Indeterminate Realism versus Phenomenological Ontology

We received word late yesterday (November 15, 2018) from our accrediting agency that we could begin offering our Ph.D. at the Institute of Lutheran theology in the fall of 2019.  As the founding President of the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT), and having taken it from its early very tenuous years through accreditation, and now to this milestone, I wish to express my sincere thanks to all who have worked so diligently on this project.  We have always done what we do to the glory of God, because the search for truth is its own reward.

I wrote this reflection earlier this week, and offer it up now in the spirit of truth.  Clearly, blog writing is not meant to be scholarly writing with citations like one would find in a academic journal.  That being said, I do think all I say below can be supported by the appropriate texts.  As always, I am interested in any responses you might want to share on the blog.
________________________________________

I remember once having a rather protracted discussion with Langdon Gilkey (1919-2004) in a Des Moines church basement sometime around 1994.  At that time, he would have been 75 years old.  Like many, I had read Naming the Whirlwind in the early1970s, and had been impressed with the issues Langdon had raised on the future possibility of God-talk.  Gilkey had given a talk reflecting on his teacher Paul Tillich that night in the church basement, and I wanted to talk to him about how I was understanding Tillich in those days.

Paul Tillich (1885-1965) wrote a number of widely-read books in the 1950s, including two that I regularly taught undergraduates, The Dynamics of Faith (1956) and The Courage to Be (1952).  (I never had undergraduates read his Systematic Theology.)  In both of those texts, Tillich had employed the notion of the "Ground of Being" in tandem with the "Power of Being," and the "depth of Being," distinguishing them all in The Dynamics of Faith from the "Structure of Being."

The Ground of Being, for Tillich in the 1950s, was the source of existential empowerment in the face of the fundamental anxieties of existence, the anxiety of fate and death, the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, and the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness.   In those days, I admit to thinking that Tillich was committed to a phenomenological ontology, and that the Ground of Being simply could not be any "thing" at all.  It was both Ground and Abyss, the Depth of Being whose function it was to be pointed to by religious symbols, and which somehow provided the "courage to be in spite of the fact of non-being," that is, that "negation of the negation of being" that provided being (through courage) existentially in the face of the non-being of existential anxiety.  Whereas a phenomenological ontology could describe the structure of being, it could only point to that indeterminate reservoir of empowerment potential transcending that structure.

I remember talking to Langdon about this, trying to gauge what, in fact, Tillich's view on the Ground of Being was. I thought that perhaps Tillich himself knew that his phenomenological ontology pointed to a Ground of Being that could only be in and for consciousness, that as the reservoir of empowerment, it could not in any way be what it is apart from consciousness.  In other words, I thought that Tillich would have to hold that if consciousness were not present, the Ground of Being could not exist either.  I remember Gilkey listening earnestly to me and saying, "I think Tillich would never think of the Ground of Being in that way.  After all, the Ground of Being for Paul was a real thing."  He then said to me, "if you want to understand what Paul was talking about, you have to read Schelling."  Since reading Schelling seriously was not then on my immediate to-do list, I admit to continuing to think that Tillich must finally be understood in the lineage of Martin Heidegger.  Surely, his thought was not somehow indebted to one of Schelling's Five Systems.  Was he not better understood as a thinker of his own age -- at least when he was thinking clearly like he was surely doing in the last 15 years of his life?

I have been talking about realism in theology these last years because I have thought profoundly important this claim:  A thing is real if and only if that thing exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   Applied to God, this is the claim that God is not real unless God's existence is what it is apart from human existence, that is to say, if and only if the existence of human beings is logically independent of God's existence.  It thus seemed that one would have to adopt irrealism in theology if one were to ground one's theology in a phenomenological ontology.   Irrealism is the simple denial of realism, the assertion that "it is not the case that God exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language."

It had been clear to me for some time that that if theology was going to be about something important, i.e., about that which the tradition had assumed it was about, it would have to make causal claims about salvation, claims of the type that "X would not have been saved  -- however one construes this -- apart from the real existence and action of God."  If Bob's existential empowerment could have occurred even were it not the case that the Ground of Being existed apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, then it could not rightly be claimed that this salvific empowerment was caused by God.  One might claim it was caused by some aspect of us, some depth of our own being with which we are not normally in contact.

It has also seemed to me for a very long time that God cannot be God if God were only a metaphysical absolute.  The God that is the God of Christianity is tied to action, I thought, to acting so as aid God's children, to, as Tillich might say, "negate the negations of being." 

This being said, ground of being theologies do have great metaphysical appeal.  Wesley Wildman rightly points to their fascination: "They deny that ultimate reality is a determinate entity, and they deny that the universe is ontologically self-explanatory" (See "Ground-of-Being Theologies," in the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science).  My opinion is, however, that while the metaphysical absolute can be intellectually satisfying in myriad ways, if there is no salvific causal connection or metaphysical dependency relation that can be drawn from the Ground of Being to possible human transformation, then Ground of Being ontologies are not really helpful for the religious quest. 

As I was thinking about the development of post-Kantian options for theology in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, I became quite uneasy with many of the moves, because they seemed mostly to be consistent with theological irrealism.  What difference would it even make if there were a God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language if empowerment in the face of the fundamental existential anxieties did not even involve God?  What difference would it make were there to exist a God that was soteriologically inert?  God could, after all, have abstract existence, perhaps like the set of all ordered pairs, but if God were not related to the universe or people in it such that if God had not existed the salvific options of people would not be different, then in what sense is it even important to say that God is?
 
As an instance of possible irrealism, consider how it is possible that one can preach Law and Gospel, and deliver Christ in the sermon so that the grace of God is delivered in the forgiveness of sins without assuming the existence of God at all.  If one presupposes a phenomenological ontology, the forgiveness proclaimed and received in the Word can be understood in terms of a change in the ontological linguisticallity of existence.  If what it is to be is to be in a world in which one dwells in relationship to beings and values, then a linguistic event like preaching really can change one's world.  One perhaps is donated a being-in-the-world which would not have happened apart from the event of preaching.  The effects on the reader of Scripture, the hearer of the sermon, and the recipient of the sacrament could clearly be interpreted as not involving the action of some divine being.  If language itself is performative and the linguistic event empowers, then why assert some other being, disconnected from the event whose action would vouchsafe for the success of the event's reception?

But what if Langdon Gilkey is right about Tillich, and that I really should have studied more deeply Schelling, or perhaps the later works of Kant whom Fichte and Schelling wholly devoured?  While I have spent quite a bit of time in both The Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Practical Reason, I have never spent sufficient time with The Critique of Judgment, Kant's last great work of 1790.   I have lately decided to read the work closely, and I now see how and why it was that both Fichte, Schelling, as well as a whole host of other philosophers, believed that Kant's greatest work was, in fact, the Critique of Judgment.  The Critique of Pure Reason is very important, of course, but the options for philosophical and theological development from that work in an age threatened by mechanism were understandably limited.  However, the Critique of Judgment with its emphasis on aesthetics and purpose seemed extremely relevant to the challenges of the early 19th century: How can one find unity, purpose and meaning in a natural universe in which everything that happens seems to be the result of some congeries or concatenation of events antecedently occurring?

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant attempts to find a linkage between the mechanism resulting from the understanding's theoretical cognition of nature and freedom resulting from practical cognition of the power of desire.  The problem is the apparent antinomy between the assertion that all natural events are necessarily determined by other natural events and the claim that there are some events which are natural that are nonetheless not wholly determined by other natural events.  After all, when confronted by the decision to either go to the party of stay home, Molly is immediately aware of her freedom not to go as the very presupposition for her thinking that she ought not to go party.  Molly is a being in the world who is caused to behave as she does by her antecedent conditioning, but who nonetheless has the freedom to do other that what she did do.  But how can all natural events have a cause in nature, when Molly is a natural being involved in natural events and she sometimes acts in ways seemingly determined by no natural events at all?  How is the freedom of a human being, whose being is embodied in nature, possible?

Kant attempts to solve this antinomy by arguing that nature deals only with appearances, and so the appearance of determinism is not in conflict with the underlying freedom encountered in practical reason's grasp of its own duty.  The freedom encountered by the reason in its moral life is not a freedom, however, solely resting in the subject.  It is a freedom determined by reason's grasp of the supersensible substrate that exists both inside and outside the subject, a supersensible substrate that is indeterminate in itself, but is determined in moral experience.  For Kant, however, there is a power of judgment which operates to make determinable the indeterminate supersensible subtrate, a determinability that is possible on the side of the object, that is, a determinability applicable to the entire supersensible substrate, not just that encountered by the subject.

In an important section of the Critique of Judgment, Kant argues that the transcendental notion of purpose applied to nature is finally no mere thinking of purpose on the side of the subject when thinking nature, a thinking that would be the subject's imposition of purpose upon nature, but it is a thinking itself grounded in the indeterminate supersensible substrate, a real supersensible substrate which is what it is, and in the application of judgment to it, can allow the thinking of purpose in nature.

