Getting Clear on the Nature of Law

Lutherans have always argued about the law.  Is there only a first and second use, or is there also a third use?  Does the law go away when grace arrives?  Is the law eternal?   Is there sin prior to law, or  is law only possible on the basis of sin?  Is living out "the form of the Gospel" a living according to the law or not?   Moreover, are good works necessary for salvation, and, if so, how can there doing not be legalistic?

Lutherans have tried mightily to say precisely what separates law and gospel, and what makes Christian living free, that is, what makes it not living underneath the law.  While I will not answer all the questions above, I want to offer a fairly commonsense way of looking at things that might help us address these questions.

I like sometimes to step away from the particularity of Christian language and describe situations using another vocabulary.  The reason for this is that we can sometimes can get more clear on what we are asserting when we employ a vocabulary that is not that to which we are accustomed.   I will proceed in this way in the remainder of this reflection.

Broadly conceived, the Christian story is one supposing that the way that things are simply is not the way things are supposed to be.   God created the universe good, but it is no longer so.   How this came to be is, of course, a matter that is not altogether clear.   How precisely is a wholly good creation nevertheless one in which elements of it become disoriented from the good?   But the mystery of the Fall is not my concern here.    I am interested merely in the distinction between the "is" and "ought."   The world is a particular way, but it ought to be a different way.

Theories of atonement specify how it is that the way things are, but are not supposed to be, nonetheless becomes again the way things are supposed to be.   In traditional language, God who is displeased with the world, nonetheless comes to accept the world.   That which is displeasing becomes pleasing to Him.

Law in Christian theology is tied to ought.   God intends the world to proceed X-ly, but the world does not proceed in this way.   The "is" of the world does not correspond to its "ought."  In a late medieval sense, law is that which is reasonable, promulgated by a competent authority, and capable of being enforced.   The contour of the world which is, is not that which is reasonable, promulgated by God, and capable of being enforced by Him.

When talking about law in the first and second senses, Lutheran theology clearly wants to address the "supposed to be-ness" of things.   We might use a semantics of possible worlds in discussing this.   Because we are speaking of conformity with God's will, we should probably avoid "deontologically possible worlds" (or some such jargon) in favor of speaking about worlds varying in conformity with divine intent.   A world fully in accordance with divine intent would thus be very distant from us, while one wholly not in accordance with this intent would be proximal to the actual world.

What I am thinking of is conceiving a World set S with the actual world and a set of worlds w1, w2, w3, etc., where the higher number indicates greater conformity with God's will and greater distance from w0, the actual world.   The first and second uses of the law can thus be analyzed as follows:  God demands x, is to say that there is some world w such that w is not the actual world and that w is, in fact, suitably distant from the actual world, and that x is in w, though x is not in the actual world.   To say that God wills x is simply to say that x is in every world w in S.  In other worlds, the w containing x is now actual.

What about the third use of the law?   Is it also to be analyzed in this way?

I think that we must make a distinction here between two senses of 'law'.  The sense which I have alluded to above clearly carries the weight of the "ought."   Traditional Christian natural law theory evinced this sense.   There was a "way that things are supposed to go" to things, even if things did not go that way.   The way that things were supposed to go was a simple as 'bodies ought to fall'.

But at the birth of modern science the old "way that things are supposed to go" of things, the teleological sense of things was lost and replaced by "the way things inexorably do go" of things.  Laws that once spoke of the divine ought were replaced by universal regularities that were, in some sense, necessary.  That two objects attract each other directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them is not the way things ought to be, but merely the way that things are.   Laws of motion express how things simply are.  With respect to physical actualizations, there are no worlds other than the actual world that could be different than the actual world.

If we understand the third use of the law descriptively in this fashion, then we are simply saying that the actual world with its particular contour could not have been other than it was given certain conditions.   What I am saying is that the particular contour of the Christian life is free because it simply could not be other than it is; its freedom is found in its necessity.   We are freed by Christ and as free men and women in Christ we are what we are given the conditions that God has wrought in Christ.

When listening to Christian preaching, one must ask if the preacher is advocating that a world that is not the actual world should be the actual world.   If she or he is advocating this, the law is being preached.   On the other hand, if the preacher is describing what is the case and cannot be other than the case for the one graced by the Living Christ, then the "form of the gospel" is being described, and there is occasion for the law's "third use" - - which is not the law at all.   Law avers that a world that is not the actual one should replace the actual one.  The Gospel discomfits this way of proceeding, claiming that the actual world needs no replacement.

More needs to be said to justify the claim that the actual world is necessary when the Gospel is preached and lived.   Surely there are physically different actualizations of the preached and lived Gospel!

But what I am claiming is that the Gospel is necessary in the sense that there is no longer any set of worlds, w1, w2, w3, etc., such that there is nomological distance between these worlds and the actual one.   All of this can and should be made more clear, but the general point should be apparent.

Thinking Truth Non-Propositionally

"I am the Way and the Truth and the Life."

I regard the statement as true.  As such, it is a  propositional truth.   Precisely how a  statement is a propositional truth is a matter of considerable debate, of course.   Some say it is true because regarding it so issues in desirable effects.  "Truth is what works," declares the confident pragmatist.

Others say it is true because it coheres appropriately with a wider class of statements.  It is consistent  with them, and it, and the wider class of statements, mutually presuppose each other so that there are no arbitrary and disconnected statements from which the statement is deducible.   Getting clear on the coherence theory of truth is never easy because it is not perspicuous what the precise boundaries of coherence are.  

Many say that the statement is propositionally true because it appropriately states what is the case.   Getting precision on what is the case apart from the statement, and what the appropriate way is in which the statement and the extra-linguistic states of affairs relate, is not altogether facile.  What constitutes the criterion by which to adjudicate when a statement appropriately states the case?  If there is an isomorphism between statement and the reality it depicts?  If so, what are the relata of the relations isomorphically obtaining?

In the absence of clear criteria which unfailingly picks out the truth of a putative propositional truth, some claim that the truth of propositional truth is primitive.  One need not have some elaborate theory of meaning which, when appropriately satisfied, delivers truth.   One could start with truth and discern that  meaning in some way is derivative upon that.

Whatever be one's theory, the notion that truth is propositional is standard fare in philosophical thinking.   A philosopher can give alternative accounts of how the truth of "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life" is true.  This much is certain.   But the philosopher runs into a brick wall when trying to think the content of the proposition in which  utterer is identified with Truth itself.  What could this mean?   How could truth be non-propositional?   How can truth be non-linguistic?  What does it mean to say that 'Jesus' is 'Truth'?

One might at this point say that 'truth' just means 'reality', and that Jesus is thus 'real'.   But this way of proceeding is fraught with much difficulty because to say 'Jesus is Truth' is clearly intended to say more than 'Jesus is real', for one would quite glibly say 'the ball is real', but never aver 'the ball is truth'.

There are two more promising steps forward, one Hegelian and one Heideggerian.   Hegel famously claimed, "Diese Gegenstaende sind wahr, wenn sie das sind, was sie sein sollen, d.h. wenn ihre Realitaet ihrem Begriff entspricht" ("Objects are true if they are as they ought to be, that is, when their reality corresponds to their notion."). [Enzyklopaedie, Wissenschaft der Logik (1830), 213, n. 127] Accordingly, Jesus is 'truth' in that he corresponds fully to the concept of what it is to be the God-man.  But is this "correspondence" really non-propositional?   Think what it would be to specify how a thing corresponds without using concepts expressible in language.  How could one thing not be another thing in the absence of that which differentiates?   And how can that which differentiates not finally be expressible in language?

Another way forward is Heideggerian.  Famously Heidegger argued that alethia (truth) is a unconcealing (Unverborgenheit) or as an Entbergung or "unveiling."   Early on Heidegger found the phenomenon of unveiling as the ontological ground for the possibility of truth.  However, later Heidegger admitted that die Frage nach der Unverborgenheit als solcher ist nicht die Frage nach die Wahrheit.  (Maybe he realized that if truth needed an ontological ground in unconcealing, falsity needed one in concealing.)   Whatever might be thought of Heidegger's turn away from truth as unconcealing in his Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens, he remained convinced that truth had something to do with correctness, and that correctness had everything to do with unveiling.  But how can one claim that the experience of unveiling ontologically grounds truth when this experience could as easily be described as truth's effect?

Given what has been said, how is it unquestionably possible for Jesus to be 'the Truth'?   Moreover, if Jesus is identified with God's self-revelation, then how can that revelation be true?   The standard move here is to distinguish between the objective, historical process of revelation and the subjective interpretation of that revelation.  (One might claim a la Pannenberg that a distinction holds between the "outer revelation" and the "inspiration" as the interpretation of these events in the Biblical witnesses.)  While the first is putatively non-propositional, the second is not.  But what is it to be a manifestation of God in and through historical events, that is, in and through particular things?  Furthermore, how could such a manifestation be non-linguistic?  If Stacia is a "true friend," but Bob is not, then what is it about Stacia that distinguishes her over and against Bob; what is that "it" that is not in principle capturable by language?

