Trust

This post will be a bit more introspective than many of the previous, so be warned. However, I want to get it down into a more coherent form, and maybe other people can relate. I think most of this is in the comments to previous posts, and maybe even in some posts themselves, but I'll put it down here. I know that I personally like hearing other people's introspection; that's why I read, because that's the closest I can get to figuring out how other people actually live, from the inside. So, here's the more psychological reasons behind my struggles in the faith, both recently and stretching back for a while.

More or less, I just don't really trust anyone. I've never been good at trust period. I was raised in a house where the motto was "If you want it done right, do it yourself." Group projects always disgusted me, because I was usually the one who would pull the group along. I haven't really had many good experiences with relying on other people, and this along with my control-freak personality does not really incline me towards delegation.

My current theological crises then arise from the fact that, built upon this, I feel betrayed by the people who were supposed to know what they were talking about. My churches growing up didn't really know what they were talking about, and I am deeply suspicious concerning the Evangelical scholars in the field, past and present. I may not be the biblical scholar that they are, but I am training to be an expert in analyzing assumptions, following logical flow, and detecting subtleties and nuances; it is in these areas where the scholars seem to be severely deficient. At any rate, if I am underestimating them, they certainly aren't putting forth their best reasonings for me to see, which leaves me in the same position. I tried for a time to put aside my own misgivings, to tell myself that those who have studied things longer really understand the field better than me, and I should listen to them. However, two problems have shaken my confidence: 1) when I ask the relevant questions, I can never get the answers I need, and 2) for every able scholar one one side of an issue, there appears to be an equally competent scholar on the other side; without being biased toward a side already, which one should I trust? Granted, sometimes reason can guide one towards one side or another, but that takes a lot of work and time to look through the issues oneself and there are too many issues.

Perhaps there is another book, another author, out there for me to read, another person for me to talk to, but to be perfectly honest, I'm weary. I've gone through too many books which other people have raved about, which have either a) made me want to start a bonfire, or b) have presented interesting views which at least present something more sophisticated, but which leave me wondering why I should accept the view in question.

The problem is, that while I have lost trust in others, I also realize how little trust I can place in myself and my own reasonings. If everyone else thinks that they are so correct when their work is so shoddy, why am I any exception? Fair is fair, after all. So I can neither ignore the crowd around me and trust to myself, nor can I listen to it. I can only hope that, maybe, God will have mercy on me. It doesn't appear that he gives that mercy out terribly liberally, however. So, in the meantime, all I have to go off of is the beauty of various proposals. I'm inclined to think that aesthetics is not a terribly reliable guide to truth, but what else do I have, besides a bit a reason to guide it along every now and then? Most skeptics aren't really all that involved in their skepticism; true skepticism leaves you a wreck, as you think that there is something tremendously important which you need to know (you can't take the easy way out and say "We can't know anything. Oh well."), and so you pursue it even though you don't think you can ever find it.

I think that I could even handle this, except for Calvinism and soteriological exclusivism. I can intellectually deny the former, and at least don't see much in the way of grounds for the latter (and this through philosophy, theology, and biblical studies). However, they still hold a pull on my emotions, and as I don't trust my reason, I can never completely be rid of them. People within the fold seem to have no problem asserting such doctrines, and even (at least with Calvinism) talk about what wonderful hope they offer. Frankly, they terrify me. Faith is a struggle for me, the hardest work that anyone could posit. Why should I think that I am one of God's elect? Sure, I could simply give up my integrity and relax, and let faith take over, but I have decided that if Christianity and the pursuit of Truth take different paths, than I must take the latter. I could let go and simply do what seems to be the best thing insofar as I can see, except that exclusivism tells me that it has to be exactly the right thing or I'm screwed. People tell me to "Just have faith;" I really want to smack those people. I'm sure that this "simple" faith they talk about pulls in almost a complete theology in and of itself.

Most Christians with whom I talk want to simplify the situation, either through special experiences (which I do not have much of), rational arguments (which never adequately respond to objections), or brute force ("Christianity is right. Accept it."). Quite honestly, the church disgusts me with its naiveté. It can't even help those within it who struggle, let alone outside of it. I'm not really sure where God is in all of this; I hear the people around me discussing his every move in our lives, but it looks to me as if blind chance could be an equally possible suggestion. When things go right, people talk about Providence, but they don't acknowledge the negatives in life in the same fashion. They tell me that God works everything for good, but the advice I get sounds more like how I can bear whatever happens, irregardless of whether there is a God. The practical tips people give concerning the Christian life seem to be more psychological than anything, and eerily reminiscent to what I hear from Buddhist thinkers.

I am currently a Christian because I like Christ's moral example better than anyone else's, and because I find some rational arguments which can tip me over the fence, even if they don't convince me. Beyond that, I just can't stand the church in which I was raised, or related churches. Intellection for me isn't an abstract game, it is a way of communicating the problems of the world in an honest way, to at least attempt to love those who have the courage to do the same by sharing my paltry insights so that we may make it through this life together. I just find depressingly few people who are willing to take the journey, and I can't help but think that this is to some extent a deep, deep problem within the church, something which reaches out of its roots instead of a surface issue. Protestantism has been spoiled for me, and I don't really feel up to the heartache involved in more sifting through the drivel, trying to find some answers. Contemporary Catholic congregations may be just as bad if not worse, but I have more to work from in terms of the history. Maybe this isn't a very good reason for conversion, but I don't even really consider it conversion any more; I'm outside the Protestant church as much as the Catholic presently.

So, that is my current struggle of this nut in a nutshell. I want to be able to convert to something, to commit to something, but confusion, doubt, and fear surround everything. I want to be free of this so that I can go forward. I want to know some sort of peace so that I can be free to love, to leave the introspection. But in the meantime, I must remain. I can't bear to do to others what I've seen happening, and I am scared that I will choose the wrong path; I have no reason to think that I will choose rightly, or that I will have much help along the way, but I'll mislead more people around me by standing still than by pressing forward.

The Individual in American and Japanese Media

In a previous post, Individualism, I had commented on a common theme running throughout American media: the individual who is unlike the rest of society, yet in the end overcomes ostracism by saving the day. Clichés like this may make for many isomorphic movies, but they seem to be revealing of a culture. For a contrasting cliché, I'd like to now turn to portrayals of the struggling individual in Japanese anime.

In the anime Rurouni Kenshin, the protagonist is a former assassin during the Meiji revolution who has vowed to live a life of peace, protecting the innocent and never killing anyone again. In the prologue movie, Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal, we see Kenshin learning swordsmanship and then leaving his master to help the cause of the rebels to overthrow the corrupt government. He is willing to do whatever is necessary to bring about a new age for the good of the people; when his actions end up killing one close to him, though, he realizes how he has misused the power within him, and his struggle from that point is to learn to use it rightly. His struggle is brought to a head in the second season, when he must confront a new threat to the Meiji regime without losing himself in his old ways of bloodshed, but with sufficient power to actually stop the antagonist.

Trigun has a similar theme; the hero, Vash, is a being with superhuman abilities who, despite his pacifism, seems to cause destruction wherever he goes. As the series moves along, he is drawn into a web of revenge in which the antagonist seeks to make him hurt those around him. Through these schemes, cities are destroyed and many die. Vash's struggle throughout is to control his power in a way which helps those around him, rather than harming them.

The series Fullmetal Alchemist similarly gives a example of a protagonist seeking to hone and control his abilities to help others. Ed, the titular alchemist, and his brother Al attempted to bring their mother back to life through alchemy. The result of this was that their mother did not come back, but instead Ed lost an arm and a leg, and Al was saved only by preserving his soul in a suit of armor. Ed feels guilty for what he has done, and seeks the philosopher's stone in order to undo the damage. Eventually, he finds out what the philosopher's stone really is and how it is made, and faces a moral crisis concerning its use. The theme all along, though, is Ed's goal to refine his strength for the sake of undoing the problems which he has caused.

Yet another example, for the sake of something different, comes from the series Hikaru no Go. Hikaru is a normal kid until he encounters a ghost in a go board. The ghost, a go player throughout two lifetimes, becomes attached to Hikaru and gets him into the game as well. Hikaru finds that he has talent at the game (further helped by his tutor's centuries of experience), and attracts the attention of a rising star in the Go world. Hikaru pursues the game in order to be counted as this opponent's rival. Hikaru, while standing out from others, is not struggling against society, but rather to develop his own strength. The theme of helping others is not as strong, but it does come up; the series does point out how the dedication of one person affects those around that person.

The examples could be multiplied without end. Generator Gawl features three students who seek to undo the scientific experiment which would lead to an apocalyptic future, a feat which requires the character Gawl to learn how to use his power rightly. The anti-hero Shinji in Neon Genesis Evangelion constantly fights with his position of responsibility as an Eva-pilot. Lain in Serial Experiments Lain has to figure out who, and what, exactly she is and deal with the consequences surrounding her creation. Ichigo in Bleach gains the powers of a death-god (shinigami) and seeks to grow stronger to confront the dangers which threaten those he cares about.