It is impossible, of course, to think what is indeterminate, however, Kant does laud Judgment's ability to think the world as if it were designed by God and as if this God had placed the human effort towards fulfillment of the moral law as the highest good of this creation.  While Kant knows that he cannot argue metaphysically for the real existence of this God without running into the antinomies, he does realize that human beings are allowed to think of the world of nature as if it is the result of objective purpose built into it by God, an objective purpose designed by God allowable on the basis or ground (Grund) of the supersensible substrate.  This substrate cannot be thought for there are no universals under which any supersensible intuitions might fall.  It is not able to be articulated by human beings, but it itself is that upon which analogies arise, analogies that allow human beings to think of nature as the field of moral activity without at the same time having to deny the results of the First Critique.

What does all of this mean?  Well maybe Ground of Being theologies yet hold some hope if we can connect them to a Kantian supersensible substrate.  If the Ground of Being underlying the Structure of Being is the supersensible substrate, an indeterminate noumenality that is the real reservoir of a power of being at the depth of being, a real reservoir of empowerment potential that can truly address the anxieties of fate and death, guilt and condemnation, and emptiness and meaninglessness, then perhaps we can read the entire tradition of theology based upon Kant a bit differently.  There would be, after all, a God, and that God would do stuff.  Its upon that God's basis that we could proclaim that God was indeed in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.  It is upon that Ground that the grace of Jesus Christ would be proclaimed and it is upon that really existing being that we could proclaim forgiveness and witness transformed lives.  It is upon that Ground that the Spirit would blow when and where it wills, and that the play of the Trinitarian persons could be entertained.  It is upon that Ground of divine simplicity that we could think the great thoughts of the Trinitarian tradition, a Ground deeper than substance but which is the true cause (Grund) of all that is. Maybe such an indeterminate realism is what the apophantic tradition was after all along. 

Kant's Argument for Purpose and the Notion of the Highest Good as the Solution to the Problem of Freedom and Nature

In his Second Introduction to Die Kritik der Urtheilskraft (1790), Kant declares:

"The understanding (Verstand), inasmuch as it can give laws to nature a priori, proves that we cognize nature only as appearance (Erscheinung), and hence at the same time points to a supersensible substate of nature (auf ein uebersinnliches Substrat derselben); but it leaves this substate wholly undetermined.  Judgment, through its a priori principle of judging nature in terms of possible particular laws of nature, provides nature's supersensible substrate (within as well as outside us) with determinability by the intellectual power (Bestimmbarkeit durch das intellectuelle Vermoegen).  But reason, through its a priori practical law, gives this same substrate determination (Bestimmung).  Thus judgment makes possible the transition (Uebergang) from the domain of the concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom" (Kant, Pluhar translation, 37/Kritik der Urtheilskraft, S. 196-7).

Kant's claims are these:

• The understanding, by giving laws to nature a priori, points to an undetermined supersensible substrate.
• Judgment, by judging nature a priori in terms of possible particular laws of nature, provides nature a determinability through its intellectual power.  
• Reason, by its a priori use of practical law, provides the substrate determination.  
• Judgment makes possible transition from the domain of the concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom. 

The supersensible substrate, which is undetermined by the understanding, is determined by reason.  How can that which is undetermined by understanding be nonetheless determined by reason?  Kant argues that judgment links the understanding and reason by providing the undetermined supersensible substrate the very possibility of determination. The undetermined cannot be determined without it having the disposition for determination.  Judgment somehow provides the supersensible the disposition for determination without itself being the actualization of that disposition.  Kant is saying, in effect, that judgment confers potential determination on the supersensible, a potentiality actualized in the employment of reason in its practical use.  But how is this all possible?  Kant argues that the condition for this possibility is the ultimate purpose for the world.  

In Section 86 entitled "Ethicotheology," Kant discusses what ultimately makes the world valuable by considering the notion of final purpose (Endzweck).  He denies that human contemplation (Betrachtung) and cognition (Erkenntnissvermoegen) of the world is sufficient to give the world value (Pluhar, 331/Die Kritik, S. 442: 22-29).  Rather, he claims that "only if we presupposed that the world has a final purpose (einen Endzweck derselben voraussetzen), could its contemplation itself have a value by reference to that purpose (die Weltbetrachtung selbst einen Werth haben)" (331/442).  Accordingly, he staunchly rejects any view that would claim that the final purpose of creation is the feeling of pleasure (der Gefuehl der Lust) that humans might have or develop, or human well-being (Wohlsein), or physical or intellectual enjoyment (Genuss), or ultimately, happiness (Glueckseligkeit) (331/442).  Kant writes: 

"For the fact that man, once he exists, makes happiness his own final intention (Endabsicht) gives us no concept [that tells us] for what end he exists at all, and what his own value is, on account of which his existence should be made agreeable to him (angenehm zu machen).  Therefore, we must already presuppose that man is the final purpose of creation, if we are to have a rational basis (Vernunftgrund) of why nature, considered as an absolute whole in terms of principles of purposes (ein absolutes Ganze nach Principien der Zweck betrachtet wird), should have to harmonize with [the goal of achieving] his happiness (zu seiner Glueckseligkeit zusammen stimmen muesse)" (331-32/442-43).   

Kant is saying that the only way rationally to account for how nature as a whole with its biological teleologies should harmonize with the human goal of happiness is to posit that human beings themselves constitute the final purpose of creation.   He further suggests that human beings have value and the world has final purpose through the "power of desire" (Begehrungsvermoegen).  This "power of desire" does not rest on what human beings might enjoy, but rather concerns the human exercise of freedom, an exercise that is tied to the good will.  Kant declares that this "good will is that through which human existence alone can have absolute worth (absoluten Werth), and in relation to which the existence of the world can have final purpose (Endzweck)" (Die Kritik, S. 443:10-13). 

Kant believes that it is through the good will that the universe has a final purpose.  The moral life of men and women is the final purpose for which nature exists at all.  Kant, however, realizes that a chain of final purposes can be organized according to the relation of "conditions" and the final purpose of human existence is, in some sense, "conditioned" by a higher purpose.  In such a concatenation, one most isolate the unconditional final purpose on the basis of which other final purposes are conditioned.  By acknowledging human beings to be the purpose of creation, there is a rational ground to regard the world as a whole as a system of final causes (die Welt als ein nach Zwecken zusammenhaengendes Ganz und als System von Endursachen anzusehen) (Die Kritik, S. 444:3-4).  Kant writes: 

" . . . we now have . . .  a basis (Grund), or at least the primary condition (Hauptbedingung), for regarding the world as a whole that coheres in terms of purposes (nach Zwecken zusammenhaengendes Ganze), and as a system of final causes (von Endursachen anzusehen). . . in referring natural purposes to an intelligent world cause (verstaendige Weltursache), as the character of our reason forces us to do, we now have a principle that allows us to conceive of the nature and properties of the first cause, i.e., the supreme basis of the kingdom of purposes (obersten Grundes im Reich der Zwecke) and hence allows us to give determination to the concept of this cause (den Begriff derselben zu bestimmen).  Physical teleology was unable to do this; all it could do was to give rise to concepts of this supreme basis that were indeterminate (unbestimmte) and on that very account were inadequate (untaugliche) for both theoretical and practical use" (Pluhar, 333/Die Kritik S. 444:2-11).  

Kant believes we must think this being not simply as intelligence (Intelligenz) and as giving laws to nature (gesetzgebend fuer die Natur), but as a sovereign (Oberhaupt) that gives laws in a moral kingdom of purposes.  In relation to the highest possible good (Gut) -- the existence of rational beings under moral laws -- we must think this primal being (Urwesen) as omniscient (allwissend), as omnipotent (allmaechtig), and as omnibenevolent (allguetig) and just (gerecht).  Kant believes the latter two conditions are necessary if we are to think the highest cause of the world as constituting the highest good under moral laws.  The same is true of all the transcendental properties, e.g., eternity and omnipresence (Allgegenwart), etc., which are presupposed by final purpose.  Kant argues that "in such a way, moral teleology supplements (ergaenzt) what physical teleology lacks, and for the first time grounds a theology" (Die Kritik S. 444: 13-29).    

Kant then concludes that the principle that allows us to relate the world to a supreme cause (oberste Ursache), is itself sufficient, and by driving our attention to the purposes of nature and in investigating the great art (grossen Kunst) lying hidden under nature's forms, the ideas that pure practical reason supplies (herbeischafft) might find incidental (beilaeufige) confirmation (Bestaetigung) in natural purposes (Naturzwecken) (Die Kritik, S. 445:1-4).  The notion of a highest being giving laws to the moral kingdom of purposes is necessary to connect the ideas of pure practical reason --ideas that have according to Kant's First Critique no echo in the physical universe -- nonetheless to nature via the notion of natural purposes.  A universe ordered teleologically is not ultimately alien to a purposeful moral agent.  It is, in fact, the kind of place in which a purposeful moral agent might dwell.  The universe and the beings inhabiting it are teaming with purpose.  Moreover, the moral kingdom of purposes require a highest being giving laws to both it and nature, a being that can and must be thought if freedom is ever to be present in and through nature. 

For Kant, Judgment is the faculty by which the indeterminate supersensible substrate might become determinable, that is, that it might be made capable of determination by pure practical reason.  But is this supersensible substrate the noumenal?  Or is it a transcendental concept, i.e., a transcendental condition for thinking how freedom and nature might be connected, a  concept that is itself not the noumenal?  If the latter, then it is determinable on the basis of itself being a concept capable of predication.  But if this is so, then the determinability of the concept is of a different order than the indeterminateness of the noumenal.  Since the noumenal remains undetermined, there is no ultimate bridge between freedom and nature.   While they can be thought together, at the ontological level they remain wholly disparate.  An unbridgeable dualism remains.  So what is that which unifies the fissure between freedom and nature?  Is it the idea of God, or is it God Himself?  It is to the oft-neglected "moral proof of the existence of God" in Die Kritik der Urtheilkraft that we turn in the next post.  

