Category Archives: Philosophy

God’s Freedom, Goodness and Necessity in Philosophical and Theological Convivium

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More thoughts on the properties of God for my philosophy of religion class. As I have been responding, this week, surrounding God’s omniscience, eternality freedom, goodness, and necessity. These are my last three responses.

  1. What is freedom? Does it make sense to talk about maximal or perfect freedom? If yes, how should this be defined? If not, why not?
  2. Do you agree that the ability to do what is morally wrong is a power for human beings but a liability for God? Answer the question by laying out the argument for this as you understand it, or asking any questions about parts that you don’t understand. Then give your reasons for why you think that this is either a good argument or not a good argument.
  3. Could it just be an accident that there is, or that there is not, a God? If not, why not?

Freedom is that aspect to be able to do or not to do. It makes sense to talk about perfect freedom vis-Γ -vis God. God is maximally or perfectly free in the sense that he literally and absolutely and personally has the capacity within himself (his in se life) to bring this or that to pass, at will. On classical theism, God’s total properties, working one within the other, grounds the fact of divine freedom. That is to say, that God, on this accounting, has libertarian agency, so to speak, to do this or that without contingence or constraint. Or it might be said, that God’s freedom has no constraint other than the consistency of his own inner-life in simple relation.

On the other hand, as Mawson develops, human freedom, finite as it is, given its lack of divine properties, by definition, are not able to be perfectly free. This is the case since human agency is conditioned by its own β€œfinity.” Meaning, human agents are not β€œomni” relative to the powers of God (on classical theism). This entails, that human freedom cannot be perfectly free insofar that it is necessarily limited by its contingency. For example, human beings have the capacity to supererogate or not; to go beyond the perceived limits of this or that good. This implies that human agents have a lack in their freedom.

[From a Christian theistic perspective, as a theological aside, here is how one of my favorite theologians, Karl Barth, refers to Divine Freedom:

According to the biblical testimony, God has the prerogative to be free without being limited by His freedom from external conditioning, free also with regard to His freedom, free not to surrender Himself to it, but to use it to give Himself to this communion and to practise this faithfulness in it, in this way being really free, free in Himself. God must not only be unconditioned but, in the absoluteness in which He sets up this fellowship, He can and will also be conditioned. He who can and does do this is the God of Holy Scripture, the triune God known to us in His revelation. This ability, proved and manifested to us in His action, constitutes His freedom. (Karl Barth,Β Church Dogmatics II/1 Β§28 The Doctrine of God: Study EditionΒ (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 47]

Goodness β€œis a matter of behaving as one ought in one’s relations with other peopleβ€”and creatures more generallyβ€”and perfect goodness is a matter of doing the best thing that one can for them whenever there is a best and doing one of the best things that one can whenever two or more things are β€˜joint best’ for them, i.e. are equally good and none is better” (Mawson, 57–8). Good is the objectively understood rightness (or we might say, righteousness) on the classical theistic account. Perfect goodness, on God, is that standard of what counts for right versus wrong. Indeed, wrong is only the privation of right. In other words, there could be no perception or conception of wrong without right being prior to it. That is to say, we understand wrongness only as it is measured against rightness (or goodness). I agree that in ethics there are grades of wrong vis-Γ -vis the good. At points, in given situations and circumstances, it can be a power for humans to choose a wrong, in order to amplify the good. We might think of Corrie Ten Boom, and her family in the Netherlands during WW2. They hid Jews from the Nazis in their home, and β€œillegally” found safe passage for some of them out of the country. In a relative sense this could represent a human power, in the sense that the sanctity of life was amplified, in the face a certain dark evil. I.e., on a grade, the sanctity of life is a greater good than is the lesser wrong of lying in order to ensure the good in this case. Such is the human dilemma, at times. Since we aren’t all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present at the same time in the same way, as God is, we must attempt to see what is the greater than rather than the lesser than in any given ethical dilemma, and choose the greater than of life, even if it might require the lesser than wrong in order to ensure the continuance of life rather than death. God is not faced with such dilemmas; again, because, on classical theism, he is β€œomni,” and much more.