So, in all of these cases, there is a person who stands out from the crowd. However, their struggle is with their own strength and its use, even when they are outcasts. They seek to control their power, generally for the good of society and/or undoing their mistakes.

Compare this to many American shows: Rudolph already has a lit nose, Mumble in Happy Feet dances as soon as he is hatched from his egg, Rémy in Ratatouille cooks from the beginning of the film, Dumbo has big ears from birth, and Shrek is always an ogre. While there is character development (at least sometimes), the feature which makes the character stand out is inherent and not a power to be controlled; those around the person must learn to see the feature as useful, or at least tolerable.

I find it interesting that in an individualist society like America, the media has such a tendency to show the social issues which arise, where society is largely what has the problem. In a communal society like Japan, the focus is on the individual and the individual's own development to become fit for their role. Of course, all of this is written with broad generalities, but it is intriguing nonetheless.

Ontology in Japanese Buddhism

So, I've started up my other blog, to hold things like papers and such, to keep it separated from the shorter discussions here. I also plan to be writing summaries and more popular presentations in this blog, while leaving the details there for people to chew on who have the time. The link for the paper corresponding to this post is: Shinran's Ontology of Amida, Part I. And now, without further ado, I present to you the thought of the Japanese Buddhist Shinran.

Shinran's thought has been noted for its similarities to certain strands of Protestantism, especially the thought of Luther. Shinran affirms that we are all too evil to come to enlightenment ourselves, so all we can do is gratefully accept the free gift of "salvation," as it were, given to us by the Buddha Amida, so that we can be reborn in the Pure Land from all can attain enlightenment. In his language (or, at least his language translated into English), we must rely on Other power, rather than self power. However, there is a catch.

The problem is that Shinran is not working within a Christian system; he is thinking within the framework provided by Mahayana Buddhism, and its radically different ontology. Simply put, even though we are supposed to rely on Other power, there is nothing which is truly other! Amida is not some God-figure separate from us, who can grant us salvation. The exact status of Amida is, in the end, quite impossible to grasp, and it appears that Shinran intends for this to be the case.

Mahayana Buddhism often uses the logic of non-dualism: two things are neither identical, nor separate. There is an ineffability about their relation, including that of cause and effect. A similar thing happens with Amida. The suchness of reality, the universal buddha-womb (tathāgatha), gives rises to the being (apparently considered historical, or at least something like that) Dharmākara. Dharmākara makes a Vow to save all sentient beings, and becomes a Bodhisattva (that is, a Buddha in the making). Upon Enlightenment, Dharmākara becomes the Buddha Amida, who as a Buddha is identified with the tathāgatha (buddha-womb) which gave rise to all of this. The two are thus inseparably interrelated.

Similarly, in the life of the believer, good and evil acts are inseparable. All of our acts are evil, not that they are sinful, but that they involve attachments to reality (which, for the Buddhist, is what makes us stick around in the world of suffering). However, once we have faith in Amida, these same acts become good; not by changing the acts, but as they are already. Amida directs virtue toward the acts and makes them become good karma, even in their evilness.

Finally, the believer and Amida are non-dual. The believer has sincere trust, shinjin, in Amida, and gives reverence (through the nembutsu, "Namu Amida Butsu", "I give reverence to the Buddha Amida"). This, however, cannot come about through the believer's own calculations, or this would be self-power. Instead, it comes about due to Amida's Vow to save all sentient beings, and Amida's subsequent directing of virtue toward us. The recitation of the nembutsu and the act of shinjin are, in effect, Amida's Vow; the Vow causes them, but they are what have made the Vow to come to fulfillment. The shinjin of the believer is itself "suchness," a simple pointer to reality as it is; this suchness at the same time is also the Tathāgatha, Amida.

In the end, this simultaneous polarity and unity is all that can be affirmed. Reality is just not understandable for Shinran; if the salvific portion, at any rate, could be understood, then (on the account of the relation between wisdom and enlightenment within Buddhism) one could become enlightened through self-power. All one can do is realize the impossibilty of conceiving reality, and turn to shinjin in Amida. This leads to a letting-go of life, not by actively trying to realize non-thinking (which would again be self-power), but through letting karma work itself out on its own.

Critical Buddhism and (not-) You

Currently reading:
Majesty and Meekness: A Comparative Study of Contrast and Harmony in the Concept of God
   by John B. Carman

Before I start with the post, I'd like to put in a plug about the above book. It's a fascinating account of similarities and differences in the conception of God across cultures, in particular between the Srivaishna tradition in India (head proponent Ramanuja) and Christian thought, though with references to Judaism and Pure Land Buddhism as well (which, though Buddhism is officially atheistic, in practice appears rather theistic). It's out of print, but the link above gives a pretty good price for used copies.

It's come time for me to write about my thesis here, in the hope that my explaining it will stimulate the writing in the paper. I'll most likely be posting here first basic overviews of the topics, and then writing more scholarly bits (that is, interacting with the texts themselves) later. The first article will be on the Critical Buddhist movement.

Critical Buddhism (CB) is a movement in Japan which is saying that much of the "Buddhist" tradition has imported foreign ideas. For those of you unfamiliar with Buddhism, here's a quick primer: we don't really exist. Not in the sense that we are nothing, but in the sense that all we are, are aggregates of the things that came together at this precise moment (think David Hume, if you know philosophy). There are no enduring selves, only such causal regularities that are convenient to call selves. Later Buddhism expands this to all of reality, such that there are no enduring substances period, but only the ebb and flow of co-dependent arising; everything comes from something else and leads to something else without its own inherent existence (to the point where Nāgārjuna denies causation proper in favor of conditions, explanations with no metaphysical baggage).

At very least, the doctrine of anātman (or no-self) is supposed to be contrary to prevailing philosophies of the day among Vedantic Hinduism, as well as the the common sense conception of the self. The problem, the CBs claim, is that later Buddhism realigns itself with Vedantism in its claims. In particular, this has to do with the doctrines of buddha-nature and original enlightenment (and the tathāgata-garbha and ālayavijñāna, for those more familiar with the tradition). These supposedly give rise to the world of particulars around us, and make it so that everyone is already pre-enlightened, as it were; they just have to realize it (or so CB claims; the issue is rather complicated). The buddha-nature and original enlightenment have become substrata, subsistent natures which undergird reality and which are more real than the somewhat illusory manifestation around us.

Suzuki, himself a prominent target of CB (or at very least, his style of thought), compares the ālaya, the storehouse out of which everything else arises, to the water of the ocean. Manas, which is the discriminating mind and also the principle of particularization, would be the waves. The waves cannot be thought apart from the water which constitutes them, and in the end just are that water in its motion. Even beyond Suzuki, many proponents of the ideas in historical Buddhist thought have explicitly compared their ideas with the Vedantic Ātman (Self), saying that the Buddha did not reveal this doctrine in his time because it would have confused many and lead them in the wrong direction. Also, they tend to remark that the Buddhist version is dynamic and ever-changing, while the Hindu version is static, a stable spot beyond the world of impermanence.

However, as CB claims, this brings us back to a Vedantic notion of an Self behind each of our particular selves (the whole "atman is brahman," "tat tvam asi" thing; for those unacquainted with Vedanta, think very roughly "I myself am God"). This is what the Buddha was trying to avoid, and so is leading us back into error. We are to let go of such delusions, they state.

Tied to this is the reason why CBs are called critical Buddhists. They believe that to be Buddhist is to be critical. Buddhism, rather than being beyond truth claims and language, must engage language and logic and use them meaningfully. One illustration used concerning the view that language does not, in the end, capture truth, is that it is like a hand pointing to the moon; you need to look at the moon and stop looking at the hand. CB will say that this is all well and good, but the hand must actually point to the moon and not to the floor instead in order to be functional.

As such, there is no place in Buddhism for "topical" philosophy, such as Daoism, various forms of Shintō, or other forms of language-skeptical views (such as much Zen!) which claim that we need to "see" reality directly. Buddhism is all about analysis, rather than being its antithesis, and it is this analysis which leads the way to Buddhist salvation.

Which brings me to a final reflection: those who deny analysis and dualism in thinking, often posit a rather strict one between thinking and doing, such that thinking is a separate activity which leads to arid speculation. Those who live by analysis, though, seem to see the continuity, that understanding leads to right action, and so no reasoning, however abstract, is (at least necessarily) divorced from the concrete.

Moments and Divine Eternity

Currently reading:
Apology for Apologetics
   by Paul Griffiths

In my last post, I ended with a couple mentions of "moments" (including the ever-popular quotation marks). It might be wondered what meaning a moment could have for an immutable and/or eternal being. I really don't have much background in philosophy of time, but I think that I have a concept which performs enough explanatory work to be worth considering. A moment, of any kind (temporal, logical, or natural) has to do with what is present to something at that moment. Different moments indicate different contexts, as it were.