Kant and The Putative Contradiction between Determinism and Freedom, and the Move towards Common Ground

As is well-known, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) wrote two very famous works that seem to give very different results.  Like many who have studied philosophy, I have spent considerable time in the texts of both his First and Second Critiques, but never seriously in his Third.

Of course, I have known for a very long time what is in his 1790 Die Kritik der Urtheilskraft.  It is, after all,  famous for its position on the subjective universality of aesthetic judgments; its development of the concept of beauty with its "four moments" that include disinterestedness, universality, necessity, and feeling; and his development of teleology and highlighting of purpose.  One can read parts of the work and be alternately convinced and puzzled by Kant's arguments.  I have known also that Kant thought that somehow his Third Critique could address the putative fissure between the results of his first two tomes, though I have not hitherto tried to examine carefully the specific arguments by which he tries to establish this.  What I write below is my first step in trying to correct this deficiency.

The Kritik der reinen Vernunft from 1781 (first edition) and 1787 (second edition) argued persuasively that all empirical objects, properties, relations and events are constituted by the Understanding (Der Verstand), that is, that the pure and empirical concepts of the understanding ultimately work to "synthesize the manifold of sensation" such that the denizens of the empirical domain can be known in their universality and necessity.  While Kant speaks of the Ding an sich (thing-in-itself), he realizes we have no epistemic access to it.  But while the nomenal realm of the things-in-themselves cannot be known, the phenomenal realm of things-as-they-are-for-us -- things as they have been constituted by, and given to consciousness -- is epistemically accessible.  We can know the latter, but not the former.   What we know is a domain whose inhabitants are connected by strict causal laws.  There are, accordingly, no uncaused events in this domain.  All that happens is a result of other things that have happened.  Accordingly, a mechanical determinism characterizes the phenomenal order of the Ding fuer uns ("thing-for-us").

The Kritik der praktischen Vernunft from 1788 argued persuasively that human beings are immediately confronted by duty, and that in the face of this duty they are free: The fact that one ought to do X presupposes that one is free to do X.  Ought implies the freedom to do; ought implies can.  (Try to think of a situation where it can meaningfully said that something ought to be done when there is no ability for what has not been done to have been other than it is.)  Famously, Kant argues that we are confronted with a categorical imperative that while empty of content, formally gives conditions of universality, impartiality, and necessity.  His subjective maxims of the categorical imperative are these: 1) So act such that in your act, your act can become a universal law of humanity, 2) So act always to treat the other as an end-in-itself and not as a means to one's own end.  But this action requires freedom, a conclusion seemingly incompatible with the results of the First Critique.

Palpably, if there is one or more free acts in the universe, then the mechanistic determinism of the First Critique is wrong.  Conversely, if all events are determined in accordance with strict natural laws, as Kantian universality and necessity seem to imply, then the freedom of the Second Critique is incorrect.  How might this tension be mitigated?

In his Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Kant takes up this issue, particularly in Section IX of his second Introduction that deals with how judgment can connect the legislations of the understanding and reason.  There is a footnote in this section where Kant explains how it is that the results of the first two Critiques are not in opposition with each other.  Because of the difficulty of the argument, I shall often quote it in the original German, offer my own translation of relevant portions, and analyze what it is the Kant is attempting to do.  It is hard enough to understand exactly what Kant means when he is writing in his own language employing his own technical vocabulary.  I believe that the task only becomes more challenging when trying to read him in translation where the attempt to render him intelligible in English has sometimes occluded the precision of that vocabulary.  Here is the footnote:

"Einer von den verschiedenen vermeinten Widersprüchen in dieser gänzlichen Unterscheidung der Naturcausalität von der durch Freiheit ist der, da man ihr den Vorwurf macht: daß, wenn ich von Hindernissen, die die Natur der Causalität nach Freiheitsgesetzen (den moralischen) legt, oder ihre Beförderung durch dieselbe rede, ich doch der ersteren auf die letztere einen Einfluß einräume. Aber wenn man das Gesagte nur verstehen will, so ist die Mißdeutung sehr leicht zu verhüten. Der Widerstand, oder die Beförderung ist nicht zwischen der Natur und der Freiheit, sondern der ersteren als Erscheinung und den Wirkungen der letztern als Erscheinungen in der Sinnenwelt; und selbst die Causalität der Freiheit (der reinen und praktischen Vernunft) ist die Causalität einer jener untergeordneten Naturursache (des Subjekts, als Mensch, folglich als Erscheinung betrachtet), von deren Bestimmung das Intelligible, welches unter der Freiheit gedacht wird, auf eine übrigens (eben so wie eben dasselbe, was das übersinnliche Substrat der Natur ausmacht) unerklärliche Art den Grund enthält" (Kritik der Urteilskraft, S. 195, fn.)

Kant points out here one of the objections to his finding no contradiction between the causality of nature and freedom is this:  "When I speak about obstacles that nature lays in the way of the laws of freedom (moral laws), or the furthering of the same, I thus concede that the former has an influence on the latter."  Kant says, however, that this is a misinterpretation of his position, a misunderstanding that is easy to avoid it.  He continues, "The resistance (Widerstand) or furtherance (Befoerderung) is not between nature and freedom, but between the former as an appearance and the effects of the latter as an appearance in the world of sense (Sinnenwelt)."  Kant is clearly explaining that this is not a situation of nature and freedom in conflict.  Rather, the apparent conflict occurs between appearances, i.e., between the appearance that is nature and the appearance of the effects of freedom.  

Kant then declares that "the causality of freedom (of pure and practical reason) is the causality of that subsumed natural cause -- the subject, as a human being, thus considered as an appearance."  He further explains that in the determination (Bestimmung) of this natural cause, "the intelligible, which is thought under [the concept] of freedom, contains a ground (Grund) in an unexplained way -- even as the same comprises the supersensible substrate of nature."  

Kant is claiming that freedom and nature do not conflict because in some sense both are appearances of an underlying reality which, though it itself cannot be explicated, nonetheless grounds the intelligible, that is, a reflective judgment of freedom, a judgment that humans can think, and in that thinking locate the perspective by which freedom and nature do not conflict.

But can we become clearer on what Kant is saying?  How does this all cohere with Kant's examination of both aesthetic and teleological judgments that comprise most of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft?  

In light of the footnote above, I want to read closely Section IX of Kant's second Introduction to the Kritik.  While it does not provide a detailed explanation of how the intelligibility of the judgment linking the domains of nature and freedom connects to the ground of the supersensible, it does nicely lay out the direction in which an explanation might take us.  Kant begins the section by distinguishing the understanding and reason.  Because the German is straightforward, I quote Werner Pluhar's translation as follows:  

"The understanding legislates a priori for nature, as object of sense, in order to give rise to theoretical cognition of nature in a possible experience.  Reason legislates a prior for freedom and for freedom's own causality, in other words, for the supersensible in the subject, in order to give rise to unconditioned practical cognition" (Pluhar, Critique of Judgment, p. 35/Kritik, S. 195:4-8).  

This statement of the results of the First and Second Critiques is followed by what I shall call Kant's independence axiom:

"The concept of freedom determines nothing with regard to our theoretical cognition of nature, just as the concept of nature determines nothing with regard to the practical laws of freedom: and to this extent it is not possible to throw a bridge from one domain to the other (eine Bruecke von einem Gebiete zu dem anderen hinueberzuschlagen) (Critique, p. 35-6/Kritik, S. 195:13-16).  

But he then qualifies this statement of independence with this startling assertion that I must quote in the original German: 

"Allein wenn die Bestimmungsgründe der Causalitaet nach dem Freiheitbegriffe . . . gleich nicht in der Natur belegen sind, und das Sinnliche das Übersinnliche im Subjekte nicht bestimmen kann: so ist dieses doch umgekehrt . . . möglich and schon in dem Begriffe eine Causalitaet durch Freiheit enthalten, deren Wirkung diesen ihren formalen Gesetzen Gemäß in der Welt geschehen soll . . .(Kritik, S. 195:17-24)." 

Kant declares that "even though the grounds of the determination of causality according to the concept of freedom do not lie in nature, and the sensible cannot thus determine the supersensible
in the subject, the converse is possible, and already in this concept, a causality through freedom is contained, [a causality] whose effect must happen in the world according to its [freedom's] formal laws."  Clearly, Kant is saying that the supersensible can somehow determine the sensible in conformity with the formal laws of freedom.  This is a bold claim for the one who wrote persuasively in his Kritik der reined Vernunft  that metaphysics has been shipwrecked on the shores on reason's antinomies.  The "supersensible" clearly smacks of metaphysics, does it not?  But Kant is not done:  

" . . . obzwar das Wort Ursache, von dem Übersinnlichen gebraucht, nur dem Grund bedeutet, die Causalitaet der Naturdinge zu einer Wirkung gemäß ihren eigen Naturgesetzen, zugleich aber doch auch mit dem formalen Princip der Vernunftgesetze einhellig zu bestimmen, . . .  (Kritik, S. 195:24-27).  

