Tuesday, December 08, 2015

God as an Agent of Theophysical Causation

I. Introduction to the Problem

At first glance, the phrase ‘theophysical causation’ seems a bit abstruse, and the appending of the term ‘agent’ only makes matters worse. Sometimes people criticize me for using locutions not often found in Lutheran theology. There is some justification for that, of course, if one were only wanting to plow the same field. Why use different equipment if one knows one can get the field plowed with what one already has?

What I want to do, however, is not do the same thing that so many capable Lutheran theologians have already done. I want to ask some questions and make some observations that come from a position inside Lutheran theology that nonetheless takes seriously the concerns of philosophy: especially semantics and ontology. The first deals with questions of meaning and truth, while the second is concerned with the question of being. Our first order today is to address the first semantic issue. What is it that we are talking about when speaking about “theophysical causation.”

The phrase ‘theophysical causation’ connotes the putative causal relationship holding between God and the physical universe. A causal relationship is one in which one of the terms in the relation is said to produce, generate, or otherwise bring about the other term in the relation. Moreover, it claims that the second would not have happened had the first not occurred.

Thinking about causality immediately involves one in a complex set of issues, most of which we cannot attend to today. It is important to see at least one thing: Causality is likely a modal relationship. If ‘A causes B’, it is likely that B obtaining just in case A does is not merely contingent, that is, that it just happens to be the case. Rather A has suitable power to produce B in a set of conditions. All of these conditions being the same, A must deliver B. Accordingly, if A were to happen, B would happen, and were A not to happen, B would not have happened.

To say that God creates, redeems and sustains the universe prima facie to use straightforward causal language. To create the universe is to bring about a state of affairs (the universe) that would not have been brought about were God not so to have created. The same causal power is loaded into phrases like ‘redeems’, ‘saves’, and ‘sustains’ and even ‘inspires’. Anything that God really does - - that is any effect of God that is not merely metaphorical - - must putatively be given a causal analysis. Accordingly, to say that God in Christ reconciles the universe unto Himself, is to say that God causally brings about a state of affairs of the universe having the relational property of ‘being reconciled by God’. Simply put, God causes it to be the case that the universe, once unreconciled with God, is now reconciled with Him.

But what does any of this have to do with the question of preaching Christ, the theme of our conference? Clearly, in preaching it seems that we do not attend to metaphysical notions of causality. Why talk about causality here. Cannot we simply preach Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to do the rest?

Of course, we must preach Christ, and surely we say that the Holy Spirit works faith in the believer. But I want to ask a question not asked by Lutherans as directly as I will do so today: Is this true? Does the Holy Spirit do anything at all when He is at work? In other words, does the Holy Spirit truly possess theophysical causal agency? If not, then the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, could not thus bring it about that the sinner hears and does the Word of God as it is proclaimed by fallible lips.

The question of theophysical causality in Lutheran theology has been safely tucked away since the late 18th century. It simply has not been an important question for Lutherans concerned with the theology of the cross and justification by grace through faith. Lutherans have talked a great deal about the salvific significance of Christ without talking much about how God causally brings about this salvation.

Today I want to argue that we Lutherans can no longer afford to keep the causal question at bay, but that we Lutherans clearly have a challenge in articulating a notion of divine causality that is up to the task of undergirding claims of the Holy Spirit’s work and Christ’s real presence in the justification and sanctification of the believer. Before I can specifically address these two issues, however, it is important for us to get clearer on the notion and putative problem of divine causality. In order to do this, I will briefly discuss the so-called mind/body problem as it emerged in the early Enlightenment and developed in the western tradition. This problem, I believe, helps us understand the problem of theophysical causality.

II. The Problem of Theophysical Causation

It is indeed instructive to look to the mind/body problem in order to find an analogue to the problem of theophysical causation. Famously, Descartes (1596-1650) held that there is a domain of physical substance and a domain of mental substance, and that changes of physical substances are caused by physical alterations, and changes of mental substance are caused by mental alterations. For Descartes, the question of how a physical event causes a mental event, or vice versa, is a particularly difficult one.

The problem is that all of nature acts in a deterministic way according to mechanical laws, and that this seemingly leaves no room for the human soul or mind. Descartes wanted to assert that there was such a soul or mind, but that it is not physical. The problem therefore is simply this: How is spiritual human freedom possible in a physical mechanical universe? While Descartes brilliantly laid out the mind/body problem, his “solution” is not persuasive. Descartes claimed that the physical and the spiritual came together at one point; he held that the causal joint between the physical and spiritual was the pineal gland.

His dualism is simple enough. The domain of the physical -- the set of all physical objects, properties, events, relations and states of affairs – is closed, and that of the mental –the set of all mental states, properties, events, experiences, and relations – is also closed except for somewhere in the region of the brain where the mental and physical meet. This is the place where human willing causally affects the movement of the body, and blows to the body are experienced as pain.

While Descartes “solution” eventuated in more problems than it solved, his statement of the problem remains classic. The body (including the brain) is a different thing than the mind (our thoughts and experiences). While the former is public, outer, subject to mechanical laws, the latter is private, inner, and subject only to psychological laws. Because the problem of the causal joint connecting the mental and physical is so intractable, various trajectories of solution were attempted after Descartes.

Leibniz (1646-1716) argued that there could be no causal connection between the inner and outer, and that God was necessary to correlate the experiences of windowless monads. Malebranche (1638-1715) argued that the experience of mental pain was the occasion for God to will the movement of a physical part. Spinoza (1632-1677) claimed that there was a neutral substance (God) that could be understood according to two aspects, or His two attributes: mind and body. For Spinoza, the same event can be described either physically or mentally. The three positions of dualism were known as the theory of pre-established harmony, Occasionalism, and identity or “two aspects” theory.

While Descartes and the subsequent tradition were busy trying to work out the problems of dualism, the German philosopher Kant (1724-1804) made a startling claim that had a very powerful effect on the subsequent tradition. Kant argued that the categories of substance and causality are ways that the mind in a rule-oriented fashion gives definite shape to the world. While there is a realm of the noumenal, such “things-in-themselves” are not knowable as substances causally connected with other substances. While empirical experience is made up of sensibility organized by concepts, putative metaphysical reality has no empirical intuitions attending it that can be organized. Hence reflection on such reality, which takes us beyond the bounds of possible experience, can never give theoretical knowledge. We can know nothing of the noumenal, though we can think regularly and cogently about it. Mental substance, as Descartes conceived it, cannot be known for Kant, because there is no experience of the substance of the “I’. While we have an awareness of a succession of awarenesses, and can thus posit what Kant called the “bare I think,” such a transcendental subject can never be known. The concept of the soul becomes, for Kant, a mere regulative ideal of pure reason.

The problem of mental causation takes a rather interesting form in Kant. While from the standpoint of pure theoretical reason, each and every publicly observable situation can be understood deterministically in terms of previous physical states and events, the same is not true of the mental. Here the categories of substance and causality do not directly apply. Accordingly, one can posit freedom from the standpoint of the noumenal, even though there is determinism from the standpoint of the phenomenal. Human beings are accordingly both free and determined.

While vague dualistic notions survived throughout the nineteenth century, in the twentieth century considerable more clarity was given to the mind/body problem. Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) argued about 60 years ago that talk of the mental and talk of the physical had definite criteria, and the criteria is behavioral. Accordingly, ‘Sally has a keen mind’ is true if and only if when Sally is stimulated in particular ways, she will respond in “keenly” appropriate ways. The attempt therefore was to reduce talk of the mind to sets of stimulus-response conditionals. For Ryle, mental causation is not a metaphysical fact, but rather a way of speaking based upon a set of behaviors. Ryle effectively reduced mental talk to talk of behavioral dispositions.

After Ryle, it became quite fashionable not to be a mind/body dualist. Most theorists chose the road of physicalism. All that exists are physical objects. Eliminativists thought it best to get rid of mental talk altogether if all that exists is the physical. Most physicalists, however, were less demanding. Talk of the mental was useful, and some could even countenance mental properties. Many of these held that the mental supervened on the physical, but was nevertheless not reducible to it. The essential idea is that supervenience offers a constraint in how mental properties are distributed. Two molecule-by-molecule replica brains will be in the same mental state, though the same mental state could be multiply realized in different brain states. There were also identity theorists who held that the brain happening, no matter how described, just is the mental happening, no matter how described. Such identity theorists survive now as advocates of non-reductive physicalism, the thesis that each and every mental event just is some physical event or other, but that the complexity of the mental web cannot be reduced to some set of physical entities.

Advocates of mind/body supervenience oftentimes speak of “downward causation,” the notion that a mental event qua mental event can be said to downwardly cause a physical event or a set of physical actualizations. Much here depends upon one’s views of mereology, that discipline dealing with the relationship between parts and wholes. Just as the whole tornado causes the physical actualizations of its swirling parts, so does a mental state or set of states cause neurophysical actualizations in the brain. Critically important is what is meant by the phrase, “mental state qua mental state.” How is it that a mental event in so far as it is a mental event can cause physical actualizations? This way of putting things does sound dualistic, and if the mind qua mind is supposed to cause the distribution of properties in the brain qua brain, then we seem to be back to the problem of the causal nexus between disparate domains of being. But this is not how theorists in the twentieth century hoped that the discussion would proceed.

The upshot of this is that we have a trajectory of reflection that wants to take seriously the thesis of physicalism and yet find room for a free mind in this physical universe. If this mind is not to be merely epiphenomenal, a set of experiences caused by the physical but not causally able to affect the physical, then it seems like we have to give a coherent analysis of mental causation. But this is much more difficult than it may have first appeared.

It is now time to turn our attention to the main problem, the connection between the divine and the non-divine. As we reflect upon the nature of this putative connection, it should become apparent how helpful our mind/body reflections have been.

III. The God/Universe problem, Causality and the Problem of Divine Causation

Classical theism, like Cartesian dualism, claims that there exist two disparate ontological regions: God and that which is not God. Whereas the problem in mind/body dualism is how the mental can causally affect the physical, and vice versa, the problem in traditional theism is how it is possible for God causally to affect the universe. Where is the causal nexus?