Necessity. God is necessary. Not in a god-of-the-gaps type of way (i.e., as an explanation to fill in the gaps in our logically-deductive schemes to explain reality, per se), but in a necessary way; in the sense that the world itself, contingent as it is, requires an explanation greater than itself to explain its existence in the first place. Or the universe/cosmos as a finite (ever expanding) entity does not have the resources within itself to explain its origin (where it came from, why it continues, and where it is going, if anywhere). Contingency implies a prior non-contingent ground upon which the contingent is contingent. Without the non-contingent prius there can be no contingent after and remainder.

Philosophy of Religion and Christian Theology in Combine

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More thoughts on the properties of God for my philosophy of religion class. As I have been responding, this week, surrounding God’s omniscience, freedom, goodness, and necessity. These are my first two responses.

“Could anyone other than you, right here and now, know what it was like to be you, right here and now? Why or why not? What are the implications of your answer for the notion of divine omniscience?” (this, posed by the tutor for the class, based on our readings of T.J. Mawson)

Omniscience. Someone might have the capacity to know what it is like to be me by way of a general set of shared commonalities. So, they might be able to be empathic, in regard, to β€œhow I see things.” But at a basic level, no, someone else, definitionally, cannot know what it is like to be me from the inside/out. I could explain to them what it is like to be me, insofar that I could in fact explain and articulate that; but that would entail the self-limiting factors of my own capacity, as a finite human being, to express such things. Equally, they could β€œget” what I’m saying to an extent, insofar that they might have similar experiences and socio-cultural conditioning to my own. But that would be as far as we could get.

Divine omniscience, on the other hand, has no such boundaries. Indeed, the living God can know exactly what it is like to be me because he knows everything. And to stretch further: from a Christian theistic perspective, he can know me from the inside/out because he assumed my humanity, and yours, and everyone’s in the incarnation. From this God has a shared human connection to our humanity. Or it might be said, that humanity has a shared connection with his humanity for us. Even so, more broadly, the Bible says in the epistle to the Hebrews, β€œthat everything is bare and naked before Him to who we must give account.” On my view, we can only really understand divine omniscience analogously. That is to say, that as we look out at being all knowing β€œconceptually,” as finite beings, as humans we come to apprehend what that entails by thinking about what that could be like. We can do so as we commiserate with each other in regard to shared experiences, and socio-cultural conditioning. We might be able to extrapolate from there, and imagine a greater instance of that in an amplitude that goes beyond that imagination itself. That said, it isn’t we that predicate God’s properties, but he who predicates ours; indeed, as we are created and re-created in his humanity for us in Jesus Christ. So, by way of order, in order to think what it means for a being to be omniscient, I prefer to not work from a negation (of human being), in order to construct a positive property for God. But instead, my preference is to think God from God, as God first has spoken Himself for us in and through the Logos of God, Jesus Christ. Since in His Self-revelation and witness, particularly as that is attested to in Holy Scripture, God has made clear that He knows everything; even down to the very beings of our hearts and minds. Philosophy might be able to posit categories that seem to correlate with that; indeed, with reference to a pure being. But ultimately, I would argue that those are only accidentally correlated with who God has Self-revealed himself to be. Insofar that God’s Self-witness remains pervasively and personally present in the world through the Christian witness. And thus, such logoi, or knowledge points are present, even to the philosophers, because God’s Self and personal witness is always already ubiquitously present in the world.

“If you were God but had somehow the choice to be either inside time or outside time (temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal), which would you choose and why? Explain your own understanding of the difference between these two possibilities as part of your answer. Must God’s relationship to time be only one of these? Explain why or why not.”

Eternality. If I was God (God forbid it!), and the only alternatives were to be temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal, I would choose the latter; to be, atemporally eternal. Again, from a Christian theistic (meaning trinitarian) perspective, I take God’s being to be beyond being (to borrow a little from Aquinas); which entails, that I believe that God is absolutely Self-determining, without contingence, to be who he is, and always has been, within the environs of his eternally existing and interpenetrating life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Classically, this type of absoluteness, as Mawson underscores and develops, is a feature of God that precludes God’s life from any type of contingently construed conditionality (i.e., dependence on the natural order, or something). Contrariwise, being temporally everlasting, again as Mawson defines it, entails the possibility that God might have some type of potentiality vis-Γ -vis the world built into his life. This might be an attractive way out for folks who want to reject the classical theistic alternative, like the open theists among us, but for me it is much too high of a price to pay. It is too high of a price to pay because, in my estimation, it makes God contingent upon us; upon our libertarian freewill, so to speak. But then again, what is freedom?

