarded to have the relevant perceptual causal connections to the divine states of affairs making theological statements true.

It is my contention that theology, if it is to survive, must make definite truth claims; it must be able to assert propositions in logical space, the satisfaction of which would be the instantiation of particular divine and divine/temporal states of affairs. To declare that that semantic realism is false, is, in effect, to claim that there are not divine and divine/temporal states of affairs. We will have much more to say about this in another context.

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.