Is it not the case that the universe is causally closed, that is, for each and every event in the universe, it is caused by other events in the universe, and for all events in the universe they cause only other events in the universe? Just as the problem of the conservation of energy and the problem of causal overdetermination - - the problem of claiming that there is a concurrent cause of an event when only one cause is needed to explain it -- arises for Cartesian dualism, so too do both problems arise for classical theism. If the universe is causally closed, no energy seeps in or seeps out of it. But without energy there can be no causal connection. Moreover, each and every event in the universe is causally explained by other events in the universe. How can one hold that God is causing anything in the universe, if other events in the universe explain the event completely?

Spinoza, who, as we have seen, held to the two aspect view on the mind/body problem, advocated a similar view with respect to God and the universe. For Spinoza, God just is the universe, and the universe just is God. However, there are two quite different descriptions of this one thing. Spinoza’s pantheism was clearly not a road that many Christian theologians wished to take, though his work profoundly influenced the great German theologian and philosopher, Hegel (1770-1831).

Hegel assumed Kant’s view that one could not ever know that God is a substance that causally affects other substances in the universe. While Kant had claimed that the noumenal thing-in-itself cannot be known behind the phenomenon, Hegel averred that Kant should give up on the thing-in-itself entirely since it was in principle unknowable. Accordingly, Hegel rejected dualism entirely. Echoing Spinoza, Hegel argued that God was profoundly and intimately connected with the world. However, this connection was not causal. For Hegel, there was nothing in the world that was not God, thought God nonetheless was more than the sum total of the world. This position known as panentheism is not new in the history of theology, and rightly claims that the Neo-Platonic notion that mind, world-soul and the universe emanate from the One is the ultimate precursor to Hegel.

But just as post-Kantian developments in thinking about mind tended towards a rejection of dualism - - even though dualism nonetheless emerged as the default position by the end of the nineteen century - - post-Kantian developments in reflecting upon God issued in non-dualist theological positions that nonetheless by the end of the nineteenth century still found dualism ensconced as the “received view.” With theism, just as with mind/body dualism, the problem of the causal joint arises. How is it possible to connect to disparate ontological domains? Is the connection of the nature of one of the domains, of the nature of the other, or is it constituted as some ontological mixture of the two? How is a causal connection between the divine and the non-divine possible without violating causal closure principles? How is it possible not to commit the fallacy of causal overdetermination?

Contemporary thinking on the problem of the relation of God and the universe oftentimes follow routes eerily similar to Descartes’ positing the pineal gland as connecting brain and mind. The suggestions have not been too promising.

· Perhaps God’s causal activity effects the collapse of the Schödinger wave equation of probabilities into a concrete quantum occasion. This would not violate the determinism of the wave equation but still allow for divine influence at the level of particular concretions. But how would this be possible without introducing energy at the quantum level?

· Perhaps God’s causal activity is found in his effects at the time of the conception of new life. There is, in fact, not a set of deterministic equations that can predict what will be the properties of a baby given knowledge of the relevant properties of the parents. Maybe the seeming element of freedom here is due to God’s introduction of new information. But this limits God’s causal hand to a very limited area of physical reality.

· Finally, one might argue that God can adjust the “boundary conditions” in a system such that a different system trajectory ensues that would not have happened absent the divine’s action. But again it is difficult to see how God can produce a change in boundary conditions without introducing information into the system.

Of course, there remains that hallowed effort of Aquinas and much of the tradition to distinguish primary and secondary causality, and argue that God is the primary cause of everything that is caused, but that God’s causality is mediated by secondary causes. Hence, while it appears that the swinging of the ax caused the vase to break, God’s productive agency is in the axe’s swing, as it is in everything else. The problem with this is that of overdetermination. What added causal power does God’s putative primary causality afford over the swinging of the ax? While it is not inconsistent to say that God’s power is involved in each and every thing, it is incoherent and seeming violates the principle of parsimony: If x can be explained by y, then why explain it by y and z?

We see now the basic outline of the theophysical causal problem. How can an immaterial, non-physical being causally produce event within physical reality without violating conservation and causal closure principles? But there is an even greater problem for a Christian theologian. How is it possible for the Triune God causally to affect the universe? How is this possible when incarnation is central to who God is?

If God is truly three in one, and is present as the transcendent and providential Father, the proximate and historical Son, and the Spirit of subjective agency within all Christians, then God’s causal joint will need to be manifest in three distinctive ways. As the providential Father, God’s causal agency creates the universe and sustains it in being. As the proximate Son, God’s causal agency has saved human beings by bringing about both a change in the Heart of God and an elevation of human existence generally. As the Spirit of subjective agency, God’s causal agency has indwelled within the hearts of human beings and has generated faith in the hearts of man and woman.

In the next sections we will forego investigating the Father’s causal nexus with creation. The causal question, when it arises, does so normally with respect to the order of creation. In what follows, I concern myself much more with the order of redemption. How is divine causal agency possible for the Son and the Holy Spirit?

IV. Preaching Christ and the Problem of the Incurvatus in se

Preaching has always been of critical importance in the Lutheran theological tradition, particularly law and gospel preaching. This has been so in the Lutheran Confessions and in the subsequent tradition.

On one level law and gospel preaching is not difficult to grasp. The presupposed ontology of law and gospel preaching in the sixteenth century include the truth of the following.

· There is a God.

· There is a sinful universe.

· God loves the sinful universe so much that He wants to reconcile it to Him.

· God sends part of Himself, his Son, to effect a “happy exchange:” the sins of the whole world are put on Christ, and the sinlessness of Christ is communicated to everyone in the world.

· God’s law is an original divine intentionality that shows human beings what ought to be the case.

· God’s wrath is a direct response of there existing in the universe that which ought not to be: human sin.

· The gospel is effected by God’s love, a gospel that reconciles human beings to God.

Notice what is presupposed: God exists; God has intentionality; God brings it about that human beings are reconciled with God. Indeed, the sixteenth century theologians would have no problems saying that there is some being referred to by ‘God’, and that this being causally brings it about that human beings are reconciled with God. What they presupposed is that there is a God and that God is causally active in the world.

If both the law and the gospel presuppose the existence of God and His causal efficacy, why are those who would talk about theophysical causality theologically suspect? Why do so many lovers of the traditional distinction between law and gospel have so little time for philosophers and philosophical categories? If proper understanding of law and gospel presuppose a particular kind of ontology, then why do Lutherans not speak openly about this ontology?

The problem, not surprisingly, goes again back to Kant. As we have already seen, Kant holds that we have no epistemic justification to suppose that the categories of substance and causality properly apply to God. Post-Kantian options thus tried to speak of God in non-ontological and non-causal ways. For Schleiermacher, God is the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence. Hegel believes that God is being God where thought is thinking itself. Ritschl and Hermann understood that talk of God is ultimately about the moral dimension of human beings. But what happens to the understanding of law and gospel in these post-Kantian developments? It seems that it is expunged in the face of good moral and ethical teaching.

After the time of Ritschl and his School, the work of Heidegger (1888-1976) and later Gadamer (1900 – 2002) provided a philosophical foundation for a new theological direction. The idea was simple enough: Human be-ing is a particular ontological structure that is filled in ontically for each person. (Ontology deals with the form or structure of human existence, its significance, while the ontic concerns the content or that which is specifiable within human existence.) Heidegger famously argued that humans already find themselves ontologically already in a world, a “structure of significances.” Humans have a particular way of dwelling with their world because human being is being-unto-death. In being being-unto-death, human being can either hide freedom and live according to “the dictatorship of das Man,” of can take hold of being, making decisions freely, and living authentically and anxiously with the results of those decisions.

Heidegger was interested in the phenomenon of the “forgetfulness of being,” and how to live authentically in the face of that phenomenon by “owning” one’s existence. What passes as “salvation,” for Heidegger, is an anxious walk into the future, resolutely holding on to one’s free choices and in this way becoming who one deeply is in the face of the anxiety of death. While there is a type of “fall” and a type of “saving” in Heidegger’s work, he cannot be interpreted generally as offering a Christian problem with a Christian solution. For that we need to turn to the work of Bultmann.

Within the context of his time and culture Bultmann was not a radical theologian. Learning his theology from the great liberal theologians, and thus heavily influenced by Kant, Bultmann searched for a way to give an intellectual undergirding to the preaching of Jesus the Christ. His so-called program of demythologization was not particularly new in Germany. In many ways his was a very confessionally orthodox and conservative program. Turning his back on the moralisms of Ritschl and his School, Bultmann wanted to return to the Reformation’s understanding of the proclamation of the Gospel as offering saving significance. Heidegger’s philosophical analysis of human existence seemed to provide just the ticket. For Bultman, the problem of life is not the “forgetfulness of being” but rather sin, a curvature back in upon oneself that denies the possibility of faith and a future with hope. Preaching the gospel for Bultmann effects a liberation from such sin, and a turning with openness towards God and the future. The preaching of the gospel thus empowers and saves instead of uplifts or instructs.

Bultmann could assume that human existence is indeed constituted by structures of significance that are oriented towards death and determination rather than God and freedom. Living “according to the flesh” is a living incurvatus; living “according to the Sprit” is an ecstatic living outside oneself in freedom and possibility. In the proclamation of the Word something truly happens. The particular content of meanings that is one’s existence shifts. One finds oneself no longer controlled by the past, but now open to faith and future. Gospel proclamation transforms existentiell living.

With this work from Bultmann, the movement towards hermeneutical theology is established. The latter claimed that Bultmann was not concerned enough about history. Hermeneutical theology emphasized that human existence is always situated such that the proclamation of grace from the outside must already have a pre-understanding of being upon which to be understood. While the specifics of how this works takes us outside the scope of this paper, the fundamental focus of hermeneutical theology is this: The Word goes forth in the preaching event, and human beings respond to that Word.