But I think to think in terms of either a temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal God, as if this binary represents the whole continuum, is false. I think it is false primarily because I believe, confess even, that God’s being cannot be constrained by human reasoning, per se. That isn’t to say that I don’t think some of the grammars developed by the philosophers cannot be of assistance when God-thinkers are attempting to give an articulate and intelligible representation of God in human speech. But it is to say that I believe it is possible, and even necessary, to think God’s triune life as time-predicating in itself. I believe God’s triune life is a novum (β€˜a new thing’ for which there is no analogy). As such, it could be said that God’s life is both atemporally eternal and also temporally everlasting, insofar that the former, in an antecedent way, predicates and tinges the latter. So, in this way, to take the philosophers’ language, it would be to think the triune God in combine, wherein the persons of God’s life, in their unitary being, condition what is given concretization in the temporally created order. Such that to think atemporality and temporality of God’s being in competition one with the other becomes a non-necessity. In this frame, time has value insofar that God’s life of Father in Son, Son in Father by the Holy Spirit creates the inner-space for time to obtain, as that first obtains in God’s triune and eternal life of communion; one with the other. This would give us a time frame that is conditioned by personal relationality, that is both eternal and everlasting; the former predicating the latter. Much of this remains a mystery (since God is ineffable). But this is how I might attempt to think an alternative theory of time based on the analogy of the incarnation of God in Christ.

On Divine Transcendence, Immanence, Omnipotence in Philosophical Projection

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More engagement with T.J. Mawson’s book, Belief in God, for my philosophy of religion class. I posted these, along with the one on personhood, which I shared in my last post here, in the discussion forum we have set up for our class. I thought I’d share them here too. These are clearly raw responses to the reading material we are engaging with.

Immanuel Kant

Divine transcendence can be thought of as God’s otherness; His otherworldliness; His awayness vis-Γ -vis the world.

According to Mawson direct knowledge and direct control are aspects of what it means to have a body. And yet I find this strained to the breaking point. He uses the β€œbody” analogy as a way to construct a concept of a God-world relation. Again, I find this methodology to be flawed. I understand that it is the way of being a speculative/analytic philosopher; but it seems ad hoc, really. Given its β€œad hocness” (or we could say β€œabstractness” vis-Γ -vis the would-be knower) I’m unsure how this can lead to an β€œopen” notion of godness. That is to say, even if Mawson et al. can construct a concept of godness, and in this case, with reference to transcendence, and even if he can construct it in such a way that it is self-referentially coherent: it nonetheless remains a construct of his own making (and thus a purely coherentist permutation; i.e., lacking the need for real correspondence). I’m unsure how this type of self β€œprojecting” can end up mapping onto an eternal living God. To me it seems like a project in constructing a procrustean bed, and then inviting God to lay His head on its pillow.

Divine immanence. In Mawson’s context it is in reference to God’s relation to the world; His presence in the world (it can also be in reference to God’s inner life, when considered from within a Christian and triune frame). Within Mawson’s system the world becomes God’s body. Not in the sense of the Church; which is how Christians understand God’s body, in participation with Christ’s body. Because of Mawson’s prior thinking on incorporeality, which he pushes into divine transcendence, he seemingly is forced to concede that the world is God’s body. For Mawson, this is how he explains God’s direct knowledge, control etc. And yet, what I find ironic, is that Mawson is in fact a Christian theist. His conception of God’s body, in Christian theological terms, could be referred to as β€˜panentheism.’ That is to say, that the world is God’s body in the sense that God might grow and develop in relation to the world. Even so, panentheism sees a distinction, still, between God and His body (the world), wherein God remains its Creator and controller, so to speak. That said, I’d be curious to see if Mawson would own the label of being a panentheist. Or maybe he would prefer the language of pantheist proper; which is to say that God grows alongside and by being in the world as a participant. From a theological perspective, Mawson’s development on a doctrine of divine immanence needs further clarification in order to have some semblance of what in fact he is ultimately getting at with his notion of β€œGod’s body.”

