Joel 2:1-18 speaks of the "Day of the Lord." This day is "a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come." The people are waiting for the Day of the Lord perhaps as children wait for Christmas. But this is folly, for this Day will be nothing like they expect.
In the heyday of dialectical theology 90 years ago or so, theologians emphasized the totaliter aliter, of the divine, the "wholly otherness" of God. The times were indeed ripe to talk of God as that nullity which effectively judges being. They proclaimed that one cannot find God by finding Him somewhere in the field of being, no matter the lofty region He might inhabit. If God really is infinitely qualitatively different from His creation, then this difference cannot merely be some adjustment of form or quality within a common potentiality spreading from the heavens to earth. No! Divine being must be totaliter aliter than the potentiality that lies within being itself. In other words, God is wholly other than what the philosophers once called "prime matter." To speak of uncreated divine being and created being under the general category of "being" is deeply problematic, for how could God be the Krisis of the world if he retains a place within it?
No matter how we might try to think the being of divine being, it is a different type of thing we think than the being of created being. God is so radically different from created being that we use the word 'being' a bit improperly to describe Him. God and the universe form ontological antipodes: God is what the universe is not, and the universe is what God is not. This ontological gap between the creator and creature is a necessary condition for the grace-full contingency of creation itself. If the created order where merely an adjustment on the uncreated order, then the gap between the divine and not-divine narrows to the point that what God is, is no longer what the universe is not. On this view Emerson would be right in saying, "Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine." On this view, God's otherness is lost and God becomes less than God.
Why does God become less than God when God's otherness is lost? How can the asymmetrical relation of 'being other than' somehow make God other than God is? If God has a determinate being, and x regards God as other and y does not, is God more God for x than x? This is but another way of asking the realist question of God: Is God externally or internally related to His creation?
What is necessary is to distinguish God-in-Himself, versus God-in-regard-to us. While divine being has the contour it has apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, what human beings regard to be God is deeply dependent upon how God is for them. While God is God apart from whether or not God appears distant or close to x, x will regard something as God only if God is not wholly proximate to x. What I am saying is very simple: For something to be regarded as God by person p, there must be an experience of extraordinary distance for p in the presence of this putative divinity. God cannot be God for p if p does not fear God as that before which p feels puny, is overwhelmed, and experiences shudder. For p - - and I would generalize to great numbers of people - - that which is not experienced as distant cannot ultimately be God.
The paradox of the Christian proclamation is that the Distant One, however, loves us. The experience of the divine has the character both of divine distance and proximity. While that which is not distant cannot be God, that which is not close cannot save us. The tremendum which is necessary for p to regard something as God is at the same time the fascinans by and through which humans are drawn to God. Our experience under the condition of existence is not a healthy one. What is needed is salvation from that which is not ultimately us. Just as creation is the free act of a being ontologically discontinuous from the divine itself, so is redemption a free action of a being ontologically discontinuous from human existence as such. While a God that is not distant cannot be God, so too a God that is too distant cannot save. The necessary condition for x to regard g as God is that g is distant from x; the necessary condition for x to be saved by g is that g is close to x. For human being, God purchases salvation generally by sacrificing divinity; he purchases his divinity by sacrificing His soteriological intimacy. This is the way of nondialectical assertions within the field of being.
The dialectical theologians were fond at pronouncing paradoxical phrases. None perhaps is more paradoxical than these we must make: Only the Distant One is ultimately Close to us. Only the One whose impassibility precludes the sentiment of love can ever really love us.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Theological Realism and Christology
One of our assumptions at the Institute of Lutheran Theology is theological realism, the notion that God exists and has a definite contour apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. While this would not be a surprising claim for most believers throughout Christian history, it is somewhat of a bold claim today, 230 years after the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. For most of the nineteenth century, attempts were made to talk intelligibly about God while at the same time not affirming that God is a metaphysical substance capable of sustaining causal relations with His universe. This penchant survives and is deeply presupposed in much Protestant theology, especially of the Lutheran persuasion.
Yesterday as I preached on 2 Peter 1:16-21, it struck me that no matter how robust the claim of theological realism is, the claim of Christological realism is be even more bold. Imagine claiming that Christology is objective, that it is an evidence-transcending propositional truth about the universe that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Imagine making such a powerful claim that the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ is factual, that is, that Christ's suffering, death and resurrection exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language! It seems to me, on reading these passages from Peter, that the claim of factuality is emphasized precisely over and against claims that the proclamation of Christ is mythological, that the proclamation somehow is a response to our inchoate religious yearnings.
It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I think Heideggerian thoughts much of the time. I have always been deeply convinced of the rectitude of Heidegger's analysis of human existence and authenticity in the face of the phenomenon of death. For much of my adult days I have assumed with Heidegger that death is basically a phenomenological reality, that only in life is there death, because there can be no death for death - - as Epicurus famously taught.
But while Heidegger's phenomenological analysis is deeply persuasive and penetrating on this point, because it is phenomenological it cannot deal with the relationship between the phenomenological and that which grounds the phenomenological. The reason is easy to see: To reflect and articulate the relationship between the phenomenological and the non-phenomenological is no longer to describe the phenomenological, but to conceive why the phenomenological has the contour it has.
Yet while moving beyond a phenomenological analysis may not a phenomenological analysis make, clearly it is not unreasonable to ask what grounds the phenomenology of death. One does not have to think very profoundly to answer that question: The phenomenology of death is grounded in the factuality of death. We live with one foot in nonbeing because we shall someday fully be nonbeing. A reasonable person not unduly timid about ontology would certainly assert such a thing. (Maybe phenomenological ontology is finally an ontology of the timid . . . )
When reading 2 Peter 1:16-21, it seems clear that the last testament of the writer to the truth of Christ is a testament of the factuality of Christ, that is, the writer wants us to know that the proclamation that liberates us in the face of death is itself grounded in the reality of the one that liberates us from death. Just as death is not a linguistic event but a fact as well as our phenomenon of it, to too is liberation from death not merely a linguistic event, but a fact as well as our phenomenon of it. In other words, just as my death exists apart from my awareness, perception, conception and language, so too does my liberation from death exist apart from those things as well.
