Theology

The Journal of Analytic Theology

From their website:

The Journal of Analytic Theology is an open access, international journal that twice anually publishes articles, book reviews, and book symposia that explore theological and meta-theological topics in a manner that prizes terminological clarity and argumentative rigor.  This includes historical studies that seek to elucidate conceptual challenges or explore strategies for addressing them.

At least for the time being, this seems to be an open access journal. There are plenty of interesting articles to check out. My favorite is particularly the one by Eleonore Stump titled “Athens and Jerusalem: The Relationship of Philosophy and Theology”. Philosophical theology is a project that I think will help make sense out of some of the deep truths that can be found in the Scripture (e.g, the Trinity) and I think it is something that theologians should utilize more often. Hopefully it continues to be open access!

Are All Sins Equal?

Are All Sins Equal?

Every sin leads to death and no sin is too great for God to forgive. This is all true, but is it true that therefore all sins are equal? I can see why someone would affirm this. If we’re all sinners, the punishment for sin is the same, and we can all be forgiven for any sin then how is it not the case that all our sins are equal in God’s sight? The argument continues that surely this would not be the case if all our sins were not equal. To strengthen this even further, every sin is against an infinitely perfect God and therefore every sin is equally wrong. The intentions for this argument are good because the equality of sins allows us to not be judgmental by treating all sinners as equal (no one is worse/better than the other) and it seems to reinforce the doctrine of total depravity as being universal to the human condition. The best passage that could be used in support of this is James 2:10–12 which states that breaking one part of the law makes one guilty of breaking it all. Or in another verse, Jesus states that anyone who lusts after a woman has already committed adultery in his heart (Matt 5:27–28).

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The True Nature of Love

Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and action. 1 John 3:18

Introduction

What is love? Some seem to think of it as just a sentiment, an emotion, or an acceptance of everyone and anything. Others can intellectualize it to the point of cold hearted abstraction. Neither of these views provide a complete picture of love as the former lacks substance but the latter lacks compassion. What these two have in common is their lack of focus on the act of love – it is not simply a belief or an emotion, it’s something that you do. To get a better understanding of what this looks like, we need to distinguish between three kinds of love: agape, phileo, and eros. Agape is an unconditional sacrificial love that wills to do good for others with truth and action. Phileo is a conditional yet loyal affection for friends, family, and society. Eros refers to a sensual or passionate love that is often (but not always) expressed in a sexual manner. Like the Bible, I’d argue that agape is the greatest of these loves for it functions through our intellectual and volitional faculties on the basis of what is truly good for a person and from there it wills to do that good in action. Unfortunately, it is also the most difficult love of them all because it cannot depend on what you feel about a person or whether they feel the same way about you.

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Reply to William Lane Craig on Divine Simplicity

[Originally posted here.]

A week ago, Dr. William Lane Craig responded to my previous post on divine simplicity and analogy. Gil already brought up some important objections to Craig’s account here.

Now, Craig is actually correct about one thing: My argument does not by itself entail that God is identical to all his parts. This only follows from the conclusion of my argument if you grant that God really has a will, intellect, etc. Craig does not grant this, since he doesn’t think talk about things having parts is metaphysically substantive.

There are a lot of things to say about Craig’s response here. Maybe the first is to simply note that he is denying that anything really, in the metaphysically deepest sense, has any parts. This is surely an unacceptable conclusion. Personally I would think it’s better to simply deny God has any parts rather than to deny anything has parts. Absent this option, if I didn’t believe in divine simplicity I would even modify my account of divine sovereignty just to save parthood. For otherwise I honestly don’t know how Craig explains kidneys, brains, legs and their relations to the people who have them. This is just a datum of experience, that there are at least some parts.

Craig tries to use an argument by Peter van Inwagen to back up his thesis. However, the problem is that Van Inwagen’s argument only demonstrates the falsity of the doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts, which is the idea that any region of a body can be taken to be a proper part. His argument can only go through if we are dealing with ‘parts’ like Dottie* which are constituted by enough matter in such a form that a person can survive by becoming identical to them. It’s not obvious though that I could ever become identical to, say, my heart. So his argument would not go through with those sorts of proper parts.

