Perspicuity of Scripture

Ok, I'm having some troubles with the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture, and I was wondering if someone could help me out. I'll outline what's been going through my head; it's not supposed to be a knock-down, drag-out argument against perspicuity, but rather what I'm struggling with.

First, why is the issue important? It seems to me that there are three major options: go with an institutional church (Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox), admit perspicuity of Scripture on matters of salvation, or be elitist (only those who have the time and energy to devote to thoroughly studying Scripture in its context could really know the truth, and even then it's doubtful; a variant on this would be a priesthood of scholars who pass on their "knowledge" to the masses).* I'm currently not liking any of the options; elitism certainly seems contrary to the Biblical message and I think that RC and EO have issues in their interpretations on Scripture (they don't seem to have kept the message as faithfully as they claim). It seems that the hope for Protestantism is that the individual can indeed get the basics out of Scripture without any (human) help.

Empirically, this does seem to be lacking. It could be entirely possible that most of these Protestants in the end agree on the important issues, we just can't be sure what the important issues are. I would like to see some support of perspicuity before accepting a position like this, however, and quite frankly the only kind of argument I see doing any work at all is a sort of "Protestantism is right, Protestantism needs perspicuity of Scripture to get off the ground, therefore Scripture is perspicuous." Except that it seems that we need Scripture to be perspicuous to be sure of Protestant claims.

Below are basic summaries of some of the arguments I've heard which I simply don't accept and why. In the end, I'm having trouble finding Biblical support for perspicuity, and the empirical troubles make me want to dismiss it if the Bible doesn't support it.

• Argument 1: God knows language, would want to give us a message we can understand, and therefore did.
  Reply: Arguments for "God would do something, therefore . . . ." just don't fly. If God hasn't told us what God would do in a situation, let's leave some room open for God's own decisions. Further, if God decides to use a tool, then God is restricted by that tool. We first need to settle the question of the extent to which perspicuity could even possibly be applicable to 2000 years of humanity over a wide range of cultures, not to mention when found in a text which is unabashedly culturally rooted itself (Paul wrote letters to specific situations in the churches, after all).
• Argument 2: Scripture verse X says that God's message (or some phrase that we can take or even twist to mean God's message) is clear/understandable/able to save/etc. Therefore, Scripture is perspicuous.
  Reply: Show me a verse which actually applies to the Bible in our current context, and I'll listen. God's message, however, is not only the written word; many times this is referring to a proclamation, or the content of a message (Paul uses it synonymously with the Gospel at points). Even insofar as it is referring to a written message (such as the Torah in certain Psalms and Deuteronomy, or possibly Paul's writings), it is always within an interpretive community (the Israelite institution, or the new church complete with disciples who had been with Jesus and eyewitnesses, as well as churches which had heard more of Paul than we have in his letters). In short, there is no similar situation to our own in which the Bible talks of God's word being clear, and the way in which these verses get used for the purpose of perspicuity is an example of why I am so fed up with both the doctrine and low-church Protestantism as it is.
• Argument 3: Elitism is false, and RC and EO make false salvific claims, therefore we are left with Protestantism under the assumption of perspicuity of Scripture.
  Reply: So who makes the judgments on what Scripture means? If the individual, the this begs the question. If the learned individual, then we have elitism. If the community, I would want to see why I should trust the given community; RC and EO provide some evidence of continuity with the early church, even if I doubt that it is anywhere near as strong as they claim. An alternative would be communities which show forth the fruits of the gospel the best. Low-church Protestant bodies don't really seem to qualify for either.
• Argument 4: Even if you deny perspicuity of Scripture, you still need to listen to tradition and have thus simply moved the problem to a different level.
  Reply: This is simply not understanding the critique offered by traditionalists. The tradition is embodied in a living interpretive community. There is a framework for how to interpret the Bible set up through listening to the thousands of voices surrounding oneself, starting with those nearest and working its way outward. I can always ask questions to clarify what someone living meant by a comment, and I at least share similarities of culture with those close to me in place and time.

So, there are my basic thoughts. I'm hoping there is something wrong; however, I'm having trouble seeing what it is. I at least as a scholar can go and research the issues, but what can we expect of the common believer? Do we simply say that anyone who is actually serious about their faith needs to go through a rigorous academic course in order to really know what they're talking about with Scripture? I know that the Bible verses I usually hear quoted in a typical church by laypeople seem to me to be woefully misunderstood, and insofar as they are used appropriately this seems to be random luck. However, muzzling laypeople doesn't seem to be a good option either.