I'm borrowing an idea more or less from science and mathematics (though I'm sure it goes far beyond that; I think that the intuitions have been around throughout intellectual history) of local phenomena. To give an example, consider the Game of Life. Each square lives or dies based solely on the surrounding squares. There can be complex, board-wide phenomena arising out of a rule that only focuses on these local conditions.

This seems to fit our own spatio-temporal moments; as we move either in space or time, what is immediately present to us (what is local to us) changes. Spatial movement is one form of movement, and temporal is another, but both require the temporal movement (I can't spatially move within the same moment of time; I would simply be spatially present at more locations within that moment. My local conditions would be more comprehensive.). Therefore, the temporal notion of "moment" I hold to be logically prior to a spatial notion of "position." But I think that both are good analogies for what I am discussing; we might simply define a "position" as a "spatial moment" and a "moment" as a "temporal position."

Further, the issue of logical and natural moments sometimes arises, especially in theological discussion concerning God's decrees. Using the current definition of moment, we would be looking at the what immediately precedes and follows each proposition about God's knowledge, and this would form the logical moment of each proposition, even though it all occurs in a single moment of another sort. So, for example, we could say that the logical moments involved in creation are such: (1) God knows all possibilties, then (2) God knows what would actually happen giving any world-actualization, and then (3) God actually creates the world (where "creates" is shorthand for being the efficient and final causes as well as sustainer). Each of these could not be said to be in separate temporal moments, but they occupy a specific ordering amongst themselves; (1) has as its context the logical step of leading to (2), which has as its context building on (1) while leading to (3), which has as its local context being more particular than (and so logically posterior to) (2).

Scotus' account of the will posits multiple natural moments within each temporal moment; the first natural moment is one in which an agent is doing x but still could possibly do not-x, and the second is when the agent has actually done x. Therefore, things are contingent at the temporal moment in which the occur. A natural moment is the local causal conditions surrounding each act, even if the acts are simultaneous. We may want to collapse natural and logical moments, depending on our metaphysics, but as long as we can talk of immediate causes and entailments, it seems that there is ground for adopting the language.

Now we come to the notion of God's eternity. One classical way of expressing this is as an "eternal present." Under my notion of "moment," this is exactly what is going on: God's local context includes everything. All things are present to God temporally, and spatially as well (and so eternity subsumes omnipresence). Seen in this light, it is hard to refute the doctrine without appearing heterodox, and yet there is no reason to affirm that God is merely a static concept. In addition, eternity and immutability are two aspects of one truth about God (leading to divine simplicity?).

In other news, I'll be reopening another blog to jot down my reading notes again; I'm posting too much on here for readers to keep up with, I suspect, but the act of writing things down in public keeps me motivated and thinking.

Divine Immutability

Some elements of the "classical" Christian concept of God have come under fire within contemporary Evangelicalism. I personally have not seen many critiques which have actually understood the material being critiqued; this is especially common with divine immutability, simplicity, and eternity (not to mention eternal generation and procession). For now, I will deal with immutability, and try to find a mode of expression which accords with contemporary intuitions better.

I do not claim that this starting account is quite the same as what the medievals were saying; it is a first attempt, and I plan on spiraling down to a more precise and historically continuous notion in time. But the key insight is that change is a relative property: something which has changed, has changed from something. Change is never a brute thing, but always within a context.

So, how do we measure change if it is relative? The same way that we do all other relative properties: by setting a fixed point from which everything else is compared. We use a coordinate system which has an origin (actually, a more accurate analogy would be the reality of space and time despite their relativity, or the truth of mathematics despite the fact that our attempts at it must always start from certain formal axioms which cannot capture its completeness; but for right now, it's just an analogy for the purpose of guiding a gestalt shift, so the details will get tidied up later).

By saying that God is immutable, we are saying that God is this fixed point. All change is measured relative to God, who is the first cause of all (and so the starting point of change), the ultimate end of all (and so the goal of change), the exemplar cause of all (and so setting the boundaries on change), and the most perfect being (and so setting the standard for completeness of being). On this view, by definition God cannot change. It just doesn't make any sense; everything is measured by God. If per impossibile God were to change, rather what would happen would be that everything else would change relative to God.

What this does not imply is that God cannot act. The problem is, we think of action as cause, then effect (such as with Hume's critique, or Kant's category of causation in his Critique of Pure Reason). Causation is, however, at the same time as its effect; that's what it is to cause something. It must be one event. But if this is the case, then immutability cannot be an issue for causation, as everything could be caused in a single "moment." To put it another way, if two agent perform the same act with the same result, and one agent does it faster than the other, then we say that the faster agent is more proficient. The limit case of this is a being who can do all things at once, without taking any time to perform an action, as omnicompetent. There would be no two "moments" to form a relation, and thus to talk about change in this being.

Next, I'll talk about divine eternity, and what could possibly be meant by a "moment" or an eternal present.

Combination Models

Thus far, I've been dealing with single-method approaches to gathering theology from Scripture. This will strike many as being implausible; why not make use of all of our methods? I will be focusing on the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (WQ) in this discussion, but I think that most other models will fare in a like fashion.

I take a model like the WQ to be both descriptive and normative. Whatever we say, we actually use tradition, reason, and experience in reading Scripture; insofar as we are doing Christian theology, we have to deal with Scripture as well, in that it has been the background for all further theologizing, whatever our normative commitments may be. We use experience and reason, because we need to appropriate Scripture ourselves and not merely relate the words on the page. We use tradition, because we come from a community (or communities) which has taught us how to read Scripture.

This, I believe, leads to the normative use of the WQ: since we use all of these things, we ought to use them well. Once we realize that reason, experience, and tradition are always applied to Scripture, whether we like it or not, how can we stand around using them poorly? The alternative would be to approximate a Scripture-only position, trying to pare away the other poles. But these other poles are the conditions under which Scripture is actually meaningful! Scripture cannot mean anything to us unless we ourselves understand it, in our present circumstances, within our community.

So, from here, the next alternative may be to emphasis one of the poles over the others. Traditional Protestant groups have raised Scripture above the others, but then this falls victim to the discussions at Sola Scriptura and Inerrancy. So, we have the remaining three poles, although we still would want to say that Scripture functions is a way distinct from the others; the other poles are ways of appropriating Scripture. To emphasize experience is to fall victim to the comments in Pragmatism, and reason leads to many of the comments concerning Logic.

To sum up these discussions: reason leads to the possibility that we've cut up the world incorrectly (and it may well me that any world-cutting is only good for particular uses), and so any theoretical theology could be toppled due to its consequences, no matter how solid it appears to be; modus tollens is applicable whenever modus ponens is. Experience leads us to formulate ways of approaching given ends, but cannot give us the ends in the first place. Reading Scripture alone (and thus, emphasizing our reading of Scripture, even while trying to claim to put Scripture itself above the other poles) ignores the complexities of the hermeneutical situation (such as the difference between divine and human authorship, and ad hoc references to tradition). I haven't written specifically about the pitfalls of tradition, but it shares with all the rest the pitfall that it, raised above the others, removes itself from critique; however, we can see that all of these need critique.

Therefore, it seems at least that any theological foundationalism is flawed. We never have pure Scripture, pure reason, pure experience, or pure tradition. If any of these attained, we would be right to use it as our foundation. The arguments for any view are quite cogent when the messiness of life is removed. As such, we end up with a theological coherentism, which seeks to create the most coherent framework for theology.

Under such a view, we have to start somewhere in building our webs of beliefs. We don't methodologically emphasize a view, but we do take one to begin our journey. From here, I cannot say that my reasonings should convince others of RC; but I regard it as a legitimate view in light of the discussion. At very least, it is as valid vantage point for theological discussion as other views, in particular since they've acknowledged the way that tradition has changed over the years (my main problem with EO is that they still put up the "unchanged since the 1st century" line; even though I have more specific doctrines that I disagree with in RC, I actually like the way in which they play out in RC better than in EO).

I think that the traditional Protestant view has been tried and found wanting, which is why I have spent the most time refuting it. My reason has convinced my that there are at least some reasons for looking at RC, in particular because (currently, at least) it seems to be the church which supports the intellectual life the most.

Experience shows me that most people really are not good at getting doctrine right, and at least here in America want to go about spreading their own views anyhow; either (a) there is a way short of vast intellectual effort which will help them to the right view, (b) the right view doesn't really matter, or (c) most people are morally culpable for not searching out their own faith. I think that (b) ends up with the same problem discussed in Pragmatism, that there has to be something set in place in order to decide which end people should seek, even if this is being good people (and what being a good person entails) and loving others (whatever love may be). And as one of my major problems with traditional Protestantism is that it is awful at listening to what others have to say (if they can't understand RC, Barth, liberals, atheists, and so on, enough to get those positions correct even while sharing similar cultural circumstances, why should I expect them to get Paul correct?), I wish to listen to others when they tell me that I would be putting too great a burden on them with (c); at any rate, I am too arrogant to be the one to bring up the issue. Therefore, I personally am left with (a). This, tied together with an attempt to take tradition seriously and not just when it supports my own view, is what is leading me to RC.