Now, I’m inclined to reject the doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts anyway so I’m happy to accept the soundness of the argument. But it just doesn’t demonstrate that there are no proper parts. And if it did entail that, then–like Peter Geach did with Tibbles the Cat–I would just take the argument to establish the relativity of identity rather than the complete lack of proper parthood. More importantly, it’s not even obviously sound. We might just deny the premise that Dottie becomes identical to Dottie*, since Dottie seems to be an animal (or a soul) and Dottie* seems to be a ‘lump’. In virtue of their falling under different sortals these two objects have different identity conditions associated with them, and thus by Leibniz’s law they are non-identical. They are merely constituted by the same matter.

There’s also something to be said about Craig’s underlying Carnapian sympathies. There is intense debate about taking this sort of view about language and metaphysical methodology (cf. the Chalmers volume on metametaphysics), and suffice it to say for now that I’m not too sympathetic. I will criticize this neo-Carnapian line of thought later, but this post should be enough to see why Craig’s response is inadequate.

 If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

— Saint Augustine

Divine Sovereignty: A Philosophical Defense

Introduction

Let’s suppose you missed a flight. This almost happened to me a few days ago, but as that entire event was unfolding, I thought to myself: How should we interpret this in light of God’s overall purposes for us? There are three possibilities – it is a blessing, a curse, or a trial. Now some may suggest that it simply happened without any divine purpose at all, but I cannot accept that. The biblical account of God’s sovereignty presents his control over every particular thing (e.g, Matt. 6:30, James 4:13–15, Acts 17:26), as well as His purposing of all things for His glory (Colossians 1:16). A Thomistic perspective entails this position as well, so it as at least rationally defensible. Unfortunately, I think our society despises God’s intricate involvement in their lives because they prefer to be left alone, or somehow think the notion itself is absurd. Why think that God is involved at all if a missed flight could be explained as a simple mistake on our parts? How does this situation benefit me, one could ask, or how could God do this to me? I do not presume to be capable of extensively answering each of these issues in a single post, for each of these questions have book length treatments in philosophy and theology. However, I do hope to illuminate and apply these principles in a way that could be insightful for our daily lives.

The Nature of God’s Power

Let’s address the first question: Why think that this is the direct work of God at all? Actually, I would qualify that question because I do not think that it is the “direct” work of God at all. This is to avoid the error of occasionalism, which is the philosophical doctrine that every created substance is of itself incapable of being an efficient cause. Every effect in creation is therefore directly caused by God. In other words, the sun that vaporizes the water does not do so of its own nature, but because God determined that this is what the effect would be. But if He so pleased, He could cause an effect to do whatever He wanted – e.g, the sun would appear to turn the water into dinosaurs for no intrinsic reason. While I’d love to refute this, I think most people would already recognize this as absurd. If that’s the case though, how could God possibly be involved? Either nature does it or God does it, right? That’s a false dilemma. It’s possible for God to cause and purpose things through nature, just as a chess player works through the rules of chess for the purpose of checkmating his opponent. Every move can be anticipated and planned accordingly without sacrificing the nature of the game.

Similarly, God perfectly anticipates every event and plans accordingly, without sacrificing the nature of things. Though this is slightly incomplete, since He decided to actualize this world with all its particularities before the foundations of the world. It’s not as if God finds Himself with a world and is forced to work with what He has. Furthermore, not only does He work before and through the nature of things, He works in the nature of things as well. By becoming a man to die on the cross, He worked in the world to shape the course of history. He does all of this for His glory and purpose, but does so without fail. Now one could ask, “How do I know that God had a specific purpose for that event? Perhaps it is not essential to His plan?”. There are indeed some aspects of reality that you could consider accidental (i.e, it’s not essential to something, not that it’s outside God’s control). For example, it would be difficult to see how a blue colored ball would thwart the entire purpose of God unless it was orange. But Scripture tells us that even the hairs on a person’s head are known by God. So the least we could say is that God knows certain “trivial facts”, but how does this lead us to purpose?