I'm probably simply missing something simple here and making a fool out of myself. Oh well, better to admit to being a fool than to continuing struggling with doubts because I can't bother to ask other people for help.

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* Edit: I guess this could be falling into the modernist purely objective/purely subjective false dichotomy; maybe there is no infallible authority, but we can still make our way anyhow (even if Scripture is theoretically inerrant, perspicuity is required to make this infallibility practical for most people). An Anglican position could then work, allowing revision but listening to the tradition. This would still seem to invalidate most Evangelicalism. Alternatively, do we drop (or marginalize) orthodoxy for orthopraxy? Even here, there seems to be some issues with perspicuity, but not as many; I don't think people disagree on many of the issues so much as ignore them. Plus, there still is the issue of salvation: even though we should be like Jesus, and we have a good example in Jesus himself what that is like, what is it that saves us and enables us to be like Jesus?

Yet another option is postmodernism and/or relativism. Not that I'm comfortable with this option either. However, at least let us get it straight that relativism and subjectivity do not entail anti-realism; they simply entail that whatever is actually real cannot be summed up in absolute/objective statements. So on this view, reading Scripture is a process where as we read, we gradually learn, without necessarily being able to say without remainder that a given view is correct. Again, I'm not completely comfortable with the view, but at the same time I don't think that it's quite as weak as a modernist critique suggests (of course it doesn't support modernism. That's hardly a critique of it.) and if perspicuity fails it may be the best way of retrieving a quasi-Protestant way of going about church.

Ideas concerning Platonism

Currently reading: Henry of Ghent: Metaphysics and the Trinity by Juan Carlos Flores

I heard an argument the other day which has me considering Platonism (see paper at http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~thorgan/papers/Conceptual.Relativity.htm). The argument itself, as I heard it, goes somewhat like this: there are times when two people are arguing, and there is both a sense in which they disagree (they aren't just talking past each other), and yet regarded within their own conceptual schemes, they are both right. A couple examples are in order. The first example, given in the paper I read, would be that of Carnap and the Polish logician. There are three books on the table, and so Carnap says that there are three objects while the Polish logician says that there are seven (the three books, plus all mereological sums; every set of two books, and the set of all three). There is a sense in which "object" in context dependent, but at the same time they are disagreeing. Another example given to me by the friend who is currently championing this view is that of a libertarian and a compatibilist regarding the good. Given the different accounts of the will, what it is to be good is different on the two accounts (if nothing else, the libertarian charges the compatibilist with reducing morality to aesthetics, and the compatibilist charges the libertarian with grounding morality on randomness). But if libertarian L and compatibilist C both say "x is good", then they could both be correct even though their theoretical notions of the good are contrary.

That's mainly as far as the paper itself goes, arguing that there is this weak inconsistency in thought which can be explained through an indirect correspondence theory of truth. I personally like to think of it as thinking about what we're talking about more than what words we are saying; metaphysics is not merely formal logic. At any rate, however, here are my thoughts on the issue. The inconsistency only comes up if we are descriptivists; that is, we say that the meaning of a word is settled through a description of it. But, if we set that aside, then the inconsistencies in arguement disappear. In particular, what I am thinking about is a reference theory of language; "good" can be used truthfully by L and C because it is primarily a reference, with theoretical descriptions coming afterward. Now, the question is, what is it referencing? I wonder to what extent it can be purely phenomena, given the different phenomena that different people would use. Even if we all have given moral role models, L & C could be referencing the behavior and so on of different role models. Zagzebski in some essay somewhere writes that in the Christian case, Jesus could be the referent of sorts; while I find this idea compelling, I would like to see some more done on how even a non-Christian and a Christian could both be right in calling something "good." Similarity between referents, maybe, with Jesus as the supreme referent which most accurately describes the notion? But then we need something to adjudicate between the referents to tell which ones are more the given attribute, and we couldn't do this without some sort of notion of the attribute in question in the first place. There are other options available, but I (on an intuitive, not logical level) think that they all come down to the matter of providing some sort of unity behind diverse concepts. It is leading me to rethink something along the lines of Platonic Ideas. For the moment, at any rate.