Why is theological realism important? Because Christian theological realism just is Christological realism. But why is Christological realism important? Because as the writer of 2 Peter declares, "We do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made know to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty" (16).
Yesterday as I preached on 2 Peter 1:16-21, it struck me that no matter how robust the claim of theological realism is, the claim of Christological realism is be even more bold. Imagine claiming that Christology is objective, that it is an evidence-transcending propositional truth about the universe that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Imagine making such a powerful claim that the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ is factual, that is, that Christ's suffering, death and resurrection exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language! It seems to me, on reading these passages from Peter, that the claim of factuality is emphasized precisely over and against claims that the proclamation of Christ is mythological, that the proclamation somehow is a response to our inchoate religious yearnings.
It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I think Heideggerian thoughts much of the time. I have always been deeply convinced of the rectitude of Heidegger's analysis of human existence and authenticity in the face of the phenomenon of death. For much of my adult days I have assumed with Heidegger that death is basically a phenomenological reality, that only in life is there death, because there can be no death for death - - as Epicurus famously taught.
But while Heidegger's phenomenological analysis is deeply persuasive and penetrating on this point, because it is phenomenological it cannot deal with the relationship between the phenomenological and that which grounds the phenomenological. The reason is easy to see: To reflect and articulate the relationship between the phenomenological and the non-phenomenological is no longer to describe the phenomenological, but to conceive why the phenomenological has the contour it has.
Yet while moving beyond a phenomenological analysis may not a phenomenological analysis make, clearly it is not unreasonable to ask what grounds the phenomenology of death. One does not have to think very profoundly to answer that question: The phenomenology of death is grounded in the factuality of death. We live with one foot in nonbeing because we shall someday fully be nonbeing. A reasonable person not unduly timid about ontology would certainly assert such a thing. (Maybe phenomenological ontology is finally an ontology of the timid . . . )
When reading 2 Peter 1:16-21, it seems clear that the last testament of the writer to the truth of Christ is a testament of the factuality of Christ, that is, the writer wants us to know that the proclamation that liberates us in the face of death is itself grounded in the reality of the one that liberates us from death. Just as death is not a linguistic event but a fact as well as our phenomenon of it, to too is liberation from death not merely a linguistic event, but a fact as well as our phenomenon of it. In other words, just as my death exists apart from my awareness, perception, conception and language, so too does my liberation from death exist apart from those things as well.
Why is theological realism important? Because Christian theological realism just is Christological realism. But why is Christological realism important? Because as the writer of 2 Peter declares, "We do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made know to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty" (16).
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Thinking and Thanking
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger was fond of the seventeenth century Pietist phrase, “Denken ist Danken, (to think is to thank).” Heidegger writes, “Pure thanks lies in this, that we simply think that which is solely and properly to-be-thought.”
But what is it that properly ought to be thought? For Heidegger, it is Being-Itself, and thinking of this being is itself a thanking for being. Much of Heidegger's later work is a poetic exploration of the common etymology between thinking and thanking, and I recommend his ruminations to those so inclined. But what has this philosopher to do with the question of God and Lutheran theology generally? And what has thinking and thanking to do with the Institute of Lutheran Theology?
Heidegger distinguishes calculative thinking from meditative thinking, claiming that while the first attempts to grasp being, the second responds to it by “thinking after” it as it discloses itself. While Heidegger never calls Being-itself 'God', the connection is palpable. Just as light-itself lights the world, so does Being-itself radiate beings. Accordingly, Being-itself is the “ground” of all that is, a ground that cannot be investigated in the way of other things. The answer to the first question about God is that just as Being-itself is the ultimate ground from which beings arise, so too is God the creative mystery at the heart of the universe.
Heidegger realized that while being could not be grasped by human thinking - -for such thinking always presupposes being - - human thinking is nonetheless a way of be-ing. Accordingly, while the human subject cannot grasp the object (being), the object can and does call forth the subject's thinking of it. Simply put, while attempts to grasp the divine always end in failure, the divine successfully reveals itself to us. The answer to the second question about Lutheran theology is that what the law cannot do is done by the grace of God. God's revelation in our lives is something we cannot coax, engineer or guarantee. His presence is donated to us from outside ourselves, not by virtue of our own efforts at spiritual transformation.
But what has Heidegger to do with our work in the Institute of Lutheran Theology? After all, is not ILT committed to the Bible and not to German philosophy? Moreover, why do people at the Institute of Lutheran Theology concern themselves with such heavy thinking? Is it not simply enough that ILT gives it future graduates instructions for doing effective ministry? Can't we simply train pastors the way we train computer engineers, librarians and hotel/motel managers?
The Institute of Lutheran theology is deeply committed to reading and understanding the Bible. Collectively, we have a very high view of Scripture, believing its clarity and authority to be matters not of our doing. But while the source of theological reflection must always be the Bible and the tradition of its thinking, this source is always reflected through the medium of the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.
Reading and understanding the Bible is thus both simple and difficult. It is simple because the Bible speaks immediately to its readers as the Word of God; it is difficult because there is no methodological formula that can forever establish the exact words of that speaking. The Bible speaks as it is questioned by different readers at different times. Ultimately like Heidegger's Being-Itself, the Bible reveals its Word as a matter of grace, for it cannot wholly be grasped through application of methodological law.