His Universal Plan

First we need to understand that not every feature in the world needs to be “essential” to God’s plan in order to have a purpose. It is possible that the blue ball is a child’s favorite color such that it is a blessing to him. This is obviously extrinsic to the ball, however, as it is not as if that specific ball itself intended to be picked up by that particular child. So extrinsic purposes are possible for particular things with accidental features, without necessarily being essential to God’s plan. Though it’s not inconceivable that something accidental could work to be at least partly essential for something like Jesus’s death – e.g, Judas could have had a silver coin as child, you never know. But even if it had no essential purpose, it could still participate in God’s plan if it fulfilled some good. For example, the Christian worldview entails the idea that God desires our flourishing as creatures (Jeremiah 29:11). Part of flourishing as creatures is experiencing joy. Thus God could work through the ball to provide that child with joy, and by consequence would be fulfilling a infinitesimal part of His greater purpose. I only say infinitesimal because it is Christ that essentially fulfills this joy in us, not the ball. That does not make the ball bad, it just makes it a lesser good.

Second, I think we’re limiting our understanding of “purpose” to either whatever is good for a person or whatever is in accord to God’s plan. This is incorrect, because it just begs the question: What if the ball was never used? What purpose would that possibly serve? This question could not be answered if we did not have a Thomistic account of purposes that will hereby be called final causes or teleology. Since the ball is a human artifact, it derives its purpose from us to be used for a child’s amusement, but of itself it would not necessarily possess that feature. We are interested in what teleology the ball has of itself, not what purpose we assign to it. By final cause then, I just mean that a ball is of its own nature directed toward a certain range of effect/s as its final cause or end just as an arrow points toward the target as its final end or goal. One of the effects that the ball is directed to is the potential to be melted into goo. This effect is present within the ball regardless of whether it gets actualized. Understood this way, all created objects would have some potential to be directed toward a certain end.

Lastly, all physical beings have final causes, but not all final causes are physical beings. The intellect is capable of final causality precisely because it is intentional by nature. Anything that intends a certain end is already exemplifying a form of teleology, except in a much different way than physical things do. At this point though, I think I’m adventuring too far into purposes that do not matter to us. Or so it seems! In reality, the purposes that are most relevant to us are those that are intrinsic to our nature. For example, it is good for us to eat food but this could not be unless it was our nature to eat. Because of the different natures of things, I think God’s purposes work in different ways for all things. A human has different ends that a ball does not have. So it becomes meaningless to ask, “Does God have a plan of salvation for balls?” because they’re simply not in need of such things. Nevertheless, I do think there is a hierarchy of purposes where the lowest forms of final causes are there to serve the higher forms. A clear example of this is water serving the plant’s need for water, and the plant serving the animal’s need for nutrition.

Conclusion

In this way, I think God works through each thing to accomplish good for beings like us. But if there so happened to be a “ball” that did not have a purpose for the greater good of rational agents, then I do not think that threatens the sovereignty of God in any way. It’s not as if every physical thing must work for our own good in order to have a purpose at all, that’s just absurd. Just by virtue of being anything at all, the ball is said to have a degree of goodness that God at every instant of its existence actualizes. Since God is goodness, every thing that has being must be analogous to this goodness in different ways. Even Satan, who has been regarded as evil personified, must have some sort of goodness insofar as he has being. The more perfect we are in relation to our natures, the more we reflect the glory of God’s being. This is why I reject the Calvinistic notion that God is most glorified when we are most damned. Or for the elect, when we are most satisfied in Him. God’s glory is not increased or diminished by any state of man, but only our reflection of His glory within our being can be increased or decreased. Now that some objections have been removed, I’ll be focusing on the practical side in my next post. Forgive me if that bored you, this post ended up being much longer than I had intended.

Barry Miller on Theistic Personalism and Classical Theism

Thus understood, God’s properties are merely human ones, albeit extended to the maximum degree possible. As conceived of by perfect-being theologians, therefore, God turns out to be simply the greatest thing around, some kind of super-being that would be quite capable of evoking admiration and wonder, but who could scarcely be described as being absolutely transcendent, or as being worthy of worship. [...] The Anselmians’ God is therefore anything but ineffable, for not only can we talk about him, we can do so in precisely the same terms as those we use in talking about humans. Such a view succeeds in presenting God in terms that are comfortingly familiar, but only at the price of being discomfortingly anthropomorphic. [...] Negative theologians and Anselmians have now presented us with two radically opposed notions of God and his attributes. On the one hand, there is a God so lacking in plurality as to be marked by no internal distinctions whatever; on the other hand, a God so riven with distinctions, so characterized by plurality, as not to be identical with all his attributes, nor they with each other. On the one hand, a God so far from being anthropomorphic as to be shrouded in the negations of human properties; on the other hand, a God so anthropomorphic as to be describable by predicates which remain basically human ones, even when qualified by the likes of ‘maximally’ as in ‘maximally wise’ or ‘omni) as in ‘omniscient’ or ‘unsurpassably’ as in ‘unsurpassably generous.’- Barry Miller in A Most Unlikely God: A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Nature of God