Pragmatism

Since I've been dealing with the defined Protestant groups, its now on to the undefined groups. I see two different ways for undefined groups to go about their task: pragmatism, and something similar to the tension model of sola Scriptura.

First, I'll talk about pragmatism, and why I don't think that it can solve the relevant issues. But before I start that, let me say that I am rather attracted to the view; I think that I've remained a Christian at least in part because of William James and Kierkegaard. I think that pragmatic/existentialist views can lead one into the right view through a number of ways. However, I don't think that they can support the view.

In order to come to a practical conclusion concerning something, we must have an end we wish to meet. If I want to find my car, I look out into the parking lot. My method is successful if it finds my car when my car is out in the lot, and more generally if it finds my car period. Theoretical concerns can then be based off of this.

So, how do we choose our ends? I can choose the method of finding my car based on practical concerns, but how why am I looking for my car? This is because I want to use my car to do something. It is some other, more ultimate end which sets the agenda, and the mediate ends used to get there.

However, the religious life appears to be, among other things, about our ultimate end. There cannot be another end beyond religion which religion serves, unless it is to become a mere tool. We could use religion for social, political, economic, etc. goals, but then it ceases to be what it claims to be.

So, if religion is about our ultimate end, we cannot use practical reasoning to determine what this end is. There must be something outside of pragmatism which tells the pragmatist what to do. The problem I have with overly practical people is that they fail to realize this, and spend their "practical" lives worrying away on trivial issues (although accomplishing them very well!).

However, how we can determine this end, and the stability it has, is what is really at the heart of the issue. The member of an undefined Christian group is not going to be a pure pragmatist; the above is prolegomena for a more complicated strategy, which I will discuss next time.

Inerrancy

This is another post which is an attempt to make more precise the views which I am rejecting, and whose rejection has lead to my current intellectual crisis. And, as usual, I am still referring to the more conservative strands of Protestantism; I should have a couple posts coming up which detail my concerns with the less-defined versions. I really do hope that people come up and critique me on all of this, so that I may understand better. And so, on to inerrancy.

To start off, I am not going to argue that the Bible is not inerrant. I don't know whether it is or not, and I don't find either side on the issue to be terribly convincing. Rather, what I want to show is that the concept of inerrancy in the best form of which I know does not do the work which it is supposed to do, and cannot support conservative Protestant theology. I'm using the definition of inerrancy proposed by Paul Feinberg: "Inerrancy means that when all facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything that they affirm, whether that has to do with doctrine or morality or with the social, physical, or life sciences."

There are many issues that could be raised here, and which have been. The one which I will focus on is this: there is both human and divine authorship of Scripture. Maybe we will want to identify these, though I will argue for reasons against this. However, even if they are identified, then we still have the two different authorships; two aspects of a single reading. And inerrancy only applies to the divine authorship per se.

The texts used to support inerrancy (That God does not lie, that all Scripture is God-breathed, that Scripture cannot be broken) all point to what God is saying in Scripture. Therefore, it is what God has said which is inerrant. Anything beyond this is to go beyond the definition of inerrancy.

Now, what is it that God has said? I see no reason to equate it with the human authorship, which would include what we get from grammatical-historical exegesis (GHE), though it may go beyond that as well. I argue from these points: (1) The Christological meaning of the OT; (2) The method of exegesis in the NT; (3) The use of Scripture in the history of the church. After all of this, I will argue for why inerrancy really doesn't help us with any certainty issues. But first, I will argue for the possibiltiy of different divine and human readings.

It seems plausible that God could use the human text and say something with it which is not what the human author had intended. Where the human author had intended to write a history, God supplies a moral lesson, or a Christological type. As was said above, it is the divine authorship which is inerrant, as so we must go with what God has intended for Scripture in such a case. Some have argued that the Greek word behind "God-breathed" in 2 Timothy means that this is not how God worked; it means that God himself actively wrote those words along with the human authors. But this does not mean that the intentions could not have been separate, and the following is an argument that many throughout history who should be in a postition to influence our exegesis proposed a view of Scripture which does not match up with GHE.

(1) The OT is Christological. This seems straightforward from Christ's claim that the entire OT speaks of him. However, the OT also made sense at the time when it was written. I see no reason to accept that Isaiah was a bunch of mysterious messianic prophecies, which everyone was baffled about until Jesus came. It makes less assumptions and more sense of the text to posit that at least most of Isaiah (I'm not denying the presence of some real prophecy concerning the future; although even these could have a double-reading) made sense to the readers of its own day and age. However, if it did this, then the historical meaning did not pertain to Christ in the way in which the NT applied it. There must therefore be two meanings. historical and Christological, and not method of exegesis can get at the latter.

(2) NT exegesis is not GHE. When Jesus refers to the passage "You are all 'gods'", his interpretation of this is not what we would ascribe to David. Matthew's quoting of the OT to justify Christ's messiahship is not good exegesis of the relevant passages. And then there's Hebrews. . . . Simply put, the NT looks to be in a sorry state if we hold it up to our standards of exegesis. However, when looked at in its own terms of a more typological exegesis, which pulls meaning out of the "surplus" of OT images, then it can be quite brilliant at points. However, it then is going above and beyond the historical meaning of the texts. So, other it really is not supported by the OT, or it is supported by an alternative reading of the OT which is not found through the human authorship alone. And also, why don't we base our own exegetical practices on the practice of Scripture, if we claim to follow it so closely?

(3) The church has not been able to read the texts in terms of GHE for hundreds of years. Even if we assume that we actually have the correct readings of the texts through GHE (a point on which I am tremendously skeptical), then we still are some of the first to be able to read the Bible. I'm pretty sure that the early Christian were not the best exegetes on our terms (and that suprisingly few in our churches today are as well); they did come up with with "eternal generation" and the "real presence," after all, and most Evangelicals want to deny these as being counter to what we get from GHE. So, we would have to say that God wrote down his word, but in such a way that it would be centuries before anyone got it. Talk about poor communication! When we speak, we speak so that someone can understand. The words themselves are not some free-floating proposition, but addressed to an individual or a group. So, by positing GHE, we make God into a teacher who stands and lectures in front of his students without any concern for their understanding.

So, given all of this, I think that there is a strong case for both a human reading and a divine reading of Scripture, and that the divine reading is what is inerrant. But, even if this is not convincing, I would like to touch on the "certainty" arguments for inerrancy. These go along the lines of "false in one, uncertain in all"; if one thing were found to be false, then everything else would be uncertain. This is just wrong on a number of levels.

First, it is an argument to establish something which needs to be true so that we can hold what we hold. We want to believe something, so we need to pretend that its support exists as well. This is a poor style of argumentation, and gives me no truth-preferring reasons to accept inerrancy; in fact, I find it to be a good candidate for modus tollens.

Second, we form relative certainties based on errant data all the time. People are more likely to get some things wrong than others. Whether or not John was write when he said that they caught 153 fish, does not impact my belief in the resurrection. Histories written a long time after the fact (such as in Chronicles) could contain errors without affecting my perception of the eyewitness view of Jesus' life. We might have some issues with interpreting Paul, as we would have to wonder about whether or not he's correct, but life can be complicated. The argument that life would be easier if we had a straightforward text can be relegated to the first point.

Third, I'm just as glad that I don't need to believe inerrancy to believe that Christ died and rose for me. I find the former to be harder to believe than the latter. At any rate, inerrancy cannot provide any more support for a belief than it itself has as a doctrine. I would have to take it on faith, as it cannot be empirically proven, and then use it to establish all other points; but why not accept the other points as they come up? To accept it as a doctrine is to presuppose it; there really isn't much of a way of establishing it otherwise. So, it cannot add any certainty, as it does not bear much itself, outside of a leap of faith.

Fourth, inerrancy does not decide any hermeneutical issues. We still need to settle genre questions, to determine what the Scriptures intend to say (even in their human authorship, let alone divine). Prima facie it is possible that the entire thing was written as an allegory. Just because something was written to sound like a history, doesn't automatically make it one. If this were possible, then why are we throwing people out of the Evangelical fold because they claim that a particular story is midrash? Why are there debates over Open Theism? I despise the view theologically, and think that the fact that it exists demonstrates the quality of Evangelical thought on the doctrine of God, but they have the right to take the passages in the meaning which they see as intended.

Therefore, I claim that inerrancy is neither effective when paired with GHE, as it applies to the divine authorship which is not automatically the same as the human, and there are historical reasons for believing in the distinction between authorships. Further, if inerrancy were true, it could not settle debates either on certainty or on hermeneutics.

Edit: I've been realizing that th labels "conservative" and "non-conservative" really are akward, and fit the situation less and less. So, in future posts I'll start using "defined" and "undefined" Christian groups instead, which I think gets at my meaning better.