Kant is pointing out that when the word 'cause' is used with respect to the supersensible, we mean only the ground (Grund) determining the causality of natural things to bring about an effect according to their own laws of nature, and at the same time to do so in conformity with the formal principle of the laws of reason.  By qualifying his assertion in this way, Kant seeks to avoid a metaphysical claim.  'Cause' used here is not a usage according to the pure concepts of the understanding or the pure ideas of reason, but instead points to a basis or ground in the noumenal by which casual connections can be drawn in the phenomenal, a basis or ground that at the same time can allow these causal connections to obtain in a way consistent with the laws of reason in the moral order.  It is a use that is possible for reflective judgment, not for the theoretical judgments of the First Critique.  It is a use that nonetheless allows for the fact that we have no insight into how this is possible (wovon die Moeglichkeit zwar night eingesehen).   

It is important to recall at this point Kant's distinction between determinative and reflective judgments.  While the theoretical exercise of pure reason and the practical use of pure practical reason employ the former, the second type of judgment is saved mostly for the kinds of concerns Kant examines in the Third Critique, e.g., aesthetics and teleology.  In a determinative judgment, the universal is that which is known and which determines the particular in accordance with it.  In a reflective judgment, however, it is the particular which is known and one is allowed thereby freely to think a universal (identifies a universal) under which the particular might fall.   

It is in such a judgment that Kant then connects this supersensible ground to the concept of purpose.  It is through a final cause that freedom and the world of nature in which it is advanced must exist. In lines that clearly suggest the development of Fichte that will soon follow, Kant writes: 

"Die Wirkung nach dem Freiheitsbegriffe ist der Endzweck, der (oder dessen Erscheinung in der Sinnenwelt) existieren soll, wozu die Bedingung der Möglichkeit desselben in der Natur (des Subjects als Sinnenwesens, nämlich als Mensch) vorausgesetzt wird" (Kritik, S. 195:30 - 196:3).   

Purpose is the effect according to the concept of freedom, which must exist in the sensible world, and which is presupposed by the condition for the possibility in nature of human beings, subjects that are denizens of the sensible.  He continues: 

" . . . die Urteilskraft giebt den vermittelnden Begriff zwischen den Naturbegriffen und dem Freiheitsbegriffe, der die Übergang von der reinen theoretischen zur der praktischen, von der Geseztsmaessigkeit nach der ersten zum Endzwecke nach dem letzten möglich macht, in dem Begriff einer Zweckmässigkeit der Natur an der Hand; Den dadurch wird die Möglichkeit des Endzwecks, der allein in der Natur und mit Einstimmung ihrer Gesetze wirklich werden kann, erkannt" (Kritik, S. 196:4-11).  

The power of judgment provides a mediating concept between the concepts of nature and freedom.  It is the concept of the purposiveness of nature that makes possible a transition from the theoretical to the practical, from the lawfulness of nature to the purpose of the practical.  We can know only through the possibility of a final purpose (Endzwecks) how freedom is actualizable in accordance with the laws of nature.  The understanding which determines the phenomenal order leaves the supersensible substrate of nature undetermined.  While reason in its practical use according to the moral laws does determine this substrate, it cannot point to how freedom might be thought actualizable in nature.  Kant declares: 

"Die Urteilskraft verschafft durch ihr Princip a priori die Beurteilung der Natur nach möglichen besonderen Gesetzen derselben ihrem übersinnlichen Substrat (in uns sowohl als ausser uns) Bestimmbarkeit durch das intellektuelle Vermögen. Die Vernunft aber giebt eben demselben durch ihr praktisches Gesetz a priori die Bestimmung; und so macht die Urteilskraft den Übergang von Gebiete des Naturbegriffs zu dem Freiheitsbegriffs möglich" (Kritik, S. 196:15-22).     

It is the power of judgment that, through its own a priori principle, judges nature according to its possible particular laws, and accordingly possesses the intellectual capability (intellektuelle Vermoegen) to give the supersensible substrate determinability (Bestimmbarkeit).  This determinability of the supersensible substrate links to the determination (Bestimmung) by practical reason of that same supersensible substate.  Judgment thus allows the transition from the domain of the concept of freedom to that of the concept of nature.   

What Kant is saying is that judgment is free to think the notion of a final purpose under which both moral freedom and the determinism of nature might fall.  One can conceive of a ground -- though not articulate its structure -- under which its determination of nature, and its determinability by practical reason is possible.  The intelligibility of this ground in uns sowohl als ausser uns is found in the final purpose for which nature and freedom exist.  Our permission contemplatively to think nature as purposeful allows us to think how it is that a purposeful moral agent might exercise freedom in the domain of nature.  Ultimately, it is only the appearance of nature that stands in opposition to the life of the moral subject.  In reality, the deepest nature of that nature is consonant with our moral strivings.  

How could it be that the fissure between freedom and nature is overcome?  It is simply that we must penetrate beyond the mere appearance of their opposition and grasp the identity of their ground in the seeming disparate difference of their domains.  With this move, Kant, and not Fichte, palpably becomes the true father of German Idealism.  

To achieve more clarity on the nature of purpose and teleology for his program of finding an underlying unity between nature and freedom, however, demands that we examine carefully relevant selections of pertinent texts in Part II of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft on teleology.  I shall return to this task in a later post. 

Reflections on Kant's Quest for the Unity of Reason

I first came to Kant as an undergraduate student, trying to read a text I found at the library with the interesting title, The Critique of Pure Reason.  I recall attempting to figure out what Kant meant by the analytic/synthetic distinction and why he thought it so important.  I liked metaphysics even then, I must admit, and was accordingly puzzled why Kant was so chary of it.

I also vividly remember taking in my last undergraduate semester a course entitled "Freedom and Determinism," in which I wrote a paper complaining that Kant could and ought not be a half-way determinist.  If the results of the First Critique are a thoroughgoing mechanistic determinism, then clearly there is no freedom, certainly not the freedom Kant extols in his Critique of Practical Reason.  I was an incompatibilist back then, I suppose, for I thought that if all acts are determined, then there can be no contra-causal freedom and philosophical libertarianism is false, and conversely, if some actions are contra-causally free -- philosophical libertarianism is true -- then not all acts are determined.

Compatibilism was, I thought, simply a lack of courage.  If I really could have done other than I did do -- and write 'really could not have done' instead of 'really could have done' in the earlier part of this sentence -- then not all acts are mechanistically determined and the results of Kant's First Critique are wrong.  How could the conclusions of both Critiques be true?   If mechanistic determinism, then no freedom; if freedom then no mechanistic determinism.  Tertium non datur!!  

I have read quite a bit of philosophy since those early days, but I must confess that I have not really gotten sufficient clarity on the freedom/determinism issue to make much progress.  Clearly, every event has a cause including each act that I do.  Yet if I am not really free to do other than what I did do, then I cannot be culpable for my actions.  With what propriety can I ascribe praise and blame to someone who cannot do other than what he does do?

Probably James' "Dilemma of Determinism" was most convincing to me.  I can believe in freedom of the will.  On questions that are momentous, unavoidable, and not ultimately empirically determinable, then I have a right to choose that belief which is most subjectively satisfying.  Either freedom of the will is true or it is not true.  If it is not true, then I am in the subjectively unsatisfying position of always regretting actions I do which, if determinism is true, I could not have not done.  My experience is one of regretting what is unchangeable, and even, if enlightened about determinism, regretting my regretting of what is unchangeable.  Why would one choose to believe that which makes a mockery out of one's very moral experience?

But my practical belief in libertarianism (the freedom to do other than what one did do) could not dispel my theoretical doubts. After all, it seemed to me then, and seems to me now, that everything in the universe is ultimately physical -- including us.  This means inter alter that explanation schemes for the realization of contra-causal action are difficult to frame. Assume that macro-event A causes macro-event B.  Given that physicalism is likely true -- that what there ultimately is in the universe are those entities over which the quantifiers of our fundamental theories of micro-physics quantify -- then each macro-event must have some realization at progressively lower levels of descriptions terminating in those most basic entities (or fields) over which micro-physics quantifies.

Even though 'A causes B' can perhaps not be given a reductive analysis in terms of a congeries of micro-events and entities constituting A and a congeries of micro-events and entities constituting B, it is nonetheless true that some set of entities and events realize A and some other set realize B.  Presumably, top-down causality does not hold, i.e., that actualizations at upper levels can causally influence the distribution of their realizers at the lower levels.  Accordingly, the laws effecting the distribution of lower level events and entities must be indigenous to those lower levels.  Thus, the distribution of these lower level events and entities will metaphysically determine the causal relations at the upper levels.  Simply put, macro-causality is realized by the physical micro-causal, and there is no room for the contra-causal agency of human beings.  While there is no type/type identity between macro-events and their realizers, there is token/token identity.  That is to say, every occasion of A need not be realized in the same way at the lower levels, but there must be some realization or other of A.   One might say that A and B are multiply realizable at the lower levels.

It is precisely these considerations that have made it difficult for me to get clear on any way to solve the problem of freedom and nature.  Freedom seems not to be part of nature, but profoundly part of what it is to be me.  Nature seems not to have any freedom, and indeed to give it freedom seems to make a mockery out of our science.  How could the lower level physical realizers of uncaused actions spontaneously appear?