I am convinced that one of the main problems facing Lutheran clergy today is that oftentimes their education denies them the freedom to think, at least to think so deeply that their thinking is transformed into thanking. While they acquire a set of skills - - they know now how to give sermons, how to plan worship and how to make hospital calls - - they aren't mentored to think what continually ought-to-be-thought: God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. This Word of grace, which cannot be established by human thinking, is itself revealed to human thinking, and in the thinking of this thought, human life becomes itself a thanking, a life lived in joyful response to the One who has Himself called such thinking into being. Faith is thus active in love.
Indeed we at ILT cannot be happy simply with teaching students what to do, until each is clear on what it is that must be thought. With an eye toward the ought-to-be-thought, students at ILT study Bible, history of church and theology, philosophical underpinnings for theology, Lutheran Confessions, and systematic theology. The objective is to think so deeply the thought that the Holy Spirit has called us to think, that we live out our deeply-thought lives in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus the Christ and in thankfully serving Him. Pastoral skills are only important if pastors believe that about which they speak. Faith is always active in love.
All of this is to say something that Lutherans have always known, but that has gotten a bit obscure in our time: Being precedes doing. Over and against existentialists, pragmatists, modern day Aristotelians, and enthusiasts of the law in all its forms, Lutheran theology has always steadfastly declared what the Bible perspicuously records: While a good tree bears good fruit, good fruit does not a good tree make. More important than future Lutheran clergy learning in their classes how to do the job of being a clergy person is that they have the time (and the space) to think through what it is to called to be one who in his or her thinking has pastoral doing as a mode of thanking. God's work of faith establishes the possibility of love.
So it is that we think about many things at ILT. We consider deeply the human condition, sin, atonement, and salvation. We think about how God relates to His universe in creation, redemption and sanctification. We reflect upon how language of God relates to other kinds of language, to the words of poets and scientists. We are convinced that if our language of God cannot easily be used Monday through Saturday, it is only very oddly and parochially employed on Sundays.
We think as well that considering these things deeply is already to occupy a position of gratitude. Think of the grace involved in such thinking! To think deeply is to realize that there is something rather than nothing, and that this situation has no worldly explanation. To think deeply is to realize that we might not have been, or that we might not now be who we somehow still deeply are in time. Thinking deeply pushes us to consider the radical contingency of human existence, to think the thought that there is nothing necessary about being. But as we consider that things could have been other than they in fact are, we realize that why and how things are themselves involve grace and gift. Thinking through contingency breeds a thankfulness of what is. Denken ist Danken!
As the end of this first decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, our collective thinking at the Institute of Lutheran Theology is in truth radically oriented to thanking. After all, there is no reason to expect that a seminary starting from nothing on a financial shoestring should be successful. People thought it could not be done. How could ILT overcome financial constraints, accrediting issues, and course delivery problems?
But I am here to proclaim to you the startling, and wholly contingent fact, that it daily is being done. ILT is blessed to have high quality students, a stellar faculty, an increasing list of generous donors, and a very professional course delivery system that allows students interaction with some of the best Lutheran theologians in the English speaking world. Where else can students study with professors Jim Nestingen, Mark Hilmer, Paul Hinlicky, Robert Benne, Hans Hillerbrand, and Uwe Siemon-Netto, to name but a few? Where else can students get the opportunity at home for one-on-one interaction with professor of international reputation who will coax them daily into thinking deeply what it is that ought-to-be-thought?
Next semester ILT will be in the process of launching a second generation video delivery system that will deliver much higher quality video to anyone having a broadband internet connection. Please tune into our fifteen minute chapels every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10:00 a.m. to see clearly Lutheran preachers preaching clearly the Word of God. Soon students will have greater options for accessing higher quality video during select lecture formats. Through the generosity of almost five hundred individual and congregational donors this last year, the Institute of Lutheran Theology is transitioning from a start-up seminary with a vision for tomorrow to an actually existing Lutheran graduate school filling the needs of students world-wide today.
While the universe did not have to be, yet by the grace of God is, so too with ILT: It could have failed, but it did not. Not only did it not fail, but it has the opportunity to lead the transformation of Lutheran theological education world-wide. To think about this radical contingency of ILT is perpetually to thank Him who called it forth into Being.
Through the work of the faculty, staff, students and supporters of ILT, that which ought-to-be-thought is itself humbly and thankfully being thought. To think in a sustained way about what God has done for us in Christ is to live a life of thanksgiving. It is from this ground that ILT has emerged, and it is from this ground that it is watered and will ultimately grow into full fruition. The divinely-worked faith of human thinking is always active in the divinely-worked love of human thanking. May God's faith and grace be indeed with you all this New Year!
Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt
President
Institute of Lutheran Theology
Monday, November 29, 2010
Theory Construction in Theology
For sometime now I have had the reoccurring thought that theology employs theories in much the same way as the natural sciences. Of course, with the natural sciences, theory construction and disconfirmation is patent. We know that if theory T has as a logical consequence P, and if ~P actually turns out true empirically, then there is something wrong with theory T. (Assuming, of course, that one's inferences are in fact deducible theorems of T.) It is all rather straightforward for the scientist - - or at least it seems prima facie so.
A number of years ago I was excited by some of the similarities I found between scientific theory construction and theological construction. It was to me then rather exciting to think that somehow theology uses theories. (I confess to having a bit of the natural theologian in me in those days.) But something has happened. While it is true that I am no longer much excited by the similarities between scientific and theological theory construction, it is not because the seeming similarities have faded for me. No - - it is because it seems to me now patently obvious, and not at all surprising, that theological theory and scientific theory have the same structure. The excitement has faded because there is no longer anything creative in the thought. They just are of the same kind. Let me explain with an example that is not that of natural theology at all.
I am rereading some of the Finnish work on Luther in teaching 'Luther, Justification and Deification' in the Institute of Lutheran Theology Masters of Theology program. Among the many claims made by the Finns is that Luther employs the notion of theosis as a central motif within his theology, that his notion of justification presupposes the unio cum Christo. The way that this is argued is to take a number of themes in Luther, chart the interrelationship between these themes, and then go to the Luther texts to see if perusal experience is consistent with the theory built out of the interrelationship of these themes.