What is an omnipotent being? This seems to be a rather ironic question to ask, at least when left up to purely human machinations. It seems to be too big of a question. How can the human mind (even if it is β€œhived”) imagine something in such a way that it could ever transcend the would-be knower’s own finite self-limitations? There is a way, a way that developed in the medieval period, known as the via negativa (β€˜negative way’). This way attempts to develop a concept of godness by negating finiteness, for example. So, indeed, if we posit that humans are finite, if we negate that, we might end up with an infinite (pure) being or some such. So, on this way, if human beings are defined by being rational/intellectual, then to negate that, and extrapolate, the omnipotent being ends up being simply the Biggest brain in the heavens. What I am describing has also been called the analogia entis (β€˜analogy of being’); Thomas Aquinas, early on, is famous for deploying it in his Christian synthesis with Aristotelian categories. In a less particularized way, in the sense that Mawson is attempting to do an analytic philosophy rather than a Christian theology, per se, Mawson, and philosophers in general use the β€˜analogy of being’ to conceive of a concept of godness. I.e., since human beings clearly aren’t β€œall powerful,” in its negation and extrapolation, the divine being must indeed be almighty, all powerful. I would suggest these are matters too great for the discipline of an analytic philosophy to pierce in any meaningful way. Apocalypse (unveiling/revelation) is required.

An Engagement with Philosophical Personhood in Theological Relief

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𝐼𝑛 π‘šπ‘¦ π‘β„Žπ‘–π‘™π‘œπ‘ π‘œπ‘β„Žπ‘¦ π‘œπ‘“ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘™π‘–π‘”π‘–π‘œπ‘› π‘π‘™π‘Žπ‘ π‘  𝑀𝑒 π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘Žπ‘™π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘Žπ‘‘π‘¦ 𝑖𝑛 π‘€π‘’π‘’π‘˜ 2. π‘‡β„Žπ‘–π‘  π‘€π‘’π‘’π‘˜ 𝑀𝑒 π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘’π‘›π‘”π‘Žπ‘”π‘–π‘›π‘” π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž πΊπ‘œπ‘‘’𝑠 π‘Žπ‘‘π‘‘π‘Ÿπ‘–π‘π‘’π‘‘π‘’π‘ , π‘Žπ‘  π‘‘β„Žπ‘œπ‘ π‘’ π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘β„Žπ‘–π‘™π‘œπ‘ π‘œπ‘β„Žπ‘–π‘π‘Žπ‘™π‘™π‘¦ π‘π‘œπ‘›π‘ π‘‘π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘’π‘‘. π‘‡β„Žπ‘–π‘  π‘€π‘’π‘’π‘˜ π‘€π‘’β€™π‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘’π‘›π‘”π‘Žπ‘”π‘–π‘›π‘” π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘ π‘œπ‘›β„Žπ‘œπ‘œπ‘‘, π‘‘π‘Ÿπ‘Žπ‘›π‘ π‘π‘’π‘›π‘‘π‘’π‘›π‘π‘’, π‘–π‘šπ‘šπ‘Žπ‘›π‘’π‘›π‘π‘’, π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ π‘œπ‘šπ‘›π‘–π‘π‘œπ‘‘π‘’π‘›π‘π‘’ 𝑣𝑖𝑠 π‘Ž 𝑣𝑖𝑠 πΊπ‘œπ‘‘. π»π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’ 𝑖𝑠 π‘€β„Žπ‘Žπ‘‘ 𝐼 π‘€π‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘‘π‘’ π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘“π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘›π‘π‘’ π‘‘π‘œ π‘€β„Žπ‘Žπ‘‘ 𝑖𝑑 π‘šπ‘’π‘Žπ‘›π‘  π‘‘π‘œ 𝑏𝑒 π‘Ž π‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘ π‘œπ‘›. π‘Šπ‘’ π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ 𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑇.𝐽. π‘€π‘Žπ‘€π‘ π‘œπ‘›’𝑠 π‘π‘œπ‘œπ‘˜ *𝐡𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑓 𝑖𝑛 πΊπ‘œπ‘‘* π‘Žπ‘  π‘œπ‘’π‘Ÿ 𝑑𝑒π‘₯𝑑. π‘†π‘œ, π‘šπ‘¦ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘π‘œπ‘›π‘ π‘’ 𝑖𝑠 π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘“π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘›π‘π‘’ π‘‘π‘œ β„Žπ‘œπ‘€ β„Žπ‘’ 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠 *π‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘ π‘œπ‘›β„Žπ‘œπ‘œπ‘‘* (𝑖𝑑 𝑖𝑠 π‘Žπ‘π‘‘π‘’π‘Žπ‘™π‘™π‘¦ π‘‘π‘œπ‘œ π‘™π‘œπ‘›π‘” π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿ π‘œπ‘’π‘Ÿ π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘’π‘š, π‘œβ„Ž 𝑀𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝐿𝑂𝐿).