Twentieth century theology, in its effort to escape the "propositional theory of truth" with respect to divine revelation - - the generally-regarded spurious claim that divine revelation is an impartation of information -- seems to lurch into a semantic crevasse of vanquished lucidity.   Simply put, one  does not know what one is talking about when discoursing about a revelation that is in principle non-propositional.   That God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself could, after all, be true, but what is true is the fact that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.  A revelation that cannot be expressed as fact is finally too amorphous to be revelatory; such a revelation is ultimately a night in which all cows are black.  

The Ruins of Christendom

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

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

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

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

Thinking about Causation

I have recently written a paper entitled 'Creatio ex Nihilo in Luther's Genesis Commentary and the Causal Question'.  The paper argues, inter alia, that the most straightforward way of reading Luther in the Genesis Commentary is to claim that he holds: 'God causally brought about the creation of matter from nothing'. 

In itself this does not seem a particularly controversial claim.  However, when understood within the dominant theological paradigm since Kant, this statement seems highly suspect.   "Of course," the paradigm claims, "God created the heavens and the earth.  Everyone believes that.  It is just that God did not cause the earth to be.  To claim that would be a pernicious category mistake!"

But why should this be?  Why would it be problematical to claim that God causally brought about the universe from nothing?   Is this not straightforward?

It is only straightforward, it seems, if one does not think too deeply about the notion of causality.  Prior to the Enlightenement, it seems, philosophers often mistook reasons and causes.   Within and after the Enlightenment, philosophers have tended to understand causality empirically.  Physical things causally bring about other physical things.  This is the causal game properly played.   To say that the game itself was caused is to violate the rules of the game.  

Thinking about causality has tended to cluster around three views:  1)  Regular theories of causation, 2) Subjunctive and countracausal theories of causation, and 3) Intrinsic relational theories of causation. 

Accordingly, (1) claims 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'A precedes B', 'A-things are constantly conjoined to B-things' and some other conditions about which there is disagreement.  (2) holds that 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'if A were not to occur, B would not occur', or many other candidates.   Finally, (3) holds that there is some intrisic connection between A and B such B is directly produced from A.  (Let us not attend to the air of circularity at this point.) 

Clearly, if one were to want to claim that the universe was brought about by God, they could not hold a regularity theory of divine causation because the production of the universe is a singular event.  This leaves only option (2), (3) or some hybrid thereof.   Now the question arises as to what general tactic is better:  Is divine creatio ex nihilo best understood counterfactually or intrinsically?   My purpose in this blog is to explore a bit the notion of an intrinsic causal relation and ask whether it is possible for it to be utilized as the best analysis of divine causality creatio ex nihilo.  I will leave discussion of counterfactual divine causation to another time. 

The notion of an intrinsic causal relation takes aim at any Humean account of causation claiming that causality must be understood in terms of constant conjunction, temporal priority and spatio contiguity.   Accordingly, such an "externalist" account presupposes a widespread patterns of occurances.  In contravention to this, an intrinsic view of causality holds that cause is an intrinsic relation of power, energy or necessary connection.  I believe that the distinction between intrinsic/extrinsic relationality matter maps well to the distinction between singular causal statements versus "non-singularist" proposals.

According to a singularist approach the truthmaker for a single causal claim is a local relation holding between singular instances.   On this reading, the causal relation does not depend upon occurence of events in the neighborhood of the event in question; the causal relation is intrinsic to the relata and their connecting processes.  Instead of regularities as the truth makers of singular causal statements, local connections are.

The critical point in thinking about an intrinsic relation is this:  'A is intrinsically related to B' if and only if 'the relation is wholly determined by A and B'.   Over and against accounts that would unpack a relationship between A and B as determined by the regularities among a wide set of events and processes, the intrinsic connection of A and B supposes that there is something in A and something in B such that 'A causes B' cannot help but obtain.  

But now let us think about 'God causally brings about the existence of the universe'.   What properties of God and the universe obtain such that it is indeed necessary that 'God causally produces the universe'?

The obvious answer, of course, is that God has as God's very nature -- one might say His natural property -- a production of initial matter/energy and the subsequent formation thereof.  One might then say of the universe that is has its natural property of being produced by divine agency.   Accordingly, 'God creates the universe' is true because there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create, and a universe whose nature it is to be created.  To claim that 'God creates the universe ex nihilo' is simply to claim that there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create all things from absolute nothing, and a universe whose nature it is to be causally produced by the divine from absolute nothing. 

Now all this at one level might seem trivial.   Have we not simply performed some crude semantic joke?  Is it not the cause that we simply have moved the causal problem of divine/universe interaction from relations and placed it in entities having properties? 

At this point one must remember what the point is.   The point is to try to give an account of causality that is philosophically defensible.   Clearly if cause is an extrinsic relation, then we cannot give an account of the singular causal statement 'God creates the universe.'   What I have suggested is that this singular causal statement is captured by appeal to an intrinsic relation which itself is captured by the natural properties of the relata.  

The question whether or not their are any philosophical grounds for asserting the truth of the single causal statement is not one I wish to entertain here.   I take it that theology has always claimed that 'God creates the heavens and the earth'.  My point here is simply to show that it is conceptually coherent to think such divine/universe causality.   As it turns out, it is no category mistake.  

Masters of Arts Degrees from the Institute of Lutheran Theology

Readers of this blog know about the Institute of Lutheran Theology, its theological commitments, and its STM and M. Div. programs.   Readers may have missed, however, our recent announcement of three new Master of Arts programs, one in Biblical Studies, one in Theology and another in Religion.   Please indulge me as I briefly address these new ILT programs.

All three degree programs are designed for those students already having a B. A. or B. S. who want to study classical theology and seek a real intellectual challenge.   The degrees are profitably pursued by those wanting a M. A. to bolster their present teaching position, for those church leaders seeking more education, and for those intellectually curious who realize that the attainment of  knowledge is itself an intrinsic end.   All three are non-thesis degrees requiring the successful completion of 33 hours of graduate credit.

The Masters of Arts in Biblical Studies (MABS) offers the following curriculum:


Required Courses:  Total Credits = 33
Core Courses (9 Credits)

• BT299: Introduction to Greek (0 cr.)
• BT 300: New Testament Greek (3 cr.)
• BT 310: Biblical Hebrew (3 cr.)
• BT 301: Lutheran Biblical Interp. (3 cr.)

Exegetical Courses (24 Credits)

Old Testament (12 Credits)

• BT 401: The Pentateuch & Writings (3 cr.)
• BT 402: Wisdom & The Prophets (3 cr.)
• BT 490: Topics in Old Testament (6 cr.)

New Testament (12 Credits)

• BT 450: The Gospels (3 cr.)
• BT 451: Paul & His Legacy (3 cr.)
• BT 452: Epistles & Formation of the New Testament (3 cr.)
• BT 491: Topics in New Testament (6 cr.)

The Masters of Arts in Theology (MAT) lists the following requirements:


Program Requirements: Total Credits = 33

• BT 301: Lutheran Biblical Interpretation (3 Credits)
• EPR 301: Faith, Knowledge, and Reason (3 Credits)
• EPR: 302: God, Logic, & Semantics (3 Credits)
• HST 301: History of Christian Thought I: Origins to 1500 (3 Credits)
• HST 302: History of Christian Thought II: The Reformation (3 Credits)
• HST 303: History of Christian Thought III: 1700-1900 (3 Credits)
• HST 304: Twentieth Century Theology (3 Credits)
• HST 351: The Lutheran Confessions in Context (3 Credits)
• HST 401: Creation & The Triune God (3 Credits)
• HST 402: Christology (3 Credits)
• HST 403: Church, Spirit, & The Two Kingdoms (3 Credits)

Finally, the Masters of Arts in Religion (MAR) offers this curriculum: 

Program Requirements:  Total Credits = 33

• BT 301: Lutheran Biblical Interpretation (3 Credits)
• EPR 301: Faith, Knowledge, and Reason (3 Credits)

6 credits in Biblical Studies: (courses with a BT prefix)

6 credits in Church History: (HST 301-304, 310, 350, 351)

6 credits in Theology, Ethics, or Philosophy of Religion: (HST 401-3, 450 courses with an EPR prefix)

9 credits in one of the three areas of specialization:

• Biblical Studies
• Theology and Church History
• Ethics & Philosophy of Religion

All courses are delivered in real-time using video-streaming technology that allows students to see and interact with the professor and with each other.   ILT permanent teaching faculty include Dr. Robert Benne, Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt, Dr. Mark Hillmer, Dr. Paul Hinlicky, Rev. Timothy Rynearson, and Dr. Jonathan Sorum.  Please check the Institute of Lutheran Theology website for more details on our programs!    