For instance, they argue that the inhabitatio Christi grounds both forensic and effective justification, that the imputational notion of justification is the divine favor or gratia, while the effective notion is the divine donum or gift. While the favor of God addresses the wrath of God, the gift of God pertains to the corruption of our natures. Just as favor of God undergirds the gift of God, so the gift of God grounds the favor of God. For Luther, justification is a unitary process that includes what is often regarded by the Reformation traditions to be sanctification. God gives Himself to His creation in love, and thus all of creation is butressed by the indwelling God. But fallen creation groans in travail for salvation. This salvation is available through the gift of divine love which is the presence of Christ in the believer grasped through faith. Thus, 'x has faith' and 'x has the presence of Christ' are materially equivalent. (I thought about claiming that they were conceptually equivalent, but I can imagine x having faith without x having the presence of Christ. How is this possible? It seems that much of Lutheran Orthodoxy was quite capable of asserting the truth of the former without asserting the truth of the latter.)
Now these general assertions could be clearly stated as propositions of a theory. One would start with some statement such as 'x has the indwelling of Christ if and only if Christ gives himself to x'. One might say then that 'for any divine property P had by D, if x has P, then x has D itself''. After such definitions, one might declare as theoretical postulates that 'for any x, if x has the presence of Christ, then x is justified', and 'for all x, if x is justified, then x is both declared righteous by divine favor, and made righteous by divine gift'. That this would be tedious work, is readily granted; that it would succeed in laying bare the structure of a class of theoretical assertions is only hoped for.
Given that a theory could be structured in which the logical and conceptual relationships between the assertions of the theory were aptly displayed, the question arises as to the applicability. Is this theory applicable to theological reality itself? Is it applicable to a class of texts written within a tradition, or written by a single author? Is it applicable to the Luther texts? Here is seems that what the theory would have to have besides the internal marks of consistency and coherency, are the external characteristics of applicability, adequacy, and fecundity. I shall treat each in turn.
Theory T would be applicable to a class of texts C if and only if it were not disconfirmed by any particular assertions found within C. Theory T would be adequate to a class of texts C if there were not assertions of C that T could not in principle handle. Theory T would be fecund with respect to C if it generated a continuing program of fruitful and creative insights concerning the relationship of T to other theories.
What is different between scientific theory construction and this theological theory construction is what Heidegger called the Befragte, that which is asked questions on the basis of the theory. In natural science theory construction, nature is the Befragte; in theological theory construction it is most often a class of texts that are questioned. To find out what view Luther held, one must be content to advance theoretical models, some of which are contradicted by the texts and some of which are not, some which fit nicely into other overarching theories, and some which do not. Just as we cannot know the Ding an Sich in nature, but must model nature and build a sustainable "take" on nature given our experience with it, so too in theology, we cannot know the mens auctoritatis (mind of the author), but content ourselves with sustainable "reads" on the basis of the Luther texts themselves. Moreover, just as traditional scientific theory must not be easily discarded in favor of newer scientific theory, but generally regarded as authoritative unless directly contradicted by new empirical evidence, so too should newer theological theory not supplant traditional readings unless there is a compelling reason to do so - - a reason arising from a straightforward experience with the Luther texts themselves.
So I find these days in theology that some statements are "more theoretical" and some "less theoretical" on the basis of whether the first are "further removed" from the primary literary experience of reading the text. So too are some theological terms "more concrete" or "less concrete" as to how they cash on the basis of the particular texts. Accordingly, oftentimes the most "theoretical" of terms are those that are presupposed everywhere in our perusal experience without being asserted directly very many times at all! It is of this latter nature, it seems, that the Finnish Lutheran notion of divinization participates.
A number of years ago I was excited by some of the similarities I found between scientific theory construction and theological construction. It was to me then rather exciting to think that somehow theology uses theories. (I confess to having a bit of the natural theologian in me in those days.) But something has happened. While it is true that I am no longer much excited by the similarities between scientific and theological theory construction, it is not because the seeming similarities have faded for me. No - - it is because it seems to me now patently obvious, and not at all surprising, that theological theory and scientific theory have the same structure. The excitement has faded because there is no longer anything creative in the thought. They just are of the same kind. Let me explain with an example that is not that of natural theology at all.
I am rereading some of the Finnish work on Luther in teaching 'Luther, Justification and Deification' in the Institute of Lutheran Theology Masters of Theology program. Among the many claims made by the Finns is that Luther employs the notion of theosis as a central motif within his theology, that his notion of justification presupposes the unio cum Christo. The way that this is argued is to take a number of themes in Luther, chart the interrelationship between these themes, and then go to the Luther texts to see if perusal experience is consistent with the theory built out of the interrelationship of these themes.
For instance, they argue that the inhabitatio Christi grounds both forensic and effective justification, that the imputational notion of justification is the divine favor or gratia, while the effective notion is the divine donum or gift. While the favor of God addresses the wrath of God, the gift of God pertains to the corruption of our natures. Just as favor of God undergirds the gift of God, so the gift of God grounds the favor of God. For Luther, justification is a unitary process that includes what is often regarded by the Reformation traditions to be sanctification. God gives Himself to His creation in love, and thus all of creation is butressed by the indwelling God. But fallen creation groans in travail for salvation. This salvation is available through the gift of divine love which is the presence of Christ in the believer grasped through faith. Thus, 'x has faith' and 'x has the presence of Christ' are materially equivalent. (I thought about claiming that they were conceptually equivalent, but I can imagine x having faith without x having the presence of Christ. How is this possible? It seems that much of Lutheran Orthodoxy was quite capable of asserting the truth of the former without asserting the truth of the latter.)