Boethius

I disagree with Mawson out of hand on the entailments of what makes a person a person. Mawson, is taking a classical way, one we would find in Boethius, Aquinas et al. (most of the Latin tradition). To define the base ground of what it means to be a person, on terms of a purely intellectualist or rationalist ground, is to imbibe a philosophical/speculative tradition; indeed. Unfortunately, for my money, to use this type of speculative ground as one’s major premise, in regard to developing an anthropology, can only lead to a speculative conclusion. Indeed, it might be self-referentially coherent, as I think Mawson’s accounting is; but ultimately, in my view, the conclusion is only as sound as the first premise.

As a Christian theist I would argue that personhood ought to be defined by reference to the imago Dei/Christi (image of God/Christ). That is to say, in my view, to understand the entailments of personhood cannot (or at least, should not) begin with an abstract thought, but instead with the concrete givenness of God’s life for the world in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ (see Colossians 1.15). In this way, personhood’s definition finds an antecedent ground beyond the immanent frame, and has a β€˜transcendent’ starting point not from within itself (as an immanent abstraction), but outwith itself in the personhood of the divine Monarchia, as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (the hypostases/persons of the Godhead coinhere one in the other in a filial and eternal relationship of interpenetrating life). If this mysterious (yet revealed) life becomes the ground by which personhood comes to have definition, at the very least what it means to be a person, is to be in a community of love for the other; living a life of self-givenness, one for the other, wherein what it means to be a person isn’t defined by having β€œrationality” or β€œself-consciousness,” per se, but to be in person-al relationship one with the other. And what serves as the ground of this community-fellowship-based personhood, only can come first, as gift, as God has graciously invited us into participation with His triune-person-grounded life through Jesus Christ.

If I reject Mawson’s definition for personhood, which I do, of course, then his dilemma of attempting to provide nobility or sanctity for humans without brain-activity is non-starting for me.

Based on my first long response, in regard to the constituents of what makes a person a person, I would argue that the triune God is the personalizing person. So, in this frame, can someone be β€œmore” of a person than someone else? That seems to make an attempt at quantifying what it means to be a person in terms of a quality (or substance) or something. God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, I would argue, is the person making person, in eternal relation; which would make Him the archetypal personalizing person maker. In this sense He is the Alpha and Omega. But since He graciously invites us into participation with Him through Christ, at a purely human level, there isn’t one person who is more person than another. God’s life is sui generis. All people are equal, insofar that all people are created in the image of God/Christ.

According to Scripture (John 4.24) β€˜God is spirit,’ and spirit is not gendered, per se. That said, God has Self-revealed Himself as Father of the Son (as Athanasius is wont to press). In the Christian reality God enfleshed came as a Man, as the Son of God (the second person). The Bible refers to God in masculine terms, by and large (except with reference to the Holy Spirit); and for me that ought to be determinative for how we refer to God.

PS. a struggle, which I knew I was bringing to this course of study, is that I am already committed to a certain Christian orientation with reference to thinking God, and everything subsequent. I had attempted to study God philosophically, at a formal level, many years ago now, and found it wanting. Even so, I still think there is value in learning to contemplate and think deeply and rigorously with regard to anything (which is why I paid for the class).

Learning Some Horizontal Thinking at the University of Babylon

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I am starting my Philosophy of Religion class tomorrow (January 13th) at the University of Oxford (by distance, of course). Thanks again to a friend of the blog for his donation, in order to pursue continuing education like this. I am critical of philosophy, often, but let me qualify that a bit further. I am only really critical of philosophy when it is used as a basis and the material for doing Christian theology. If these disciplines are kept separate and distinct, then I have no problem learning to think with the rigor of a philosopher. As long as the god thought from philosophical machinations is kept from the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ, then I have no problem with engaging in some horizontal inklings like that; insofar that it might train the muscle of the mind to think with a type of scrutiny and articulation that latterly can be deployed in the service of communicating a Christian theology. I am simply referring to the formal aspects of thinking, in regard to the value of learning some philosophy. Again, once that is uncritically deployed in the development of a Christian theology, at both a formal and material level, then I think it is antiChrist. But when in Babylon, like Daniel and his friends were, then even tools learned from the University of Babylon can be evangelized and made useful for the purposes of God’s kingdom in Christ.