Although German theologians did not make this move at the time, one might call locutions of the preached Word, locutions that do not state what is the case, but rather bring about some effect, perlocutionary or performative utterances. John Austin (1911-1960) very famously used the term - - though he seems to abandon it later on.

Christian theologians who wish to privilege preaching have a penchant to speak of performative utterances. Oswald Bayer’s 2008 book, Martin Luther: A Contemporary Interpretation, makes much of performative utterances, saying that proclamation in this way is at the root of Luther’s theology. The idea is simply this:

1) ‘The cat is on the mat’ states what is the case. It is a constative judgment.

2) “I now pronounce you man and wife’ brings a new reality into being. It is a performative utterance.

While Austin and his student John Searle did not argue the point clearly and consistently, one might hold that performative utterances somehow are of a different order of speaking entirely, an order where, unlike with constative judgments, truth is not an issue. But as I have argued elsewhere, this is chimerical.[1]

It is important to note that while a performative judgment can be felicitous, according to Austin, it cannot be true. Constative propositions can be true, but performative utterances cannot be. Why? Performative utterances do not state what is the case, but brings about the case in their speaking. But here the problem becomes very acute. How can theology survive without stating the truth? How did it ever spread without proclaiming the truth? In an effort to save theological judgments from criticism of the special sciences, the language of theology gets insulated from the entire question of truth. This has had, as we all know, disastrous consequences.

The idea, however, is clear enough: Preaching effects performances that change the life-world of the listener. The person hearing is changed in the hearing not because he or she hears and recognizes the propositions spoken as true, but simply because the proclamations become true for the hearer in the hearing. This way of proceeding presupposes a phenomenology of truth as disclosure or “un-concealing.” When language is spoken, something comes out of the darkness and shows itself in the light. The proclaimed gospel “lights up” our being and changes us as the content of our significations are themselves changed. Preaching effects a transformation of the context of significances that constitute our “world.”

In this way of going about things, the incurvatus spoken about by the Reformers is read phenomenologically. One’s experience is to be turned back upon the self, and not oriented towards God and His grace. What is important to see, however, is that while the Reformers could talk about a unexperienced incurvatus, this makes no sense for twentieth century phenomenological thinking. The incurvatus is finally constituted phenomenologically. There can thus be no incurvatus without human beings experiencing themselves in an incurvatus way.

V. The Problem of an Existential/Phenomenological Understanding of the incurvatus in the Post-modern Context

We live in a time of radical pluralism. Competing religions, value systems, worldviews and even different approaches to truth characterize our time. While philosophers opine that truth has a definite structure and criteria, many simply operate as if truth is simply what people regard to be so. When I began teaching 25 years ago I asked my students three questions:

· If two people disagree on what is beautiful, must one be wrong?

· If two people disagree on what is good, must one be wrong?

· If two people disagree on what is true, must one be wrong?

In the early days, almost all students would claim “no” to the first, about 67% “no” to the second, and maybe a handful “no” to the last. In other words, most of my students in 1987 were relativists (and subjectivists) about aesthetics, about 33% were relativists on ethics, and almost all believed in objective truth. While beauty was in the eye of the behold in 1987, truth was not.

By the time I finished university teaching in 2010, things had changed. Almost all students still denied any type of aesthetic objectivism, of course. But now 85% or more denied ethical objectivity, and almost two out of three denied any objectivity to truth. What happened?

There are many reasons for this, and we can’t enter into the complex issues involved in this paper. Know, however, that the general influence of phenomenology and the social sciences has been important. Heidegger’s phenomenological trajectory began with the assumption that truth is fundamentally an experience, a bringing of something out of concealment. Obviously if A and B have different truth experiences, different things can be true for them. A can have a phenomenological experience of truth with regard to X, but B fails to have it. Thus X is “true for” A, but not for B.

From a sociological point of view, moreover, something can be regarded by a culture as true, but not so regarded by another culture. Thus, two people disagreeing about what is true must not each both be wrong.

We live in a time of confusion with respect to truth, and for many, what truth is simply is what one’s culture or experience say it is. It was Protagoras (480-411 BC) who reportedly said, “Man is the measure of all things; of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not.” What is lost in this, of course, is the classical distinction between appearance and reality, the distinction enshrined in western philosophy a century after Protagoras wrote. Just because P appears to be true for A, it does not follow that A is true. But notice that the phenomenological starting point collapses the distinction: Whatever appears to be true simply is true. The same happens with the sociological starting point. What a culture takes to be true at a time really is true at that time. Accordingly, it was true that the sun went around the earth in the Middle Ages, but not true later on.

Join these confusions about truth with our general pragmatic orientation and all kinds of problems arise. For the pragmatist, truth is “what works.” If a theory has great explanatory and predictive power, if it is useful for human beings in relevant ways, then the theory can be regarded as true. Notice what happens when this orientation is linked to an existential-ontological horizon? What becomes true is what works for the individual at the horizon of his or her existence. If the individual is freed or liberated from the fallenness of his/her existence - - however, such fallenness is defined - - then that which frees the individual becomes “true” for him or her.

Paul Tillich (1885-1965) very famously argued that religious symbols are true to the degree that they existentially empower; they are true when they appropriately determine one’s being or non-being. When one is granted “being and the meaning of being” by a religious symbol, that symbol is true. ‘Jesus is the Christ’ is true in that it existentially empowers the individual in the face of existence.

As I have suggested, good preaching can pass the “truth test” when these underlying assumptions are in play. Accordingly, to say that Christ forgives is not to appeal to any causal agency in Christ, but merely to say that Christ is a symbol that existentially empowers. After Kant, divine agency was figured in such a way as not to assert there is a substance existing apart from us having causal powers. Kant taught us that causality is always a for us affair. Reflecting upon this a moment, one understands that there can be no divine causality without human existence.

Now there is no doubt that the last two hundred years has been dominated by the Kantian paradigm in theology. Within that general paradigm some very good theology has been done. However, for many reasons, both philosophical and theological, I believe that this paradigm is dying. Unfortunately, I cannot address the philosophical problems with the paradigm today.

Theologically, however, it was always problematic to begin with anthropological facts about us, and move to what is possible with respect to God based upon that anthropological/epistemological framework. It is far more in keeping with the Christian tradition to begin with the assertion that there is God, and then to think through human options on the basis of this divine reality. Far too, we have tried to make sense of God on the basis of what we know about ourselves. But what if we were to break through the paradigm and begin with the reality of God, the reality of the Triune God, and then seek to make sense of ourselves on the basis of the reality of that truth?

God is Triune; three persons in one Being. As we have already alluded to, all three persons of the Trinity prima facie have causal powers. God the Father creates, Christ the Son redeems, and the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies. These are all causal terms. While one could read them metaphorically, there seem to be very good reasons not to. What are they?

With respect to mental causation Jaegwon Kim has appealed to Samuel Alexander’s dismissal of epiphenomenalism in this trenchant phrase he terms “Alexander’s Dictum:” To be is to have causal powers. If a mental state has no causal power then it is not really real. To state that something is, it must make a difference to what happens in the universe. While the nineteenth century’s penchant for idealism would allow thinkers to give ontological status to non-causally real things, this is not possible in the twentieth century. Oddly, the same culture that is pluralistic on truth, believes nonetheless in science, and is quite interested in thinking through causal questions. The natural sciences have given us wonderful causal maps.

As it turns out, people of religious leaning are concerned about causality as well. Indeed, those who are yearning for a Savior are interested in finding a casually efficacious Savior, a Savior who make something the case that would not have been the case without Him so making.

VI. The Importance of Causation in Theology

There simply is no salvation without causation! When one backs up and removes the Kantian lens, it is clearly apparent that this is true. How can one be “saved” from the powers of sin, death and the power of the devil unless there is some be-ing happening that is causally efficacious?

While the causal question in the sciences has always been at the fore, for a very long time in theology -- because of the distinction in Neo-Kantianism between scientific judgments and “value judgments” - - the area of value, which includes the domain of theology, was insulated from the causal questions of the sciences. Jesus’ teachings in Ritschl’s school were certainly worthy of emulation, but the question of the real causal power of the Christ remained marginal and underdeveloped.

However, if we leave behind the landscape of idealism and engage the world as realists - - those who would say that entities, events and causal relations exist outside of us - - we understand that we can no longer regard the symbol of ‘the power of God’ simply as a symbol the can inculcate existential/phenomenological power. So let us return now to the question of preaching Christ: Can one effectively preach Christ without assuming causal agency?

In answering this, we are inexorably driven to ask the question of grounds. When I hear in the preacher’s mouth that my sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, I ask myself, “But is it so?” Now, there are many who would say that this is the wrong response. If I had actually heard the proclamation, I need not ask for grounds. The Word its reality; it donates what is. Moses convicts me of my failings and Christ announces his blessings. It is all first order proclamation. Years ago Robert Schlarleman compared the first-person gospel address to the phrase, ‘Take heart’. This utterance is clearly performative. It liberates and makes free. Is not the desire to seek grounds misguided and ultimately indicative of a loss of faith?

But here is the problem. For many denizens of the early 21st century, one simply cannot hear the pure gospel proclamation without asking the question of truth. In a world of vastly conflicting claims to truth, those truly serious about salvation today are not that much different than their counterparts in late antiquity. Which of the available competing religious claims is true? Which one is worthy upon which to stake one’s life?