All of this is but an extended introduction to Immanuel Kant's Third Critique.  In his 1790 Critique of Judgment -- actually it is Der Kritik der Urtielkraft, or "Critique of the Power of Judgment"-- Kant mounts a spirited defense of a position that animated earlier readers of the Kritik, but has not been much understood since.  In this Critique, Kant argues for the possibility of a rapprochement between Nature and Freedom, between the results of the First Critique and the results of the Second.  Famously, he argues for a different type of judgment than the determinative judgments of the first two Critiques.

While it is the imagination and understanding which work to form and experience the objects of the empirical world according to the laws of nature we ourselves promulgate, and while it is reason that functions to determine our moral experience according to the moral law that we autonomously legislate, there is a judgment tied to aesthetics and teleology that does not determine the particular on the basis of the universal, but which allows a universal to be thought on the basis of the particular.  In this reflective judgment, which Kant does not explicitly connect to aesthetics in the Critique of Judgment, there is granted a license to judge universally and subjectively the purposiveness of that which has no purpose.  In this judgment, one is ultimately allowed to think that there is a supersensible substratum connecting the sensibility of nature and the supersensibility of freedom, a noumenal reality that shows itself in teleological organization in nature, and in the doing, rescues nature from a position of total otherness (alienation?) from freedom.

Imagine John acting to save Mary from her drug addiction.  Presumably, John could not have acted so to save Mary, but did so act, and thus his act is freely done and praiseworthy because of it.  But where does John realize his free decision to do other than what he might have done and take Mary to the drug treatment center?

He seemingly must do this action wholly embodied in nature  -- his body is physical and his actions are physical events -- and thus the entire realization of his free decision so to act is subject to the determinism of nature.  So how could this free act be possible in a mechanical universe?  What are the transcendental conditions allowing for the realization of Freedom in Nature?

Kant's answer is that we are allowed to think that there is in nature purposive structure.  The heart exists to pump blood.  The pumping of the blood allows the heart to be conceived as cause.  The symmetries of nature allow a designer to be thought as cause.  Nature itself organizes itself, and in this organization points to a summum bonum as the limit of such organization, as the attractor towards which all things flow.  In the organization of nature can be found the manifestation of the supersensible, a manifestation that makes possible the realization of freedom precisely in the determinism of nature.  Kant is hoping to locate a unity to reason grounding both its theoretical and practical operations, a unity that does not, however, fall prey to the antinomies of Pure Reason, a unity that escapes the charge of the bare posit of another pulling of a metaphysical rabbit out of the hat.

An evaluation of the degree to which Kant is successful must await, however, a precise statement of the argument for the unity of reason found in the Critique of Judgment.  It is to this that I hope soon to return.

An Irony at Luther Seminary

The Park Bugle of St. Anthony Park reports in its June 22, 2018 issue that Luther Seminary will sell 15 acres of its buildings and land.  The subheading declares, "Sale is Part of 'Campus of the Future' plan, which includes free tuition for incoming students and a trimmer campus."  The buildings to be sold include Northwestern Hall, Stub Hall, several houses and the LDR apartments on Fulham St., Breck Woods, and Bockman Hall.  Remaining at Luther Seminary are the Olson Campus Center and Gullixson Hall.  Looking at the map, it would appear that approximately 70% of the campus is slated for sale.  (See http://www.parkbugle.org/luther-seminary-to-sell-15-acres-of-buildings-land/.)

There are many reasons for the sale.  Years ago I wrote a brief paper justifying the establishment of a new Lutheran seminary -- a seminary that the Institute of Lutheran Theology became -- that alluded to the problems facing the present brick and mortar Lutheran seminaries.  I spoke then of the economic, sociological and theological problems facing these educational institutions (https://www.academia.edu/12456248/Proposal_of_the_Lutheran_Theological_House_of_Studies_Taskforce).  The problems the seminaries face oftentimes disallow them from operating on the models they have inherited from the past.  Within the ELCA in particular, changes are now rapid.

Luther Seminary, like many seminaries of mainline Protestant Christianity, is witnessing declining enrollment and increased use of online learning platforms.  While headcount at many seminaries is slowly declining, the number of physical students on campuses is dropping much more precipitously.  This seems to be happening at Luther. 

As I was contemplating the move by Luther to monetize their real estate assets to provide operational revenue via "free tuition" for incoming M.Div. and M.A. students, I was stuck by an irony.  While the ELCA and its predecessor bodies have not for decades been able to provide future pastors free tuition for matriculating at Luther, free tuition will now evidently be available to students because of the appreciation of the financial value of Luther Seminary's real assets.

Many of those who will train to become future "missional pastors" at Luther will no doubt have deep concerns and criticisms of capitalism.  Theological literature criticizing America's present  economic system is abundant, and most studying in mainline Protestant denominational seminaries can articulate at least some of the key points of economic injustice underlying classism, sexism, racism, etc. Clearly, a greater percentage of American wealth lands in fewer and fewer hands.  (Think of Jeff Bezos at Amazon who is now worth $142,500,000,000.)  It simply is true that many becoming pastors today understand their task primarily as speaking a prophetic voice against structures of economic injustice, oppression and marginalization.

The irony is this: Those attending Luther in its tuition-free future will likely owe their ability to learn the deep theological critiques of capitalism to . . .  capitalism.  How is this so?

Land value appreciates because developers see a market, and subsequently value an asset on the basis of how it will allow them to serve that market.  There are many reasons why developers develop.  Many developers whom I know have altruistic traits; they want to help people by providing a service that is needed.  However, no developer can develop without calculating the margins, and those margins must include profit.

It is standard in commercial and multi-family development that one must achieve a certain debt service covering ratio (DSCR) before a bank will make a loan on a project.  This ratio is the measure of net operating income (NOI) over debt service.  Most banks will not approve a project if the DSCR is below 1.2.  For instance, if debt service (principle + interest) on a building is $100,000/year, the NOI must be at least $120,000 if the DSCR is to be above 1.2.  Since NOI is the difference between revenue and all expenses, one must show a profit prior to depreciation (amortized write-off of capital expenditures) of $120,000 even to get the loan to allow the project to be built.  Simply put, one must show $20,000 in available cash flow (net operating income less debt service) in order to build the project.  The land and improvements at Luther Seminary will likely have the value they will have, a value based upon a motivated rational seller and motivated rational buyer, because someone can figure a way to cash flow the new project at 20% over debt service.

This means that the value of the asset that can be monetized for free student tuition which will allow students to study the evils of capitalism is itself dependent upon economic realities that presuppose capitalism.  Simply put, if capitalism did not work, at least in this particular case, there would be insufficient land and improvement value to monetize, no free student tuition, and possibly no educational context for the study of capitalism's shortcomings.

But there is more irony.  What the Lutheran Church was not capable of doing -- providing free tuition to those studying to become pastors -- the market is actually accomplishing.   It is precisely because entrepreneurs take risks in order to develop property that land at Luther will likely have the value it will have. Because the land and improvements have the value they have, monetization is possible which can produce free or diminished student tuition. 

It is perhaps too bald to say this, but I shall do so anyway:  The necessary condition for the possibility of a context of free and open dialogue and criticism of capitalism among students and professors at Luther Seminary is the existence itself of capitalism, an economic system apparently capable of providing the requisite funds for the discussion there to occur.

Living without Tribes

I don't have a tribe.  I grew up in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS), migrated to the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), fell into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and find myself now more (or less) identified with the North America Lutheran Church (NALC) and Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC).

I did not get there the way that others do.  There were no mentors saying to do this or that in order to get here or there.  In fact, no one told me where best to head. 

It didn't occur to me in my first five decades of life that I would establish a new Lutheran seminary and graduate school.  While I remember telling my Bethany College undergraduate students in the late1980s that the ELCA was essentially unstable and could not survive, I did not spend great lengths of time wondering about what life would be like after the ELCA.

I was not an insider and have never been one, so the thought of starting a new Lutheran graduate school could not occur to me.

As an undergraduate, I knew nobody seriously contemplating becoming a pastor.  I was busy playing music, and beginning about age 22, doing some more serious studying.  I read primary texts on my own because I did know anyone else reading them and they were interesting to me.  I notice that I liked philosophy, particularly philosophers dealing with theological questions.

While others were going to the seminary after college, I went to the farm and raised corn, soybeans, cattle and sheep.  It was during these farm days that I switched membership from the small LCMS church of my hometown to the larger LCA church 16 miles away.  There I found more exciting music, as well as preaching that actually connected to the contemporary horizon.  I was a LCA Lutheran that had no idea what "being LCA" really meant.  (Later I would say that I did not know the "identify conditions" of being LCA.)  I did learn that the LCA had bishops, but the question of bishops was of no concern to me.

My concern at the beginning of the 1980s was simply this, "How is theology possible given the intellectual assumptions of contemporary culture?"  It seemed to me that both my little LCMS congregation and the larger LCA congregation which I was attending did not deal with the questions about which I was concerned.  What evidence is there for God and the truth of revelation?  What kind of responses can be given to German higher criticism that seemed to me to undermine the reliability of the Biblical texts?   What could Tillich possibly be meaning by saying that Christ is transparent to the Ground of Being?

At this point I was still almost completely self-taught.  I had studied Latin on the farm and tried to read some primary texts. (I made it through Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, Tillich's Systematic Theology and Elert's Structure of Lutheranism, and the first volume of Richard Feymann's Lectures on Physics when I was not outside actually working.)