Bonaventure on the Threefold Primacy of God, AI, and GEB

Here's a quote I came across while reading St. Bonaventure in his Intinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Soul's Journey into God):

Ideo omnimodum, quia summe unum. Quod enim summe unum est, est omnis multitudinis universale principium; ac per hoc ipsum est universalis omnium causa efficiens, exemplans et terminans, sicut "causa essendi, ratio intellegendi et ordo vivendi". Est igitur omnimodum non sicut omnium essentia, sed sicut cunctarum essentiarum superexcellentissima et universalissima et sufficientissima causa; cuius virtus, quia summa unita in essentia, ideo summe infinitissima et multiplicissima in efficacia.

Finally because it is supremely one, it is all-embracing. That which is supremely one is the universal principle of all multiplicity. By reason of this, it is the universal efficient, exemplary, and final cause of all things as it is the "cause of existence, the basis of understanding, and the rule of life." Therefore it is all-embracing not as though it were identical with the essence of all things, but as the most excellent, most universal, and most sufficient cause of all essences whose power, because it is supremely unified in its essence, is supremely infinite and multiple in its effects.

Bonaventure isn't the only one who notes this feature of metaphysics, but his quote brings it out well. God isn't only the first efficient cause of the universe, but also its first exemplar cause and its ultimate final cause as well. We are not just created by God, but we also have the basis for thought from God as cause of all exemplars, and we have a basis for action in God as our ultimate final cause, stirring up desire and love within us. There is a triad of being, intellect, and will; memory, understanding, and love; past, present, and future. All of these are unities expressed in diversity; rather than rationalizing the Trinity, we see how mysterious our life is.

Maybe this is the problem with Strong AI: we can give a computer its efficient cause, and maybe even to some extent its exemplars, but its final cause is always entirely reducible to these. It cannot synthesize the future into the present, it cannot have a will which is both the same as and different from its reason and memory. We must either collapse it, or separate it.

Hofstadter in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach presents human beings as "strange loops," or "twisted hierarchies": hierarchies where as one goes up or down, one ends up back where one started. Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem is part of the basis for this book, in which Gödel produces a statement which can state its own unprovability (and hence, if it is provable, it is false; if it is unprovable, it is true, but unprovable). I think that there is something akin to that here, in these footsteps on the Trinity within ourselves; we start with willing, but then have to mention understanding and being, which in turn come back to willing. It is the non-duality of these which joins them so that they cannot be thought apart from each other, but it is their non-identity which lets them be mentioned apart from one another and so discussed independently. Is this "strange loop-ness" a vestige of the Trinity as well?

Some time, I think that I'll talk about Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus on the Trinity and its relation to the world. For Henry especially, the Trinitarian nature of God is evident in creation's relation to God and its structure, even though at the same time all acts of God are performed by the entire Trinity. At any rate, they'll provide some more analytic approaches to what I have mentioned above.

Ruminations on Math and Knowledge

As I've been tutoring in math lately, I've been thinking about what goes on within mathematics and possible relations to our own knowledge. Maybe some analogies here will clear up some of my ideas concerning the nature of logic and its relation to reality; on the other hand, maybe it'll just lead to more obfuscation.

(1) When we work with sines and cosines (as well as tangents, cotangents, secants, and cosecants), we are referring back to the relations between the sides of a triangle. We are actually talking about the sides of that triangle, with precise and true statements. However, we can never get at those sides in and of themselves. We really only get at their relations, and so all of our thinking about them is entirely relational. But this doesn't affect its validity. Further, through these trigonometric relations, we see all sorts of things which we would not have seen without looking at the relations; we can see how triangles relate to circles, we can work with all sorts of signals in engineering, we can calculate many different identities relating our relations are so delve into the depths of the nature of mathematics. All of this is possible precisely because we are working with the relations (we are speaking "analogically," if you will). So, even if we cannot know the sides in themselves, we can understand their significance and have real, true, precise, meaningful speech about them.

(2) We've all learned about the quadratic equation. There are cubic and quartic equations too, for higher order polynomials, and so anything with at most an x⁴ term in it can be solved through an equation (even if the equations are too complicated for most practical use). However, there is no general equation for any higher order polynomial; once an x⁵ is in there, kiss straightforward procedures goodbye. We can prove that there cannot be a general procedure for solving these monsters. I'll maybe look at the proof some other time; meanwhile, the importance of this is that even though we have a perfectly logical, ordered reality, we cannot analyze it all according to any one method.

Hurray for Platonism!

D'oh....

So, I was glancing through my latin texts, and I realized that I have made a grave error. You see, vulpes isn't a 5th declension noun after all, but a 3rd. I'll blame the latin book which I cannot find right now for the mistake. So, the url will remain the same to immortalize my error, but from now on, this blog will be Pulpitum Vulpis.

Individualism

Currently reading:
Beginning Latin Poetry Reader
   by Gavin Betts & Daniel Franklin

I just finished watching Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and was struck by the continuity in the theme of the ugly duckling in American culture. From the time of Rudolph in the 60s, to Happy Feet and Ratatouille today, we have celebrated the misfit who overcomes the odds and saves the day. But why must we keep giving the message? There must be a market for it, or else it would have fallen out of use. However, we still need to remind people that those who march to the beat of a different drummer are not the devil incarnate. Even in a culture which celebrates individualism, we become a herd of "individualists," committed to being unique in the same way as everyone else.

In most cases, this struggle is portrayed as one in which the lonely individual is the hero, and society is simply morally deficient. And it is hard to disagree with this assessment. It is hard to disagree with Nietzsche in declaring most people to be part of the slave mentality, even apart from his association of this with Christianity. Kierkegaard's assessment of those who live at the aesthetic level, the level of living life beautifully in the moment without ever making any real decisions, is woefully accurate. Confucius struggled with finding any rulers, or even many people period, who would seek more than their own glory to work toward the betterment of the Chinese society. Socrates was condemned by the majority, and let us not forget the mob chanting "Crucify!" at the trial of Jesus. This is without even getting into the atrocities committed for racial reasons. It seems to be just plain wrong to go with the flow, in all times, in all places.

But surely this can't be the entire story. Even if we admit that people are sinful, there seems to be some instinct hard-wired into some people to be primarily a part of the community. Why would God create this desire for communal harmony in us if we were all called to deny it? Can everyone spend the time seeking the truth for oneself, without substantial help and simple trust in others?

Kant, in his Conflict of the Faculties, lays out the situation as follows: There were three higher subjects (faculties) in his day, Theology, Law, and Medicine. The doctors would never be able to get around to healing anyone if they had to always go back and reassess their medical knowledge. Similarly, the judges could never hand down a verdict in a case if they had to question the validity of every law which passed their way, and theology could never get underway if the theologians had to constantly turn back to prolegomena and the results of historical studies for Scripture. On the other hand, we need philosophers who question these results, who keep the conversations open. We should not close down the questions entirely, but concern with the theory keeps us from practical results. If we require everyone to go against the herd instinct, to go his or her own way, then society would collapse.

Which leaves us in the following dilemma: we need society in order to carry on our lives, and society needs firm structures in place in order to function. These structures, however, will marginalize and commit violence against some people in the society. Further, in practice the society often goes astray, leading to the necessity of individuals going against said society. New movements will begin, only to fall back into the same problems as the necessity arises for a societal order (cf. almost any religious movement which promises freedom from the old way of life), and committing the same sins.

So, in the end, we can either give standards which will burden those who do the work in society, or we can fall victim to institutional sin. We can be Pharisees or publicans, but how hard it is to walk as Jesus walked! Gentleness leads to inaction and strength to violence, and how difficult it is to traverse the middle path.

Sola Scriptura

I've been trying to find a good way of framing the doctrine of sola Scriptura, so that I would realize what exactly it is that I am rejecting. To start, I assume that it is something between Scriptura nuda on the one hand (which states that everything needed for faith is found directly in Scripture, provable from Scripture, and that we don't need any outside help to get it), and the RC and EO views of tradition one the other. So, how do we account for the status of Scripture while also listening to tradition, without being arbitrary in what we pick?

I posit three models: (1) the heuristic model, (2) the alternative reading model, and (3) the tension model. (1) would be the closest to Scriptura nuda; it says that everything we need, can be found in Scripture and provable by Scripture. However, it has a better grasp of the enormity of this task. For this reason, we seek help from others (from the tradition) to guide us to a correct reading. However, in principle, we could get everything directly from Scripture without a tradition. The tradition acts like a heuristic in mathematics; that is, it doesn't mean anything when it comes down to proving something, but it gives hints to where a fruitful grove of theorems may lie.