Acting in Conformity with the Law versus Acting From or Because of the Law

When Lutherans come to think about God's Law, they sometimes think and say some rather confusing things.   Oftentimes this confusion reigns because they don't properly distinguish from among the nature of law, its motivation and its effects.    

Properly speaking, the law is that which ought to be the case, as it is commanded and enforced by a proper authority: God.  While the law is not a description of what actually happens, it is the real reality of what should happen: That which ought to be is as that which ought to be.  Accordingly, Lutherans should be nomological realists; they should hold that the  law is something objectively present outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language.  Thinking of such a law is, however, prone to abstraction.

Over the last centuries, Lutherans have been busy trying to follow Luther's lead in not thinking about the law abstractly, but rather considering it concretely.  Accordingly, the law is not simply an eternal set of prescriptions, but is itself a power.  The law, in fact, accuses.  It kills.

But the question arises: In what sense can the law accuse and kill?   Even asking this question seems misguided to Lutheran insiders.   How could a Lutheran theologian seriously suggest that he knows not the sense in which the law accuses and kills?   Does he not get even the basics of Lutheran theology?

Seemingly straightforward questions that somehow get asked anyway generally suggest that there has been some adjustment in the underlying set of assumptions or paradigm.   If one starts with the reality of human existence and the human Urerlebnis of being held fully responsible for not being able to do what one ought (Elert), then indeed asking in what sense the law accuses and kills is like asking in what sense water is wet.   However, if one is serious about theological realism, then things change a bit.  The law gains an ontological vitality not entailed by its phenomenological contour.   Now the law is because God is.  The law becomes an expression of what God is in and through creation.   A divine nomological ontology now sharply distinguishes the law in se from its effects pro nobis, and from our own motivations to do the law.

Kant famously distinguished acting because of or from duty from merely acting in accordance with duty.  For Kant, the motivation for doing an action is what is at issue morally.  I can save the old lady about to be hit by the truck for a number of reasons, some quite selfish or misguided.   (Maybe I don't like to see the hoods of trucks dented or dirtied.)   To act solely on the basis that saving her is the right thing to do is to act morally for the right reason.   (Kant used the example of the shopkeeper who acted merely in accordance with duty - - and not from duty - - in not duping his customer because the shopkeeper wants to build a good reputation and a better business.)

The distinction between acting in accordance with a rule or acting from, because or due to a rule is helpful, I think, in getting clear on how the law accuses and kills.

God wills x but Bob cannot seemingly or easily do x.   This willing of x by God is real: it exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   Now Bob can live "according to the law" by so acting with respect to x because of, from or due to x.  Such life under the law is itself a fundamental existential response to the reality of the law.   One can attempt to be moral and do what it is that one ought to do out of  proper motivation: One acts solely because this action is commanded by God.   While acting from the law is good for Kant, it is bad for Luther (and all of us generally) because to act because of the law is to prioritize, reify, and focus upon the fact of x.  Such prioritizing, reifying and focusing upon x can only push one further away from the author of x.

Fortunately, what is bad of Kant is good for Luther (and all of us generally).   While to act merely in accordance with duty is, for Kant, not really to be acting in a morally manifest way - -though he clearly says that such acting can be wholly appropriate - - acting in accordance with the law can be for Christians a highly laudable state.   (One should act so that one's right-hand does not know what one's left-hand is doing.)  Grace is eschewing a life lived "according to the law" so that one can "act in accordance with the law" and not due to the law.  Acting merely in accordance with the law is what grace accomplishes.   The law is taken up, not abolished.   What is abolished is acting from the law; what remains is acting in accordance with the law from proper inclination (spontaneous thankfulness) and not from the demands of the law itself.   Such an acting is neither accusatory nor nefarious; it simply is on the basis of He who is.

If we keep with the central story of Christianity - - there is a God and this God has a definite intentionality for His creation - - then the Lutheran focus on Law and Gospel is properly understood as a pertaining not primarily to the order of things, but mainly to the order of the human heart with respect to things.  (I am not wholly denying here that nature is out of conformity with the law under the conditions of the Fall, but simply not thematizing it here.)   Is the primal ought manifest to human beings as accusation or gift?   Is it finally that which kills or that which makes alive?   It all goes back to the motivation of the human heart, and with respect to the importance of motivation Kant was fully in accord with Luther.  What is different is the nature of motivation.   Luther knew what Paul proclaimed:  To act due to the law was to live according to the flesh.   But to be gifted to act freely merely in accordance with the law is the most blessed life available to all; it is to live in the dynamics of the Spirit.

Why Meaning Matters

A number of years ago when the MacNiel/Lehrer Report still appeared on PBS, there was an economist who answered a particular question using some of the technical language of his discipline.   The response from the other guest was instructive.   Listening to what the economist had offered, he remonstrated, "Why, that's just theological."  

The economist had clearly taken a heavy hit.  Calling his language theological in that context was to suggest a number of things:  1) His language was not clear, 2) His language was ambiguous, 3) His language made only dubious claims to truth, 4) His language was needlessly complex, 5) His language was useless. 

I have from the beginning of my time in theology sought a particular precision.  The reason for this is simply that very early on I learned how captivating theological language could be.   It seemed to me that one could enter another world by using such language.   When I was young it was great fun to read theology, to envision new possibilities, and to address theological problems.   But something happened to me on my way to a Ph. D.   

I began to realize that everything I was thinking when I was thinking theologically was comprised of propositions comprised of terms and predications of identity and attribution.  I began to think that if what I was thinking was to be true, I must get very clear on what it was precisely that I was thinking so I knew what it precisely was that was to be true.   This meant that I must analyze the language of my theological thinking to see what precisely it meant.  

But when I began to explore what it is precisely that theological language meant, I ran up against a host of problems.  Though I could use theological language correctly, - - I could use it in such ways that fit the linguistic situation (one might say, I could satisfy the appropriate stimulus/response conditionals theologically) - - I did not know exactly how my theological language related to other kinds of discourse.   When talking to people who did not know how to employ theological language like I thought I then did, I started to realize that I did not always know how to translate what I was saying theologically into types of language that they grasped, language that related to the world in which both they and I lived.  In this way, I began to worry about what precise claims I was making theologically and whether there was evidence to support those claims I was making.  

Long ago I concluded that the more one likely agonizes over what precisely one means when doing theology, the less theology one is likely to do.  Wonderful, learned and deeply evocative theology can be written without one knowing precisely what one means in the writing.  This is, of course, to a degree true of all disciplines.   Does one know the precise identity conditions of each term one uses in fundamental particle physics?   While the answer to this is perhaps, "no," there is a difference.   One has a public, objective semantic yardstick in fundamental particle physics that one does not possess in theology.   This is why one can look up the precise meaning of a term in the first context but not the second.   In theology, the meaning of terms and phrases depends deeply on who is employing them.  In theology it is fundamentally meaning  that matters.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology believes that it is critically important to grasp the semantic question in theology.   We in the developed countries of the West live at a time in which great numbers of people are abandoing the use of theological language.   The reason, in my opinion, is that far too many now think the language is not clear and unambiguous, that it makes dubious claims, and that is is complex and useless. For many people, in fact, the clearer the language becomes - - I am thinking now of some expressions of Evangelical theology - - the less likely many think it is to be true, and the more likely it is to be true, the less clear they believe it is.   Somehow in theology, meaning and truth, the twin pillars of semantics, have become inversely proportional.  

I have been posting this week about the Institute of Lutheran Theology.   At ILT we are serious about studying theology seriously.   This means, among other things, that not only God and his work in Jesus Christ is at issue for us, but also the meaning of God working in Jesus Christ.  The reason meaning matters is that it is necessary for truth, and when the truth at issue is the Truth, then the meaning that matters is that which really matters.    

The Institute of Lutheran Theology's Masters of Sacred Theology

Readers of this blog soon realize that I have theological interests.  This is why I continued to be engaged in the building of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, a new Lutheran School of Theology centered in Jesus Christ which profoundly engages questions of theological truth as they relate to our contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon. 

Did you know that the Institute of Lutheran Theology offers a Masters of Sacred Theology, the Sacrae Theologiae Magister or STM?  This post-M. Div. degree consists of six graduate courses and a thesis (21 hours), and offers tracks in Reformation Theology, Contemporary Lutheran Theology, and Issues in Science/Religion and the Philosophy of Religion.  The STM allows motivated students the opportunity to pursue higher level coursework, either as a preparatory step for study at the doctorate level or as a means of professional development.  

