Towards a Theology of Fantasy

Worlds of fantasy, whether in film, in books, in video games, or what not, help us to see our own world as it is. The could-have-been worlds reveal the sheer contingency of the way things are, and the corresponding craft of the Workman who has made them. For every instance of magic, of mystical spirits and walking trees, we learn to see that the everyday trees and creatures are no less wondrous, and that maybe our own world has been fitted to our own personal lives as little as the strange, alien realm of fantasy.

The Purpose of Church

<bitter angsty rant>

What is the church, and why should we hang out with the local congregations? I hear an awful lot of stuff these days along the lines of, "You're not supposed to get anything out of church; you're supposed to be there to serve." While there is some wisdom to this, it also seems to me to be a cop-out. If everyone has a problem with "not getting something out of church," this would normally suggest to me that something has gone disastrously wrong; one should be able to spiritually grow within the local congregation, and not solely from the development of long-suffering.

What happens when one's faith grows weaker after every sermon, when one can no longer even wish to believe what is said in the empty-headed sentimentalism called worship? When opportunities for service are basically being an usher (aka doorstop with bulletins) or working in the bookstore, selling the latest popular poison to infect our churches? Teaching of any sort would be right out, because one doesn't want to simply yell "Jesus" and "Bible" (in reverse order of importance) louder and louder. So, both helping and being helped are really not happening. However, is the path of rugged individualism really Biblical either? Is the community on a blog and on Facebook really a church substitute, or the functional equivalent of a local congregation in this day and age?

What really worries me, though, is Paul's insistence that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak to overcome the strong. Now, God chose Israel, who showed the strength of God by actually being strong despite their regulations and humble origins (at least when they were following God). So, I'm assuming that the foolish would have to actually confound the wise, not simply taunt everyone else at the last judgment. Further, James does say that God will give wisdom to all who ask. Now, what do I do when there really seems to be very little wisdom in the church? Sure, I can read Augustine, and Aquinas, and so on and so forth, and these people really are the only reason why I'm still a Christian at all. However, the promises seem to be that the common people and not just the already brilliant guys would confound the wise. So, when there is surprisingly little attention paid to Proverbs exhortations to leave simplicity for wisdom within the local congregation, this reflects on the lack of God's work, it would seem to me. But, if God isn't working in the promised way, why should I really assume that God is acting at all?

Similarly, when it comes to living the righteous lifestyle, I seem to be getting mixed messages. On the one hand, I'm told that God's power should be working in me; on the other, I'm told that I have to appropriate this through (insert variation of visualization technique here). Why should I assume that this is God's power working and not merely my own psychological trick? Quite honestly, I find more practical wisdom in Buddhist thought, deficient as I think it is in the long run. If God's acting, then why isn't God acting? If salvation is only for the next life, then this gives us a defeater for belief in it at all.

In sum, here is my question: The Bible claims that God acts in some ways rather than others, presumably with empirical effects. At what point can this claim be falsified, or must we always just grit our teeth and hang onto faith despite any signs of God's presence besides a possible event 2000 years ago? How would this really be faith any longer?

</bitter angsty rant>

Phenomenology of Spirit: Perception

It's been a while since I read this section, so hopefully I'll get it correctly enough. I'm going to leave out most of Hegel's argument, because (a) I don't understand it all myself, and (b) to put it all in would be more or less to repeat the Phenomenology. Also, when I compare a stage in Hegel's thought to one philosophy or another, I do not mean that Hegel made this connection, but rather that I think that it helps explain the view (although it's hard to escape the blatant Aristotelianism in part of the next section).