Now these general assertions could be clearly stated as propositions of a theory. One would start with some statement such as 'x has the indwelling of Christ if and only if Christ gives himself to x'. One might say then that 'for any divine property P had by D, if x has P, then x has D itself''. After such definitions, one might declare as theoretical postulates that 'for any x, if x has the presence of Christ, then x is justified', and 'for all x, if x is justified, then x is both declared righteous by divine favor, and made righteous by divine gift'. That this would be tedious work, is readily granted; that it would succeed in laying bare the structure of a class of theoretical assertions is only hoped for.
Given that a theory could be structured in which the logical and conceptual relationships between the assertions of the theory were aptly displayed, the question arises as to the applicability. Is this theory applicable to theological reality itself? Is it applicable to a class of texts written within a tradition, or written by a single author? Is it applicable to the Luther texts? Here is seems that what the theory would have to have besides the internal marks of consistency and coherency, are the external characteristics of applicability, adequacy, and fecundity. I shall treat each in turn.
Theory T would be applicable to a class of texts C if and only if it were not disconfirmed by any particular assertions found within C. Theory T would be adequate to a class of texts C if there were not assertions of C that T could not in principle handle. Theory T would be fecund with respect to C if it generated a continuing program of fruitful and creative insights concerning the relationship of T to other theories.
What is different between scientific theory construction and this theological theory construction is what Heidegger called the Befragte, that which is asked questions on the basis of the theory. In natural science theory construction, nature is the Befragte; in theological theory construction it is most often a class of texts that are questioned. To find out what view Luther held, one must be content to advance theoretical models, some of which are contradicted by the texts and some of which are not, some which fit nicely into other overarching theories, and some which do not. Just as we cannot know the Ding an Sich in nature, but must model nature and build a sustainable "take" on nature given our experience with it, so too in theology, we cannot know the mens auctoritatis (mind of the author), but content ourselves with sustainable "reads" on the basis of the Luther texts themselves. Moreover, just as traditional scientific theory must not be easily discarded in favor of newer scientific theory, but generally regarded as authoritative unless directly contradicted by new empirical evidence, so too should newer theological theory not supplant traditional readings unless there is a compelling reason to do so - - a reason arising from a straightforward experience with the Luther texts themselves.
So I find these days in theology that some statements are "more theoretical" and some "less theoretical" on the basis of whether the first are "further removed" from the primary literary experience of reading the text. So too are some theological terms "more concrete" or "less concrete" as to how they cash on the basis of the particular texts. Accordingly, oftentimes the most "theoretical" of terms are those that are presupposed everywhere in our perusal experience without being asserted directly very many times at all! It is of this latter nature, it seems, that the Finnish Lutheran notion of divinization participates.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Normativity and Theology
Some distinctions are so basic and simple that we denizens of North America tend, in general, to forget them. One such distinction is between the normative and the descriptive. While Hume famously taught that one cannot derive an "ought" from and "is," many no longer can grasp that statements about what is the case cannot entail statements about what must be the case. The only way, in fact, to get the "ought" from the "is" is to describe what is in such ways that there is an implied ought. But then one merely derives an "ought" from another "ought."
I taught for many years at a state university. Students came to there first or second class in philosophy assuming that how people behave somehow entails how they ought to behave. Perhaps the problem is the ambiguity in the word 'norm' itself. What is "normal" for human beings is that which falls within a spectrum of human behaviors. While what 85% of people do is "normal," clearly at least 5-10% is not. What is "normal" is what human beings normally do. This becomes a norm for human behavior for many, for they have never thought through the fact that normal behavior does not the normative make. Just because 90% or more of humans do a certain thing does not entail that they should do that thing. One simply cannot get an "ought" from an "is," even if what "is" is normal for human beings.
The loss of the "ought" probably is inevitable in a democratic equalitarian culture where one voice is prized as highly as the next. Clearly, the loss of the "ought" is connected with relativism with respect to truth. If one "ought" not hold one position more so than the next, it is difficult to understand the semantic field for truth. When doing mathematics one solves the equation is properly and truly or improperly and wrongly. Those who do it wrong "ought" to have done it properly. Grading mathematics examinations presupposes that the student "ought" to solve the problem this way and not this way.
Maybe it is because the natural shows "no echo of the normative" (Davidson) that we present-day devotees of naturalism have such a difficult time with truth. And if truth in mathematics is problematic for contemporary naturalism, how much more is truth in theology. How can it be so, for instance, that a notion of justification within theology thought and taught these last 1000 years is the position that one "ought" to hold. Given that Augustine, Thomas and Luther taught differently on justification, which one, or which elements of these thinkers views are right, are what rational agents ought to hold true? Surely serious work in theology must eschew the descriptive in favor of the normative. It is not merely that A taught x and B aught y and C taught z, and we must document this, but rather that A wrongly taught x, while B rightly taught y. Theology is thoroughly normative. To give up on the normative makes the descriptive task of church history merely one of reporting. While the historian in this case might say the C agreed with D, she cannot say that D rightly agreed with C.
Theology must always include the normative. Like philosophy, theology survives as a remnant to a by-gone era before statistical methods and the new "science of man" turned questions to human regularities (norms) of behavior. Theology, in its commitment to "oughts," does indeed suggest that the natural is not all that there is. There must be, besides are world, a world of the "should have been," a world of what would be ideal and beneficent, a world of the very Created Order of God, a world mirroring the ultimate design features of deity prior to its dissolution into what is, before its Fall into existence. That we only catch glimpses of this world seems reasonable to we creatures of this Fall.