ILT is offering two courses this fall in the STM program, a seminar in Pannenberg taught by Dr. Paul Hinlicky and the required methodology course taught by me. Course descriptions are as follows:
  

• HST 590:  Contemporary Lutheran Dogmatics: Pannenberg's Systematic Theology:  This seminar examines all three volumes of Wolfhart Pannenberg's systematic theology. 

• EPR 580:  Methodology and Approaches to Graduate Study:  This required course introduces graduate students to the standard critical approaches and issues relevant to doing successful and informed work in historical theology, contemporary theology and the philosophy of religion.   Students will read primary sources from both the continental and analytical traditions.  Historical, phenomenological, existential, hermeneutical, analytical, social-scientific and post-structuralist approaches are examined.

Students are expected to possess mastery of verbal and written English for course participation and written work. There are no other specific language requirements for the STM, but students researching particular areas will be expected to have working knowledge of the languages needed to complete their research.  Depending upon the student’s interests and project, this may include knowledge of Greek, Latin, German, French or another modern foreign language.  Because of the importance of primary text reading in the German sources, ILT occasionally offers theological German as a benefit to its students - - though the course does not count towards fulfilling the 21 hour requirement for graduation.

•   HST 585:  Theological German.  Students wanting to do research in German may take this course which introduces the theological vocabulary and successful techniques of reading theological German.

Students from all religious traditions are invited to study.  All courses are delivered in real time and on-line through our video conferencing platform.  All students see and interact with each other and the professor.  For more information about ILT programming, please visit our website or call 605-692-9337. Students can still apply for fall admission into the STM program.  Our admission requirements are listed below.
 

• Prior completion of an M.Div. degree, an M.A. in theology or closely related field of study, or a related degree demonstrating preparation for advanced theological work
• Completion of application form
• Three recommendations from individuals with knowledge of likely academic performance
• Official graduate and undergraduate transcripts must be sent directly to ILT
• (International applicants only) International applicants are required to submit a score on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The score must be 550 or above, with an essayrating of at least 5.0, and cannot be more than one year old.

  

The Semantics of 'Jesus Christ'

Oftentimes we miss the things that are most obvious.  This is true in all areas of life, and in theology especially.  What is obvious, but not often enough clearly thought through, is the way in which the meaning of 'Jesus Christ' has changed in the past couple of centuries.  There are vast differences in the way Bultmann and Irenaeus understand 'Jesus Christ', differences so vast that Irenaeus and Bultmann could best be said to understand 'Jesus Christ' in radically different ways.  Unfortunately, theology has often failed to realize this and to address the fact and nature of the difference.   In order to see this all more clearly, let us reflect upon an example from baseball. 

A pitcher in a baseball game is someone who throws the ball past the batter.   He would not be a pitcher if he were not to do this.   The implicit rule is something like this, "If x is a baseball pitcher, then ceteris paribus x will occupy a position y feet from home plate, and x will attempt to throw the ball over home plate such that the batter will either not hit the ball on three hitable pitches,  or hit the ball in the air such that it can be caught, or on the ground such that a throw can be made to first base prior to the batter reaching first base after hitting the ball."

Now I don't for a moment think this is a very accurate stating of the rule in question, but it should at least show what it is that I am thinking when I say that within the game of baseball, there are clear rules governing the role of pitcher.   If I am talking about the rules governing actual pitchers and batters and actual games, I could be said to be speaking of the rules in the material mode.   However, if I am talking about the way that the term 'pitcher' relates to other terms like 'hitter', 'catcher', 'innings', I could be said to be speaking of the rules in the formal mode.

One of the great advances of twentieth century philosophy was to see that much language we take to be in the material mode can be more deeply studied, and its nature clarified, if we interpret such language to be in the formal mode.   The shift from talk in the material mode of objects and properties to the formal mode of terms and predicates is sometimes termed "semantic ascent."  (For instance, we might cease talking about whether unicorns exist and began talking about whether the word 'unicorn' has any useful role to play in our theory.)  While undertaking a semantic ascent in baseball may have negligible ontological significance, doing so with respect to pi mesons certainly does. How so?

If we are operating in the material mode and say that a pi meson is a hadron with bayron number of 0, we are declaring (probably) that for all x, x is a pi meson just in case x is a hadron with the bayron number of 0, and there is some such x.  In the formal mode, and after taking proper semantic ascent, we claim merely that in our background meta-language the term 'pi meson' can be substituted salve veritate with the locution 'a hadron with the bayron number of 0' and that the term 'pi meson' has a useful role to play in our assumed fundamental particle theory.

I like to talk about simple semantic matters in the philosophy of science as a way into discussion within theology generally.   Take the classic definition of Chalcedon on the two natures of Christ:

"We also teach that we apprehend this one and only Christ-Son, Lord, only-begotten — in two natures; and we do this without confusing the two natures, without transmuting one nature into the other, without dividing them into two separate categories, without contrasting them according to area or function. The distinctiveness of each nature is not nullified by the union. Instead, the "properties" of each nature are conserved and both natures concur in one "person" and in one reality [hypostasis]. They are not divided or cut into two persons, but are together the one and only and only-begotten Word [Logos], God, the Lord Jesus Christ."

Now one could regard this to be a class of statements in the object language making a batch of ontological statements about the person of Christ.   According to this interpretation, we must hold that there are such things as 'natures' comprised of classes of properties that append to the person (hypostasis) of Christ.   These natures are distinctive classes of properties that are famously neither confused, transmuted or divided, contrasted, but nonetheless somehow "united" in the one person.  It has be notoriously difficult to try to clarify the ontological situation here.

But one could perform a semantic ascent and place such discourse into the formal mode.   Now the Definition gets read as a specification of the rules by which one will use a particular language.  It is permitted that the term 'human' and term 'divine' both be predicated of the name 'Jesus Christ' even though the term 'human nature' has a set of entailments normally not in the set of entailments from 'divine nature'.   (One could perform this semantic ascent in myriad and sundry ways, so please excuse my clumsiness here.)

In the formal mode, the ontological commitments of material mode interpretation are jettisoned, and the issue devolves to one of proper application of rules.   Can a coherent set of rules be specified which permits the correct Christological affirmations and disallows those termed heretical?   If such rules can be specified, then we are in a position - - with much of the tradition actually - - to talk about a specific theological grammar.   The issue has become one of syntax.   How are the words of theological theory used?

Now I want to introduce another topic that will connect with what I have just said.  Notice how differently one investigates the ontological and the soteriological?   While a causal analysis is not entailed in the first, it is in the second.   Take, for instance, a set of abstract (existing) objects and the relationships that hold between them.   The set of all triples does exist and, for all I know, it may be identical with the number '3'.   One can make ontological assertions about these objects and no causal connection between them - - or between them and me - - is presupposed.   But notice how different it is to speak about Jesus Christ.   Here the very logic of discourse about Christ presupposes a causal connection with humanity - - including me.  Christ could not be Christ without there being a saving causal relationship with respect to me.    (Or at least this was true up until quite recently in the theological tradition.  Clearly a Tillichian could hold that the symbol of the Christ existentially empowers without saying that the symbol has in itself causal power.   The symbol in itself could be causally inert, yet a particular subject could respond to it in a particular way.  This would make the symbol an abstract object.  This understanding of 'Christ' is, I would argue, quite different from that of the tradition.)

Now I wish to introduce a final topic.    Philosophers of science routinely distinguish realist from nonrealist interpretations of scientific theory.   A realist with respect to pi mesons would regard the material mode presentation of pi meson theory - - theory in the object language - - to be making ontological claims about the way that the world is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   An irrealist interpretation would note the way that the object language of the theory behaves and understands that this behavior could have explanatory and predictive power - - in terms of the ways the rules work - - but would nonetheless not want to claim that in the nature of the case the world has such objects, properties and causal relationships specified by the theories.

Finally we come to the point.   The semantics of 'Jesus Christ' at the time of the Definition assumed a material mode reading which was thoroughly soteriological.   As the tradition developed and, in particular, was transformed by the Enlightenment, this original material mode ontological interpretation was increasingly transformed to a formal mode interpretation.   (This argument can be made, I think, though there are a great  many prima facie objections to this generalization that must be met.)  As we moved away from the nineteenth century and its penchant for various forms of reductionism in theology, we entered into a phase of twentieth century theology that would assume - - whether it said so or not - - a regnant  formal mode interpretation of theological language.   What was important was the regular ways in which theological language was employed and the use to which it was put, not the ontology associated with a classical understanding of that language.  (How else could metaphysics become disassociated from theology?)   Theological irrealism could be made completely consistent with the correct use of theological language.  As Wittgenstein trenchantly remarked, "What is important here is that the language-game is played."