Summary:

1. Movement in Object
1. Many indifferent properties coexisting in universal medium (white, tart, cubical, but each a different, non-interacting quality)
2. However, determinate unity, through exclusion from all else (this white and this tart and this cubical)
3. Properties as properties of One Thing(both universal and determinate)
2. Movement in Consciousness (discovered through possibility of deception)
1. Differences in consciousness breaking up object (e.g. different senses) into in different aspects; we are the universal medium; however, differences are already specifically determined, and so in Thing itself
2. Unity through all the different aspects united in one consciousness
3. Object existing both for-itself and for-an-other, since it is both many determinate properties and also synthesized in consciousness
3. Movement up to Force (due to impossibility of reconciling contradictions within perception)

In this section, Hegel picks up from sense-certainty. Where sense-certainty started with simply the immediate presence of the Here, the Now, and the empirical I, perception starts grouping together sense impressions as different universals (remember that the movements of sense-certainty established all the different This-es as having their reality under the aspect of the universal). We see different sense-impressions together in the same place, and this yields a thing with properties. This first takes the form of a set of different properties (different universals) sharing the same space, but indifferent to each other. An example Hegel gives is salt, in which there exist in the same place white, tart, and cubical, although none of these different qualities really have anything to do with each other yet.

At the same time, the thing differentiates itself from other things, gaining a unity through this negation of everything else. At the same time, the "properties" cease becoming universals and are now determinate through each other; this white is also tart and cubical, etc., unlike other whites. As such, we have a "singular individuality in the medium of subsistence radiating forth into plurality. (P115)"

However, this simultaneous unity and multiplicity, exclusion and determinateness, creates a problem for perception; as any objective Thing would have self-identity, the problems in their contradictory nature must be in our own perception. Therefore, we must revisit these movements (which had been on the side of the object) within our own consciousness. The True, the being-in-itself, is therefore reflected into Consciousness, where we we again analyze it, recompare it to the object, make adjustments, and repeat ad nauseam. The truth of perception ultimately lies within consciousness itself, and unlike apprehension (the step with sense-certainty), perception involves a reflection onto itself.

The differences in the object occur due to our own nature; our difference of senses give rise to the distinction between sight, smell, taste, touch, etc. We ourselves are the universal medium for these properties, which are indifferent to each other. However, these different aspects are all specifically determined through being in the determinate Thing, and so in this way are in the Thing itself; they, however, are indifferent to each other in its thing-hood. At the same time, they gain a unity through being combined in the same consciousness, such that they are distinct only insofar as one is not the other; the salt is white insofar as it is not cubical, cubical insofar as it is not tart, and so on, although these are not actually separate.

The Thing itself is existing in this two-fold way, both as many and one, both as for itself and for another, "and, moreover, it is an other on its own account, just because it is for and other. . . . (P 123)" However, to avoid contradiction, one aspect must be essential and the other non-essential. Hegel goes through the options, showing that there is no essence to be found for the Thing. The Thing is empty, and perception can only work by alternating between the aspects. In order to overcome this, we must move on the the next circle: Force and the Understanding.

St. Isaac the Syrian

For those who have not seen it before, I've seen some good stuff on Koinonia, a blog by an Eastern Orthodox priest. As of late, he's been writing on St. Isaac the Syrian, discussing similar issues to what I've brought up on universalism. Links are at:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV

Email and Hegel

Since I figure that most people whom I email read this blog, my new email will be michael [dot] anderson [at] marquette [dot] edu.

I've been continuing my reading in Hegel, though I've been procrastinating working through it enough to put it on the blog. In the meantime, though, here are some things that I've been noticing:

• Hegel's peculiar logic. The textbook categorization of this has been "Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis," which is wrong. That's Kant, and it describes Kant's system quite well, actually. Hegel, however, cannot be captured by such a formal logical maneuver; he works from within the contingent and half-correct views which we put forward, and shows how they negate and then supercede themselves. One way to think of this is through the pattern "Concrete - Abstract - Unity," in which he starts with something as it is in itself in concrete reality (such as immediate sense experience), then shows how this negates itself and becomes and abstract thought-object (sense experience reveals itself to be only meaningful as a universal), and then shows a unity (the original "this" in sense experience is regained, but as one instantiation of a universal). It is not any negation or any unity, however, but the specific ones resulting from the tensions in the object, resulting from it being both in-itself and for-another. "Negation" may not even be the best word, but perhaps even "limitation"; the view of sense experience shows a limitation, which is overcome by the notion of the universal, which in turn shows a limitation which is overcome by bringing back in the particular "this."
• Hegel's system is highly symmetrical, in a hall of mirrors sort of way. The movement seen in Sense Certainty is repeated in the next two sections, only at a higher level and with submovements (fractals come to mind).
• Another way of looking at his logic seems to be that of a dual movement: one is going back and forth, transcending the limitations of each view, and the other is an upward movement which encompasses more and more, leading to an overall movement like an upward spiral.

