Types of Theological Non-Realism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clarity with Respect to Realism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Law, Nature, and Homoerotic Acts

There is so much confusion about homosexual behavior within Lutheran circles, that I shall try again to explain what was once thought obvious by Christianity: Homoerotic behavior, like many other human behaviors, is sinful. That this is true ought not to be startling to Lutherans who know that human beings perpetually sin against God in thought, word and deed. Curiously, however, Lutherans have increasing difficulty confessing the sinfulness of such acts, and indeed, of many types of sexual behaviors and practices.

The Lutheran position on the rectitude of homosexual behavior should be straightforward. After all, the great theological tradition has always held that there is an order of creation. The order of creation is the direct artifact of God’s design; it instantiates God’s primary intentionality for existence as such. The Biblical tradition has affirmed that it is part of God’s primary intentionality that a man and woman should leave their parents and dwell in life-long relationships with each other. God is the author of creation so it bears an imprint of his “eternal law” that can be apprehended through conscience as “natural law.” The natural law tradition expresses what God has objectively ordered nature to be.

Under the conditions of existence, the order of creation has fallen into sin from which it cannot free itself. Things that are, are not what they ought to be. Accordingly, human beings by their own natures (fallen human natures) are not, and cannot be, what they are by nature, by that which has been ordered by God. Natural law expresses God’s universal objective ordering; natural human natures instantiate the particular subjective ordering of individuals after their own ends, ends that are not part of God’s primal intentionality.

Given that the Biblical record unambiguously places man and woman together in the paradisical state within the order of creation, the question becomes what can the redeemed church support and proclaim as consistent with this order of creation. Obviously, human beings naturally are not who they are to be by nature. As fallen human beings living the redeemed life, what ought they to think about nature and about their natural acts that are not natural?

There are two choices: One can say that the orders of creation must be adjusted or accommodated to what is naturally possible. Some individuals are obviously natured and nurtured not to desire sexual and romantic relationships with members of the other sex. This is obvious. Moreover, some individuals are obviously natured and nurtured not to be able easily to avoid sexual promiscuity, sexual objectification, masturbation, serial monogamy, premarital sexual activity, etc. This is obvious as well. One can thus say that that which is not attainable, must be not be regarded as sinful, or must be differently understood as sinful.

The other option, of course, is to follow the tradition and claim that what we are sexually not who we ought to be. This option identifies divorce as sin, and understands how humans can be divorced - - particularly in a society like ours. This option identifies the addictive masturbation, pornographic consumption, and sexual promiscuity (especially serial monogamy) as sinful, but still understands how humans could be engaged in these behaviors - - particularly in a society like ours. Finally, this option finally identifies homoerotic behavior as sinful, yet understands how humans can be engaged in these behaviors - - particularly in a society like ours.

The fundamental question is whether we want to regard homoerotic behavior as consistent with the order of creation or not. To my mind, groups like the WordAlone Network have never claimed that divorce is consistent with the order of creation. If they were to have said that, and claimed that homoerotic behavior was inconsistent with it, then the WordAlone Network would be guilty of unfairly picking a particular sin to scorn. Questions about sex and sexuality are driven by society. General cultural forces generate the question of the propriety of homoerotic behavior, and it is this question which confronts the churches now; it is this question that needs a response. I do not believe there are many at synodical and churchwide conventions who want to claim that divorce, masturbation, and sexual promiscuity ought to be blessed within a liturgical context. This point must be seen clearly.

Unfortunately, Lutherans have abandoned any effort to think ontologically about divine law. They squirm at words like 'eternal law' and any attempt to identify a teleologically-ordered creation with divine law. They want to talk about the law only in so far as it confronts us, thus confusing the experience of being curbed by the law with the ontological contour of the law itself. But acting merely in accordance with the law, or acting due to the law does not change the meaning or ontology of the law. The law is the universal objective will of God for His creation, an objective will that is almost wholly obscured under the conditions of existence, an objective will grounding the promulgation of particular divine laws.

The time has come for Lutherans to rescue the divine law from its security within the phenomenology of human existence, and make again the bold and risky claim that the divine law really is God's, and that human apprehension of that law does not that law make.