When it came time to leave the farm in 1981, I thought again about going to seminary.  But when I looked at the catalogue at Luther Seminary and I visited Concordia Seminary, I did not see the intellectual challenges I wanted. In coming back from St. Louis I stopped at the University of Iowa, and considered what it would be like to go there. 

Nobody told me that the GRE score I received would have gotten me into most graduate programs at the time, and nobody told me about the advantages I might have had going to an east coast school.  If they had, I would not have listened anyway, because I liked the midwest and was always partial to the the Iowa Hawkeyes.  I had met Dr. George Forell at the LCA church I had attended and I knew Iowa offered both a Ph.D. in philosophy and one in religion, and figured either of these programs would be more challenging than the seminary.

At Iowa, I soon discovered that most of my classmates in the School of Religion already had M.Div. degrees from seminaries, and that having these degrees did not seem to help them do better in the classes than I was doing.  I liked taking classes both in the philosophy and religion departments at Iowa.  While I had not decided in which department to do my Ph.D., receiving the Teaching-Research Fellowship in the School of Religion made my mind up for me.  I took a M.A. in philosophy and a Ph.D. in Religion.

My course work at Iowa was decidedly non-standard, even for somebody getting their Ph.D. in a program entitled, "Contemporary Theology and Religious Reflection."  Since I studied what was interesting to me, I took courses in Kant, Analytical Ethics, Christian Ethics, Chinese religions, Plato, Frege, Wittgenstein, Predicate Logic, Modal Logic, Sartre, Analytical Metaphysics, Heidegger, Rahner, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and many courses in the history of theology and philosophy.  There were many seminars that I recall being helpful, particularly one in metaphysics that dealt with the nature of causation, a second in theology examining the nature of the dialectical method, and a third in the philosophy of science where I worked to understand the element of convention in all theory construction.   I had seminars dealing with numerous contemporary theological topics, and a two semester course called 'Theological Questions I and II" that dealt deeply with Tillich's thought, as read through the prism of Robert Scharlemann's Reflection and Doubt in the Thought of Paul Tillich.

My comp areas included the History of Theology, Theological (particularly analytical) Methods, Hegel and Tillich.  My dissertation was on Martin Luther, particularly his semantics as interpreted through his work in the disputations. 

Although my dissertation won the top prize at the University of Iowa for dissertations in the humanities, I realized that I simply did not know, and had not studied, the late medieval period sufficiently deeply to be able to speak confidently about much upon which I was writing.  I knew that knowledge of the original languages was holding me back.  While I knew some Latin, I did not know it well enough to do painstaking work in the untranslated Latin texts of Luther's Ockamist predecessors.  And while I knew some German, it was definitely slow work to read German articles and books dealing with the issues interesting me.  My French was in some ways more serviceable than my German in those days, but there was little reason to use it in the dissertation.  Dr. George Forell was my friend and Doktor Vater on the dissertation, and he made sure that I did not say anything too odd.

Coming out of Iowa with a Ph.D. in Religion and a M.A. in Philosophy, I headed to Bethany College in Lindsborg, KS, and soon understood that as Chair of the Department with an award-winning dissertation on Luther, it was assumed by all audiences that I had deep competence in Lutheran theology, and that I would surely have profound opinions on all matters theological of interest to Lutherans. 

But I found that I was not of any particular Lutheran tribe.  When I read in logic, semantics and metaphysics, people assumed that I was reading in Lutheran theology and interested in questions of scriptural interpretation, worship, and practical theology. (I actually was interested in these things, but one can only read so much.) I wanted to be part of a tribe and gain tribal acceptance, but sometimes felt I did not say quite the right things in the right ways.  Quickly, I learned that my life vocation was going to become much wider than my training.  I had to learn confessional Lutheran theology deeply and I had to learn it quickly.  I also had to acquaint myself with the contour of contemporary Lutheran theology.  After all, in my Ph.D. program, I had not read one article or book from an American Lutheran theologian outside of George Forell. 

My real orientation to Lutheran theology thus came primarily through reading the texts of Martin Luther.  While I did not know about Evangelical Catholics, Lutheran Pietism, First Form/Second Form issues, Forde, etc., I did learn a great deal at Iowa about Luther, Christian existentialism and the phenomenological approach generally, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Robert Scharlemann.  Since I never was a member of a tribe, I had to learn about the other tribes from the outside, as it were.  I grasped what American Lutheran theologians were doing by understanding them as influenced by European Schools of thought generally.  I understood that theologian A was working with a phenomenological ontology, that B buys some of the assumptions of process theology, that C is beholden to the work of Hegel or maybe the dialectical theologians, while D is influenced by post-Gadamerian developments within hermeneutical theology, particularly those pertaining to an ontology of language.

Over the course of the next 10-15 years, I thought I actually had found my tribe.  After I became Head of Religion and Philosophy at Grand View College (now "Grand View University") and toiled there to increase Lutheran identity, I knew that I should become an ELCA pastor, teach and preach, and work hard to promote Lutheran identity within that denomination as well.

I took a position in philosophy and religion at South Dakota State University(SDSU) -- a position that turned out to be mostly teaching philosophy -- while simultaneously working with Wartburg Seminary to acquire those qualifications necessary to become an ELCA pastor.  I was ordained on All Saints Day in 1998 and served two congregations while teaching full-time at SDSU.  Shortly before my ordination, I read the Concordat and tried to explain to my Bishop that the lex credendi always follows the lex orandi, but she was not interested.   To my worries about Lutheran identity, she calmly pointed out, "It seems you don't have enough faith."  Yet, though my entrance onto the ELCA clergy roles did not progress precisely as I planned, I nonetheless thought that within the ELCA I had indeed found my tribe. After all, there were like-minded individuals with whom I felt comfortable.  Surely, I was home in the ELCA.

As theological coherence and consistency declined within the ELCA in the late twentieth century, I found myself within a group of those wanting to return the ELCA to a more traditional theological mooring.  I was not motivated in my opposition to ELCA theological laxity by the power of bishops or by sexuality issues per se, but simply by what I took to be the eclipse of theology within the ELCA. I believed that the situation was worse than that the denomination was heading in the wrong direction, it was a matter of there being no agreed upon way any longer within the ELCA to adjudicate what should be the right direction in which to go.  Simply put, there was no way to really do theology any more.  To my disconsolation and consternation, I found that increasingly within the ELCA, one had to say the right things in the right ways or one was really not accepted by many within ELCA leadership.  Tribalism was back, and I was outside again.

When the WordAlone Network conceived establishing a new House of Studies "committed to the traditional Biblical hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation" -- a phrase I wrote -- it was maybe natural for me to lead the effort.  Why?

Perhaps it is because I did not know the tribes deeply enough, and thus did not realize how difficult it would be to birth a project demanding that people from the differing tribes work together.   Maybe my absence of a tribe was an advantage because I did not naturally build the new school -- now called 'The Institute of Lutheran Theology' -- in a particular tribal tradition.  I simply wanted to establish a school in which people from all the tribes could come together and do Lutheran theology seriously and rigorously, where they could safely agree or disagree beyond slogans giving the "identity conditions" of their tribal participation, where the unity of the search for truth -- a unity naturally manifesting itself in the pressuring of boundaries of any particular tribe -- would trump the security of knowing which tribe was my tribe, which the right tribe.

So it is that the Institute of Lutheran Theology today has students, faculty and staff from the ELCA, LCMS, NALC, LCMC, ELS (Evangelical Lutheran Synod), CALC (Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations), AFLC (Association of Free Lutheran Churches,  ALC (Augsburg Lutheran Churches), ELCIC (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada) and the Orthodox Lutheran Church.  (It has students from a variety of other Christian traditions as well.)

So why has the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) formed if it is not a manifestation of a tribe?  Has it no home theology?  What is taught there?

ILT is committed to the search for truth in theology; it embraces a semantic realist construal of theological language: Theological propositions have truth-conditions; they are in principle capable of adjudication.  Moreover, ILT takes the Theology of the Cross motif within Lutheran theology deeply seriously.  The divine is hidden and we must be humble in the face of this hiddenness.  Finally, ILT believes that theology exists always dynamically, that its task is never complete.  Theology bridges the gap between the kerygma of our tradition -- and our changing understandings of this kerygma -- and the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.   Because this horizon changes, the theological task lies ever before us.  ILT is an institution living out the dynamics of the theological task.  We do not abandon the kerygma for the culture, nor embrace the culture in forgetfulness of the kerygma.

Perhaps not being in a tribe is precisely the best way to lead the theological life.  I never thought it would be so important not to be in a tribe.  Perhaps being an outsider is precisely what it is to live life under the Cross.  We can never be secure.  As Christ's feet were raised off of the ground on the Cross, so are all of our aspirations for certainty.  The search for foundations is the originator of the "identity conditions" which confidently demarcate tribal members.  But in the face of eternity, such demarcation is, as Thomas Aquinas said about his completed Summa, "merely straw."  

Ultimately, we pilgrims of the Cross are forever outsiders.  My prayer is that ILT will continue to live the tension of the Cross, that it will continue to bring together particular people into a project bigger than the being of particular selves.  After all, when Christ snares us, our particularity comes to an end.  At the end of the day, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).  We at ILT live this oneness in Jesus Christ each day, in the midst of the tribes which threaten at times to pull us apart, but which will continue to exist as long as theology itself remains.