But how could one ever know which is true? We could claim that there is a domain of written revelation to which we can appeal that guarantees truth. But this way is not the way of those who have learned, understood and applied the historical-critical methodology. One could simply say that we have an experience of the risen Christ in the preaching, and this experience itself vouchsafes the truthfulness of the proclamation. In doing this, however, we have a problem, for if the proclamation eventuates in a certain experience for A but not for B, we really have no grounds to say that a particular experience should have happened for B as well. If the proclamation strikes one, then it is gospel; if not, then it is not.[2]

It is instructive, I think, to reflect upon the likely causal map that many would draw concerning the claim that the reality of the preached Christ determines the normativity of the attesting text. One drawing such a map would merely point out that person A has a particular genetic temperament that in conjunction with his past experiences has eventuated in him being in a particular causal situation such that the proclamation or declamation of a particular phrase or set of phrases with a particular inflection causally produces a mental state and an appropriate behavioral trajectory in the hearer. That is to say, A stimulated X-ly by words of Scripture or sermon brings it about that were A would respond Y-ly in particular situations. Though theology oftentimes runs from such reductionism, thinking reductionistic thoughts can help theology clarify what claims are actually being made. In the example just given, it would seem that all of the causal action could in principle be specified at the behavioral, mental and finally neural levels.

Now what happens when A becomes aware of this fact, of the fact that the causal chain that can be drawn is a physical one? Would A respond in the same way were he to know that this could be causally explained physically, and that we need not appeal to divine causation? Would A regard the proclamation of Christ as true were he to be able in principle causally to explain his affective and behavioral response to the sermon? What happens to A when hearing the gospel proclamation knowing that the only causal chain at work is a natural one? Does not the realization by A that there is no causal agency outside physical agency change how A reacts to the causal stimulation?

Consider this example: Bob is suffering from terminal illness and hears the pastor proclaim at the bedside that he (Bob) will be resurrected in the flesh just as Jesus was. Bob’s immediate response is an experience of peace in the face of death. But would not the contour of this experience change if Bob were to think through the cause of his experience and conclude that there is only a physical chain of causality here? How could this knowledge not change the contour of Bob’s response?

Lutheran theology since the time of Kant has prided itself in overcoming the dualism of nature and supernature. Compare now the natural causal chain in the above example with the classical, pre-Kantian Lutheran account. The preacher preaches the Gospel and the Word proclaimed. The Holy Spirit causally brings it about that the believer truly hears the Gospel and actually responds in way she would not have done were it not for the case that the Spirit was at work. The Spirit’s causal activity is part of the works of the Holy Trinity outside itself. The effect of this causal activity is that the proclaimed Word produces faith. The Holy Spirit brings it about the hearer of the Word believes the Gospel, the Gospel that claims that Christ has truly bought about the forgiveness of sins through his death and resurrection.

Moreover, this Christ, the eternal second Person of the Trinity, lives even now. This Christ has an existence outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language. If we follow Luther and much of the Lutheran tradition, this Christ is now present in the believer. The Holy Spirit thus causally brings it about that Christ is present in the believer. God’s spiritual agency causally brings it about that a different state of affairs obtains in the hearer than would have obtained without His causality.

If we take very seriously the causal question, then we have to say that the effect of preaching is a divine effect, that the physical causal chain does not determine wholly the state of affairs that obtains. There is no causal closure of the natural when it comes to the work of the Holy Spirit. Some account of supernatural agency is finally necessary. While the divine Word is carried on the wings of the human word, the perlocution wrought must make reference to divine causal agency.

VII. A Tale of Three Causal Chains and a Brief Conclusion

A number of years ago Daniel Dennett wrote an article in which he talked about three levels of description in computer systems. He spoke of a physical stance, a design stance and an intentional stance. Different statements are true given different stances - - for instance, we can say that the computer is “thinking” or “wants to do” something - - even though a computer’s deepest causal map is at the physical level. Using mental talk is possible when describing computer behavior, but no “minds” interfere with ultimate microphysical determination. Is this way of looking at things useful when considering the question of preaching?

Accordingly, on one level we could draw a causal map in preaching at the physico-behavioral level. This description would be strongly reductionistic and claim that there is no interruption of causal determination at this level.

On the next level of description, we could talk about the effects of particular language upon the linguistic-phenomenological horizon of the individual. This level would is that which is assumed in hermeneutical theology. One does not do a reduction to the physico-behavioral, but rather speaks broadly as language as the house of being, and the uttering of particular language being capable of changing being.

Finally, one might articulate the highest level of description as the “divine level.” Here the theologian would talk analogously to how computer programmers talk. Theologians would use locutions like “the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, and enlightens” just as computer programmers would speak of the computer “thinking” or “wanting” to move to the next state. Each would claim that the deepest causal map is at the lowest level, but each would simultaneously countenance genuine higher-level talk, and would be able even to make true statements at these highest levels. What do we make of this putative analogy?

I began this article by talking about the relationship of God and the universe in a dualistic fashion. The divine is the divine and not the universe, and the universe is the universe but not divine. This all seems very good when talking about God’s providential activity. But in thinking about the Holy Spirit, things get much more difficult. This is true for thinking through such Lutheran notions as the ubiquitas Christi as well. In thinking through these issues, it seems like the metaphor of “layers” prevails over disparate “domains.” Does Dennet’s analogy have service in theology?

No. For reasons already alluded to, this analogy cannot work. Why? Ultimately theological assertions cannot be a higher-level description of underlying natural and anthropological processes because the very raison d’etre of theology is soteriological. There is no salvation without causation. The Word is causal. The agency of the Spirit in this “Wording of the Word” is causal. Closing the causal loop at the natural level does not realize theological truth, but contradicts it. Divine causation must, of necessity, have as its relata a divine and non-divine term. I don’t see how divine causation is possible ultimately without drawing a relation between nature and supernature.

This does not mean that when it comes to thinking the causal activity of the Son and Holy Spirit, we would need necessarily to begin with the analogy of mind/body dualism, and try to understand divine causal agency analogously to the pineal gland. This may be the best way to think through the Father’s creation and provident care for the world, but it is not optimal for thinking about the Trinity and incarnation. Once God is incarnated in his Son that is ever present in the world, and once the Holy Spirit carried by the Word is forever working in the hearts of believers attesting to the Word, then we must make sense of the divine bringing about states of affairs in and through the finite. I think the situation here is better conceived through the notion of downward causation. But, as we have seen, the causal map of downward causation is not clear, and it may even finally presuppose the dualism advocates were hoping to escape!

We have traversed much ground in this paper and asked many questions. We have argued that the category of divine causality must be recovered if we are to think through cogently God’s real presence and activity in the world. This is true as well when considering how it is that talk of the Holy Spirit’s activity in preaching is itself true. While we do not yet have an adequate explanatory model how it might be possible for God to be at work in his work in the Trinity through preaching and believing, I have today argued that pursuit of such a model is crucial for a robust theology proclaiming that ‘Christ is the way, the truth and the life’ is true.



[1] Bayer writes: “In contrast to every metaphysical set of statements that teach about the deity, this assertion [e.g. "To you is born this day a Savior"] declares that God's truth and will are not abstract entities, but are directed verbally and publicly as a concrete promise to a particular hearer in a specific situation. 'God' is apprehended as the one who makes a promise to a human being in such a way that the person who hears it can have full confidence in it" [Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation.  By Oswald Bayer.  Translated by Thomas Trapp.  (Grand Rapids, MI.  Eerdmans,  2008), p. 53.]

Bayer clearly supposes that there exists a firm distinction among performative utterances like promise-making, constative utterances which describe or report states of affairs that can be true or false, and imperative utterances.  He further explains:   " . . . one cannot take the promise, which is not a descriptive statement, and transform it into a descriptive statement. Secondly, one cannot take the promise, which is not in the form of a statement that shows how something ought to be done, and transform it into an imperative. . . . The truth of the promise . . . is to be determined only at the very place that the promise was . . . constituted. This means it is located within the relationship of the one who is speaking . . . and the one who hears. . . . If it is correct that the one individual is in the position of hearer in the relationship that is constituted by this promise, and if that is verified, it excludes the possibility that he himself can verify the promise. . . . To seek to verify this oneself would be atheism . . ." (54-55).


It is true, of course, that there are statements such as "I promise to pay you $1000,” and that such statements cannot be given a complete analysis in terms of a set of descriptive statements.  Reporting is a different linguistic activity than promising.  It is also true that such statements cannot be reductively analyzable into a set of imperative statements.    However, one must distinguish between a reduction of the performative and a delineation of its palpable presuppositions, presuppositions that can be stated in terms of the descriptive and imperative.


In "I promise to pay $1000", the following are presupposed: "I exist," "you exist," "$1000 exist," and "I ought to pay you $1000." The first three are descriptive statements and the fourth imperative. Notice that here the verba of the sentence do not themselves constitute the rem, but instead presuppose a set of definite res: the existence of two agents, the existence of money, and the taking on of an obligation. This is not to say that 'x promises z to y' can be reduced to the existence of x, y and z, and a set of imperative statements, for while there is more to promising than the taking on of an obligation, an obligation is nonetheless presupposed in the promising. 


In the divine promise of salvation it would seem that the same structure obtains: God exists, I exist, some state of affairs to which 'salvation' properly applies exists, and God is under obligation to bring about salvation to me. (Admittedly, it is rather jarring to think of God being under obligation, but the logic of promising seems to demand it.)  


Bayer further claims that the "truth of the promise is determined where it is constituted," that is, in the one speaking and hearing. But what exactly is this to mean? Clearly, Bayer is not talking about a correspondence, coherence, or even pragmatic notion of truth. We are told, in fact, that the individual cannot verify the truth of the promise, for to do so would involve one in atheism.  


If 'Bob promises to pay me $1000 on April 1 and does not do so, he has broken his promise.  We would not normally say, however, that his promise is true or false.  A broken promise is, to use Austin's language, an "infelicitous' performative utterance.  Since on Austinian grounds, truth and falsity are not properties of promises qua promises, it is not clear what Bayer means by a promise’s truth.  One might say, I suppose, that some descriptively-stated presupposition for the keeping of the promise did not obtain and thus that statement is not true.  Yet this is not to say that the promise is false, but merely that the falsity of the promise’s presupposition makes it true that the promise is infelicitous.  Statements about promises have definite truth conditions even if the promises do not. 