Medieval Trinitarian Theology

Currently reading: The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus by Richard Cross

I figured that I'd jot down some things I've been learning this summer; maybe someone else will be interested, maybe not, but it'll force me to think through it. The main thing I've been reading up on so far has been 13th century trinitarian theology; mainly Duns Scotus with some Henry of Ghent, but also a little Bonaventure and Aquinas (especially after being corrected on some errors in thinking on my last post). Much of the following is recapping a dissertation I've been reading by Russell Friedman, entitled, In Principio Erat Verbum: The Incorporation of Philosophical Psychology into Trinitarian Theology, 1250-1325.

All of the thinkers in this period look back to Augustine and Anselm in their formulations of the Trinity. Many of the strategies of these two are incorporated into later, more precise Scholastic thought, though in different ways. Aquinas and Bonaventure are similar in their thinking, yet develop differences which are further developed by succeeding thinkers.

One model of thinking about the Trinity involves looking at the relations between the persons. Augustine in particular champions this model (though I believe that similar steps were taken by at least one of the Cappadocians; I'll have to look this up). The key thing is that whatever distinguishes the persons in God can't be an essential property as they all have one essence. Neither can it be an accidental property, as God doesn't have any accidents in an Aristotelian sense (besides, we don't exactly want the persons to be accidental to God's nature, even if we are going with a contemporary, non-Aristotelian framework). The only other Aristotelian category which makes sense once you remove talk of accident and substance is relation. The divine persons are therefore distinguished from one another through their relational properties. In most beings, relations are a cheap manner of being, even below accidents; the fact that there are more books than DVDs in this apartment has nothing to do with the being of the books or DVDs. However, when these relations are within the divine essence, they have a manner of being as full as any substance.

Aquinas in particular takes up this line of approach. The persons are distinguished not merely by relations, but by opposed relations; the Father has the relation of paternity to the Son, and the Son has the relation of filiation to the Father. The Holy Spirit must have a relation to both Son and Father in order to be distinct from them, and so they both have the relation of active spiration to the Spirit and the Spirit has the relation of passive spiration from both the Son and Father (thus, the relation account demands the filioque).

Bonaventure, on the other hand, tends to take the lead of Richard of St. Victor and his emanationist model. In this model, the relations of origin become the most important; what makes the Son a distinct person is the origin of generation (procession in the mode of nature), and what makes the Spirit a distinct person is the origin of spiration (procession in the mode of will). The Father is who he is through being ungenerated. Generation and spiration are simply intrinsically different from each other and do not need opposing forces to distinguish them.

Now, here is an important thing to note: even though I have said that Aquinas and Bonaventure foreground the respective views, for them this is merely a conceptual distinction. Both speak of relations and both speak of emanations, but the ordering is the ordering of our concepts; these are really identified within God. Franciscans and others sympathetic to the Franciscan viewpoint on this issue, however, took the matter a step further. In particular, Henry of Ghent incorporated Augustine's psychological model of the Trinity along with Aquinas' philosophical psychology (with some tweaking). Augustine, in his De Trinitate, likened the Trinity to the memory, intellect, and will. Henry identifies the procession of generation with the procession of the mental Word (intellect/understanding) (thereby identifying procession in the mode of nature with procession in the mode of intellect), and the procession of the will (linked to love) with the spiration of the Spirit. Duns Scotus, Henry's pupil, follows in this, making this psychological emanation scheme his complete account of the Trinity by collapsing the relations into the emanations (this is, of course, leaving out many details on all sides).

I'm struggling with the psychological view of the Trinity myself. It's foreign to much of contemporary theology, and seems to be rather anthropomorphic. At the same time, I've been working through some reasonings for looking at it. Looking at the Son as God's understanding (as a simplification, at least; all of the above accounts separate God's understanding qua Son from God's understanding qua God), one can then make parallels to John's prologue, or Proverbs 8 with wisdom, or Genesis 1 with the ordering of the world from chaos. Similarly, identifying the Spirit with God's will makes sense considering who the Spirit is and how the Spirit acts in the Christian (at least as a broad characterization; I'm going for the big picture here). Similarly, it does seem like there is an outward movement from ourselves when we know something and when we will something, which nonetheless remains with ourselves. Finally, it does not seem (overly) anthropomorphic to say that God has a will or understanding; these seem to be pretty standard traits attributed to God and even within philosophy flow out of the cosmological argument. None of this is to imply that we have even the foggiest idea of God's phenomenology.