Bad Perceptions versus God’s Perceptions in a Culture Awash in Self-worship

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Perceptions don’t dictate the truth, per se. The truth is the truth without contingence upon our relative perceptions. Perceptions might dictate a variety of things in society writ large, but never the truth, per se. Perceptions are really and only self-projections of our dispositions and their forming pressures, as those have developed in our personal circumstances and experiences in the world. Nevertheless, we aren’t slavishly trapped within our perceptions, per se. But our only hope is to come to participate in the extra life of God; and begin to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. This way our perceptions will no longer merely be contingent upon the winds of our experiences, per se, but instead upon the solidity of God’s eternal and triune life, of which we have become participants through union with the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. As our perceptions come to be formed, more and more, by His anchoring reality, from within His life, which is Truth, we can begin to see things as they are, rather than how we would prefer them to be. There are good perceptions and bad perceptions. The former are formed by an ongoing relationship with the living God in and through the risen and ascended Christ. Bad perceptions are simply formed by living ensconced in the immanent world of our own making; as if we are like God.

The Captivity of God: Against Scholastic and Philosophical Theology

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Just to reiterate, once again, the way scholastic theology, particularly with reference to Thomas Aquinas directly, and the scholastic trad after Thomas (whether Catholic or Protestant) indirectly, affects the way contemporary orthodox theologians do theology, let me share a passage from David Kelsey as he sketches the entailments of scholastic methodology vis-Γ -vis the β€˜revelation’ found in Holy Scripture. In this instance it is with reference to the way that Aristotelian metaphysics are deployed in an effort to explicate the loci deposited in Holy Scripture. What is of import for our purposes is to notice how God’s Self-revelation becomes a predicate, by way of explanatory apparatus, of a purely philosophical construct developed by way of the human powers of reflecting on β€œbeing-as-such.”

The first question Thomas takes up in Part 1a of the Summa concerns the distinctive nature of theology or β€œsacred doctrine.” There is a β€œscience” whose subject matter is God, viz., β€œdivine doctrine.” What is distinctive about that β€œscience” is that it argues from first principles that are scripturally revealed. Such β€œdivine doctrine” is fundamentally different from the philosophical science of metaphysics whose subject matter is not God, but being-as-such. The first principles of metaphysics are discovered, not in revelation, but by rational analysis of the most general features of the concretely actual instances of β€œbeing” that human experience encounters. It can study God only indirectly as the β€œfirst cause” implied by the existential contingency of all concretely actual instances of β€œbeing” that we experience. God does not fall under β€œbeing-as-such,” i.e., is not one sort of β€œinstantiation” among others of β€œbeing-as-such.” That is why the science of metaphysics cannot study God directly. On the other hand, the questions about God that follow the first two questions in Part 1a of the Summa are directly about God, i.e., are β€œdivine doctrine” and not β€œmetaphysics.” That holds true even though, based on scripturally revealed first principles, they nonetheless freely make analogical, use of the conceptuality that is developed in the β€œscience” of metaphysics to analyze β€œbeing-as-such.”[1]

It is an interesting set of gymnastics one must engage in in order to finally arrive at the punch line: in the end sacra doctrina becomes an explicate of a humanly discovered metaphysics. Even though, as Kelsey notes, because the theologian feels compelled to, God cannot ultimately be known by way of a naked metaphysics, and yet, the theologian, in their frailty, must use the next best thing towards speaking and thinking God; i.e., the discovery the profane philosophers have ostensibly made in finding the β€˜first principles.’

This continues to be the way evangelical, Reformed and Lutheran theologians attempt to renew the Protestant churches. They place an ad hoc value on what has come before, as if it is the only orthodox way possible for the churches to be refreshed in the good news of the Gospel. And yet, as Kelsey illustrates through his sketch, by way of implication, God’s Self-revelation is held captive to the discoveries of the pagans; i.e., that is in regard to thinking β€˜being’ as actus purus (β€˜pure act’). As a Bible reader I don’t recognize the god discovered by the philosophers as the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ; as God who is my Father.