A Lutheran Theology of Nature

Lutheran theology has suffered these last 200 years from a turning away from nature towards a single-minded concentration upon value. The work of the German Protestant theologian Abrecht Ritschl (1822-89) is characteristic of this turn. Ritschl held that God is knowable only through Christ, and that theology must therefore concentrate on ethics and repudiate metaphysics. Of course, by repudiating metaphysics, Ritschl found it difficult to situate divine reality into the reality of nature. Metaphysics is concerned with those most basic generalities presupposed by experience as such. If God’s reality is denied metaphysical reality, then God is not part of the “basic generality” of what is, and if this be so, then God clearly cannot connect to nature.

The disconnect between God and nature in Ritschl is just the working out of the trajectory set by Kant a hundred years before. God is, for Kant, clearly not the kind of being who can sustain causal relationships with natural entities, or that can be ingredient in natural states of affairs or events. By placing God within the Ideals of Pure Reason, Kant took Him out of nature entirely. Such a de-divinization of nature nicely left nature as a natural object to be studied and explored on its own. Following previous Enlightenment thinkers, Kant’s move gave nature autonomy over and against the divine. Though Kant struggled mightily in the Critique of Judgment to bring back teleology and the non-natural generally into the world, much of the subsequent philosophical, scientific, and theological trajectory did not buy it. Theologians in general had to find a place for God outside of nature; they had to find a place for God within human experience generally, within the ontological depths of the structure of human being itself.

Lutheran theology has drunk deeply from the trough of Kant. In so doing, it has paid precariously little attention to nature for the last two hundred years. Although it can claim one of the greatest of all scientists, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), it has for centuries been quite unconcerned with natural reality, preferring the safety of reflecting on human experience. In thinking about this, it now occurs to me that the general marginalization of Lutheran theology may have everything to do with this disconnect from natural science. If God cannot be found in nature, why think He can do much even - - if He is somehow found in the depths of the self?

I believe the time is right for Lutheran theology to retrieve the early Enlightenment idea of there being two books: the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. If the Book of Scripture can be reclaimed as something that has a particular internal clarity which places Christ as its center, why cannot the Book of Nature be read with an internal clarity that places the Creator God at its center? Of course, there are many reasons not to read either book in that way. My point is, however, that if Lutheran theology wants to retain a discourse that is to survive, it has to give its discourse robust truth conditions. These conditions are given when claims can be made about Christ that are finally not indexed to claims about communities reading a text in a certain way, or when claims are made about divine causality that themselves are not indexed to claims made about individuals interpreting things in a particular way.

What would happen if we began with the presupposition that the whole of Scripture interprets its parts, the parts support the whole, and that the whole is about Christ? What would happen if we began with the presupposition that the whole of nature interprets its parts, the parts support the whole, and that the whole is finally about a God who creates?

Now, of course, there are all kinds of wonderful arguments about how misguided these approaches would be. There is no slam-dunk evidence after all that God is required as a theoretical causal entity within a most basic scientific theory of nature. I readily concede this and add that, thinking in this way, there is no evidence as well that Christ is required as the central notion of all of Scriptures, and that such a Christ actually justifies the ungodly. Critical reflection seems to dislodge the centrality of Christ from Scripture just as it takes a creator God out of the universe.

But, of course, we should not be surprised that critical reflection does such a thing. The primal question of all of humanity is the question of the serpent, “Did God really say it?” Yes, indeed, did God really speak in Scripture, and does He say anything in nature? We have as Lutheran theologians assumed that he speaks only in the first book, and rather obscurely there at that. But what would happen if we started with the assumption that He does so speak? Why would it be any more difficult to find God the Creator working in and through nature than God the Redeemer working though and in Scripture? It all has to do with how we read things. Can we speak about the “internal clarity of nature” analogously with the “internal clarity of Scripture?” I see no reason ultimately to justify the assertion that the serpent’s question is more effective against the former rather than the latter. It is time to get serious about theology again, or simply to move onto other projects. I am not moving on.

Pre-understanding Scripture

Imagine how it must have once been. Imagine what it would have been like to have read Scripture thinking it clear, thinking that it gave perspicuous answers to questions. Imagine what it must have been like in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries during the development of Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxies. These theologians understood what the Biblical text meant within their cultural worlds and within the horizon of their experience; they knew that they could trust Scripture because it had authority.