I taught for many years at a state university. Students came to there first or second class in philosophy assuming that how people behave somehow entails how they ought to behave. Perhaps the problem is the ambiguity in the word 'norm' itself. What is "normal" for human beings is that which falls within a spectrum of human behaviors. While what 85% of people do is "normal," clearly at least 5-10% is not. What is "normal" is what human beings normally do. This becomes a norm for human behavior for many, for they have never thought through the fact that normal behavior does not the normative make. Just because 90% or more of humans do a certain thing does not entail that they should do that thing. One simply cannot get an "ought" from an "is," even if what "is" is normal for human beings.
The loss of the "ought" probably is inevitable in a democratic equalitarian culture where one voice is prized as highly as the next. Clearly, the loss of the "ought" is connected with relativism with respect to truth. If one "ought" not hold one position more so than the next, it is difficult to understand the semantic field for truth. When doing mathematics one solves the equation is properly and truly or improperly and wrongly. Those who do it wrong "ought" to have done it properly. Grading mathematics examinations presupposes that the student "ought" to solve the problem this way and not this way.
Maybe it is because the natural shows "no echo of the normative" (Davidson) that we present-day devotees of naturalism have such a difficult time with truth. And if truth in mathematics is problematic for contemporary naturalism, how much more is truth in theology. How can it be so, for instance, that a notion of justification within theology thought and taught these last 1000 years is the position that one "ought" to hold. Given that Augustine, Thomas and Luther taught differently on justification, which one, or which elements of these thinkers views are right, are what rational agents ought to hold true? Surely serious work in theology must eschew the descriptive in favor of the normative. It is not merely that A taught x and B aught y and C taught z, and we must document this, but rather that A wrongly taught x, while B rightly taught y. Theology is thoroughly normative. To give up on the normative makes the descriptive task of church history merely one of reporting. While the historian in this case might say the C agreed with D, she cannot say that D rightly agreed with C.
Theology must always include the normative. Like philosophy, theology survives as a remnant to a by-gone era before statistical methods and the new "science of man" turned questions to human regularities (norms) of behavior. Theology, in its commitment to "oughts," does indeed suggest that the natural is not all that there is. There must be, besides are world, a world of the "should have been," a world of what would be ideal and beneficent, a world of the very Created Order of God, a world mirroring the ultimate design features of deity prior to its dissolution into what is, before its Fall into existence. That we only catch glimpses of this world seems reasonable to we creatures of this Fall.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Luther: Justification and/or Deification?
In 1988 I attended my first Luther Congress. We met in Oslo, Norway. While there I met a young Finn named Risto Saarinen who gave me a copy of the book Thesarus Lutheri. Later I was given a copy of Luther und Theosis and I began to read.
In the early 1990s, I became quite interested in whether or not Luther was a theologian of theosis (or deification). I remember standing up at the Lutheran gathering at the American Academy of Religion one year, and talking about the new Finnish research. It was new and exciting research in America. At the next Luther Congress in St. Paul in 1993, I was in Mannermaa's seminar. I found him to be an immensely likable man, someone who was willing to question his own research, someone who would genuinely dialogue. I got to know some of the other young scholars in Mannermaa's group. They were intensely interested in theological conversation.
When working through Simo Peura's Mehr als ein Mensch, my uneasiness with the way that the Finns were reading Luther grew. It seemed to me that so much of the thesis of deification depended upon a rather small group of passages, and these mostly from the early Luther. Moreover, as I read a bit more of Augustine (and those that know Augustine), it seemed to me that deification imagery was palpable in the Augustinian tradition. I concluded that in order to show that Luther was a theologian of deification, one would have thereby to establish that he was using the imagery of deification differently from how it was employed by theologians who have generally been thought to uphold justification, not deification, as their central salvific notion.
As I considered the historical question of Luther's adherence to deification, I quickly determined that I would need to know what deification is if I were to be able to determine whether Luther held to it. I looked at the question of what deification is both semantically and ontologically. Firstly, I wanted to know the identity conditions of 'deification' so that the term could be properly applied. Secondly, I wanted to know what state of affairs would make true the claim that deification was present.
My contribution to the Mannermaa Festschrift in 1997 considered the ontology of deification. What claim could we be making about the divine/human reltionship when asserting that person p is deified? While the essay was itself speculative and inconclusive, the exercise was useful to me, for I found how little textual evidence there was to adjudicate among senses of 'deification', and I discerned that some notions of justification were not entirely unlike some notions of deification. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the boundary between 'justification' and 'deification' was becoming porous. What began as a seemingly firm distinction dissolved upon deeper reflection.
Beginning in two weeks, I will present a course entitled 'Luther: Justification and/or Deification'. The course will, as the title suggests, try to get clear on the claim that Luther is a theologian of theosis, by getting clear about what state of affairs would make true a statement about the deification of a person. Accordingly, we shall start in the course by understanding justification in the tradition generally, and the late medieval options on justification. After this we shall read some of what the Finns claim about deification. Looking specifically at the Luther texts, we shall try to answer this question: Was Luther, as Mannermaa has suggested, a theologian of theosis? Please visit the Institute of Lutheran Theology web page at www.ilt.org for details. The course is in the new ILT Masters of Theology program. This degree is designed for those wishing to study theology beyond the M. Div. level. All are welcome. Any takers?
In the early 1990s, I became quite interested in whether or not Luther was a theologian of theosis (or deification). I remember standing up at the Lutheran gathering at the American Academy of Religion one year, and talking about the new Finnish research. It was new and exciting research in America. At the next Luther Congress in St. Paul in 1993, I was in Mannermaa's seminar. I found him to be an immensely likable man, someone who was willing to question his own research, someone who would genuinely dialogue. I got to know some of the other young scholars in Mannermaa's group. They were intensely interested in theological conversation.