(2) is the alternative reading model. (1) only admits of a single reading of Scripture (presumably we would not be able to prove contradictory doctrines, and so would not have contradictory readings). (2) is like (1), only it discusses the matter of multiple interpretations. Let us assume that there are readings of Scripture R and S, such that R leads to doctrine x and S leads to doctrine y, where x and y are mutually exclusive. Further, the tradition affirms doctrine x over doctrine y, or reading R over reading S. Then, the reading R of Scripture is correct. We can say that everything is contained in Scripture, and that the Tradition is necessary for finding the correct view.

(3) is the tension model. Unlike (2), we cannot hold to a specific doctrine as mandatory in Scripture; everything is theoretically up for grabs. However, in practice, this is not what happens as there are checks and balances. All readings of Scripture, throughout time as well as in our own present circumstances, are weighed and hold each other in tension. Our present reading of Scripture is never complete in and of itself, but must be looked at against the Tradition, which in turn must be looked at in light of contemporary thought (therefore, a triad of Scripture, reason, and Tradition). The Tradition keeps us from going off anywhere and everywhere, but cannot anchor us down to any specific doctrine; it must always be heard, but not always heeded. Similarly for any other voice. Turning again to a mathematical analogy, we keep coming up with new equations, occasionally new variables, but each equation gives us new constraints as well. Or, alternatively, we throw in a bunch of different starting points and have them compete amongst each other to see which ones are the best, then start from the winners, throw in more new points, compete again, ad infinitum (like a genetic algorithm, for AI peeps).

I think that (1) is the only version which works for standard conservative Protestantism. Unfortunately, it rests on doubtful assumptions concerning textual interpretation (in theory at least, there must be one and only one coherent reading of the text; I think that different versions might deal with historical information differently), and I'm skeptical about its validity for practice (it assumes that we can take any starting point which has been taken and from there get closer and closer to the intended reading, with the occasional guidance of Tradition; also, even if in theory it works, practice seems closer to (2) and we need to go with what works, not what looks pretty). Simply put, I need to see (1) articulated by scholars with practice in literary interpretation before I would give it any more heed. Also, it seems to fall victim to a classical argument against sola Scriptura: it cannot prove itself, and so by its own criterion cannot be an important aspect for faith.

(2) seems more likely from an interpretation standpoint. However, here we run into the issue of where we draw the line on questions of proof. To avoid saying that the proof for a doctrine comes directly from Scripture, we must say that it comes from a reading of Scripture given within the Tradition. We must then separate readings which are merely Scripture, and so do not violate sola Scriptura, and readings which interpose extra-biblical material. Where is the dividing line between Protestant and Catholic? After all, RC wants to claim that its dogmas are the result of a couple thousand years of meditating on Scripture and the Tradition of the church, and recent RC theology has wanted to reverse the move at Trent which split the two into two different sources. In addition, interpretations of the "sufficiency of Scripture" historically have been loathe to separate it from the Church's understanding of Scripture; this seems to leave the user of (2) in either RC or EO, or foundationless (i.e. Scripture would not support sola Scriptura).

So, this leaves (3). This would be the approach of several groups which are too diverse to catch under a single name. I do not think that relativism leads to groundlessness; space and time are relative, and real conditions of our experience if nothing else which do not fall apart into a merely subjective flux. When I talk about spatio-temporal properties, I mean something, even if I must always be using arbitrary standards and referents. Similarly, we could hold to a single meaning of Scripture which is read off only in particular circumstances, relative to readers yet not a flight of fancy. This is my only hope right now of not going Catholic, but I still have the concerns which I voiced in the last post.

Edit: I think that there is one more model, which is really a version of (2) or (3), which is the closest to the rhetoric which I hear concerning the doctrine. This is the "antiquity" model (A), which gives greater authority to earlier voices (the apostles are the most important to listen to, then next comes the church of the first couple centuries, then the next couple, and so on). If we follow (2), then when the church has had mutually exclusive readings R and S of Scripture, and R is the earlier reading, we pick R over S. If we follow (3), then we count earlier voices as having more weight then more contemporary voices, but still able to be outweighed. I'll have to think about these some more, concerning whether they can escape the problems given above.

Theological Hodgepodge

This is some more thinking out loud about my current theological crises, so don't be expecting anything too coherent in this post. I'll refine my view of Protestant interpretation, discuss what features would move me to choose RC over liberal Protestantism, and start picking through the issue of conflicting interpretations in various groups.

(1) I would like to say that, despite my frustration with Protestant interpretations of Scripture, I do not think that Protestant interpreters are idiots. There are many extremely bright people who have read the Bible and come to Protestant conclusions. Calvin was very bright and profound, for example, and many of my professors have been and are as well. I simply think that such interpretation relies more on its own tradition than it supposes, and that this tradition is ill-formed from its conception in the Reformation. Most of my readers will disagree with that, but that is where I stand until I can see otherwise.

(2) My two live options seem to be RC and orthopraxy of one sort or another. I think that rationally, the two come out evenly; orthopraxy may even come out a little ahead (I've settled that the Marian and Papal dogmas aren't pernicious; I still find them hard to swallow). However, there are many other concerns which I have. For one thing, I need to be able to proclaim that Jesus is God Incarnate, period. If the church which I am in is iffy on that note, then I cannot really see myself in that church.

The reason for this is simple: Arianism is not Christianity. It may have a more enlightened moral view than anything else non-Christian, but if it were established from the relevant authorities then I would be packing my bags for some other religion. So, therefore, I need to find a church which allows me to say that Christ is God; not just that the church says that, but that it can provide the grounds for saying so.

Biblical exegesis might get us a good, coherent reading which supports the view, but if it's down to Biblical exegesis alone, then why can we have any firm foundation? Couldn't later exegesis always revise the opinion? All of the good exegesis which I have seen has acknowledged that there are no logically tight arguments in interpretation, just better readings, and the field bears that out empirically. So, we must always defer any certain statement, though we may have enough to live by for the moment. This is not a logical problem with the position, but a recognition that it is not a solid basis for even an Anti-Arian position.

So, I am down to a minimalist view and a maximalist view. The first thing which tips the scales for me is this: it would be better to take the maximalist view were the minimalist view to be true, then for the opposite to occur. The second is like: my problem right now is that I have too little food to eat, not that I have too much. It could be that I simply need to learn how to diet, but putting that aside, the maximalist view seems to offer the better way to meet my needs, even if there is some junk food thrown in.

In addition, I find that the attention on lack of ritual really replaces ritual for some people. One can become attached to non-ritual just as easily as to ritual, and trust in the lack of "works" which is in reality a work in and of itself. I want a way to express my faith; similar to my gesticulations when I speak, I like to be able to use a physical language of symbolism. I don't want to engage in it as a means of salvation, though I see no prima facie problem with God employing certain usual means in his dealing with humanity. Rituals don't save, but neither do non-rituals; only God's grace through Jesus Christ does. Our faith is the matter which should underlie all of our acts, whether kneeling or abstaining.

This might raise the question of why I would convert to RC, if I think that Protestantism has the basis of faith down. For one thing, there are still certain key questions concerning how God has decided to act within the world which need to be hammered out, and so this talk of "grace" and "faith" does not settle the question (for the record, I loathe it when people tell me to "just have faith"). But really, the main point to me is that I think that RC is right, and if so then the will of God is that I should be part of that "official" body of Christ. If it is the will of God, then it is what I should do, irregardless of consequences one way or another.

(3) I am still wrestling through the problem of conflicting interpretations. It seems that everything which I am saying could be critiqued; I could be falling prey to a modernist, analytical dichotomy, of the kind which my posts on logic so deplore. It could be the case that there is no necessary reason why, say, the emergent church, or Anglicanism, would hit upon the truth, and yet they do through God's grace. Somehow within the midst of diversity, the thread of truth is woven into its tapestry. This argument has even more force because of some of my reasons for considering RC seriously; since Vatican II, there is an opening for serious thought about theology within RC, and for new development. Trent's "infallibility" of the church becomes vague and allows for reworking within the textual boundaries. Does this make null and void my earlier arguments against the Protestant position? Wouldn't I find myself similarly situated in RC, as I surely wouldn't be one of those who would just content myself with the church's proclamations and be done with it? Wouldn't I be appealing to the same position which I deny to Protestants?

I'm not going to say that I'm not troubled by this. However, if it is all about conflicting interpretations which somehow hold the truth in their tension, then this does not settle the question in favor of any specific group. All groups seem to need this to some extent, or at least all the groups in which I am interested. No matter where I go, I must face the fact that the theology of the said group does not match up well with the historical realities of Scripture. Therefore, other reasons can come in which tip the balance in one way or another.

These reasons are not such that they are logically valid in all contexts, but rather point out some salient features of the various conversations which do present problems. There is a practical point to be made in critiquing Protestant views of sola Scriptura, even if the doctrine can be theoretically defended. This is similar to how the average believer can believe in God because of creation, and her belief is valid even though she knows nothing about the intricacies of the cosmological argument or her own hidden assumptions.

I will never reach the point in this life where each point could be made with the infinite precision and study necessary, and so at some time the practical, faulty, and yet not entirely irrelevant conclusions must be what I act upon.