So the Institute of Lutheran Theology Has Accreditation -- What's Next?

From Whence We Have Come

On February 23, 2017, Comptroller Leon Miles and I received on behalf of the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) the Certificate of Accreditation from the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE).  We did the process quickly, having been granted formal applicant status in 2016, candidacy in 2017 and now initial accreditation in 2018.  ABHE has been wonderful to work with.  They have been good friends and helping neighbors for a young institution like ILT, coaching us to up our game in every facet of institutional life, and giving appropriate feedback along the way.

Accreditation by the ABHE means that ILT is recognized as an accredited institution by both the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the United States Department of Education.  Furthermore, since CHEA recognizes all graduate programming ABHE accredits all the way through the Ph.D., CHEA will recognize all ILT graduate programming as well through the Ph.D.

It has been quite a journey for the fledgling institution that began life as a "House of Studies."  The Preamble of the "Proposal of the Lutheran Theological House of Studies Task Force" that I authored and delivered to the 2006 WordAlone Convention in Golden Valley, MN, sought to respond to the directive of the 2005 Convention to "appoint a task force to develop a plan and proposal to establish a 'Lutheran Theological House of Studies' using the gifts of theological teachers employing the scriptural hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation. "  I led the Task Force consisting initially of WordAlone President Jaynan Clark, WordAlone Board Chair John Beem, WordAlone Executive Director Mark Chavez, WordAlone staff member Rev. Randy Freund, and WordAlone Treasurer Irv Aal.

The Task Force Proposal actually specified much of what has become the Institute of Lutheran Theology.  It spoke of the need for the school to have "critical distance" from the seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) if it was going to be able to offer a prophetic voice within the ELCA context. It specified that the theological house of studies must have full curricular autonomy, and that it must be institutionally independent and academically accredited.   Having just acquired initial institutional accreditation, it is interesting to quote the Proposal on the question of accreditation.  So much of what ILT has done was clearly specified in the 2006 document.  Here is what I wrote then: 

"Probably the most important question as to the nature of any educational institution is whether or not it should be accredited.  Our task force has concluded that the challenges are so great in the present ELCA educational context that only an institution having strong academic qualifications can address them.  It is our sense that we are faced with a “confessional crisis” within North American Lutheranism, and that we owe it to our Savior, and to our Lutheran tradition, to offer an attractive vehicle by which to train future pastors and perpetuate the Lutheran confessional tradition.  Accreditation does three things:  1) It provides an external motivation to build academic excellence; 2) It provides increased opportunities for students; 3) It symbolizes to all that taking the Confessions seriously does not mitigate taking academics seriously.

Firstly, the very nature of external accreditation demands that our house of studies will have an adequate research library and fully qualified faculty.  While we might have good intentions in building excellence into a non-accredited house of studies, the natural discontinuities of temporal life make it difficult to achieve academic excellence in the long-term without institutionalizing external accreditation demands.  Accreditation implements externally our internal demand for excellence and keeps us honest long-term when hiring faculty and acquiring educational resources.

Secondly, being accredited allows greater student flexibility and opportunity.  Students can transfer in and out of accredited programs.  Each is treated fairly in accordance with objective standards developed and monitored by the accrediting agency (ATS).  In addition, accreditation grants greater flexibility for people studying at different schools and seminaries.  In accredited programs there can be certain assumptions about standard courses that are not found in non-accredited curricula.  Preparation for becoming a pastor is more “seamless” when there is a general program of preparation clearly defined, whose various parts can, to some degree, be gotten in different places.  Moreover, an accredited house of studies allows students to prepare not only to fill pastoral pulpits, but also be educated to be teachers in the church.  We wish to nurture an academic competency in teaching and relating Lutheran confessional theology within the marketplace of ideas.  It is our hope to offer advanced academic opportunities for highly motivated students.  We hope not only to train pastors for the future, but also to train teachers of those pastors.  While we could possibly train pastors short-term on a non-accredited basis, we cannot educate teachers of pastors.  

Thirdly, accreditation symbolizes the consonance within our Lutheran tradition of confession and academic competence.  Lutheran theology was born in the university. The “new theology” at Wittenberg was debated in academic halls and written about in scholarly tracts and books.  It is a university-bred theology that sought to be captive to the Word alone.  We live in a time in which the pastor often serves congregations with members more educated than she or he is.  In an environment in which the very plausibility of the Christian worldview is up for grabs, we need educated pastors who know the intellectual terrain of the various disciplines, and who are able and willing to give an account of that which lies within them.  Thus it is manifestly important that future pastors have good libraries, great professors, and an intellectually stimulating campus environment, precisely the characteristics of accredited programs."

While there are certain discontinuities between the vision cast above and what actually developed -- for instance, we never did pursue ATS accreditation because of their strictures years ago against delivering the majority of a curriculum through video-conferencing -- much remains as true now as twelve years ago, especially these three assertions:

• Accreditation provides an external motivation to build academic excellence.
• Accreditation offers increased opportunities for students.
• Accreditation symbolizes to all that taking the Confessions seriously does not mitigate taking academics seriously. 

The last point is particularly important.  I wrote then about an environment in which "the very plausibility of the Christian worldview is up for grabs," and the profound need for "educated pastors who know the intellectual terrain of the various disciplines."

Data from Pew shows how quickly the decline in Christianity is happening and how profound the challenges are.  Between 2007 and 2014 the Christian share of the [US] population fell from 78.4% to 70.6%.  This is a precipitous drop that cannot, in my opinion, be stemmed simply by excellent Law/Gospel sermons being preached to dwindling numbers of folks in the pews.  Pastors of the future are going to need wise heads as well as strong hearts, because they will need to deal with the reestablishment and the perpetuation of the Christian plausibility structure itself.  Such pastor theologians will clearly require "good libraries, great professors, and an intellectually stimulating campus environment," exactly the characteristics we have designed into ILT.

To Where We Shall Go

The Institute of Lutheran Theology has a graduate school and a certificate school.  Its graduate school faculty has seven members, its certificate school faculty has four, and there are well over a dozen adjunct faculty serving both schools.  Within the graduate school, students are designated as follows:

• Open Studies
• Masters of Arts in Religion
• Masters of Divinity  
• Masters of Sacred Theology
• Doctor of Ministry 

While all of these programs are excellent, none really get at the central task of the future: The reestablishment and perpetuation of the Christian plausibility structure itself.  How can this be done and who in Lutheran circles is attempting such a thing?  Is it not hubris to think that one can in any way be engaged in the establishment and perpetuation of Christian plausibility?  Is not the apologetic task a thing of the past, something we did once before these post-modern days?

I do not think so.  In fact, I believe that what is needed in Lutheran circles is a Ph.D. that produces deeply-educated men and women who know well the theological tradition, the intellectual and cultural horizon, and how to relate the tradition to the horizon in ways that make legitimate truth-claims.

The ILT Faculty Senate passed on January 19, 2018, a Ph.D. program that defines program learning outcomes, admission requirements, program concentrations, language requirements, qualifying exams, a course of study, comprehensive examinations, and a process for making a thesis proposal and writing and defending a dissertation.

ILT's proposed Ph.D. will offer concentrations in Old Testament, New Testament, Philosophical Theology, Historical Theology, Systematic Theology, and Christian Ethics.  The proposal calls for a minimum of 45 credits with 12 dedicated to the thesis proposal and writing, three to a methodology course, with the rest of the credits coming from 500 level courses, independent reading, writing and presenting an article at an academic conference, an article in a peer-reviewed journal, an article in an academic book, the translation of an academic book, or serving as a teaching assistant.

Students will normally take three qualifying exams, with one or more able to be waived if a student already has a STM from ILT.  The qualifying exams will be tailored for each concentration, e.g, Biblical theology, historical and systematic theology, or philosophical theology and ethics.  When the exams are satisfactorily concluded the student automatically becomes a candidate for the Ph.D.

The four comprehensive exams are all closed-book with a maximum of one week between them.  Students must present a proposal for their exams to their department head.  Only one of the four exams can be in the dissertation area.  When the student passes the exams, they begin in earnest the dissertation phase of their program. 

The video-conferencing technology ILT has used since its inception will work very well for bringing in external exam and thesis readers.  Instead of the student defending his thesis in a public hall where only local scholars are available, he or she will defend on-line where some of the greatest scholars in the world can be called together.  

There are challenges, of course.  More physical books will be needed in our library, and more digitized on-line books and serials must be made available to students.  But the requisite idea is present: We will develop from a school dedicated to achieving academic respectability to a school of real academic excellence, a school where the theological task is continually engaged, a school with the academic competence to think deeply and perhaps conclude, as I did in 2006, that the problem for theology today is our continuing penchant for Descartes' problem and the Kantian trajectory that ultimately issued from it.

As I said then, it is not that ontology recapitulates epistemology, but that epistemology recapitulates ontology.  Our present moment requires that we abandon the prejudice to locate the being of God through a profound introspection of human experience and cognition.  We must instead discern God where God might be found, in a Being whose be-ing is outside of human be-ing, in a Being whose be-ing is at issue primordially for it, in a Being whose be-ing called from eternity all being, in a Being whose be-ing is to be the eternal Savior of us all, a be-ing whose Spirit works faith and grace within those whom the Spirit pleases.