[2] One must distinguish between the purely descriptive truth that the Bible and many other books can and do strike readers with existential truth, and the normative claim that the Bible ought so to do so.  Until we can give an analysis of why the Bible ought to strike one as salvific truth, we have not engaged the issue which the claim of the formal norm in Lutheran Orthodoxy was trying to answer.
Imagine a time where the Bible does not strike people as giving life-saving existential truth. (This time has already happened in much of the first world.)  In the absence of a formal norm - - either the text bears an artifact/artificer relationship to God or the Holy Spirit causally operates only upon it - - what position is left for the theologian?  Would he not have to say that the Bible is not the Holy Scriptures any longer, for it no longer salvifically empowers us?

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Bare Particulars, Trinity and Incarnation I

I
I was blessed thirty years ago to be a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Iowa.  It was in the 1980s, a time where the influence of the "Iowa School" was rapidly waning.  The "Iowa School" of philosophy was associated inter alia with the work of Herbert Feigl, Gustav Bergmann, Wilfred Sellers and Everett Hall.  These men deeply understood logical positivism and further grasped that ontological questions could not be disassociated from it.  While none were teaching at Iowa in the 1980s, excellent philosophers like Panayot Butchvarov remained who were profoundly interested in questions of contemporary metaphysics.   

Of all of the Iowa philosophers, Gustav Bergmann was perhaps the most interesting.  Born in Vienna in 1906 with a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Vienna, Bergmann was briefly a member of the famous "Vienna Circle" before moving to Berlin in 1931 to work with Einstein on certain aspects of mathematical physics.


Bergmann later migrated to America in the late 1930s and was invited to the University of Iowa to work with the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin.  While Bergmann and Lewin parted company fairly quickly, Bergmann made connections at Iowa and was appointed a lecturer in the early 1940s, finally progressing to full professor by 1950.    Bergmann stayed in Iowa City beyond his retirement in 1974.  I remember seeing him occasionally in the philosophy department in the early 1980s when I was there, often reading an Italian novel.  Unfortunately, he developed Alzheimer’s and succumbed to the disease in 1987.  


Bergmann was committed to logical positivism early on, and retained a general orientation towards logical empiricism throughout his life.[1]  He was also an unregenerate realist who held that metaphysics was not only possible, but necessary if one was going to give a coherent account of the ontological structure grounding the semantic conditions of ideal language.  Starting with the syntax of the language of formal logic, Bergmann attempted to make explicit the logical structure of that language by pointing to the metaphysical constitution of the objects and states of affairs referred to by that language.[2] 


The Iowa School has always been interested in the metaphysics of universal and particulars, believing that careful analysis of a logically perspicuous language could bear metaphysical fruit.   And Bergmann’s vineyard was indeed lush!   A committed realist who granted ontological status to various kinds of abstract objects, Bergmann advocated that the common sense particulars of which we are directly acquainted, e.g., this ball and that spot, are actually not metaphysically simple, but rather are constituted by metaphysically more basic bare particulars exemplifying various universals.  Bergmann thus argued for a “complex ontology” while eschewing a “functional ontology” (Frege).[3]   There is much wisdom to be gleaned in reading Bergmann, though such reading is mostly out of favor today.[4]



II
In this essay I want to review Bergmann’s notion of a bare particular with an eye towards its theological appropriation.   Is there any way that this notion can be helpful in understanding the ontological grounds for Trinitarian and Christological discourse?  

Bergmann’s Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong gives a description of what he means by a ‘bare particular’. 

A bare particular is a mere individuator.  Structurally that is its only job.   It does nothing else.   In this respect it is like Aristotle’s matter, or, perhaps more closely, like Thomas’ material signata.   Only, it is a thing.[5]
Bergmann claims that two red spots can “exemplify” the same universals (e.g., redness, spot-shapeness), and are yet different spots because they are constituted by different bare particulars.  Like Aristotelian primary substances, bare particulars can neither be “said of” any other thing nor be “present in” something else.  Furthermore, while bare particulars are predicated, they cannot be predicated of any other thing.  Bare particulars, unlike properties, are thus the ultimate subjects of predication.  While ‘white’ can be “said of” particular white properties or can be “present in” particulars as such, it can also be predicated: this particular white property had by this particular can itself be said to be white.[6]  This is not possible with a bare particular.  In phrases like ‘x is a bare particular’, the “is” must be one of identity and not attribution.  

Bill Vallicella has written quite cogently about the metaphysical situation regarding bare particulars.[7]  Such particulars, while possessing properties, have no natures, that is, they have nothing by virtue of which the particular is the particular that it is.  Bergmann countenanced that an external relation of exemplification obtains between bare particulars and the universals that are “exemplified” in them.   For instance, bare particular a can exemplify whiteness and felininity (catness), in that whiteness and felininity are both “here.”   The relation of exemplification is external because there is nothing about whiteness or felininity that necessitates there exemplification at a.   Conversely, there is nothing about being a that requires whiteness and felininity to be so exemplified. Since every bare particular is externally related to the properties that are exemplified at that particular, the properties had by the bare particular or merely accidental to it.   While this particular exemplifies white and felininity, it is possible for it to have exemplified black and canininity (dogness). 


The fact that bare particulars are not Aristotelian substances is easily grasped.  Aristotelian substances have a “layer” of properties without which the particular could not be the particular it is.  One might say that the individual is internally related to its nature for Aristotle.[8]  As Vallicella points out, on an Aristotelian understanding, the particular Fido is no longer free to take on any property whatsoever.  The dog Fido cannot, as it were, take on the property of felininity and still be the dog Fido.  In other words, the particular Fido is a canine in each and every possible world in which Fido exists.  


This is not the case with the bare particular a, for apparently, a can take on properties like canininity or felininity at will as it skirts through possible worlds.  The capability a posseses to do this is necessary if a is properly to individuate, for a bare particular simply is that which individuates two qualitatively identical objects.   This red spot and that red spot are individuated by the fact that this red spot is this one and that red spot is that one.   A bare particular always exemplifies some property or other, but does so only contingently. Any properties exemplified at a are simply primitively exemplified at a.  There is no deeper ground in a, no nature, that determines the expression of any particular properties at a.   Vallicella terms this feature “promiscuous combinability”: each bare particular can “hook up” with any universal, in that it is logically possible for any universal to be exemplified at any bare particular. 


Bergmann is a constituent ontologist holding that bare particulars are ingredient in each ordinary particular, that is, an ordinary particular is constituted by a bare particular exemplifying properties.   One could argue that a bare particular having constituent parts violates the nature of that particular’s particularity, and advance instead a non-constituent ontology for particulars.   On this view, there would be no deeper constitution of an ordinary particular. The particular is numerically distinct from other particulars, although that by which it is numerically distinct is not specified.  This seems the tactic of Nicholas Wolterstoff, who rejects Bergmann’s constituent analysis claiming that ordinary particulars are, in fact, simple.[9] 


At this point we might distinguish Bergmann’s “bare particular” from the notions of “thin particular” and “thick particular.”   David Armstrong seems – unjustly in my view -- to think his “thin particular” is different than Bergmann’s “bare particular.” But his distinction between thick and thin particulars is useful.   While a thin particular is a particular considered in isolation from the properties it instantiates, a thick particular is that thin particular considered in combination with the properties it instantiates.[10]  Armstrong declares, “the thin particular remains the particular with its attributes abstracted away.  The thick particular is again a state of affairs: the thin particular’s having the (particular) attributes that it has.  Armstrong’s thin particular, like Bergmann’s bare particular, is committed to a constituent analysis of ordinary particulars. 


I assume for the remainder of this article that the notion of a “bare particular” or “think particular” is ultimately philosophical defensible, though I know that much work is needed in making that defense.  As a theologian, my purpose is not to do the philosopher’s deep work at this time, but rather to move to a different question entirely.   What do the doctrines of the Trinity and two natures of Christ look like when assuming that notion of bare particularity?  How do “bare” or “thin” particulars relate to the tradition’s understanding of hypostasis and persona?  Finally, how might this discussion connect with Scotus’ notion of haeccity?   I will take up these questions in the next post.         

   

[1] Defining “logical empiricism” is not easy.  Richard Creath writes, "What held the group together was a common concern for scientific methodology and the important role that science could play in reshaping society. Within that scientific methodology the logical empiricists wanted to find a natural and important role for logic and mathematics and to find an understanding of philosophy according to which it was part of the scientific enterprise.”  See Creath, Richard, "Logical Empiricism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .[2] For an overview of the life and philosophy of Bergmann, see William Heald, “From Positivism to Realism: The Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann, 1992, http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/bai/heald.htm.
[3] His constituent ontology analyzes seeming particulars into bare particulars exemplifying universals.   A function ontology eschews “in” as the primary metaphysical relationship, substituting instead a coordinating function, e.g., the function of {green, oval, spatio-temporal location} as argument delivers “this spot” as a value.

[4] Bergmann does place fairly heavy demands upon his reader.   Those interested in his work should study the following:  Philosophische Analyse / Philosophical Analysis: Ontology and Analysis:  Essays and Recollections about Gustav Bergmann, eds., Addis, Jesson and Tegtmeier (Muenchen: Walter de Gruyter, 2013); Philosophische Analyse / Philosophical Analysis: Fostering the Ontological Turn: Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987), eds. Egidi and Bonino, (Muenchen: Walter de Gruyter, 2013); and Philosophsche Analyse / Philosophical Analysis: Gustav Bergmann: Phenomenological Realism and Dialectical Ontology, eds., Langlet and Monnoyer, (Muenchen: Walter de Gruyter, 2013).
[5]Gustav Bergmann, Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (Madison, WS: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 25.
[6] All of this goes back, of course, to Aristotle in his Categories.   Aristotle famously said that only particular substances are neither “said of” nor “present in” something else.