Phenomenology of Spirit: Sense Certainty

After outlining the methodology of his project, Hegel begins this analysis of the patterns of consciousness with sense experience. This is because sense experience is what is most immediate and most basic; the truth of sense experience is simply what it is, nothing more, nothing less; its simple fact of existence is all that there is to it.

We at first can make a distinction based on the nature of the experience: the sense-experience itself is seemingly separable from our knowing it, as it as an object would seem to be there whether or not the knower is. Its being is essential, and our knowing of it contingent. In order to discover this being, we must ask ourselves, "What is This?"

Now, normally we can write down a truth, and it stays true. However, with sense-experience, as soon as we write down something like "Now is noon," the Now (a temporal This) has already passed by; the truth is "stale." It is preserved merely in the fact that it now is not, as a negation of the present Now. Further, we notice that we cannot speak about sense-experience directly. The best that we can do is to point out, "This," but the "This" is the most abstract and undetermined of universals. We cannot say what we mean.

Through this, we see that sense experience is not as immediate as we had first assumed. It is, in fact, entirely mediated; the This is preserved through what is not-This, and what we mean is always at odds with what we say.

So, certainty is not found in the object of sense-experience. Next, let us try the subject, the 'I' which has the experience. However, the 'I' (at least phenomenologically at this point) turns out to be another indexical, utterable as a universal but never meaning the concrete 'I' with the experience of the Here and Now.

Therefore, we run into an impasse whether we start from either the subject or the object. Next, let us take the whole of sense experience, rather than simply a specific This, and we'll consider this whole as the essence of sense-experience. As we are taking the whole, we cannot factor out an 'I' or an object. We see that for any This, we first negate it (as right away we are dealing with another This), but then we negate the negation (and I'm not really sure what Hegel means here, but I think it is that we realize that if the This were simply negated, it would simply not be, but it does exist in a certain sense). However, the This is not the same after this double negation; in the first instance it was immediate, but as soon as we had to think about it it became something "reflected back on itself."

As we go through this, we realize that the "true" Now is a plurality of Nows, and this is how it is a universal.

The sense that I make out is that it is the succession, the history of Nows, of Heres, of Is which makes any one of them what they are; there would not be any indexicals if there were not others, but at the same time each one does exist, as part of the plurality of indexicals. The transitoriness is part of the experience, but there would be no transitoriness without others, and so everything is what it is through others and this only exists as (a subjective part of?) a universal. Hegel goes on to say that "the sense-certainty is nothing else but just this history." So, experience is actually the opposite of a universal, and has no being in itself; animals approach particulars appropriately and profoundly by eating them.

At this point, Hegel sees the necessity of stepping beyond the simple apprehension of sense-experience to the perception of it, and that is where I will begin next time.

Closing Thoughts on Universalism

I think that I'll most likely end my posts on Universalism here (although, Scott, if you want to talk about any other articles in the Talbott book, let me know). Here is Talbott's case for universalism in a nutshell:

1. If we take all the the Bible on its surface level, we seem to have the following inconsistent triad:
   1. God wills that everyone would be saved.
   2. God's will will be accomplished in the end.
   3. Some people will be eternally damned.
2. Arminians reject the second option, and Augustinians the first.
3. However, each group seems to care more about their own choice from the top two, than about the third, and they have done some solid exegesis to show that "God wills everyone to be saved," on the one hand, and "God's will will be accomplished in the end" on the other.
4. Given this, it seems plausible to say that the verses which should be taken in a non-apparent fashion are those which support the third option.

Of course, Talbott also does Biblical work to back up his view, though I will not cover that here due to space and lack of competency.