The thing that is closest to Lutheran theology is the meaning of 'Jesus is the Christ'.   It is this meaning, I argue, that has been fundamentally changed over the past centuries.   Though the language-game continues to be played, and the rules can remain in principle specifiable, an unnoticed move to the formal mode has in reality happened.   That this has happened is evidenced by how ontology has become divorced from eschatology.   Eschatological/soteriological interpretations of theological language that are confidently assumed to not be ontological clearly evidence that the previous material mode interpretation of theological language has become in actuality a formal mode interpretation.   No longer even is it deemed theologically central that theological realism hold, a realism that would have seemed necessary to the tradition if one were to have any real soteriology.   

What has happened on our watch is that we have allowed the language of theology to remain formally correct while we have come to deem it relevant that it in fact refers!   But clearly in the theological tradition reference was central to the question of the semantics of  theological language.   Unlike irrealist interpretations of scientific theory, realism in theology becomes necessary to hold the semantics of theological language consistent with the theological tradition.  

  

   

An Interpretive Center

People sometimes remark that I oftentimes seem to write about putative philosophical issues rather then staying directly on task and use the theological language of our great Lutheran tradition.   Why would this be?  Is it that I somehow am not interested deeply in the traditional objects of Lutheran theological reflection?

No, this is not true.   I believe that the center of Lutheran theology is the proclamation of the free grace of Jesus Christ appropriated in faith.   When serving in the parish, I preached this each and every week.   I believe that the external Word interprets itself, striking the human heart both as Law and Gospel, and that through this Word we are justified and made free lords before God and dutiful servants to one another.   I believe that the great ecumenical creeds of the Church make definite truth-claims, and I routinely confess their truth.   I believe that Jesus Christ was true God and true man, and believe in Lutheran fashion in the genus maiestaticum, as well as the genus idiomaticum and genus apotelesmaticum.  So why talk about all of the philosophical issues if this theological core of beliefs is at the center of things?

The reason I am interested in discussing philosophical issues (mostly semantic and ontological) is because while Lutherans can still say all of the right things, they don't necessarily mean by these things what Lutherans once meant.

But why should this be a problem if all the same things are confessed?   Surely there can be different philosophischen Rictungen among confessing Lutherans.   After all, did not Wilhelm Hermann famously argue that metaphysics (and its variations) are irrelevant to solid, Lutheran confessional theology?   Did not the young Luther scholar Wilhelm Link, (who died much too soon in the war) argue that Luther claimed the same thing?  Isn't the greatness of Lutheran theology found in the freedom of interpretation in one's confessions?   Surely, we ought not to confuse the left hand and the right hand of God, the hand of reason, law and philosophy, and the hand of faith, grace and theology!

Luther in his various disputations would occasionally quip that what was finally important in disputing was an agreement not merely in speech, but in the things (in res).  An agreement as to what is held or asserted has been crucially important in the development of doctrine generally and within the Lutheran Confessions specifically.   The question is this:  How does this Lutheran commitment to the truth of propositions from the tradition and the Confessions get appropriated in our time?   My considered opinion is that there is a great deal of confusion here, and my fear is that this confusion could be disastrous for the future of Lutheran theology. 

When one plays baseball, one plays by baseball rules.  There are three outs per side, both teams batting once constitutes an inning, and there are nine innings in a game.  (I am thinking about the major and minor leagues with respect to this last point.)   Proper theological language has rules as well.   One must know how to use the word 'Father' and the word 'Son'.  Specifically, one must be able to say 'The Son is God', 'The Father is God', without saying 'The Father is the Son'.  Rules permitting the right expressions in the right linguistic circumstances and prohibiting the wrong ones in the wrong circumstances are notoriously difficult to formulate, but there is little doubt that there exist some set of rules that undergird the modus loquendi theologicus.   

So far so good.   One could in principle formulate a theological game as well as a game of black hole theory.   Within contemporary cosmological theory, certain terms occur in particular statements and not within others.  Prima facie there does not seem to be much different between the formal structure of a Trinitarian language and that language of any heavily theoretical discipline.   There is a proper and improper way of using terms and phrases.   The question now confronts us:  Are the semantics of the two games the same?

On this there is much difference of opinion, of course.    Many would say that there is extra-linguistic set of referents to which the language of black holes is anchored that is not available for the theoretical language of the Trinity.   But why would this be so?   Why would one think there is some res that black hole theory has the theology does not have?    One would not think this - - unless one had previous opinions about what is possible ontologically for the Trinity over and against black holes.

Since the time of the Enlightenment, there has been an increasing sense in the former Christian West that the language of theology does not make truth claims.   While most within popular culture - - I am not talking here about philosophers of science - - would claim that there are clear truth conditions for black hole theory, they would not, if they reflected some, claim easily that there are similar truth conditions in theology.  The reason, of course, is that for tens of millions of people theological language simply can't be making truth claims because such language is an expression of individual and cultural value.  There simply is no realm of theological facts such that the rules of theological language can govern a linguistic usage that can bring the language into contact with a domain of extra-linguistic referents.  The fact/value distinction is wholly enshrined within contemporary culture, and this descendent from the Enlightenment must be dealt with before theological language is afforded the same opportunity to refer as the language of black holes.

My claim has been and continues to be that the interpretive center has been lost within much of Lutheran theology in the first part of the twenty-first century.   The problem has been that a general cultural/intellectual commitment to the Enlightenment paradigm, especially Kant, has led millions to presuppose different semantic possibilities for that language than that which generally characterized the tradition.   I am not saying that much of this is explicit.  (Increasingly few people even know the name 'Kant'.)  But middle school children learn that science is about facts and religion is about values.   They don't know the torturous intellectual history that brought civilization to this "insight."  They are taught this fact/value distinction as if it fell from the heavens.   It is part of the Enlightenment paradigm, a paradigm that functions as the default ontological posit of our time.   What I am saying is this: To continue to divorce theology and metaphysics and to allow the fact/value distinction to stand inviolate, is to allow theological language not to be about truth, and it is thus to allow theological language to assume a different semantics than it previously had.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology is grounded in Scripture and Confessions.   It holds assiduously to classical confessional Lutheran theology.  Professors at ILT are passionate about their commitment to Scriptural truth and authority as it is known and understood through the hermeneutical lens of the Confessions.   While students are exposed to the great Biblical exegetes and the great theologians of the tradition, they learn the most important thing, I believe, that a school of theology can impart: ILT believes that it is true that God was in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and that because of this truth we have good grounds to preach and teach in His Name.     

A Lutheran School of Theology for our Times

Many of you know that I have been intimately involved with the effort to birth a new Lutheran School of Theology.    It was, in fact, in 2006 that I began in earnest to work with others in forming the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT).  It is now six years later and ILT (www.ilt.org) has moved from the nascent, through the initial fledgling, and into the mature fledgling stage.  We are a staff of thirteen individuals, some living in Brookings, SD, but others living in places as diverse as Annapolis, New York, and Irvine, CA.   We are a permanent faculty of nine with more than a dozen adjuncts teaching for us regularly.  We are governed by a Board of eight prominent individuals from all parts of North America.  This fall we are are expecting between 40-50 students studying in our degree and pastoral certificate programs.    

ILT has been making strides in building its academic programs.  We now have Masters of Arts degrees in Biblical Studies, in Theology, and in Religion, as well as our Masters of Divinity program.   We are very excited about our Masters of Sacred Theology degree which allows students an opportunity to get a theology degree beyond the Masters of Divinity.   This fall in the STM program, I will be teaching the Methodology course and Dr. Paul Hinlicky will be offering a Seminar on Pannenberg's three volume systematic theology.  While ILT is still in its infancy, it is growing quickly.    

I believe the ILT is a Lutheran School of Theology for our times.  Why?   The answer is simply that it fits nicely the post-modern context in which it finds itself.  Modernity was a time in which the general commitment to the ideals of reason and objectivity tended to push theology in the direction of finding underlying commonalities among traditions.   Notably, in the nineteenth century, attempts were made to ground all religion upon underlying structures of human feeling, morality, will or thinking.  While the anthropological starting point was rejected in the twentieth century generally, it proved clearly difficult to formulate within a modernist paradigm a theory of the "Wholly Other," an account of the otherness of God that nonetheless accepted the Kantian critique.

Within the Lutheran situation in North America, modernity did not until the last 70 years or so, globally undermine the putative objects of religious experience and reflection.  The trajectory of North American Lutheranism was dominated by another more modest and regional modernist impulse: the desire to find commonality in belief and practice and thus to form one large Lutheran denomination.  Lutheran ecumenism seemed to entail structural unity.  If two denominational trajectories could agree upon the same theological and ecclesiological principles, then they should become one trajectory.   Conversely, if two trajectories were not to become one trajectory, they must have determinate theological and ecclesiological differences.  Why else would they not become one?   And if they held determinately different theological and ecclesiological views, then there  must exist theological institutions whose purpose it was, in part, to give legitimacy to the distinctiveness of the disparate trajectories.  Cooperation among seminaries across denominational lines was a risky thing indeed because it tended to undercut the legitimization of the disparate denominations themselves.   Moreover, for different denominational traditions to use the same seminary was to suggest that there was no reason for there to be different denominational traditions in the first place.

