The Terrifying Truth about Fax Machines

... is that they are evil. Or at least the one in the clubhouse office is. So, I had decided back in December to apply to Northwestern's Religious Studies program. The only problem is, the deadline was December 31st. So I hurriedly polished up a class paper, put together a statement of purpose, and faxed transcript requests.

So, this week I've been wondering where everything is. My application is in, and one professor has turned in a letter; to be fair, I didn't tell the other two professors that I needed letters ASAP instead of by January 15th (for my Notre Dame application), but I would like an answer from my emails or something so that I know they are getting through. I've also been in contact with records offices, trying to figure out what's happened to my requests, as evidently they haven't been getting through.

I think that I've discovered the reason now: after talking to the registrar at Taylor, and saying that I would try faxing it in again, she emailed me saying that she had received a blank page. The stupid fax machine makes you put the pages in backwards to send them. Maybe this isn't news to anyone else, but it's kinda frustrating to me that this piece of junk might have cost me an grad school opportunity and the $75 application fee.

Anātman as Openness

Currently reading:
Wound of Knowledge
   by Rowan Williams

I've been thinking some more on the Buddhist notion of anātman (or no-self; also seen as anatta in some texts). I feel the need to deal with it, because so much practical advice given in Christian circles sounds similar. I don't mean simply trendy, pop-psych advice, but even the advice of great saints throughout history in both their lives and their thoughts. This is even separate from the Biblical admonitions to deny one's own self, to crucify it, to die with Christ and let him live within oneself. Holiness of any sort comes through a denial of self, and there must be some ontological feature of the self that allows this.

However, I have trouble within a Christian context speaking of non-self. If we are not enduring entities in some fashion, then who is saved? There would be a causal chain connecting "me" now to "me" in heaven, but this would not be the same person. I also would think that this would have ramifications for the Incarnation and the Atonement, but I won't get into that now (in short, if what is saved must be assumed, and there is now such thing which could be assumed, what could be saved?).

This is why I offer the view of "openness" instead. It is not that we do not exist as selves, but that our existence as selves necessarily implies an openness to the world around us and the world's continual influence. While this could be taken in a mystical direction, let me put forth some prosaic examples. Right now, I occasionally hear my pet rabbit doing something or other in the kitchen. Sometimes I might even need to respond. This is not a response to something inside of myself, but something which is not-me. I may have all of my own concerns, but then my wife comes home and has the things that she wants to do. In order to deal with that, I must open myself up to new ways of valuation, caring, and seeing the world.

To be closed, by contrast, is to engage in selfishness and hatred (one could probably make a case for each of the seven deadly sins; maybe in another post when I'm bored and putting off thesis-writing). Intellectually, it is to force all information through tightly controlled categories which can never be readjusted. Volitionally, it is to assert one's own will and to seek to avoid feeling the force of anyone else's. In trying to make oneself a self-contained self, one is actually becoming less. It is in letting go of this construction that one can have peace, freedom, love, and holiness.

But, while this construction of the closed self bears some resemblance to the Buddhist's notion of a constructed self, the answer is not to deny any reality whatsoever to the self. We simply need a new category to allow for a type of being which is fundamentally open to the world and which increases in fullness of being as it increases in openness, while nevertheless enduring.

Scotus and Buddhism

With the first draft of my thesis due soon (January 15th, if anyone would like a copy), I've been spending some more time ruminating over Buddhism. I'm currently finding that Scotus' (and Anselm's) notion of two affections in the will is helping me to see both where Buddhism is insightful, and where it is deficicent.

A quick primer, before I get into matters: Buddhism teaches that we have one big problem. We suffer. We do not merely suffer when we have literal pain, but throughout life once we realize its transitoriness. In the end, joys end up producing as much suffering as anything else. The cure for this is to realize that we do not actually exist as enduring entities. The precise explanation for what this means differs between Buddhist traditions, but one would not be amiss in most of them to think that we are mere aggregates which are continuously changing, without any stable self or soul underlying the change. Once we realize this, we can let go and be unattached to any specific aggregate, realizing that it is as little "ourself" as the aggregate which comprises other people.

Scotus' theory of the will, which he borrows and develops from Anselm, includes the notion of two affections which can motivate the will to act: the affection for the advantageous, or what is good for ourselves, and the affection for justice, or what is good in itself. I see the problem with Buddhism (at least early Buddhism) is that it only recognizes the affection for the advantageous. It then rightly recognizes that if this is all that there is, then all that one can do is to quiet it, to realize that there really is nothing permanently advantageous, and so the best course of action is to let go of attachments to all thoughts concerning advantage or disadvantage.

If that really were all of which the will consisted, I think that it would be perfectly correct. As it stands, I think that some formulations are still tremendously insightful, and probably more helpful for dealing with life than, say, modern counseling (btw, an experience which I have found to confirm me in my thoughts that academic studies can sometimes be more useful for the art of living than so-called practical studies). However, the Christian can add something: there is a real final goal in life, something outside of oneself which nevertheless continuously pulls one on. This is only possible if one can have an affection for the good in itself, above and beyond desires for one's own good. This is not to say that sin does not dampen this affection, or that we can pursue God perfectly on our own, but simply that without the potential within the will not even God could restore us without making us non-human.

There is an extent to which the Christian might want to practice non-attachment; any person displaying holiness displays a selflessness, a love which seeks not its own, and a complete abandonment to the will of God. However, Christian thought also teaches a reattachment to our ultimate final cause, God. I think that some forms of Mahayana Buddhism realize something similar, but in the end simply struggle in trying to explain what this "something else" is within their own tradition (not that I would expect any Buddhist to accept this as a conclusive argument against their position; I respect their own thinking on the matter too much to pretend that I have refuted it. It's merely how I see their position in terms of my own).

This reattachment to God, further, gives worth back to the affection for the advantageous. Once our affection for justice is working properly and we seek that which is truly good in itself, and truly The Good in itself, we find that this Good also will satisfy our own good. More than that, but we can even speak of the advantageous because of the Good in itself. I take it that Buddhism is correct in saying that, without this ultimate final cause, there can be no true advantage, and so there cannot be a satisfiable affection for the advantageous. We attain our being because of our end, not simply because of our creation in the past. Because God has willed for us to attain Himself in the particular ways which He has decreed, we are what we are. In other words, God cannot be thought of as efficient cause without also being thought of as final cause, as well as present sustainer of the universe.

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.