Now, I see some force to this argument, However, I've had to come a bit further before settling (somewhat unstably) on Universalism myself. Jerry Walls has an essay in the book in which he argues that given non-compatibilist free will, God cannot save everyone; someone could always be too stubborn for redemption. Talbott himself thinks that in order to be just, God must give everyone full knowledge of what their actions entail; given this, Talbott claims, how could people not choose God? Walls responds that we can only respond to so much of the truth at a time; it would be perfectly just for God to give us some truth which would be relevant to our present actions, and then more from there. If we reject the truth given to us, then that is our own fault. So, on Walls' view, some people could reject God, because they never have to be shown a full-on view of God and thereby know fully what they are rejecting.

As far as I can see, I think that these two on their own are at a stalemate. Eric Reitan responds that the chance that this possible world is one in which everyone would stay in Hell for all eternity is infinitesimally small; assuming that people in Hell could chose to leave (a point on which Talbott and Walls seem to be in agreement), the probability that Hell is empty would be continually increasing, reaching 1 as time goes to infinity. Therefore, the chance that we have such rum luck as to be in the, say, one possible world in which Hell is perpetually non-empty is so small that we can assume that this is not that world.

Against Reitan, one could point out the hardening effects of sin. One could say that the longer one is in Hell, the less likely one is to want to leave, and so the probability does not actually approach 1 that Hell will be empty. Against this, one could point out the breaking effects of Hell and sin, and how even a hardened sinner would eventually have to face their own choices. Again, there seem to be reasons to hold both sides.

There are a couple other arguments which I could go through, but here is my conclusion: it is logically possible (and on the grounds presented so far, not holly implausible) that Hell will be non-empty, but I can't affirm this. The reason is that I can't accept exclusivism (see various earlier posts), and the more I try to work out inclusivism, the more Pelagian I seem to become (loosely speaking; I still hold that Arminianism is neither Pelagian nor Semi-Pelagian). So, in order to account for God's grace, I am leaning toward universalism and the view that divine Goodness is powerful enough to eventually win over the most determined sinners. Of course, this is not a detailed argument (or perhaps any at all), but it's the reasoning I see in front of me currently.

Grad Schools, Reprise

I just got a call today that Marquette can offer me a position with funding. So I'll be going into a doctoral program after all next year. Woo-hoo!

Transgender Issues

A while back, I had read through an article on transgender issues in the church in Christianity Today (see here). While I'm not terribly familiar with the specific details of this debate, it seems that many of the same problems come up in sundry issues involving social- and bio-ethics these days. So, here are my relatively uninformed questions to the two sides:

Pro-Transgender: How does one feel like a woman/man in a man's/woman's body? It would seem to be that at the very moment when physical gender is so plastic, the gender stereotypes must be more rigid than ever in order to create this turmoil. There must be a determinate "feeling" of woman-ness or man-ness for this to make sense, but the stronger this is, the more it is simply a social construct rather than a physical issue (whether or not it would be more than a social construct to begin with).

Anti-Transgender: The whole notion that "God doesn't make mistakes" simply does not apply. First, God could have intended to create someone who would later have a sex-change operation, and thus have not made a mistake; after all, we are born naked, but we put on clothes, we are born little, but we grow, we are born foolish, and (some) gain understanding. How we are born does not determine what God has intended. Second, God does allow evil in the world, and this, as evil, is what should not be. In other cases, we are called to overcome it; why could this case not be analogous? After all, we are all programmed with hormones, but we shouldn't be following them indiscriminately. Instead, we have to deny them (and say that God made a "mistake"?) at times. Others around us may be working injustice; do we sit back, because God has created that situation? In short, in order for Evangelicals to even begin this line (in any case; euthanasia IMHO has similar issues), they need to work out a much fuller natural law ethics than they currently have, and I don't see many willing to put the time into this (what the typical Evangelical "feels" is right does not count as a basis).