But new cultural winds have been blowing, winds that have tended to erode the grounds of universal reason and objectivity upon which modernity was based.   The result has been that increasing numbers of people are comfortable with contextualized, regional rationalities (and pluralism), and perspectivalism.   While in many ways destructive of the traditional intellectual enterprise of the West, in others ways this move to postmodernity has been a move towards intellectual liberation: No longer does a tradition have to seek its legitimacy by arguing against a universal rational yardstick that it has a closer approximation to truth than another tradition.  This externalist perspective is traded in for an internalist viewpoint:  One starts on the inside in a tradition and experiences and reflects upon the world from the inside.   There is no Archimedian view from the top - - a "view from nowhere."   There are only traditions with there traditional ways of interpreting the world.     Our resultant ideology of "inclusiveness in diversity" is built upon a postmodern scaffolding.  Institutions must be inclusive of various diverse traditions, realizing the full complexity of what a tradition is and how a tradition comes to see the world in a particular way.

ILT is not a seminary of any denomination, but is a School of Theology dedicated to serving various denominational traditions.  Its unity is found in its service to diverging theological traditions.  It is not owned by a denomination, but is an independent, Lutheran non-profit entity that safeguards its autonomy and works towards its accreditation.   Grounded in both Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, yet realizing there has been and always will be diverging paths of Lutheran interpretation on both Scripture and Confessions, ILT seeks to connect the best Lutheran professors to the most capable Lutheran students using the latest interactive video-conferencing technology. 

But the unity-in-diversity of ILT does have its limits in its interpretation of Scripture and Confessions.   We believe, in fact, that both sources presuppose the following:

• There is a God who has its being apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. 
• Propositions about God and God's relation to the world can be true or false. 
• God and the world can be (and are) causally related. 
• God's work in Jesus Christ cannot be confined merely to the realm of value, but also concerns the realm of nature. 
• Scripture has both an external and internal clarity.  

Using these principles as a lens back to Scripture and Confessions, ILT dares to bring the traditional Lutheran confessional horizon into dialogue with the intellectual and cultural horizons of our day.   We believe that theology concerns truth of the deepest kind, truth that determines our being and non-being, truth that ultimately heals and saves all of humankind.  Jesus Christ is at the center of all we do at ILT.  Gloria ad Deum.    

Living Under the Epistemic Law

Clearly, it is plausible to claim that warrant is what separates true belief and knowledge.   The received view in epistemology is that knowledge just is justified, true belief, and while the post-Gettier literature has tried to tweak this a bit so as to avoid unintended counterinstances, the central idea remains intact: Something more than true belief is needed for knowledge, and this something more is what warrants the epistemic agent holding that true belief at all.  But what is this warrant?

Many hold that warrant connects generally to deontology as follows:  x is warranted for Y if and only if Y concludes x when acting on the basis of properly performing all of his/her epistemic duties.   The idea is that a proper concluding of x is somehow internal to Y-- that the relevant warrant-conferring properties are internal to Y, i.e., that Y's mental states are pertinent in concluding x. There are many ways to be an internalist, but normativity usually figures into to all of them in some way.   If one, broadly speaking, manifests proper doxastic practice, then one will have a greater probability in ascertaining truth.  Acting due to the proper rule or law of proper doxastic formation adds warrant to true belief and thus issues in knowledge.   (I am skipping over many philosophical details here in order to get at the theological issue.)  

Famously, William Clifford argued that it was always wrong everywhere to hold a belief without proper grounds or evidence.  In so arguing, Clifford committed himself to the importance of the epistemic law in achieving knowledge.   One's ship might make it across the ocean or it might not.   To say that one knows that it will do so without having proper evidence - - without properly performing one's pertinent epistemic duties - - is the mark of epistemic waywardness.   One only knows that it will so make it if one has done the relevant research, believes it will make it and it does so.  Absent the relevant research, even if it happens to make it across, one cannot say that one knew it, though one did believe it deeply.  The idea is that one is responsible for what one claims to know.   One cannot know that which one has not examined deeply.  Simply put, it can be clearly irresponsible to say one knows that the ship will make it even if it does, while one might responsibly hold claim to know that the ship will make it even if it does not.  Such epistemic responsibility is tied to the proper performance of epistemic duty.

There is thus a parallel between the proper formation of belief and the proper performance of an action, a parallel eschewing of consequentialism.  Just as the ethical deontologist holds that acting due to a moral principle in performing A clan be right even if the consequences of A are in fact deleterious, so does the epistemic deontologist claim that forming a belief due to properly performing one's epistemic duties is right even if the belief turns out to be false.  Everything rests upon the intentionality of the act.   Was the moral act done solely on the basis of the moral law?  Was the epistemic act done solely on the basis of the epistemic principle?  Deontology in epistemology makes knowing a matter of the law.  One must properly perform one's epistemic duties if one is ever to achieve knowledge.  Simply put, if one is to know x, one must do what one ought to do.   

But human beings have not been successful in doing what they ought to do.   While Bob should act on the basis of moral principle P, he does not so act.  Why?  Christians confess that there is a basic existential disruption that does not allow Bob to act as he ought.   Sin is that which prohibits the total consonance of "is" and "ought."

But what is true of moral action is true also of epistemology.   Why would anyone expect epistemic agent Bob always to act due to the proper epistemic principle?   There same is/ought gap exists in epistemology as it does in moral action generally.   "Oh, sinful epistemic agent that I am, those things I claim to know, I do not really know!"  Descartes famously argued that epistemic turpitude rests upon human beings having freedom to assert P or not assert P, and that unfortunately they do assert one (or the other) without adequate grounds.   (God does not have this failing having always adequate grounds.)   Epistemic waywardness is built into the fabric of human existence.    

Lutherans claim that the nature of the Law is always to accuse.  While I try to live my life in accordance with the proper moral principles, I cannot do so.   Thus, I am guilty.   Similarly and in an epistemic key, while I try to live my life in accordance with proper epistemic duties, I cannot do so.   Thus, I am guilty.

To be guilty is finally not to be who one deeply is.   As sons and daughters of God created in imago dei, we ought always to do that which would properly issue from one created in imago dei.   But we don't so act and thus we aren't so constituted.

Lutheran theology proclaims grace to all who stand guilty before the Law.   While we are not now who we ought to be, in God's sight - - i.e., the highest sight - - we become again who we should be.   The accusing Law is quelled through the effects of God's love of us.   Through Christ we are again who we really are even though, and despite the fact, we are not who we should be.  The way that grace makes us who we truly are, while we yet remain who we are not truly, is a subject of great controversy in the theological tradition.   The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic grace is important in examining these ways.  Is the grace which heals the disrupture something that human beings in some sense have (and on the logical basis of which a divine judgment is proffered), or is it some change of the divine judgment (on the logical basis of which human change is possible?   (We shall not go into all of the views here, but readers of the blog probably are familiar with most.)  

The question, however, of this post is this:  If there is a parallel between the moral and epistemic waywardness of human beings in that both the morality and epistemology ultimately depend upon the law, and if this law always accuses us because we are not the moral (and epistemic agents) we ought to be, and if our healing from the guilt of moral sin is due to grace (however, finally considered), then would it not be important for Christians (of a deontological internalist persuasion) to reflect upon what the contour of what epistemic grace might be?  If we cannot live up to our paridisical epistemic lights, and if living in accordance with these lights is what it is to have true knowledge of truth, then what divine grace might we expect in knowing truth?

On this way of viewing things, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil really symbolizes a fall into the deontological, both moral and epistemic.  Thinking through what knowledge could be before such a Fall is the theme of a later post.   It seems clear, however, that it cannot be a matter of deontology.

Transcendentality

I must admit that I have always rather liked the transcendental option.   When the skies seem especially dark, it is tempting to think of divine presence on the transcendental horizon of our own experience.   This way of proceeding supposedly avoids the problems of subjectivism and pyschologism without committing one to finding God as an object among objects in the world and history, or looking for Him in some supernatural transcendent dimension lying out beyond the world and history.

I admit that I have not thought much about the transcendental starting point in recent years.   Instead I have been pondering how it is that in order to avoid an eliminativism of the theological, one must ascribe to it a robust semantics, one that is realist in its orientation. 

I want to relfect here a bit upon transcendentality and the semantic questions that arise when trying to articulate the position.   While the transcendental starting point is prima facie promising in trying to locate a place for God, the position requires a type of realist semantics that is difficult to formulate.   I will try to lay this out nascently below.