Tolerance, Commitment and the Lutheran Ethos

Forty years ago when I was farming in northwest Iowa, a farmer friend announced that the famous University of Chicago religion scholar Martin Marty was going to be speaking seventy miles away in Orange City, and he wondered if we might not want to go and hear him.  Although I had not heard of Martin Marty back then, I could not pass up the opportunity to go to Orange City.  As I recall, Marty was speaking on the general theme of tolerance and commitment, and telling us that mature faith possesses both.   My friend Doug challenged professor Marty after the lecture:  "Dr. Marty, I found your presentation very stimulating, but remain unconvinced.  My own observations suggest that the more committed people are religiously the less tolerant they are, and the more tolerant they are, the less committed they are."

I recall that Martin Marty looked at my friend rather sadly, as if Doug had showed up for card night without knowing how to play.  "That is not the way it works," he reiterated, "it is precisely in tolerance that one is most deeply committed."  He uttered many other wise things as well, but I don't recall how anything he said provided warrant for the widely-propagated view that religious tolerance and commitment are profoundly compatible.

Of course, being good Americans in the early twenty-first century, most of us naturally pay lip-service not only to the compatibility of tolerance and commitment, but also to their direct direct proportionality.  We Americans love our story.  After all, America was founded on religious freedom, a freedom from compulsion to a particular religion so that one had greater freedom to practice one's chosen religion. 

It was a great experiment, this founding of America.  Could a country endure that tolerated many different religions, that rejected the assumption of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia: cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion")?  If Tillich is right and religion pertains to ultimate concern, then how is it possible for people with different -- sometimes radically different -- ultimate concerns to come together and agree to be governed?  Far better, it would seem, the traditional view where the ruler and the ruled share the same ultimate commitment.  But America not only survived, it thrived.  Apparently people with different ultimate concerns can live together without compromising those concerns!  So it is that we learn in America that it is precisely within the context of overarching tolerance that commitment is most deeply possible.

I remember thinking at the time, however, that Doug's question was a good one, and that the famed Dr. Marty had taken it rather too lightly.  (We often underestimate the strength of challenges to our assumptions.)  Perhaps Martin Marty was living so deeply in his religious tradition that he did not see the problem.  How exactly does one continue to assert the truth of one's own tradition, allow others to assert the truth of their own, and not run into fundamental conflict?  How does one do this if the truth about which one is concerned is ultimate? 

My days on the farm was a time in my life that I was very interested in the question of religious truth.  I puzzled a great deal over the question of how two or more religions might be true at the same time.  I was a pretty tolerant guy in those days, and it did not come naturally to me to think that my Lutheran truth-claims were mostly all true, and those of Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims almost all false.  Why would I be given the requisite epistemic priority to know the true, when those far more serious than I were not afforded the same? 

So assuming that contrary religious claims might be conjointly true, what would it be by virtue of which they could be conjointly true?  While I was thinking such thoughts in 1978, I admit I did not know anyone in my farming community except Doug who thought that supposed contrary statements about God's properties and relations could somehow be conjointly true.  Every Lutheran I knew thought that either God created the universe in six days or did not do so, that either Jesus was born of a virgin or was not so born, and that either Jesus the Christ was the only way to the Father or was not the only way. 

Later in my life I would ask undergraduate students this question: "If two people disagree on what is true, must one of them be wrong?"  In the middle 1980s when I started my college teaching career most students said "yes," but by 2010 when I was finishing my tenure of university teaching they were saying, "no."  Perhaps in the 1980s the few students saying "no" were thinking about philosophical or religious "truth."  (Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder in aesthetics, truth is in the mind of the conceiver in philosophy or theology.)  However, by 2010 students were assuming a much more expansive domain of putative truths, a domain that included the historical, scientific and even the mathematical.  Be that as it may, if my college students in the late 1980s could think that contrary religious claims might be conjointly true, perhaps it was possible in a northwest Iowa farming community a decade earlier. 

There are two ways, I believe, of conceiving the relationship between tolerance and commitment.  The first is one that the American founding fathers could embrace.  One must be tolerant of contrary claims in areas where one's epistemic limitations are the most pronounced.  Since one cannot know that 'x is true', one must be tolerant of those claiming, 'it is false that x is true'.  Such epistemic tolerance, however, is thoroughly compatible with the belief that 'x is true'.  One can be deeply committed to the truth of a claim without knowing that the belief is true.  Epistemic tolerance of x is clearly compatible with an existential commitment to ~x.  Accordingly, tolerance of another's claims of truth is the proper attitude to adopt when realizing one's epistemic limitations, but commitment to one's own beliefs is, however, proper, honorable and courageous.  After all, not to be committed to one's own beliefs is to live inauthentically, is to live in a way that does not own one's beliefs.  (I am thinking of Heidegger's Eigenlichtkeit or "ownmostness.")  

Doug and Dr. Marty would not, however, likely have affirmed this relatively traditional interpretation of the compatibility of tolerance and commitment.  Both were quite aware of the intellectual and cultural horizon of the 1970s, a horizon that increasingly understood religious assertions as statements of value and not of fact.  Accordingly, tolerance in things religious is assured because there is no way in principle for religious language to state what is the case apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and thus there is no facile way for its claims to come into conflict.  Religious language (and most theological language) reports, expresses or recommends one's own psychological or existential states; it does not describe a divine realm existing on its own apart from us.  Since such language pertains to human experience, every attempt to state that another's religious affirmations are false is an act of prejudice. Who can rightly say that my religious affirmations, grounded as they are in my experience, are false?  If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too must the truths of religion be only in the ears and eyes of its hearers and readers. 

Unfortunately, this view of things, though great for tolerance, presents deep problems for commitment.  If I know that my affirmation of x is a statement of value, and I know that your affirmation of ~x is a statement of value, then since values are neither true nor false, upon what grounds can one be rightly committed to to x rather than ~x?  Lamentably, the search for grounds for values succeeds only in uncovering other values.  (No matter how hard I have tried, I have never been able to derive an "ought" from an "is.")  Are not the deep values of the grounds simply another statement of commitment?  (I am committed to feeding the hungry because I value -- I am committed to -- feeding the hungry.) 

Simply put, if the warranted assertibility of religious utterances is ultimately subjective, then why be committed to the particularity of their assertion when times become difficult?  While one might die for truth, does one really die for value?  (I am not saying that one might not die for the truth of a value.)  Polycarp (69-155) was burned alive rather than renounce faith in Christ.  Clearly, the great man died because he was convinced of the truth of Christ, not the value Christ had for him.

Doug's question was sophisticated in the way of the medieval question of whether or not God could make a rock so heavy that He could not lift it.  Doug was asking this: If one is tolerant in one's religious assertions, then one is clandestinely understanding these assertions as not have truth-conditions.  But why be committed to the assertion of a particular body of statements or the doing of a set of actions if there are no truth-conditions grounding the assertion of the statements or the doing of the actions?  Alternately, if one is committed to a set of assertions or a class of actions, then one is presupposing their truth, but if this is so then why be deeply tolerant of unjustified views at odds with those that one has good reason to regard as true?  Just as the property of making a rock so heavy that God can't lift it cannot properly be applied to God, so to the property of being deeply tolerant of contrary religious claims while be profoundly committed to one's own cannot properly be applied to late twentieth-century Christian believers, those no longer believing as did the Founding Fathers that tolerance pertains to epistemic humility with regard to the domain of religious fact. 

Dominant strands of Lutheran theology over the past 200 years have tended to downplay the idea that there exists a realm of theological facts independent of human awareness, perception, conception and language.  Kantian assumptions within theology departments at German universities undercut notions of divine substantiality and causality.  As European Lutheran theology hit American shores (particularly after World War II), and comingled with American assumptions about the fact/value distinction, a Lutheran theological ethos emerged that was disdainful of Lutheran Orthodoxy, particularly it's penchant to regard confessional and doctrinal statements as affirmations of theological fact.  The result was heightened tensions among Lutherans, a tension pertaining to both semantics and ontology. 

While conservative traditions like the Missouri and Wisconsin Synods continued to assume that there was some objective fact of the matter about which confessional and doctrinal statements were speaking truly, the precursor church bodies which became the ELCA began leaning towards an understanding of such language that connected more to human experience.  While the former thus understood tolerance as grounded in epistemic limitation, the latter came to see it as an affirmation of the particularity of the believer's cultural existence itself.  Tensions ran high, and it did not help when spokesman of the former sometimes suggested that the tolerance of epistemic humility was due to a willful abandonment of the objectivity of revelation.   Nor were tensions abated when the latter seemed to think that confessional and doctrinal affirmations somehow denied the authenticity of the theologian or preacher's voice, and that such affirmations simply strangled the believer's authentic religious life and practice. 

The Institute of Lutheran Theology emerged, in part, because it became time for there to be an institution that was both deeply sympathetic to the starting points of the various Lutheran traditions, and that understood these starting points within the broader historical and philosophical context.  It is time now that Lutherans talk seriously to each other.  It is time we think together the dialectic of tolerance and commitment, time we ask together how an affirmation of both is possible.  In so asking, we shall undoubtedly learn a great deal more about ourselves.  Such learning is a very good thing, for it is time that we dialogue with each other in a spirit of tolerance and commitment, a spirit that shall take the truth claims of all partners seriously, while adjudicating conflicting truth claims within an ethos of epistemic humility.