Things are different now. Oh yes, we denizens of the early 21st century can still talk about the importance of Bible reading, of going to church, of participating in a community of faith. But things are different. We find the Bible today still to be a pretty important book to know something about; we think that reading it might help us. We might even think that if we read it enough, we might believe it. Yet for many, at least, there is a fissure between the text and our interpretation of it. We know that we have a wonderful text that has been handed down to us, but we are not at all sure how trustworthy at is - - well, at least on the details, and . . . well, even thought we can't agree exactly on what is a detail and what is not. It is obvious that Scripture no longer is trusted like it once was.

Every interpretation of something presupposes a pre-understanding of it. One cannot unpack the meaning of something if one does not already have some clue to what the thing is. This is true for books, for nature, and for people. I know, for instance, that Paul is in pain because I have experienced pain: I have a pre-understanding of what it is to be a person, to emit sounds, and to speak in certain ways. I, in fact, live my life pre-understanding what my life is all about. To use a famous example from Heidegger, I can tell what a hammer means in my life because I have a pre-understanding of how it connects to other things in life. There is a context of significances in which I live, and the hammer, its relation to nails, lumber, a roof, and to me, are all part of that context. Most of the time I do not think deeply about my dwelling pre-understandingly in my world.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries men and women pre-understood what the Bible meant. They knew it to be a text that one could trust, that had authority, that spoke the Word of God. Accordingly, one can speak about their ontological understanding of Scripture. It meant then, for many people, that upon which the ultimate signifincance for one's life was known. Thus, one was always already related to Scripture because Scripture always displayed itself as that upon which the proclamation of the meaning of our being depended. Given such a pre-understanding of being, it made sense lovingly to collect passages from the text which displayed truth. In those ages, truth came with a capital 'T' and Scripture was pre-understood as that which could proclaim this truth. It was within the pre-understanding of the be-ing of Scripture that the internal clarity of Scripture arose.

Things are quite different today. The pre-understanding of the text is not, for many, a pre-understanding that regards the text as authoritive, that allows that the text can judge the reader much more profoundly than the reader the text. Our pre-understanding regards the text within the context of texts arising from a particular region from which other texts emerged. The text is already known to be a document upon which the application of historical methods are fruitful. While there is a sense that the text has functional authority within certain religious traditions, it is not a document that can reach across these traditions and provide me with answers about my being and the meaning of my being. The text is therefore not understood as the kind of thing that could in principle give rise to the internal clarity of Scripture. There is no reason for the Scripture to be clear because it is not the kind of thing for which clarity is at issue.

The last five centuries have seen a fundamental shift in our pre-understandings of the Biblical text. These pre-understandings are not themselves the kind of thing that can be changed by evidence. In our day, as in former ones, pre-understandings are gifts to enjoy; they cannot be engineered; they cannot be worked up through our own piety or spirituality.

Luther said that we are ridden either by the devil or the Christ. Maybe this is true for pre-understandings. Of course, for Luther, the Word proclaimed brought the agency of the Holy Spirit into action. This agency, of course, could modify or transform the context of pre-understandings. Simply put, for the Reformers, there was always the sense that the Word of God could be spoken, that it could be found in the text, and that it was vouchsafed by the tradition. It is this pre-understanding that is no longer present in our day.

So how can we jump start an ontology of Scripture and Word when that ontology is no longer present? Does saying, "the Word is sufficient unto itself and unto its own interpretation" help us when there is no longer any pre-understanding of a Word that could be sufficient unto its own interpretation? Lutherans must always, of course, come back to the Word. This is true. But what happens when the lights go out on the context upon which the Word qua Word emerges? What happens then?

Here the answer must be firm and unwavering: the hermeneutical helplessness is itself a riding of the horse. No neutrality is possible here. The first question of the temptor, "did God say?" is also the last. We either find the Word or don't. The only thing that changes is where or where not we either find the Word or don't.

Staying Relevant - - Why What is Old is New Today.

I

There is a popular story that goes like this:

Once upon a time about 500 years ago there was a sincere, superstitious monk who was so overcome by guilt before God that he fell into extended bouts of despair. In the depths of his despair the young man glimpsed the mercy and forgiveness of God. He realized that righteousness is not a property that God has intrinsically, but rather a property God continually gives away to believers. Luther’s spiritual tussle in the monastery eventuated in his ultimate departure and decision to take a university position as a professor. Later this renegade monk married, had children, and led a movement that changed history.