Transcendental Thomism was part of a general effort within mid-twentieth century Roman Catholicism to read Aquinas in ways that were not Neo-Scholastic in orientation.    The idea was to retrieve the Augustinian element in Thomas' thinking which would allow God to be found grounding the activity of human intentionality itself. 

Reflect for a moment on the grasping of any being.   The necessary condition for grasping determinate being is, for Karl Rahner - -  the most famous of the Transcendental Thomists - - that one have a pre-understanding, or a fore-grasping of Being in itself.   In every act of knowing any object, there is a transcendental condition consisting in the a horizon of pure being.   This horizon is the term of the Vorgriff, the end point of any fore-grasping.   The idea is very simple and maybe an analogy helps.  In order for a person to know that she is incarcerated in a particular cell, she must grasp beyond the cell to know what area she could be occupying if she were not limited by the cell wall to be in the particular cell she is in.  Without a fore-grasping of the "beyond," the incarcerated one would not know themselves as incarcerated at all.   Whereas Heidegger said that projecting into no-thing was the necessary condition for the thing to be thing - - and hence "nothingness is the face of being" - - Karl Rahner claimed that the totality of Being is the face of being.

The transcendental starting point fits nicely within the Augustinian key, within the general orientation of "the ontological thirst," that is, the thematization of the assertion that "my heart is not at rest until it finds its rest in Thee, O Lord."   Human beings are a dynamism towards Being.   This dynamism towards Being is the transcendental condition for the possibility of grasping the realm of determinate beings.

Very important in this approach is the overcoming of Neo-Scholastic dualisms between nature and supernature, the finite and infinite,  and nature and grace.   The transcendental horizon making possible human knowledge is not merely a thing of nature, nor merely a thing of grace, but it is a horizon of a continuum of nature and grace, a continuum where natural human striving gives way to the grace of God as pure Being, as that which is the authentic end of human striving.   For Rahner and followers nature is already graced; God is always already related to nature.  Grace thus is ingredient in the transcendental constitution of natural human striving; there is no authentic nature without grace.

Now the question I wish to entertain pertains to the semantics of the language I have just used to articulate the position in the previous three paragraphs.   What are the conditions for the possibility of meaning and truth of that language used to articulate the structure of the transcendental horizon of human natural being? 

This is a very difficult question, of course; one that seems far more difficult than articulating the conditions for the possibility of the meaningfulness of language referring to the world of nature and history, or a putative transcendent realm existing beyond nature and history. 

I have argued that we must adopt semantic realism in theology for three reasons: 1) If our time is to take the truth claims of theology seriously again, theology must make serious truth claims; 2) If theology is a discipline that is so important that one's very being and the meaning of one's being is at issue in it, then we should work with a view of theological language that makes the most robust theological assertions; 3) It turns out to be very difficult to give theological language a self-consistent semantic interpretation that is finally not realist - - at least if one wants to retain theological language.  Because semantic realism seems best for referring to God in the world and beyond it, it is tempting to think that semantic realism is the best construal of language about the transcendental horizon as well.   However, for reasons soon apparent it proves to be very difficult indeed to provide such a semantics.  Why?

Imagine language L having a standard intension and extension such that the intension of a name is its sense and its extension is its reference, the intension of a monadic predicate is a property and its extension a set of objects satisfying that property, that the intension of a polyadic predicate is a relation and its extension the set of ordered n-tuples satisfying this relation, and the intension of a sentence is the proposition expressed and the extension its truth-value.   Now assume the L is going to articulate the transcendental horizon T. 

The first question to ask is what are the names that refer to objects and entities, and what are the predicates that refer to classes of objects and entities?   Whereas a particular being is an object, it is not clear that the horizon of being is itself an entity or object.   But what is it?   Is it precisely that which is forgotten in any predicate of the predicate to the name?   This sounds sufficiently profound, but what could be actually said by saying that there is something that is not a being or thing but still nevertheless is somehow, and that this which is but is not any particular being is that which is forgotten in the very semantics of L? 

Now one might say that the particular dynamism toward Being itself is a series of events that could be specified in principle by names, and that the property of "driving beyond" refers to the class of those events comprising the dynamism.   On this construal, the dynamism and its salient properties could be in principle referred to by L,  But notice what can't be referred to?   It is precisely the term of the Vorgriff, the end or being towards which the dynamism flows. 

But I hear the objection.   Have you not in this proto-analysis presupposed a dualism between self and other, with the otherness of Being Itself now somehow existing outside the dynamnism as that to which the dynamism flows?   Don't you realize that it is precisely, as you earlier said, a continuum that exists between the dynamism and its terms, and thus between nature and grace?   But unfortunately pointing this out is no ultimate help at all to the semantic task.   Why?

The reason why is analogous to the problem Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus.   After he pointed out that language can have sense only when it refers to objects in the world, he raised the question of the meaningfulness of the assertions which themselves refer to the relation between language and world.   Obviously, they must be senseless.   Wittgenstein thus concludes the Tractatus with the suggestion that the propositions of the Tractatus are elucidations, that they are like the rungs on the ladder, the entire ladder of which must be thrown away when the relationship between world and language is rightly grasped.

Analogically here, the transcendental horizon of the graced natural dynamism towards being (T) grounds the very possibility of the language used to talk about that transcendental horizon.  In the human dynamism towards Being in its totality, the transcendental horizon T is known in the surpassing towards being.   However, since Being in its totality cannot be an other to the subject of the transcendental dynamism, Being in its totality becomes the face of Being in its totality, that is, the articulating of the transcendental structure presupposes the transcendental structure.   Language about being which grasps determinate being having the transcendental horizon as a condition cannot itself grasp indeterminate being, that is, it cannot grasp the transcendental structure having as its ultimate term the totality of being.

Nothing what I have said here should be deeply surprising.   Why would one expect language to be able to refer to something as inchoate an unthematic as the transcendental horizon of being?   My embryonic point here is simply this: If transcendentality is the ultimate location of God, then the infinite regress of transcendentality in knowing transcendentality is a problem for any language that attempts to state this.  Clearly, language L is not adequate to the task of referring to the transcendental horizon.   If this is so - - and I do know that much more argument is needed - - then hopes appear dim for a semantic realism with regard to transcendentality, and accordingly, for the robust truth of the existence and contour of transcendentality itself. 

Semantics and Correlative Theology

There was once a time when I did not worry too much about how talk of God and talk of the universe as such connected.   In those days I solidly subscribed to a correlative theology which linked the semantics of theological language to the semantics of human existential/phenomenological/ontological language. Theological truth and meaning had to do with human truth and meaning.   The language of each could be mapped to an appropriate background language such that the discourse of theology was commensurate with that of theology.   While the logical geography of fundamental ontology differed from that of theology, they could be compared.   Existential questions could be given theological answers, and theological answers would invite existential questions.

Over the years I have come to regard this effort as being more or less misguided.   It is not that existential questions cannot be correlated with religious answers, it is simply that when this is done, the religious answer correlated has a different meaning than it would have had were it not so correlated.   How is this so?

Religious and theological answers pertain to soteriology, and what is salvific with respect to our immediate situation in the universe is not likely the same thing as what is salvific when our immediate situation is worked up existentially-phenomenologically-orntologically.   (I realize that this statement needs a considerable amount of unpacking.)  A corollary to what I am saying is simply that a problem with the method of correlation is that it cannot save the one that correlates.  This method is to the philosophy of science what lived salvific immediacy is to the practice of science.

It is finally a question of semantics.   For C (the one correlating), existential question E has a definite meaning that can in some way be addressed by theological answer T.  E and T have more or less definite semantic conditions for C.  Think, however, about one who has not adopted the reflexive standpoint of C.  Let us call such a non-reflexive one U (standing for unable of willing to occupy the standpoint of C).  For U, T has different meaning and truth conditions than for C because the truth conditions for T are ontological - - one might better say 'ontic' here because I am talking about being not the be-ing of beings - - in a way that they are not for C.

How is this so?  Clearly, the truth conditions for T with respect to U are tied to what is the case in a way that T is not for C.  Accordingly for C, T is true just in case T obtains.  But this need not be so for C.  Here T is true just in case it is appropriately linked to E.   For U, T is true just in case a relationship R holds appropriately of some state of affairs S.   For C, T is true just in case a relationship R' hold appropriately of some religious or theological description D that is pertinent to E.  For U, T is true because of some reality that is what it is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.  This is an extensionalist  interpretation of T.  For C, since T is true just because there is a reality which is what it is because of human awareness, perception, conception or language, the description of this reality becomes the most important matter.   Now we have moved to an intensionalist context.   (This needs more unpacking as well.) 