I understand that the machine known as Protestant orthodoxy will never go away. But it is important, at least from my lights, to continue to call it out, and offer alternative ways to think and speak God directly from His Self-revelation in Jesus Christ; from the β€œrationality” inherent to the Gospel Hisself; from the concrete actualism that we in fact have been provided with by God through His Self-given cruciformed life for the world in Jesus Christ. If guys and gals want to do philosophy of religion and scholastic theology, great. But don’t deceive yourselves and others into thinking that it comes close to touching the surface, with providing an actual point of contact between the living God and humanity. The only concrete place of that happenstance is found in the hypostatic union of God and humanity in the Man, Jesus Christ. It is His life that sets the terms, the categories, the emphases by which the Christian can come to truly (kataphysically) andΒ  evangelically know the triune God.

The secret things belong to theΒ LordΒ our God, butΒ the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law. –Deuteronomy 29:29

[1] David H. Kelsey, Human Aguish and God’s Power (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 215–16.

On the Goal of Wokeness: To Destroy

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The goal of “wokeness” (which is really Postmodern relativism) is to destroy the idea that there are any stable realities or truth; or Truth, as the case may be. It functions like an acid, that once released, eats away at everything it comes into contact with. It has telos, or purpose, ironically. Rene Descartes, at least in an early modern sense, kicked off this type of corrosive chemical, through his methodological skepticism, most commonly understood in the anecdote cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). This turns the subject into the self as the ground from whence all of reality must be thought. No longer on the external reality of God’s triune life (a reality that is mind-independent/extramental), but upon the monadic singularity of the human subjects own, idiosyncratic thoughts about reality; whatever those might be. In the end, then, what wokeness really is, biblically construed, is idolatry; it is self-worship, and whatever we project ourselves and our desires upon “out there.” For wokeness it is as if “In the beginning I created the heavens and the earth.” Wokeness is really just a modern, or postmodern expression of the fallen heart (see Gen 3). It is the collapsing of the true and living God, with all that He is in Himself, into each of ourselves individually, and celebrating our supposedly “unique” divine identities that we have come to realize as those who have “come of age.” Sluffing off the mythos and superstitions of the past, and understanding that the past was really just too naive to recognize that who they were describing and thinking as God, was really just a self-projection. This is how we have arrived at the β€œsecular age,” in nuce (see Charles Taylor).

A Psychology on the Theological Rationalist

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The following is a post I wrote ten years ago that has been buried on a tumblr account I once had. I thought I would repost it here (there are some grammatical errors present, but I’m too lazy to fix them).

Here is a short reflection on what I would like to callΒ Theological Rationalism.Β 

In order to reflect upon what it means to be rationalistic; it is best to, at the outset, recognize that in my usage there is a difference between being a rationalist and being rational. The former smacks of an anthropology that is grounded in an intellectualism, meaning that a person or human being can be reduced down to their intellect or mind as their defining feature for what it means to be human (so an essentialism of the mind and its constituent properties)–what we might (and do) find in someone like Thomas Aquinas’ anthropology or even more pointedly in Rene Descartes’ epistemological (ontological) project ofΒ cogito ergo sumΒ (β€˜I think, therefore I am’). This is the kind of anthropology that funds what it is to be a rationalist. I see this as distinct from being rational in that being ‘rational’ simply means that someone is reasonable (by whatever standards that might presuppose) in the way they think, communicate, and act; but being rational does not mean that someone’s ‘being’ can be reduced to their mind and its capacity to actively assign meaning to reality in an essential fashion.

With this distinction in mind, I would like to apply what it means to be a rationalist to theological practice and activity. For me in my experience as a Christian person, when rationalism is applied, as it is, in my North American Christian (and Protestant) context, is that we end up with a form of Christian Fundamentalism. I think the most stalwart and able representative of this kind ofΒ theological rationalismΒ might be someone like Carl Henry. Although Henry was actually more informed and aware of his theological surroundings and history than who I really have in mind with this post.

In this post, I am thinking more of the kind of Christian I am most familiar with at a popular level. What happens for the North American Christian, often, is that all of their Christian identity can be reduced to one or two overarching totalizing meta-narrative or stories through which they compress and seek to interpret all else. In this way, they feel a sense of control, indeed even power over the circumstances of their life, and in particular, over their relation to God. The key to what I am getting at (without getting into some concrete examples) is to recognize that these kinds of theological rationalists have been trained and conditioned to think in this way; in other words, it is not that they are intentionally seeking to control their relation to God (although they are sometimes), it is that they have been sold a bill of goods that reduces God and his acts to their preconceived theological framework, which is based upon their own active intellect’s which believes that all of reality can be compressed therein. The emphasis then is placed upon their minds, and their capacity to provide propositional explanation for God, and all of the theological related to him.