When working through Simo Peura's Mehr als ein Mensch, my uneasiness with the way that the Finns were reading Luther grew. It seemed to me that so much of the thesis of deification depended upon a rather small group of passages, and these mostly from the early Luther. Moreover, as I read a bit more of Augustine (and those that know Augustine), it seemed to me that deification imagery was palpable in the Augustinian tradition. I concluded that in order to show that Luther was a theologian of deification, one would have thereby to establish that he was using the imagery of deification differently from how it was employed by theologians who have generally been thought to uphold justification, not deification, as their central salvific notion.
As I considered the historical question of Luther's adherence to deification, I quickly determined that I would need to know what deification is if I were to be able to determine whether Luther held to it. I looked at the question of what deification is both semantically and ontologically. Firstly, I wanted to know the identity conditions of 'deification' so that the term could be properly applied. Secondly, I wanted to know what state of affairs would make true the claim that deification was present.
My contribution to the Mannermaa Festschrift in 1997 considered the ontology of deification. What claim could we be making about the divine/human reltionship when asserting that person p is deified? While the essay was itself speculative and inconclusive, the exercise was useful to me, for I found how little textual evidence there was to adjudicate among senses of 'deification', and I discerned that some notions of justification were not entirely unlike some notions of deification. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the boundary between 'justification' and 'deification' was becoming porous. What began as a seemingly firm distinction dissolved upon deeper reflection.
Beginning in two weeks, I will present a course entitled 'Luther: Justification and/or Deification'. The course will, as the title suggests, try to get clear on the claim that Luther is a theologian of theosis, by getting clear about what state of affairs would make true a statement about the deification of a person. Accordingly, we shall start in the course by understanding justification in the tradition generally, and the late medieval options on justification. After this we shall read some of what the Finns claim about deification. Looking specifically at the Luther texts, we shall try to answer this question: Was Luther, as Mannermaa has suggested, a theologian of theosis? Please visit the Institute of Lutheran Theology web page at www.ilt.org for details. The course is in the new ILT Masters of Theology program. This degree is designed for those wishing to study theology beyond the M. Div. level. All are welcome. Any takers?
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Singular Divine Causal Statements
To say that 'John wrecked the car' is to make a causal statement. It is to say that 'John caused the wrecking of the car'. To make such causal statements truthfully demands that there is some state of affairs (or some states of affairs), on the basis of which, it is true that 'John caused the wrecking of the car.' So what is the "stuff" that makes true the statement? What are the truth-conditions of 'John caused the wrecking of the car'?
One answer is to say that there is a substance (object or entity) John who has a particular set of properties necessary (or necessary and sufficient) for the existence of the set of properties the car has. Here the basic ontological category is that of substance, with the change of properties that substances have being causally determined by the properties other substances possess. The properties of the relevant entities can include times and places such that 'A causes B' is true on the basis of some substance S having property set P - - picked out by 'A' - - being necessary and sufficient for some substance S* having property set P* - - picked out by 'B'.
An alternate analysis construes the basic ontological facts of causation as a relation of events. On this view 'John causes the wrecking of the car' is really elliptical for something like 'John doing x causes the wrecking of the car'. Accordingly there is event E (John doing x) and event E* (the car wrecking) such that E causes E*.
One of the problems of understanding causality has been our infatuation with the Humean account of causation and the "covering law" models that derive from him. Famously, Hume argued that a statement like 'John doing x caused the wrecking of the car' must be analyzed in this way: i) John doing x temporally proceeded the wrecking of the car; ii) John doing x is contiguous with the wrecking of the car; iii) and events (or substances having properties) like John doing x are constantly conjoined with events (or substances having properties) like the car wrecking. This regularity theory of causation was regnant through much of the last century, giving rise to the notion of "covering laws." Accordingly E causes E* if and only if there is a universal generalization to the effect that 'for all y if y instantiates E then y instantiates E*. This cannot merely be an accidental universal generalization, however. It must be a nomic regularity. It must carry the force of necessity of a particular kind.
Ignoring all the important details, one might claim that the analysis of a singular causal statement presupposes universal hypotheticals, on the basis of which the singular causal statement is true. Accordingly, singular statement S is true if and only if S can somehow be seen as an instance of L: S is true by virtue of L. Of course, the standard Humean regularity theorist wants to go no further than the existence of the regularity. It is unexceptional that force between two objects equals the gravitational constant times the product of the mass of those objects over the square of their distance. This is a bare fact about the universe. That in some particular instance referred to by singular causal statement S, the mass of the two objects times the gravitation constant over the square of their distance gives the observed force is not surprising because, of course, this happens all of the time and this situation is an instance of what happens all of the time.
There are many problems with Humean accounts, but they are still held in favor by very empirically-minded philosophers who are not wont to ascribe ontological status to those entities quantified over in their theories. Anti-realists here can simply point to the fact that "this happens." This is the way that things are, and while we can have theories that might explain how those things are, those things will finally reference other "brute facts" about the way that things are. Of course, any one seriously interested in allowing 'God' to be a term in a singular causal statement cannot subscribe to a Humean or neo-Humean position on causation. If it is true that 'God caused the universe to be', this is a singular event. There is no covering law that this statement can instance. When it comes to talking about God and God's relationship to the world, we must - - if we allow truth-conditions at all to such statements - - understand the statements as both irreducibly singular and causal.
So to say that 'God's word caused the universe to be' is to claim that some state of affairs exists such that that statement is true. This state of affairs seems, plausibly, either to have to be the existence of a divine substance with properties, or an irreducible event. But clearly, God speaking cannot be ingredient in an event, if we mean by 'event' what is standardly meant by 'event'. Presumably, time began with the creation of the universe. Accordingly, so did events. Before time there could not have been events - - whatever could be meant here by 'before' - - for the precondition for eventhood was not present. Thus, it seems, we must give an analysis of the divine in terms of substance and properties. There seems to be no other way than this to proceed.