[7] See http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/11/bare-particulars-versus-aristotelian-substances.html.
[8] a is internally related to b if and only if the being of a is in part determined by the being of b, e.g., I am internally related genetically to my father.  a is externally related to b if and only if the being of a is not affected by the relationship a has to b, e.g., my father is externally related genetically to me.
[9] See Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Bergmann’s Constituent Ontology,” Nous 4:2 (May 1970), 116ff. 
[10] See David Armstrong, “Universals as Attributes,” 65-93, Michael Loux, Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings (New York: Routledge, 2001), 79:  “The thin particular is a, taken apart from its properties (substratum).   It is linked to its properties by instantiation, but it is not identical to them. . . .  However, this is not the only way a particular can be thought of.   It can also be thought of as involving its properties.  . . This is the thick particular.  But the thick particular, because it enfolds both thin particulars and properties, held together by instantiation, can be nothing but a state of affairs.”   Armstrong seems to think that Bergmann’s “bare particular” does not instantiate properties, a view that Bergmann explicitly denies.

Thursday, March 05, 2015

Horizons and Proper Theological Education


Good theology is always involved in mediation.  I am not here directly talking about the Vermittlungstheologie of the nineteenth century, a theology inspired by the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), and associated with such names as Isaak Dorner (1809-84), Julius Mueller (1801-78), and Richard Rothe (1799-1867).  A look at Vermittlungstheologie is, however, important to clarify what it is that I don't and do mean when talking about theology as mediation.

Historically, Vermittlungstheologie commenced with the 1828 founding of the Heidelberg theological journal Theologische Studien und Kritiken.  The founding editor of the journal was obviously thinking Hegelian thoughts when he wrote:  "Mediation is the scientifically tracing back of relative oppositions to their original unity, through which an inner reconciliation and higher standpoint is gained by which they are transcended, the intellectual position arising out of this mediation being the true, healthy mean."  [See Roger Olsen, The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction, p. 242.]  

As practiced, however, Vermittlungstheologie was less concerned with making proper Hegelian moves, and more interested simply in carving out a bridge between two apparent opposites, e.g., between the Gospel and the secularized culture, between rationalism and supernaturalism, between Hegel and Schleiermacher, between theology and the life of the church.

Dorner was perhaps the most famous of the mediating theologians, trying as he did to mediate faith as Christianity's subjective standard with Scripture as its objective standard.  He also wanted to combine aspects of the "feeling approach" of Schleiermacher with the deeply rational intellectual approach of Hegel [Olsen, p. 243].  In his reflection upon God, he searched to mediate between transcendent immutability and immanent changeability.  His "progressive incarnation" attempted to mediate orthodox and kenotic Christology.  

Many of the moves of historical mediating theology can be associated with the tension between rationalism and romanticism, between objectivity and subjectivity.  While this dialectic remains with us today - - I am thinking specifically of views of scriptural authority advocating a causal relationship between God and Scripture versus views that claim authority arises in the meaningful confrontation of text and reader  - - I am not thinking primarily of objectivity/subjectivity or thinking/feeling when conceiving mediation, but rather the the poles of message and context, kerygma and cultural situation.   All good theology is contextual because all effective theology must start with the historical proclamation of the particularity of Christ and the constellation of events so linked, and connect this to the universal human situation - - or at least that which is considered universal within a particular cultural trajectory.  Theology mediates the horizon of the proclaimed Christ event with the intellectual and cultural horizon of its reception.  

As I look at the current situation within Lutheran churches within North America, I see a general attempt to avoid effective mediating theology.  This is no surprise in this.  This type of mediation is very difficult work.  The problem is that one pole of the mediation seems often to be cancelled, redescribed, or otherwise assimilated by the other.   This seems true of theological education in particular.  

In order to see this, consider one antipode of the dialectic to be the proclaimed Christ event, the kerygma of Christ and Him crucified for our salvation, and the other pole to be the present intellectual and cultural horizon, the sum total of received contexts of significance and meaning, the assumed cannons of rationality, the intellectual/cultural ethos.   Thinking about theological education, it is easy to see that Lutheran seminaries have a tendency to concentrate upon one of the poles and, accordingly, seek to understand the other pole on the basis of the former.   For instance, there are a number of Lutheran seminaries that know deeply the intellectual and cultural horizon of the present and, upon this basis, seek to articulate the relevance of the historic kerygma for the contemporary horizon.   Although it is dangerous to generalize, I will do so nonetheless simply for the sake of illustration.  (I am not seeking to establish here or in the next two paragraphs that particular seminaries have a particular orientation.)

The ELCA seminaries seem sometimes to be engaged in assimilating the particularity of the proclamation to the generality of the cultural standpoint.   For instance, the faculty and students at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago clearly know what positions are just, right, compassionate and loving with regard to same sex relationships and same sex marriage.  Their position on this issue is not one that they assume needs profound argumentation; it is clearly and immediately experienced as just and loving.  Its rectitude is in the cultural air, following facilely from vague and inchoate cultural intuitions about natural rights.  Something so clearly known must be given theological legitimation as well, of course, and thus appeal is made to the prophetic element within the theological tradition to do just that.  Kerygma and context are thus not mediated, but rather the general context tends to assimilate the particularity of the proclamation.  Here the contour of the intellectual/cultural context trumps that of the traditional kerygma.  

One might regard the LCMS seminaries as occasionally emphasizing the other pole to the exclusion of the former.   Here the effort is to hold on tightly to the particularity of the kerygmatic proclamation against the horizon of the cultural context.  While it is important to understand deeply the particularity of the proclamation, sometimes the focus on this risks ignoring the subtleties of the intellectual/cultural horizon.  This can, occasionally, lead to an effort to repristinate the past articulations of kerygma at the expense of being open to more deeply understanding the contemporary horizon.   Now the kerygma can trump the context.

At the Institute of Lutheran Theology we want profoundly to explore both the contemporary cultural/intellectual horizon and the tradition's proclamation of kerygma.  Why?   It is because we believe that effective theology must mediate proclamation and context, kerygma and the contemporary situation.   In this way there is a mediation between the horizons that keeps in tact the contour of each while yet bridging between that which might prima facie appear as disparate.  The goal is never to reduce one to the other; never to understand the kergyma as a movement upon the horizon of the cultural context, nor to understand the cultural context as a movement brought forth from the determinate contour of the proclamation.   Ultimately, God's work in creation, obscured by the Fall, is nonetheless still dimly palpable within the contemporary situation.  It is therefore always "addressable" by the kerygma.  Good theology always mediates kerygma and context, forming, as it were, an isometric between the two hands of God.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Model-Theoretic Semantics and Theology


All too often we unthinkingly assume a "magical" view of language.   We naturally suppose that our language is anchored to the world correctly, as if our language intends to link to the world in a particular way.  For instance, we might believe that 'dog' uniquely refers to that class of which the canine at my heels is a member, and 'laptop' to that class of which this object upon which I type is an element.

However, reflection about the nature of such intentionality does not support these prima facie intuitions.    'Dog' cannot and does not intend the canine at my feet, though through appropriate human context and practice it may refer to that animal.   'Laptop' is conventionally linked to the object upon which I type these words, though it may not have been the case.

Hilary Putnam famously advanced the "model-theoretic argument against realism."  In it he purports to show that that an entire linguistic system considered as a totality cannot by itself determinately refer.   Representations, no matter how involved, are not agents and thus have no power to intend objects in the world.  Language, considered formally and syntacticly, does not in itself have meaning and cannot thus refer to the world.  Any attempt to give language such an intentionality through the use of model-theoretic semantics must fail.  In order to understand what Putnam is saying and its relevance for theology, we must understand what model-theoretic semantics is.

Model theory provides an interpretation to formal systems.  For the various symbols of a language, it assigns an extension, i.e., particular individuals, sets, functions and relations.  Model theory recognizes that since language does not magically intend objects in the world, the elements of language can only map to structures of objects.  Simply put,  given a particular function f, and any non-logical term p, f(p) graphs to a unique object in the world o.  In other words, there is a transformation from language to its extensional interpretation, a correspondence that is itself conventional.   Accordingly, while a particular function f1 maps 'dog' to the class of objects of which the canine at my feet is a member, another function f2 maps 'dog' to the last horse standing at Custer's last stand.  When we think language magically picks out the elements of the world, we simply forget that many other functional images of our language are possible.  Simply put, we forget that our language can sustain a large number of multivalent interpretations.

Model-theoretic semantics proceeds by constructing models which satisfy classes of statements, that jointly makes true those statements.   Take, for instance, this class C of statements:  'The cat is on the mat', 'John understands that an equivalence relation is reflexive', and 'All mats are owned by John'.   A model is an extensional interpretation I making all members of C true.  This might happen when 'cat' refers to the set of all domesticated felines, 'mat' to the set of all objects upon which one wipes one's feet, 'on' to a two place predicate Oxy specifying the set of all ordered pairs {x, y} such that x is adjacent and above y, 'John' to a particular person,  'understands' to a dyadic predicate Uxy forming the set of all ordered pairs {x, y} such that the first is an epistemic agent and y is that which is understood, 'equivalence relation is reflexive' to a member of the set of all concepts, and 'owned by' to a two place relation Wxy forming the set of all {x, y} such that x possesses y.  In addition, 'the cat' is a definite description uniquely picking out some member of the set of all domesticate felines, while 'the mat' uniquely refers to one member of the class of all objects upon which one wipes one's feet.  

The reader should reflect upon how difficult it is to provide an adequate intensional characterization of the set of mats or the set of things understood.   Fortunately, we don't have to pick all the properties that each and every member of the set has.  We can simply refer to the set whose members have these properties as well as others.  It is obvious that the three propositions above are true (or "satisfied") if there exists the sets in question and the members of these sets are related in the ways above specified. Let us call this interpretation I.  

Now notice that we can form I2 as follows:  Allow 'cat' to refer to the set of positive integers and 'mat' to refer to the set of negative integers, and "on to" (Oxy) to be the set of all ordered pairs {x, y} such that x is greater than y.   'The cat' now refers to a definite positive integer and 'the mat' to a particular negative integer.   Let 'John' refer to the positive integer 17 and 'understands' be the two place relation forming the set of all x such that x is the square root of y.   Assume that 'equivalence relation is reflexive' refers to 289, itself a member of the set of all odd numbers.  Finally, allow 'owned by' to refer to be the set of ordered pairs {x, y} in W, such that either x is greater than y v x=y v x is less than y.  While this interpretation may seem very artificial, it does in fact "satisfy" each member of C.  The point is that all sentences of C are true both on models I1 and I2.  