Luther was very disappointed with the Catholic Church of his time, particularly its leadership. He was so dismayed about this that he referred to the pope as the “antichrist,” hardly a term of endearment. A group of people gathered around Luther and together they helped set the theological trajectory of the Reformation. While Luther was a tremendous religious genius, these people were less creative, less spiritual, and zealously interested in getting all the theological facts right. Theological squabbles erupted within Lutheranism, eventuating in the Formula of Agreement, a document putatively quelling the disputes between the “gnesio-Lutherans” and the “Phillipists.” The emergence of this Formula was the ground upon which later Lutheran thinkers attempted to “get it right.” Thinkers like Gerhard, Baier, Hutter, Quenstedt, and Hollazius codified the teachings of the Formula and advanced it in a series of books whose appearance was in profound tension with the new currents of Enlightenment thought emerging. These practitioners of “Lutheran Orthodoxy” became so concerned about the letter of doctrine, that they forgot the living reality of the spirit out of which the Reformation was born. These thinkers wrote books that were heavily read for some years, but then fell into disuse as Enlightenment thought reached dominance. While Lutheran emigrants fleeing Europe sought to read these books in North America, for the most part these books of Lutheran Orthodoxy were considered to be old, out-of-date, and definitely out-of-step with the times.

II

The first thing to realize about this story is how pervasive it is. Today these books are considered so out-of-date that most students at Lutheran seminaries have never heard of their writers, let alone ever read anything by them. Most Lutheran faculty don’t read them either. Why would anyone read them today? After all, they trifle about things that are quite disconnected from contemporary life and experience. Why would anyone seeking to be Lutheran in our postmodern age want to read those who slavishly wanted to get it right? Don’t Lutherans in the pews today know that there have been thousands of religions in the world, that the veracity of religious claims cannot be proved, and thus that they clearly cannot prove our own? Don’t they know that religious claims are not factual, but rather valuational, that they do not inform us about how the world is, but seek to express something about our self-understanding and religious practice within a community of faith? God-talk talks not about God, but about us. We are religious, this is true, but our religion is only our projected “map against time,” a map that is different for different peoples. We are religious cartographers, unsure of whether our maps are accurate or whether it even makes sense to talk of accuracy. So it is in our age. The voices of the old are irrelevant, while the voices of the new echo about without place.

III

The story above is how we Lutheran Christians are represented by others. It is the hand we are dealt. How do we with this hand tell again our story? How do we tell a story for today about God’s love for us in Christ when we suspect that the story we tell may be just that, a story? How can we who live on the other side of the Enlightenment and its criticism tell the story with the same vitality that animated those old Lutheran church fathers in their studies, cranking out there compendia and loci?

In addressing this tonight, I want to ask you to do an experiment. Ask yourself this: “What if this Christian stuff is true? What if it is true that there is a God who created the universe, and filled it with all types of living beings? (Set aside questions, for the moment, as to how it is true.) What if it is true that man and woman really are the apex of God’s creation, that they who were given so much have mysteriously, inexplicably, and somehow from their own freedom turned from God? What if it is true that God is just and must distribute justice according to merit? What if it is true that human beings deserve nothing but eternal abandonment from God, an abandonment that is horrible and loveless? What if it is true that the only way for humans to be saved from what they deserve is for God to rescue them? What if it is true that God is so merciful that he abandoned part of Himself, his Son to death so that we might live abundantly now and forever? What if all of this is true?”

I hear the answer: “We believe that already. We already believe these things. Although we have no certain knowledge; we have faith. We believe these things even though others believe other things.”

But I want again to challenge: Do you really believe these things? Socrates taught that a person will do what is right if she knows what is right. Writing five centuries before the western world knew anything of original sin, Plato claims that human beings do bad things because of ignorance: they just do not viscerally know what they sometimes say they know. Analogously, are we sometimes guilty of thinking we believe when we don’t? Do we sometimes just give lip service to believing?

Imagine, if you will, the days of the early church when there were persecutions and martyrs. Or think about the Reformers, about how they spirited Luther about in disguise to avoid detection and death. Or think about those dusty old men in their old studies writing page upon page, documenting the truth of the faith. Do we do anything similar? Would we? Or are we playing a different game? Do we really believe that the story is more than story; do we believe that it denotes events that God has done as well as donates to us a new understanding, a new way of looking at the world, a new sense of what is possible for us?