Random Philosophical Thoughts

I'm really only blogging about half the things that I would like to; I figure that for everything I jot down, it means another post which I added earlier will be ignored. However, I also want to write stuff out before I forget it, and so here it goes: some variations on a theme of Scotus.

Thought #1: I see that Scotus is often criticized for having such a complicated system of logic. These criticisms are often directed at him by those who wish to get back down to reality. But I would think that the complicated logic is precisely and indication of Scotus' commitment to explaining reality! Those who get too caught up in abstractions have simple, or at least simpler, logical systems; just chop out the stuff you can't explain and be done with it (*cough* Ockham *cough*). Complicated logic is usually a sign that a person is grappling with the nitty-gritties of the situation and not content to let the abstraction do all the work.

Thought #2: We need a category for the analytic a posteriori. We have the analytic a priori (immediate and necessary), synthetic a posteriori (mediate and contingent), and synthetic a priori (mediate and necessary). But it seems that there are immediate and contingent beliefs (and therefore, analytic a posteriori): I exist, I see, I perceive such-and-such. We might be able to transform any of these statements to an analytic a priori statement by teasing out logical entailments, but this would miss the actual grounding of these statements. I don't logically conclude by the meaning of the words "I exist" and their entailments that I exist, I just have an immediate cognition of the contingent fact of my existence. So, we have 4 forms of knowledge: rational, empricial, transcendental, and existential. (Yes, this is also based on Scotus, though he like other Aristotelians would explain the difference between "transcendental" and "rational" knowledge differently).

Clarifications

Currently reading:
Tradition & Traditions
   by Yves Congar

I figured that I would put down some reasons which have allowed me to take the leap of seriously considering conversion. I doubt that I'll convince anyone else, but at least in this way people can understand my position better, and (I hope) at least have some concerns removed about what I may be giving up in going.

First, in reading through the documents of Vatican II, I was struck by how often they pointed things back to Christ. The status of the church is founded up Christ, Mary and the saints are meant to demonstrate the power of God, and infallibility is only supposed to be exercised in line with the message already given by Christ to the apostles. Now, one might think that the arguments are forced, that they don't reflect practice, and so on, and all of this may be true; however, what it did show me was that there is a real concern in at least official Catholic theology to give due honor to our Lord.

Second, in reading certain accounts of tradition (such as that given in Vatican II, or more explicitly in Tradition and Traditions), I was able to find a view of tradition which gives due place to Scripture and the message given to the apostles by Christ. I don't have to accept the Tridentine account which gives revelation one source in Scripture, and once source in tradition; everything is bound up, and Scripture is a quite necessary element. It's not even that there is a separate oral tradition complementing Scripture, but rather an interpretative tradition which has also supplied forms of worship. If one takes typological exegesis of Scripture as important, and not just historical-grammatical (something which I think is necessary for treating Scripture as a canon, and to account for the exegesis within the NT and the early church), then the interpretive community really does have something to supply which is based on Scripture but also alongside it; Scripture is sufficient as a source, though not as a proof, of doctrine. Again, you may not be satisfied by this account, but the important thing is that I see views which are allowed within RC that give greater primacy to Scripture than has been done at times.

Third, I've been rethinking the relation between faith and works, and reading some more on the Catholic view of the matter. On the one hand, as I've mentioned, I see a greater coherence in Scripture through altering some of the more traditional Reformed categories; on the other, I see RC statements which strongly affirm the working of God's grace within salvation and or subsequent actions.

So, these are some of the reasons which have allowed me to reconsider my options. I do not see myself as changing my basic convictions, but rather seeking a place to express them without the present problems I see in Protestantism. I don't plan on putting up pictures of Mary in our house, or of opening up meals with a prayer to St. So-and-so. I don't plan to ritualizing my way to salvation; I don't seek a new way of salvation at all, but to follow what it is I see that God wants me to do. I don't want to introduce a new source of revelation. I've always considered myself an Evangelical per accidens; that is, the doctrine in Evangelicalism matched up with my own, but with no necessary reason behind it. For me, it's been and will be about the primacy of Christ working through his people, and giving due glory to God in the way which God has seen fit.

Conversion

I've been thinking about this for a long time, and a good number of recent blog posts (and not-so-recent) tie into this. I'm coming to the point where I just can't defend Protestantism anymore. Unless someone can help me out of the problems which I have, conversion is imminent; I'll talk about Roman Catholicism here, but Eastern Orthodoxy hasn't been ruled out yet.

In the following arguments, I would like to note that there may be some false dichotomies. I am not perfectly happy with the way things are laid out; however, I'm dealing with a crisis of conscience concerning a murky area, where nothing comes out either clear or certain. To ignore my conscience now would be wrong, whether or not following it would be right, as I would be purposefully choosing against what I see to be good and true for my own comfort. Given that, the following is only meant to be a way of sorting through the issues, and not as a knock-down drag-out argument.

(1) With that said, the first position which I have to take is on the issue of orthodoxy: how much does it really matter? Should I advocate a position of orthopraxy instead (to one degree or another), a position which allows for competing "conversations" (such as the emergent church or Anglicanism), or is there a specific truth to which I need to hold and to which I should be encouraging others to hold?

If I am to avoid RC, then this is where I need to get off; either at orthopraxy or conversation. Neither of these options really satisfy me, however. Orthopraxy seems to require beliefs as much as orthodoxy, both about what to do and why we should do it. So I'm not sure concerning the extent to which the two can be separated; they are different in degree, maybe, but not in kind. The emergent church could be a possibility, given our present circumstances and the difficulty in coming to any sort of conclusion, but who are the conversation partners? If one person thinks that Jesus is God and another that Jesus was just a good person, is it ok to simply disagree and move on within a church setting? And I'm not sure that Anglicanism can get away with glancing at the church tradition selectively. It's probably the best option of the above if I want to preserve some sense of orthodoxy, but whether or not the Via Media can hold up rationally (I think it might be able to), it's tearing me apart existentially.

In addition to this, there is the position of those like Paul and John within the church. They may not have had complete theologies, but they preached what they had as if it were important to believe those specific things. They treated the specific points in theology as important, and so churches which back off of the orthodoxy issue don't seem to line up with the NT. It was important for Paul that churches hold onto the tradition which he gave to them, and not "merely" love each other (though the latter was rather important as well).

However, given all of this, I will still have to do more work on this area. These are just my preliminary thoughts on the matter.

(2) So, we've decided on orthodoxy; that is, a church that takes a clear stance on the relevant issues. Within this, we have Catholicism and Protestantism for now; we can throw in Orthodoxy to the Catholic side for this discussion. My problem is that I can't see how Protestantism has any legitimate authority.

Protestantism rests on the ability of people to read the Scripture on its own; failing that, we could have a priesthood of scholars deciding theology. But, this was the position that Germany took, with the results that followed. So, we must look at the interpretation of Scripture by everyone. Why should we assume that this is possible? I don't see this being affirmed in Scripture anywhere; in no place does it affirm its own perspicuity, or that individual interpretation is valid. I don't see this being carried out empirically; churches split, and everyone reads what is right in her own eyes. I don't see this being possible linguistically; texts are read in interpretative communities, as the early church could tell us (this doesn't need to come from postmodern literary criticism). It may be, despite all of this, that perspicuity of Scripture is possible, but I want to see some reason for thinking it true.

It may here be argued that I am making a straw man for myself, that Protestantism can hold to some tradition; it cries "sola scriptura," not "scriptura nuda." This is all well and good, but where does the interpretation of Scripture come from which critiques its own reading? We can decide to have another interpretive community, but why think that it got things right? If the Reformers actually did hit on the correct interpretation, then we could be all well and good, but the point of the posts De fide and De operibus were precisely to show that the Reformers got their categories wrong, and were not trustworthy interpreters.

Next, I would like the see that Scripture itself were complete enough to critique any interpretive community which had been reading it. However, everything in the NT is occasional. Yes, I even take Romans to be a letter addressing a specific issue, albeit more systematically than Paul's other letters. These are letters written to the churches which have already received the truth through the preaching and sharing of the various missionaries. The texts then are complements; they might touch on every relevant point of faith, but I can see places in them where there are issues which are not discussed in sufficient detail (baptism and the laying on of hands, for example, seem to have more behind them then is mentioned; and Paul himself tells people to hold to the traditions which he had handed down, presumably before the letter itself). Given all of this, I find it hard to believe that we have the whole story completely in written form. If this is true, though, then where do we go for the rest? Is it honest to plunder tradition for a couple nuggets as needed, but ignore it when it stresses things like the unity of the church?

Finally, what makes Protestants so different from, say, the Arians? The Arians thought that they had the Scriptural high ground in their own interpretation. They believed this as much as and Protestant does. They probably weren't any worse it their reading. But, in the end, we all want to deny their view, Protestant as well as Catholic. How can I affirm this, though, and then turn around and allow the private interpretation of Scripture for the Protestant? If I allow for the early ecumenical councils, though, at what point do I stop and say, "This tradition is now invalid?" Would this be any different?