Model-Theoretic semantics provides abstract models satisfying classes of statements.  These models are sets obeying set-theoretic operations.  Clearly, we can think of the satisfaction of the classes of statements to be mappings from the constituents of those statements to unique set-theoretic structures; the relationship of the linguistic entities to their extensions are unique functions.  Each interpretation is a function from the linguistic to the set-theoretic because the following uniqueness condition holds where x is the linguistic and y the set-theoretic:  If and are members of f, then y = z. 

Putnam's argument purports to show that simply having a model that makes a class of statements true does not in and of itself determine reference.   There are an infinite number of models with different extensions that make the class of statements true!  Neither does representational similarity between the linguistic symbols and their extensions nor truth itself vouchsafe a unique reference for a language.

One way to grasp this is to consider Quine's gavagai example.   The anthropologist sees the native saying 'gavagai whenever presented with a rabbit.   But the anthropologist is sophisticated in his reflections and realizes that the native could mean 'undetached rabbit part' or 'rabbit event' or 'temporal rabbit stage'.   The model would seemingly be satisfied by any of these interpretations.   Language does not determine reference.

Putnam finds in the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem significant results which extend this insight.   The theorem holds that any satisfiable system -- that is, any system that has a model -- has a countable finite or infinite number of models.  Putnam generalizes the results of this theorem, showing that even in a system vast enough to incorporate all of our empirical knowledge, it would nonetheless be the case that there would be great numbers of models (and associated ontologies) satisfying all of the constraints of the system's theoretical and operational constraints.

While there is debate about whether Putnam's proof in "Model's and Reality" (see Realism and Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 1-25) commits a mathematical error, the general point is clear enough to anyone who has every taught an introductory logic course: Truth is always truth under an interpretation.   Agreeing on language does not an agreement make.   Agreement is only had if there exists agreement of language and a common interpretation or model.   Only if the same model is specified and there is agreement in truth-value among the relevant propositions can one speak of actual agreement.  

It should be obvious to anyone who reads theology that theological traditions have not always been clear about the interpretation of their language.   This becomes deeply clear in interfaith dialogues when two sides may use the same language, but mean something quite different with that language.   It happened, in my opinion, in the Evangelical Lutheran Church's adoption of three important documents between 1997-99:  Call to Common Agreement, the Formula of Agreement, and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.  The frustrating thing about those debates was that many of the participants either did not know that they needed to clarify the models they were using, or intentionally did not deeply reflect upon their interpretations for fear of losing the historic "agreement" between the parties that the ecumenical talks were supposed to engender.  

Maybe the proclivity of participants in ecumenical dialogues not to clarify the models they are assuming stems from a general historical practice among theologians to fail to specify the interpretations they employ in their own polemics and constructive work.

Take the following three propositions and assign them extensional interpretations I1 and 2.


  • T1:   God creates the universe.
  • T2:   All of creation has fallen into sin. 
  • T3:   Through His Son, God redeems his fallen creation.  
Let I1 be the following interpretation: 

  • 'God':    That being having all positive predicates to the infinite degree
  • 'Creates':  A dyadic predicate whose extension is the relation {{x, y}: x causes there to be both the material and form comprising y}
  • 'Universe':  All that exists outside of diving being
  • 'Creation':   All that exists outside of divine being
  • 'Falls':  A dyadic predicate whose extension is the relation {{x, y}: x is creation and y is the distortion of x under the conditions of present existence}
  • 'Sin':  The distortion of creation under the conditions of present existence
  • 'Son":  Hypostasis bearing the divine nature sustaining the following relationships of having been begotten by the hypostasis of the Father and spirating the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit
  • 'Redeems':  A triadic predicate whose extension is the relation {{x, y, z}: x causes there to be reordering of y on account of z, such that x regards y as manifesting properties characteristic of the created universe 
Many readers may take issue with the extension I gave to T1-T3.   It would be an important exercise, I think, were all who employ theological language to attempt to provide a semantics like I just attempted.   It is by no means a simple task.   It is time, I believe, for theologians not simply to take responsibility for their theological language, but also for the interpretation they give that language.

Let I2  be the following interpretation:

  • 'God':   To-beness in its totality.  That which is presupposed by the notions of being a particular being, and not-being a particular being
  • 'Creates':  A dyadic predicate whose extension is the relation {{x, y}: x is conceptually presupposed by the class of all existing beings}
  • 'Universe':  The set of all non-divine beings
  • 'Creation':  The set of all non-divine beings
  • 'Falls':  A dyadic predicate whose extension is the relation {{x, y}: x is creation and y is the set of attitudes, dispositions, and existential orientations of human beings phenomenologically present to human awareness as lacking the character of original creations
  • 'Sin':  The existential of human existence towards the "what is" of the past rather than the "what might be" of the future 
  • 'Son':  A symbol that points to and participates in the totality of being, and is capable of communicating the power of being itself phenomenologically to human beings
  • 'Redeems':  A triadic predicates whose extension is the relations {{x, y, z}: x communicates the power of being itself to human beings (y) by means of the symbol of the Son (z)}  
The perceptive reader might find a trace of Tillich in interpretation I2.   The point to realize is that I1 and I2 both make T1-T3 true.   Both models satisfy a very small class of theological propositions.   Notice it is meaningless to ask if T1-T3 are true until a model has been specified upon which to evaluate their truth.  Here as everywhere in theology, truth is always truth under an interpretation.    





Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Growth of the Institute of Lutheran Theology


I want to inform all of you about the growth and development of the Institute of Lutheran Theology.   I have not been updating my blog regularly because I am pretty busy with ILT these days.   If you have not been to our webpage for awhile, please take a look.   We are growing with celerity and probity.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology was blessed to take in more than $760,000 in cash donations last year, and had revenue of over $1,000,000.  It has now achieved these levels with respect to the most recent American Theological School (ATS) listings: 

  • ILT expended more than 28 other ATS accredited institutions in 2014.
  • ILT had a headcount greater than 29 other ATS accredited institutions in 2014.
  • ILT had a full-time equivalency of students (FTE's) higher than 23 accredited institutions in 2014.   
  • ILT is now larger than three of the four Canadian Lutheran seminaries.  
The Institute of Lutheran Theology has a permanent staff of 14 (11 full-time) with a faculty of 16 (7 permanent and 9 adjunct).  It has awarded four masters of divinity degrees, four masters of religion degrees, and 12 ministry certificates.   Its library has grown to 40,000 volumes available to faculty, students and friends.   

Our staff and faculty have eight members from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), six from the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), four from Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMS), three from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), two from the Augsburg Lutheran Churches (ALC), and one each from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) and the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations (AFLC).  On our Board we have the senior justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court and the former President of the American Academy of Religion. It is comprised of five LCMC members, two from the ELCA, one from the NALC, one from the LCMS,  and one from the Canadian Association of Lutheran Churches (CALC).  It is remarkable to bring together Lutherans from many so many Lutheran church bodies to build one institution.   Soli Deo gloria et honor!!!

Because we believe that laypeople are quite capable of thinking theologically, we provide these resources for congregations and interested Christians of all kinds: 

  • Table Talk.  This devotional bulletin insert by Pastor Tim Swenson is used by scores of congregations around the country and ILT hopes that more of you know about this and use it.   The masters are distributed without charge or a small fee for mailing bulk copies.  You may click here to see examples of this product.
  • Word at Work Magazine.  A seasonal magazine with articles on subjects of interest for all Lutherans, it is distributed free of charge and is also available online here.   Register online to join the 4,000 households already on the mailing list.
  • Word at Work Classes.   No longer do we charge for these excellent video products.   Go to this page to see what they have to offer.  ILT is currently featuring Dr. Forell’s last lectures on Luther.   Other things of interest include Dr. Buddy Mendez’s class on communication and relationships, Pastor Scott Grorud’s confirmation class, and Pastor Moe Redding’s class on discipleship.
  • Word at Work Events.  If you go here you see that ILT is happy to come to congregations and do theological lectures on various topics.   For instance, the Academic Dean, Dr. Jon Sorum just did a series on “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Facing the Crisis in the Church” in Mesa, Arizona, last week.  Dr. Paul Hinlicky is just one of many ILT professors willing to do these events.  
  • Weekly ILT Chapel (and daily sermons from the ILT community).  Go here to view past and present chapels.  
Grounded in Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, ILT boldly asserts the reality of God and the causal linkage between God and His creation.  It believes that God really was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19), and it believes that this truth can be effectively related to the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.  

Visit our webpage, our Facebook page, or our YouTube channel for more information.    



Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Reformation Freedom


This was released by the Institute of Lutheran Theology last Friday.   I couldn't bring the formatting through well to this blog page, but I decided the content might make it worth putting up anyway.   Hopefully, every Lutheran already knows this . . . 

October 31, 2014 (Reformation Day) points to the beginning of the Reformation in Europe.   The gospel reading from John 8, asserts this: “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine;  and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (31-32).  Reformation Day is all about freedom.   It is not, however, about freedom in the sense that most Americans think.   When we citizens of western democracies think of freedom, we are likely to think the following:  A person is free if and only if that person is able to do what the person wants to do.  This freedom from external constraint or compulsion is what is meant by political or civil freedom.   A free people are a people whom the state does not coerce, who have natural rights for the pursuit of happiness that cannot be taken away by the state and must be honored by the state.   Some read the Reformation as a movement towards individual freedom.   Each person has a free conscience, and can interpret Scripture properly on his or her own.  According to this line of interpretation, this notion developed into freedom of religion, a idea that Americans understand as a constitutional right.  The Reformation gave greater freedom to individuals over and against the powers of Church and Empire.  But this way of understanding freedom, is not what Jesus is talking about here.  This notion of freedom is not Reformation freedom.         