Phenomenology of Spirit: Introduction

Learning languages is fun and all, but it's time for me to get back into something more than essays for philosophy. I've picked up Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, partially because I figure that I should get somewhat of a grasp on Hegel at some point, partially because I want to understand Kierkegaard better and so I want to know what's going on in German/Danish intellectual life at that time, and partially because the Introduction to Phenomenology of Spirit seems to have similar concerns about the nature of cognition that I have been wrestling with (I'm skipping the Preface to the book, as the Forward had suggested that it really is of much more use after one has read the rest of the book). As there's no way that I'll understand Hegel without doing some digesting of his work and restating it, I'm going to summarize what I've been reading. Anyone reading this blog who has a background in Hegel (which, as far as I know, is a grand total of 1 person), please feel free to let me know when I'm totally missing the point.

Key Points:

• We should have skepticism regarding our own views as well as others, and so find what is wrong with them as they come up.
• All negations are determinate negations, and not pure nothingness.
• While we cannot observe our consciousness directly, we can observe the patterns of consciousness as one leads to another through its negation.

Hegel's question is this: how do we know that we know what we know? It would seem that either there is a gap in between our concepts and the Absolute, or that we receive truth through a medium. Both would seem to create a problem for knowing. However, even this fear assumes something: that there is a difference between our cognition and the Absolute, or Truth. Now, we have not yet defined what these mean, and so must go about doing such.

Different sources give different answers to what any sort of knowledge is, and these different sources themselves end up merely being one word against another. We must instead look at the phenomenon itself, instead of these opinions about it (each of which is less than the phenomenon). We then start by doubting, but ourselves as well as authorities; our skepticism is against the "whole range of phenomenal counsciousness." We can look at the pattern of counsciousness which arises out of this systematic doubt, since every negation is not just a mere negation, but a definite negation of something specific.

It turns out that we have a goal given by the project itself: when knowledge no longer goes beyond itself, but is united with its goal, and "Notion corresponds to object and object to Notion." In the case of consciousness, the Notion is the same as its object, always going beyond itself. Because of this, it never can rest in a given place, always spoiling its own limited satisfactions.

Our study then is concerned with our knowing, and the essence/being-in-itself/truth. Consciousness is also always twofold, both distinguishing itself and relating itself to things. The relating is the knowing, and the distinguishing gives us the being-in-itself. What we want to know, then, is whether the Notion (of consciousness) is the same as the object (also consciousness). In comparing the knowledge with the truth, the truth is no longer simply being-in-itself, but rather has become being-for-consciousness of this in-itself; and upon the changing of our Notion, the object alters as well. So, the reality of what is happening is not directly observable by us.

However, in the course of experience, we will see constant negations in this stream of becoming. As negations are all negations of something, the second object in this sequence contains the "nothingness of the first," again a definite nothingness which preserves what was true about the first. The origination of these objects through these negations is what we can know, even if not the being-in-itself This process of negations also arises out of necessity, and so this process of becoming is itself a Science. Finally, we will come to a point (Hegel promises) while seeking out the patterns of consciousness where appearance and essence will coincide, giving us absolute knowledge.

I don't really understand what Hegel is saying well enough to offer any criticisms or thoughts on the matter; I think that I'll need to see a couple of his arguments in action. Nevertheless, if anyone has the time to read this, fire some questions my way to force me to try to work things out.

Theses on Hell

As a way of sorting through the stuff I've been thinking about with regards to universalism/inclusvism, I'm posting some points concerning the nature of Hell. Feel free to drop in with comments, criticisms, what not. As theses, I currently don't have arguments for these points, but I think they make intuitive sense.