If I have not made myself sufficiently clear in the proceeding paragraph, let me try again.   The theologian who believes there is some extra-linguistic, extra-subjective ontological situation that obtains from which one must be saved, will regard the meaning of that which saves to be of a different type than the theologian who does not believe this.   The move to the reflexive level is indeed a move out of the primary soteriological context.  The one making the move likely has reinterpreted the meaning of the soteriological context in ways that make it true that a real ontic answer no longer is necessary or warranted in addressing that context. 

The question of which we are dealing concerns the identity conditions of theological and religious statements.   What makes one theological proposition semantically identical to another?  Identical syntax does not an identical semantics entail, for theological propositions have different meanings within different contexts.   Semantics does not supervene upon syntax unless the syntax is defined to include the very form of life of the one using the syntax.   (One might then talk about a global supervenience of semantics upon syntax.)  The identity of theological propositions is clearly not externally related to the philosophical (ontological) context in which they find themselves and to which they are related.  The point is that the context of reflexive correlation is a very different context than immediate lived existence.

A related question of identity within theological semantics arises for the theologian who believes that the content of preaching Christ and Him crucified is somehow identical across various philosophical and metaphysical worldviews.   Wilhelm Hermann argued famously that metaphysics is irrelevant to theology.   That is to say, presumably, that the semantic identity of a certain set of theological statements is invariant across different ontological worldviews, across worldviews as different as nineteenth century materialism and teleological Aristotelianism.  The semantics of theological propositions are indifferent to the greater philosophical context, that is, to alternate sets of philosophical presuppositions.

But this cannot possibly be the case.  What a theological proposition means is fundamentally connected to the context in which it finds itself, that is, to the wider philosophical context.  It is very easy to see this is true, for the truth conditions of a theological proposition does in fact change across different ontological horizons.   Why? 

Imagine I hold that the proclamation that I am forgiven from my sins in spite of my sin is a performative utterance issuing in the perlocution of existential empowerment in the face of fundamental anxieties.   Clearly, the semantics of the declarative utterance is related to the context of a linguistic/existential structure of human existence.  The meaning of the declarative statement is not related to some kind of theological states of affairs, but rather to the human existential/linguistic structure.  In this way, one might say that the Word is what it does.

However, the critical question is and has always been, is the Word only what it does.   Is the perlocution itself the result of a belief about the world, or can the perlocution happen without such a belief?   It has always seemed clear to me that the possibility of the perlocution occurring is tied to human belief in a very proximate way.  Without the belief being the belief that it is, it is not the case that the perlocution is the perlocution that it is.   Responding to the gospel declaration is not like hearing the words "excuse me."  While the conventions of the social situation are present in the former, they do not determine the use and response to the gospel address in a similar way.

But the deeper question has to do with truth conditions themselves.   If one says "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself," is it not quite different to say that the truth conditions are that God is in Jesus Christ, or alternately that they are somehow in the existential empowerment of the listener?   Consider how different these two truth conditions are:

1)  'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' is true if and only if God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. 

2)  'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' is true if and only if the utterance of 'God is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself' effects a particular hearer H (appropriately structured so as to be effected by the utterance), in such a way as to have existential empowerment of an appropriate kind, 

While one could spend a great deal of time and effort trying to clarify (2), it should be apparent what the salient difference between (1) and (2) is.   The meaning of the latter has to be defined relationally with respect to the human linguistic/existential structure; the meaning of the former can be defined by its relationship to a world that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.

The Big Problem for Lutheran Confessionalism

Thinkers like to think about things towards which progress can be made. Philosophers of a materialist or physicalist persuasion find it relatively easy to understand how properties at higher levels might covary as a function of properties at lower levels.

For instance, biological properties distribute as a function of chemical properties, which distribute as a function of molecular properties, which themselves distribute as a function of atomic properties or subatomic properties. While there are some problems relating levels, the big problem concerns how it is that psychological properties covary with respect to neurophysiological properties.

While we may have no difficulties in general in countenancing a view of things where neurophysiological actualizations are finally metaphysically dependent upon mircrophysical causation, the notion that thoughts and decisions might ultimately metaphysically depend upon mircophysical processes is disquieting. While moderate reductions seem unproblematic throughout physical reality, the countenancing of reductions between the mental and physical involves some rather paradoxical claims, e.g., the notion that my writing these words in this blog right now themselves metaphysically depend somehow upon microphysical actualizations of various kinds.

While some philosophers here warmly embrace the "downward causality" of the mental into the physical on a mereological basis, the fundamental problem remains: If mental event m1 causes neurophysiological actualizations p2, then it seems that m1 must either itself have a physical realization or not. If it has no physical realization, then the advocate of downward causation must finally advocate a substance dualism - - something they want to avoid - - or she or he must admit that the physical realizer of m1 - - let us call this p1 -- itself causes p2, and there is no real downward causation. So the big problem is simply this: How is genuine freedom possible for an agent when the agent and his/her acts are metaphysically dependent upon microphysics? The problem is so big and intractable, that philosophers generally work on easier problems, providing in other ways the work that can advance a physicalist agenda.

We confessional Lutherans also have a problem that is so big that we really don't want to entertain it. We want to work on things that can be worked upon profitably, e.g,, Law/Gospel matters, not problems that seem intractable, problems that pertain to the truth of our theological position.

All the standard paths are open for the Lutheran wanting to talk about truth, of course. One could say that proposition p is true if and only if p describes or expresses the feelings, attitudes or the existential orientation of the one so uttering p. Or one might improve this somewhat by saying that p is true if and only if it liberates from sin and grants the freedom for the future (whatever precisely might by meant by "sin" and "freedom for the future" in this context). Or one might say that p is true if and only if it functions as a rule for the specification and use of other utterances by a particular linguistic community. Or perhaps one is less trendy and say that p is true if and only if p obtains. But then one must ask the rule specifying the condition for p obtaining.

Readers will understand that this last option asks that we think about the truth of p in broadly "cognitive-propositional" terms. For one stating that 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself' is true if and only if God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, the question is what conditions must be met in order for God to be in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. This is not an easy question, as we shall see. One could say that that there is an individual God, and individual Christ, and that the two are related by the first being in the second. But this does not help too much either, for what are the conditions for "being in"?

At this point, the discussion of the last few decades about Christian inclusivism, exclusivism and pluralism becomes relevant. One could say that there is some kind of linguistic commensurability across religions such that the same objects and events can be in principle picked out in the various religious worlds. On this view, the Christin and Buddhist would presumably disagree about whether God was in Christ obtains, but they would both understand what it means. However, if a particular kind of holism holds, then the Buddhist could not state that "God was in Christ" in the same way as the Christian, and thus the fact that it obtains for one and not the other would not entail that the very same thing would need to obtain for both in order for truth to be predicated.

The point is a basic one between internalism and externalism. Are there conditions that must be met in order for a proposition to correctly apply to a situation, conditions that are internal to the proposition in question (and its relevant context), or are they external to it? What I am asking is simply whether or not there can be some "bird's eye" factual perspective above and beyond the practico-linguistic worlds occupied by adherents of the various world religions. While this question of the priority of facts over language arises within philosophy generally, theologians must pay especially intense attention to it because, in some sense, much of what the theologian is trying to talk about is beyond what can be said to be factual in any ordinary sense. The theologian who embraces externalism must seemingly hold, as John Hick suggests, to a view that Ultimate Referent of religious and theological language lies beyond the linguistic worlds of any religion and that it is a noumenal reality to which the phenomenal fields of meaning of the various traditions point.

Lutherans do not often enter the fray on what many would regard as a "philosophy of religion" concern, but it is simply the case that some position on the inclusivism, eclusivism, pluralism issue is more cogent and plausible than others, and must thereby be adopted - - either explicitly or implicitly.   While the relationship between grace and nature in some of the Catholic theological tradition sets up nicely for inclusivist views like those of Rahner, Lutheran emphasis on the discontinuity between these two seem to block any argument for being an "anonymous Lutheran."  A tendency towards exclusivism seems to be in the Lutheran theological DNA, but clearly we cannot easily argue like seventeenth century Lutherans did before the "Copernican revolution" of realizing that Christian faith is one belief system among the other world religions, and that the Lutheran take on Christianity does not predominate even there.

To hold to religious pluralism is much easier when one works with an alethia account of truth as unveiling, rather than an account that supposes there is an objective reality identified by Christians as the Triune God.  To the theological realist, of course, truth is not promiscuous, and it is predicated of those propositions that tend to represent most accurately that which can never be known.   (While the paradox here makes this problem seems acute, it is no worse than the problem of the external world generally.)

I believe that the big problem I describe here should be regarded as such by any Lutheran thinking through the options on the table.   We cannot simply decide not to engage the issue.  To do that would be an example of the quietism we have so long been accused of sponsoring.