Teaching philosophy for so many years has made me acutely aware of a second sense of freedom:  A person is free if and only if that person could have done other than what he or she did do.  This understanding of freedom speaks to so-called "contra-causal causality":  Is a person merely moved along by the movement of the subatomic particles comprising him, or has that person real freedom with respect to those particles?  The idea is this:  We are all made up of matter (energy) that is ruled by certain fundamental laws of motion.   The decisions we make are actually determined by the neurons and synapses of our brain that, in turn, our comprised of matter (energy) obeying laws of motion.  Thus, when I choose to go through door A rather than B, I am really just being moved neurophysiologically to walk through A rather than B.  Free choice is an illusion.  If I knew all of the laws of motion at work in the system, I would be able to calculate with absolute certainity the future movement of any particles in that system - - this includes particles that make up people and thus includes the people themselves.   But this philosophical sense of freedom is not something about which John 8 is concerned.  This is notion of freedom is not Reformation freedom.

What John 8 concerns is a specifically Christian sense of freedom:  A person is free if and only if that person wants to do, and is able to do, that which that person ought to do.  The idea here can be seen easily with respect to the alcoholic.   He may not rationally want to drink, and indeed may be successful not drinking much of the time, but he always passionally wants to drink.  He is always besieged by the desire to drink, and finds himself divided: He does not want to drink at the same time as he deeply wants to drink.   It is this way with respect to sin.   St. Paul discusses this in Romans 7.  "So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members."  The sinner, like the alcoholic, is divided.  He is a slave to sin, rationally wanting desperately not to do that which he wants passionally to do.  All of us our in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.    The freedom of the Reformation is a freedom that returns the sinner back to what God would have him be; it is a re-forming of a self de-formed by sin.   The freedom of the Christian is a freedom from sin that quells the divided self, allowing the believer a sense of peace through certain knowledge that that she is becoming, and in some sense already is, that which God has intended her to be.  

Christian freedom is not an absence of external compulsion like in civil freedom, nor is it an absence of internal compulsion like in philosophical freedom, it is rather a reorientation of the whole way of thinking about freedom.  Christian freedom does not measure freedom with respect to the self, but rather with respect to God. The Reformation's deepest insight is that when God looks upon us, He sees his holy, innocent, suffering Son, and thus he sees us as being who we are intended by God to be.  God justifies sinners, and in so doing gives the gift of freedom: We are who God wants us to be on account of Christ.   This is true Reformation freedom. May the freedom of the Reformation animate you and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus! 

Dennis Bielfeldt, Ph. D
President
Institute of Lutheran Theology 

Saturday, August 09, 2014

Fall 2014 Classes at the Institute of Lutheran Theology


If you go to the ILT website here you shall discover some very interesting courses being offered.   The first thing to realize is that ILT is offering twenty courses for graduate credit this fall.  These courses include standard courses in Biblical theology, systematic theology, historical theology, and pastoral theology, as well as a Greek readings course and courses in philosophy and ethics.   (We believe at ILT that theological reflection has been, and must always be, in dialogue with the philosophical assumptions and views of the age in which it is undertaken.  Theological reflection is clearly not philosophical reflection, but it nonetheless neglects philosophy at its own peril.)

Our Masters of Sacred Theology (STM) students this fall can choose courses in theological German, Bonhoeffer, philosophy of religion and theology & science.   Readers of this blog will find all of these courses interesting, but I want to bring to attention the excellent course on Bonhoeffer taught this fall by our Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. Jonathan Sorum.  Sorum is a Bonhoeffer expert, and the course is extremely well-prepared an insightful.   If you are interested in a challenge on Wednesday nights from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. CDT, I recommend that you email admissions@ilt.org and get enrolled today.   Dr. Sorum is also available for conversation on it at 605-692-9337.

ILT also is offering six certificate courses on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings.   If you don't already have an undergraduate or graduate degree, but are interested in studying theology seriously, these courses are for you!   We designed them to be basic training in theology, much like companies like IBM give basic job training to computer science majors.  The computer science majors find IBM's training deep and challenging, even if they already have a computer science degree.   Similarly, students with undergraduate or advanced degrees already will find our certificate courses deep, challenging and interesting.

All of our courses are delivered in a fully-interactive format on-line.  We at ILT take educational quality very seriously, and we have well-known professors currently teaching and more coming soon.   You can study with some of the top names in Lutheran theology in the English-speaking world.

There is no other place like ILT.   We are not an idea waiting to be implemented, but a fully-functioning, degree-granting institution with faculty, faculty governance, students, embedded ministry sites, and a guarantee to offer each and every class on schedule so that you can advance through our Masters of Divinity program in as few as three years.  Come and join the fun!       

Friday, August 08, 2014

Facts and Values


It seemed simple once - - this distinction confidently taught to grade school children by those knowing nothing of its lineage.  "Children, please listen up.  There are facts and there are values.  You can say that Sally got the wrong answer in science class because science deals with facts.  She can have the wrong answer because there is something to measure the facts against.  However, you cannot say, and you must not ever say, that Sally has got it wrong when she says that there is a God, or when she says that there is not a God, or when she claims Frank was wrong to push Molly.  After all, every person is entitled to his own opinion."  

Every future teacher secondary school teacher I had in my university classes knew and believed in the fact/value distinction. Future school teachers, after all, have to be taught to respect familial and cultural diversity.  It is not wrong that Piper has two mothers or that Alex faces Mecca each day. Of course, the reality of such diversity entails that many of our most cherished judgments are simply values.  There is nothing to measure the probity of Piper having two mothers against; there is no fact of the matter that decides the truth or falsity of Alex facing Mecca.  School teachers teach the facts of grammar, mathematics, science and history, and let the kids "express themselves" in art, music, theater and the interpretation of literature.  While most kids don't any longer have the chance to study philosophy or theology in secondary school, if they could do so today, they would find these disciplines relegated to the same arena as art, music and theater. "Kids need to respect the views of others," their teachers confidently intone.  There can be no fact of the matter in philosophy or religion.  Some kids are Catholics, some Lutheran, some Jewish, some Islamic, and some reject religion all together.   There is no fact of the matter which makes Catholicism "right" and Islam "wrong." To suggest this simply displays abject intolerance.  

Maybe the exposure to this distinction when young explains its popularity today.  Everywhere within popular culture we find the presupposition of the arbitrary and capricious nature of value. The great ideals of humanity (beauty, goodness and truth) are confidently thought to be mere affairs of subjective value.  Some people believe there is a God, but others do not.   This is fine because there is no fact of the matter about there being or not being a God.  Some people believe that abortion is right and others believe it wrong.  This is fine because there is no fact of the matter about its rectitude.  But while Amber might believe abortion wrong, since there is no fact of the matter about its rectitude, she ought not to block access to abortion for others who might believe it is morally permissible.  Since Amber's value is personal, it concerns only her personal behavior.  For her to claim that her personal value ought to govern public policy is for her to succumb to close-minded intolerance.  Does she not know that abortion can be right for Alex but wrong for Piper?  If she knows that abortion could be right for another, she simply has no right to block access to abortion to another - - even if she believes it is a heinous murder.

American people in the second decade of the twentieth century quite naturally assume that talk of God is valuational, that it concerns not a publicly observable arena, but rather expresses the perspective or orientation on life of the author or speaker and his culture.  When theologians write of God and pastors preach passionately from the pulpit, contemporary readers and hearers increasingly simply read or hear the words as valuational expressions; they naturally assume that these words offer a personal or cultural perspective or reveal personal or cultural dispositions and orientations.  The young particularly have been well trained not to understand the words as being factual.  They must not understand these words that way, for to do so would itself be an act of intolerance.   This is where the preacher starts today.  She  starts with an audience trained to be open-minded enough not to regard her words as descriptive and factual.  Paradoxically, the more open-minded the hearer, the more difficult it is today for the hearer to hear the Word.   In this way, the Word is sacrificed on the altar of the fact/value distinction.             

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Philosophical Impediments to Proclamation


Theology was once a lofty discipline whose practitioners were among the brightest and best of their age.  In Luther's day candidates for the Doctor of Theology had first to receive a Masters of Arts in philosophy.  They knew the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and they had exposure to the quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music).  They understood Latin deeply and some learned Greek and Hebrew as well.   Luther knew his Aristotle well enough to realize that the Aristotle he encountered in the text was not the Aristotle that many theologians embraced in the High and Late Middle Ages.  Like in every age, Luther's era was a time in which philosophy and theology were deeply related.

Our age also is a time in which theological and philosophical matters are deeply connected.   The relationship between the two is so profound that many thinkers (often very deep theological thinkers) often overlook or miss it entirely.  But theologians today ignore philosophical issues at their own peril.  Deeply-educated in the Biblical text, its historical and social context, its history of reception, and effective homiletical techniques to proclaim it, theological thinkers often fail to examine and appreciate deeply enough the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon into which the text is preached.  In failing to grasp the differing philosophical assumptions between textual origination and reception, they overlook the presuppositional issues making it difficult for the text to be properly understood be contemporary readers and hearers.  These issues, I believe, our explicitly philosophical.  They involve such traditional and meaty philosophical concerns as ontology (the study of being), epistemology (the study of knowing), and semantics (the study of meaning).

In the following series of posts I will spell out what I believe to be some of the philosophical impediments to Biblical proclamation in our time.  I will deal with such issues as the fact/value distinction, the loss of normativity, the problem of truth-conditions for religious and theological language, the problem of the external world as it relates to the divine, the question of agent motivation, the problem of reductionism, and, of course, the question of freedom.  (Of course, the discussion will be necessarily brief and undeveloped.)  Throughout, the questions of dualism, physicalism and idealism will be engaged.   The overarching issue is semantic.  What does (or can) the Gospel mean in an age where the horizon of understanding of the reader or listener is pluralistic, therapeutic, and anti-realistic?  What can God-talk mean to those today (particularly the young) who neither know the intellectual tradition, nor are normatively determined by it?