1. Everyone in Hell must, given their characters at the time, necessarily be in Hell. It is not a contingent feature of the world that a person of X character is eternally saved or suffering.
2. For this reason, if someone is in Hell, they are in Hell due to some feature of God's character of of their own. It seems that these are the only two choices which would give grounds for the necessity of the 1st thesis.
3. Hell can be either retributive, redemptive, or unavoidable. The first is if we can say that sinners, due to some feature in their own character of of God's, must necessarily be punished. The second is if Hell would (at least possibly) lead to a better end for those punished. The third is if Hell is not a place of justice, but simply an unavoidable by-product of the way the world is, or of other decision which God has made concerning how the world would be set up.
4. Hell could only be retributive if God's nature demanded retribution. The person's own character cannot necessitate retribution without some source from outside herself mandating retribution, and if God only contingently wills retribution, then it would not be necessary and would not be truly just.
5. Given that God does forgive some, it is not absolutely necessary that God mete out retribution.
6. Given that there is no necessary link between explicit acceptance of Christ's death and God's forgiveness (though there is with the fact of Christ's death, incarnation, and resurrection), there is no relative necessity for why God must mete out retribution.
7. Retributive justice really doesn't make sense anyhow, and in theology it is largely an artifact of first feudal (with honor) and then capitalist (with debt) societies, rather than part of God's own character.
8. Hell, therefore, is either redemptive or unavoidable.
9. If Hell is unavoidable, then it is such due to the person's character and not God's nature (otherwise, we'd be talking about retribution).
10. Anyone who truly knows the good and realizes that apart from it, there is no good, would not necessarily hold out against it forever.
11. Hell is therefore either redemptive, or contingently unavoidable.
12. If exclusivism (that is, salvation through explicit acceptance of Jesus through that name or as translated and interpreted within a traditional Christian framework), then the gospel would be horrible news to most people; before, God could say, "What does the Lord require of you? To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God," but now these very same activities not only could be non-salvific but anti-salvific, when they would cause someone to reject an often unjust, unmerciful, and prideful Christian witness.

Emanation and Emergentism

Just some random, crazy musings, to feel out some concepts: What would the difference be between a top-down look at the universe, and a bottom-up one? Putting aside questions of fit with revealed theology, I propose the two scenarios: One one, we have a Neoplationic-esque One emanating through the Mind and World Soul, culminating in matter. In the other, matter "thinks itself," gives rise to emergent properties (that is, properties not completely reducible to the physical properties of matter), which in turn culminates in Absolute Self-Consciousness, and Omega Point, God, whatever the specific system may declare it.

In both cases, we would have a hierarchy, with top-down causation (presumably in both, the more complex affects the less complex; it is more a matter of explanatory and causal priority). We would still have the differing levels of causation, with God/One/Absolute acting on everything, and the mental/Nous/noosphere/etc. (Dust?) on the material; both would seem to fit the model of essential causation which I had mentioned previously.

It seems that the present moment might actually look pretty similar for both; however, there would be a difference in whether the Past or Future is the ultimate reality; Platonic Forms (especially as in Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return) or Aristotelian Teleology (everything striving toward the Prime Mover as a final cause), perhaps?

Of course, these options are not exclusive; we could say, for example, that God creates in a more emanationist like manner from which then mind emerges (or just skip both modes of talking altogether; but that's outside of the present thought experiment). If we could say that God is affected by creation (voluntarily or otherwise), we could even have feedback loops, and (perhaps?) strange loops in the world (that is, hierachies that fold back on themselves, such as Russell's paradox and Goedel's theorem). Would this give the world both the unity and complexity which it has?

So, from there, why would I be concerned with this stuff? Part of what I want to do is to figure out what exactly various themes throughout perfectly orthodox Christian thought mean; what does Athansius mean when talking about the Logos in all of the universe, or Augustine in talking about the Infinite which is wholly itself wherever it is, or Bonaventure in his threefold ontology of emanation, exemplarity, and consummation? Aquinas' ipsum esse and Scotus' (or, as I've found out, Ibn Sina's) essential causes? How about traditional doctrines of God's sustaining power, as well as role as first efficient cause and ultimate final cause? Is there a philosophical explanation underlying the experience of countless Christian mystics, East and West?

It seems like most of these feature both of these movements at once: simultaneously a procession (whether necessary, as in classical Neoplatonism, or contingent, as in Christian adaptations), and a return (whether through a beatific vision, apokastatis, theosis), and so therefore both the teleological, forward, bottom-up approach and the essential, backward, top-down approach.