IV

There are many who talk these days about the virtues of faith without claiming that faith supposes that something is so. They claim that one can have faith in God the creator, redeemer and sustainer without necessarily believing that God creates, redeems or sustains. In other words, many no longer think that ‘believing in’ entails ‘believing that’. They no longer think that trusting in something presupposes a definite ontological contour of that which is to be trusted. But think of how odd it would be to trust in a friend without believing anything definite upon which that trust is based. To trust in a friend clearly presupposes that the friend has certain properties, characteristics on the basis of which the friend is worthy of trust. How could one trust in God if God had no definite contour, if one thought that God possessed no properties on the basis of which He is worthy of trust?

The reason why many want to allow trust without definite belief is that our theological and religious language has been given an interpretation that is noncausal in character. We want to trust in God’s creativity without saying that God actually creates, without saying that things would not have been the way they were without divine causal input. This hits home with the intelligent design issue. While folks in very conservative traditions want to hold on to six day creation, many mainline Protestant folks (including Lutherans) want to allow that assertions about God’s existence and presence are somehow consistent with a denial of intelligent design generally. They want to claim that the universe is not teleological in its constitution, that is, that neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory does describe the causal mechanism of the universe, and that no divine input is necessary to bring the universe into the state it is. But what is meant by ‘creates’ if there is no being having a teleological connection to his artifacts?

V

Those claiming the demise of religion are continually disappointed because it does not seem like religion goes away. The reason for this, I believe, is that there are certain fundamental structures of human existence which call for religion, in whatever guise. I have always liked the phrase of Mircea Eliade: “Religion is a factor within the structure of consciousness, not a stage in the history of consciousness.” Religion does not go away because humans are who they are: anxious beings struggling within the field of time. Religion does not go away because the fundamental anxieties of human existence do not go away: We are anxious in the face of death, in the face of guilt, and in the face of meaninglessness. The fifth century theologian Augustine summed up this basic human deficiency: “My heart is not at rest until it finds its rest in you, O Lord.”

Now the problem over the last two centuries is that our old story of Jesus and his love for creation has been given an interpretation that no longer fully addresses these anxieties. By saying that the divine story is only a story, we have found ourselves stuck. The anxieties remain and are factual, but the response to these anxieties is not: While Jesus’ resurrection did not bring his corpse back to life, proclaiming his resurrection supposedly quickens us in the face of death. Although God has no a wrathful intent towards human beings on the basis of which He would ever abandon them, proclaiming divine forgiveness somehow still makes life better when we feel guilty. While God really does not exist as a being in the world creating and sustaining the universe, proclaiming God’s continuing love supposedly make us feel less empty, less not-at-home in a lonely and foreign universe.

But consider this: What if the factuality of the existential question were answered by the factuality of a Christian response? What if we claimed that the profound existential problems with life could only be adequately addressed by a historically-based response, that is, a response asserting that there was once a God who took on the nature of human being in order to transform human beings into new creatures?

VI

And so we come full circle. What is the relevance of Christ for us today? Christ has the same relevance He always has had because human beings have the same structure of existence they always have had. Admittedly, somehow over the years the relevance of Christ has seemed to abate. I believe that this abatement has been, and is, inversely proportional to the degree that we think the Jesus story true, that is, to the degree that we think it more than a story.

Now you might wonder at this point how early 21^st century people could believe in the old, old story when they live in a world that has come of age? Did not even Bultmann ask how contemporary man and woman could believe in Christianity now that there was the wireless? (He asked this about 80 years ago.) The answer is simple: This is how it always has been. When Christianity burst upon the ancient world, it had to establish its plausibility on an intellectual horizon where many thought it preposterous and crude. Christianity found few supporters in the five great schools of philosophical antiquity: The Academy founded by Plato, the Lyceum founded by Aristotle, the school of Stoicism, the Epicurean school, and the skeptical school of Sextus Empiricus. Yet Christianity has always made proselytes out of its critics. From the early days of intellectual rejection, there ensued a long development of intellectual acceptance, an acceptance that gave rise to the universities of Europe.

And how was it that this scandal of a religion could have done such a thing? This answer Lutherans know very well: “I believe by my own reason or strength, I cannot believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by his gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified me in the one true life, even as he calls, gathers, and enlightens the whole Christian church on earth.”

The good news is that we don’t have to believe in things that are incredible or work up faith for things we can’t regard as true. This is God’s work. Our belief is His gift; our faith is His work, and the truth of the gospel is His truth.

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