The slavery enters into this situation at a very basic level; these theological rationalists believe that they are worshipping God, but who they are really worshipping is a construal of God and his acts which they have constructed and conjured up in a way wherein their understanding of God becomes the essential basis wherein God is assigned his being/person. The terrible reality of this is that this person is stuck in a vicious circle; because they might realize (at some point) that they are not living in a true refreshing kind of freedom, and so they desperately look to God for help. But this is the paradoxical problem, when they look to God, they have already denuded God of any Lordly and contradictory and transformative force in their lives, because they have captured God by the power of their own minds; they have made God contingent upon their capacity to explain God in the terms that their minds (and the history of ideas this associated with) have actively constructed, and all this in the name of God in Christ.

The only escape from this, from the absolutized subjectivity is to start fresh. It is, as Thomas Torrance might say, to engage in a dialectic and process of repentant thinking. It is to repudiate any kind of theological rationalism, and its anthropology, and to adopt a new attitude wherein the God who has revealed himself in Christ no longer is held captive by our own psyches and their desires to be comfortable and in control. It is to finally rest in the fact that God is God, and that he has contradicted all of our reason by way of the cross. Once we are able to renounce/repent of our wayward flesh made absolute; it is here where the theological rationalist finally will have the capacity to be theologically reasonable–and this, based upon a dynamic love of Christ that is not contingent upon me and my mind, but upon God and his relation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

A Response to Plato’s Impact on the Great Tradition of the Church

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Earlier this morning I listened to Credo Magazine’s podcast in which Matthew Barrett interviews Louis Markos, the author of From Plato to Christ, among other books. You can listen to that podcast here. They were discussing, of course, the role and impact that Plato had, and continues to have on the development of Christian theology. Barrett often likes to refer to the Great Tradition of the Church, which of course is really more of a Latin way to think about things theological and ecclesial (the Greeks have the Consensus Patrum, ha!) I of course repudiate the general prolegomenon, or theological methodology that broadly funds said Tradition. The following were some thoughts I ticked off, in response to the podcast, while at work, in a moment of free-time, and then posted them on my Twitter and Facebook accounts, respectively. I thought I’d share that here too.

One problem with the so-called Great Tradition of the Church, is its methodological direction; insofar that it offers one. It allows the shadowland of the philosophersβ€”the accidents of history as givenβ€”to lead to the being of all reality in Jesus Christ. It supposes that there are vestigial logoi of God generally diffuse in the created order, and that profane humanity itself has the capacity to see it by way of an abstract and methodologically speculative reasoning. It then allows this framework to shape our respective knowledge of God when we are confronted with God’s β€œspecial revelation.” As if the heavens themselves declare the glory of the LORD in a way that is intellectually discernible outwith God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. In other words, an actus purus (pure being) notion of godness (as the Great Trad is supposedly funded by vis-Γ -vis a doctrine of God) presupposes upon the reality of a natura pura (pure nature) wherein grace and nature are asymmetrically independent domains of God’s greater reality. The result is that nature simply is awaiting, even as it supplies the preparation and mediation, of its own perfection as God comes to it in the grace of Jesus Christ. And yet nowhere in canonical reality do we see this supposition operative. β€˜In the beginning God created the heavens and earth’ … and in the beginning the seed of the women would crush the serpent’s head while bruising its heel. The canonical reality, just as creational reality in general, has always already been suffused by the concreto of God’s Grace. His first Word of creation was from and for the Word who was with God, and was God. As such the Great Tradition allows the creation itself to predicate God’s perfection, as if the instrument of nature’s perfection; instead of understanding that God has always already been creation’s inner reality just as sure β€œas the world was created so that Christ might be born.”[1]

I need to refine my thinking a bit further, but all-in-all I think what I have posited above represents a type of critique I would make of the Great Tradition’s grace-nature dualism whereby we get things like the analogia entis, among other loci.

[1] I stole the quote β€œthe world was created so that Christ might be born,” from Scottish theologian, David Fergusson. I often refer to this quote, and thought it was a nice way to close out my previous thoughts leading into it.