(3) So, if Protestantism is having problems, what can I say about Catholicism? It's not that I completely agree with RC, but my initial problems are melting away as I learn what their real beliefs are.

As far as the concept of tradition goes, despite the language used at the council of Trent which suggests that tradition and Scripture are two sources of revelation, the general view which I have seen through RC history and most recently in Vatican II is that tradition, church, and Scripture cannot be completely taken apart. There was a deposit given from Christ to the apostles, who in turn passed it on to the church through their appointed successors. This consisted both of writings and the apostles' teaching; not as if there were some additional, secret teaching given beyond what was written, but as stated before the writings are occasional and building off of the initial preaching and building up. The Scriptures are sufficient for salvation, but this does not entail that they can be read by themselves; they must be read as the deposit given the church by the apostles, in light of the meaning given through the community.

So, the next question becomes: why did this not become one vast game of telephone? And, naturally speaking, there is no reason to think that it has not. However, if God has not guided his people in one form or another throughout the years, then what can we hope for in matters of doctrine? The Protestant answer I find to be lacking, and quite honestly it appears to by a mere rationalism to allow for the Protestant way of life. I am somewhat skeptical of the Catholic answer, but I will allow that it has a greater potential to be true.

The next question becomes, are there any doctrines which I find to be especially pernicious? That is, that not only do I disagree with them, but that I find them downright dangerous? The more I look into matters, the less I find this to be the case. The pope may be infallible, but this is through the power of God and not simply as a human being; in addition, such infallibility does not lead to the right to give new revelation, but only to draw out of what has already been given. The immaculate conception may still be a stumbling point, but at least Mary was cleaned of the taint of original sin only through the work of Christ, and so is a type, an exemplar of the church rather than a naturally perfect human being. And as given in my posts De fide and De operibus, I think that Scripture is actually more coherent with a stronger interpretation of "works" than what many Protestants allow.

So, with all of this, I would not choose RC completely on its own. However, I see the following situation: There is an A, Christianity, which I believe to be true. Further, A comes in two forms: P and C, where P entails not-C and C entails not-P. As far as my open options go, these are the only two forms available to me. I am not sure about either P or C, but I think that P is beset with innumerable, intractable problems, while C is at least possible (whether or not it is probable). There is a possible line of transmission for the beliefs in question for C, and this breaks down in P. In addition, C doesn't seem to contain any doctrines that break down A, and so is a valid form of A. Therefore, even if I don't prima facie see how C is true, as long as I think that A is true, P is most likely false, and C is possible, than I have to go with C.

(4) The above have mainly been my rational inclinations. I will now jot down a few existential considerations, things which have been bugging me continually and which make me want to make the change.

First, I am tired of the disunity within Protestantism. It may not be quite as bad as RC makes it out to be, and I myself even used to argue that it was only on the surface, but I'm really doubting that now. Churches split, different theologies are everywhere, and there is sometimes little common ground, even within evangelicalism. Theological views are coined to justify different positions, rather than with any real plausibility. For someone who has become subjectively convinced of a view, this may not be an issue, but I'm forever on the outside, never able to take the (to my mind) intellectually dishonest moves which settle the arguments.

Second, the anti-intellectual trends in evangelicalism. I go to a school with pastors, who simply want to go out and "preach Jesus." They don't really want to understand their views, they don't want to know why what the teach is true, they just want to get out there with a pre-packaged view and hand that off to others. And this is at one of the top evangelical seminaries in the country. In no other job would I want a candidate who cared so little about understanding the prerequisites! Another generation of churches will be fed poor views about Scripture, about faith, about God, and so on, because some people can't be bothered to wrestle through the issues. And in all of this, I am again left out on the side. I'm told that doctrine matters, but that those who really try to understand will get it wrong unless they say what everyone else is saying. It has come to the point where "sola scriptura" and "sola fide" are more important than whether the bible teaches these things. The impact of all of this is that people really don't seem to work well without some sort of tradition, and will manufacture one for themselves (without acknowledging it) if it is denied them (again, I realize that a proper Protestant view of tradition is better than this, but I think the problem remains even once details are worked out). I simply say that the traditions which I see around me are illegitimate at their core.

Third, the flip side of the previous point is that I feel a debt of gratitude toward RC, as being the place where I actually find some intellectual (and therefore, for me, part of my spiritual) sustenance. I have been offered thin gruel within Protestantism, with a single loaf of bread being regarded as a feast. Some new movements, which pull from modern thoughts on hermeneutics (such as with Treier and Vanhoozer) and which don't shove everything into a shallow system of logic, are doing something about this, but I feel that it is too late for me to really jump back in. Too many uninsightful arguments for inerrancy, too many proof-texts which treat the Bible like a text of science or philosophy, have had their toll.

(5) With all of the above said, I now open this post up to comments. I've seen what happens to posts like this, so I am establishing some ground rules. Ignore these, and face deletion. Forgive me for being a trifle blunt, but some of these issues have really rankled me in the past, so humor me if nothing else:

1. The words "fallen from grace" will not appear in any posts. If you wish to make this point, go back and read the posts under the "Bible" label and comment on those. I will still disagree with it, but at least then we can discuss what Scripture actually says about grace, faith, and works, and not what some have pulled from a single verse.
2. If you haven't heard about what Catholicism teaches from a Catholic source (preferably either an official source or an educated Catholic), then you don't know what Catholicism teaches. Ask questions, but don't assume that you've got it down.
3. Any Bible passage needs to be exegeted and placed in context if it is to make a substantial point. Yes, you may think that your passage says one thing, but many other people who have read the Bible at least as much as you have thought differently. Make a case.
4. Similarly, no Bible passage has a clear meaning when it comes to this topic. If you think it does, it's nice to have an opinion, but the clarity of the verse isn't particularly clear. See the previous point.

Defense of LFW, Part III

I'll try not to post too many more things this week; I'm just trying to get some of my thoughts down while they are here. Here is the promised third installment of the "Defense of LFW" series (you can get to the previous two posts through the labels). There should be two more parts coming; they're more or less done, but I have enough stuff on here for the moment.

Scotus’ ethical theory has attracted notice as of late due to its nature as an intriguing version of voluntarism (or something close to it). What is right, is right because God says it, except for the fundamental axiom that God must be loved (which Scotus takes to be analytically true) and whatever follows from that. In particular, no act which has as its recipients contingent beings could be necessarily right; God could always in theory violate any given standard, as the finite goodness of a creature vanishes in light of the infinite goodness of God. However, in actuality God’s justice leads God to set up the world in a way which is conducive to the good of creatures, a way which is appropriate to their given natures. God is gracious toward creation due to his justice, but God is not determined by his justice to do good to creation. It is difficult to say how this fits together, and unlike some of the other examples which I will give it does not lend itself to analysis of our own experience, but it does seem to hold together intuitions both of God’s goodness in acting the way he does as well as the purely gracious aspect of what God does.

Next, Scotus believes that God commands what is right, but in an orderly fashion. So much so, in fact, that Scotus can build a natural law ethic of sorts. What I want to note here is the harmonious nature of the right for Scotus. He compares this harmony to that of beauty:

One could say that just as beauty is not some absolute quality in a beautiful body, but a combination of all that is in harmony with such a body (such as size, figure, and color), and a combination of all aspects (that pertain to all that is agreeable to such a body and are in harmony with one another), so the moral goodness of an act is a kind of decor it has, including a combination of due proportion to all to which it should be proportioned. (Duns Scotus on Freedom and the Will, p. 167)

Because of this, what is right can be improvised based on the situation, but still in tune with the nature of things. For example, Scotus says that marriage has two ends. The first is that of procreation, and the second is that of commutative justice between spouses. Because of this, it was permitted that the patriarchs and others could have multiple wives, as there was a need for rapid population growth. It is even possible that God would allow polygamy again in response to a great disaster. However, in the meantime, it is better for there to be only one spouse of each sex. This is because when all other things are equal, it is best for the husband and wife to have equal enjoyment of each other. Scotus also cites cases such as that of private ownership as examples of what is harmonious with other things, though not determined to be good:

Given the principle of positive law that life in a community or state ought to be peaceful, it does not follow from this necessarily that everyone ought to have possessions distinct from those of another. . . nevertheless, that such persons [e.g. the infirm] have their own possessions is exceedingly consonant with peaceful living. (Duns Scotus on F&W, p. 204)

It may be objected that the marriage example does not really substantiate my point. After all, we can determine whether the situation calls for the primary purpose of marriage trumping the secondary purpose. I would have two responses to make. First, there is nothing to suggest that the situation determines the response; there is still room for a judgement which is harmonious with other factors rather than determined. There may be situations, for example, in which it would be right to have private property, but also right to not have private property, and these for different reasons. Second, it raises the question of situations in which there are multiple ends to be realized which cannot be ranked.