So to say that 'God spoke the universe into being' is to say that 'God's speaking caused the universe to be', and this is to presuppose as truth-conditions a substance God having the property of speaking - - whatever might be meant by that - - the existence of which is both necessary and sufficient for the world to be. This view nicely supports the counterfactual that if there were not a universe, God would not have spoken it into being.
Of course, in the contemporary theological discussion, few want any longer to analyze the semantic conditions of 'God created the heavens and the earth' in the way I have just suggested. While many would talk about the meaningfulness of the statement, they would have difficulty in specifying precisely the conditions that would make it true or false. But meaning and truth stand together. One can't have one without the other, it seems. To the degree that theologians have divorced the two, to that degree the language of theology has become, to use Wittgenstein's phrase - - a "wheel idly turning.'
The necessary condition of theological language not becoming moribund is for it to reassert its traditional commitment to truth-conditions. Such a recommitment to truth presupposes a determinate ontological situation, and it is this situation that must be investigated. What I have suggested here is very simple: To claim that "God created the heavens and the earth' is true is to claim that there is some being God exhibiting certain properties on the basis of which the universe, which might have not existed, does indeed exist. But making assertions like this takes considerable courage. Lamentably, there has been far too little courage in recent decades on the part of those within the theological guild.
One answer is to say that there is a substance (object or entity) John who has a particular set of properties necessary (or necessary and sufficient) for the existence of the set of properties the car has. Here the basic ontological category is that of substance, with the change of properties that substances have being causally determined by the properties other substances possess. The properties of the relevant entities can include times and places such that 'A causes B' is true on the basis of some substance S having property set P - - picked out by 'A' - - being necessary and sufficient for some substance S* having property set P* - - picked out by 'B'.
An alternate analysis construes the basic ontological facts of causation as a relation of events. On this view 'John causes the wrecking of the car' is really elliptical for something like 'John doing x causes the wrecking of the car'. Accordingly there is event E (John doing x) and event E* (the car wrecking) such that E causes E*.
One of the problems of understanding causality has been our infatuation with the Humean account of causation and the "covering law" models that derive from him. Famously, Hume argued that a statement like 'John doing x caused the wrecking of the car' must be analyzed in this way: i) John doing x temporally proceeded the wrecking of the car; ii) John doing x is contiguous with the wrecking of the car; iii) and events (or substances having properties) like John doing x are constantly conjoined with events (or substances having properties) like the car wrecking. This regularity theory of causation was regnant through much of the last century, giving rise to the notion of "covering laws." Accordingly E causes E* if and only if there is a universal generalization to the effect that 'for all y if y instantiates E then y instantiates E*. This cannot merely be an accidental universal generalization, however. It must be a nomic regularity. It must carry the force of necessity of a particular kind.
Ignoring all the important details, one might claim that the analysis of a singular causal statement presupposes universal hypotheticals, on the basis of which the singular causal statement is true. Accordingly, singular statement S is true if and only if S can somehow be seen as an instance of L: S is true by virtue of L. Of course, the standard Humean regularity theorist wants to go no further than the existence of the regularity. It is unexceptional that force between two objects equals the gravitational constant times the product of the mass of those objects over the square of their distance. This is a bare fact about the universe. That in some particular instance referred to by singular causal statement S, the mass of the two objects times the gravitation constant over the square of their distance gives the observed force is not surprising because, of course, this happens all of the time and this situation is an instance of what happens all of the time.
There are many problems with Humean accounts, but they are still held in favor by very empirically-minded philosophers who are not wont to ascribe ontological status to those entities quantified over in their theories. Anti-realists here can simply point to the fact that "this happens." This is the way that things are, and while we can have theories that might explain how those things are, those things will finally reference other "brute facts" about the way that things are. Of course, any one seriously interested in allowing 'God' to be a term in a singular causal statement cannot subscribe to a Humean or neo-Humean position on causation. If it is true that 'God caused the universe to be', this is a singular event. There is no covering law that this statement can instance. When it comes to talking about God and God's relationship to the world, we must - - if we allow truth-conditions at all to such statements - - understand the statements as both irreducibly singular and causal.
So to say that 'God's word caused the universe to be' is to claim that some state of affairs exists such that that statement is true. This state of affairs seems, plausibly, either to have to be the existence of a divine substance with properties, or an irreducible event. But clearly, God speaking cannot be ingredient in an event, if we mean by 'event' what is standardly meant by 'event'. Presumably, time began with the creation of the universe. Accordingly, so did events. Before time there could not have been events - - whatever could be meant here by 'before' - - for the precondition for eventhood was not present. Thus, it seems, we must give an analysis of the divine in terms of substance and properties. There seems to be no other way than this to proceed.
So to say that 'God spoke the universe into being' is to say that 'God's speaking caused the universe to be', and this is to presuppose as truth-conditions a substance God having the property of speaking - - whatever might be meant by that - - the existence of which is both necessary and sufficient for the world to be. This view nicely supports the counterfactual that if there were not a universe, God would not have spoken it into being.
Of course, in the contemporary theological discussion, few want any longer to analyze the semantic conditions of 'God created the heavens and the earth' in the way I have just suggested. While many would talk about the meaningfulness of the statement, they would have difficulty in specifying precisely the conditions that would make it true or false. But meaning and truth stand together. One can't have one without the other, it seems. To the degree that theologians have divorced the two, to that degree the language of theology has become, to use Wittgenstein's phrase - - a "wheel idly turning.'
The necessary condition of theological language not becoming moribund is for it to reassert its traditional commitment to truth-conditions. Such a recommitment to truth presupposes a determinate ontological situation, and it is this situation that must be investigated. What I have suggested here is very simple: To claim that "God created the heavens and the earth' is true is to claim that there is some being God exhibiting certain properties on the basis of which the universe, which might have not existed, does indeed exist. But making assertions like this takes considerable courage. Lamentably, there has been far too little courage in recent decades on the part of those within the theological guild.
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