 

I think Barry Miller’s remarks accurately portray the contrasting views of God (personalistic vs classic) today. Aside from my studies on ethics, I’ve been picking up my studies on philosophy of religion, with a particular look at the doctrine of divine simplicity and the two big contrasting views of God that I mentioned earlier: theistic personalism and classical theism. What turns me away from Theistic personalism is how anthropomorphic God is made out to be and how similar he is to us. Also, proponents of the DDS argue that theistic personalist’s denial of the DDS forces them to accept that God must be dependent on his attributes for his existence. What attracts me at the moment about DDS is how much of a rich understanding it gives to the fact that God is an uncaused first cause. That, and the fact that anthropomorphism is avoided entirely (some see this as a weakness in that God seems to be this distant abstract object).

A Defense of Natural Theology: A Response to Tony Arsenal

Tony Arsenal wrote a very interesting and thought-provoking article over at the Theological Arsenal (I love the pun in his blog name). Basically he argues that natural theology fails mainly because of the fact that the fall affected our reasoning capabilities.

Tony points out that many of those who hold to two books of revelation–that is, that God has revealed himself through nature and His creation and through Scripture–cite Romans 1:20 as a proof text of general revelation. Romans 1:18-25 reads:

“18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,[g] in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but theybecame futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

Tony notes three problems:

(1) Nature (creation) is fallen.

(2) Human reasoning is fallen.

(3) Sola Scriptura is knocked off its rightful throne.

I am symphathetic to Tony’s view since we both do share a common belief in original sin and the fall (I would hope all Christians share that belief!). One could read Tony’s article to get his full argumentation. I’m merely going to respond to his points and show that they simply do not work against natural theology.

I. Nature is fallen

The points made in this section work mainly against the Fine Tuning Argument, which is an argument I personally don’t like too much (it’s just me). There are plenty more sophisticated arguments, and even better versions of the fine-tuning argument. So, I think it’s wrongheaded to disqualify Natural theology on the grounds of arguing that nature is fallen, thus because the Fine Tuning argument doesn’t work, all of natural theology must fail too. But Tony did give reasons in his comments as to why he chose this argument and its form. I still think that should have been noted in the section itself. As someone who is for natural theology, that doesn’t mean I agree with every argument used in the enterprise. I think some arguments even fail and are bad, given my own metaphysical assumptions. I don’t have much else to say here.

II. Human Reasoning is Fallen

Now, this is where it really takes the cake. Tony writes, “ Even if Nature were able to accurately and conclusively reveal details about God, we are so screwed up that we couldn’t get to those truths.” He then proceeds to quote a number of Scriptures that highlight the fact that we are indeed fallen, wicked people. He concludes, “If there is never a point in our lives in which our hearts and thoughts do not deceive us, and there is no one who is exempt from this estate… then how could we ever trust our fallen reasoning to approach a fallen creation to tell us about a transcendent and wholly other God?” Where to begin….Ok, here goes. This is extremely problematic. I mean if we can never trust reason, why should I trust your argument? Why should you trust mine? So let’s lay out a charitable argument for Tony’s case.

1. The fall affected our reasoning capabilities to the point that we cannot apprehend the truths of nature (Even if Nature were able to accurately and conclusively reveal details about God, we are so screwed up that we couldn’t get to those truths)

Ok, so far so good. Now suppose this is true. Suppose that our minds are such that they’re affected to the point of not apprehend the truths of nature. Wouldn’t this apply to reality as well? Sure. Our minds are so affected by the fall that we cannot trust our reason to apprehend reality. 2+2 could equal five for all we know. This all sounds very Kantian to me (the fact that we cannot know reality in-itself) I would hope Tony Arsenal is not a Kantian.

But why stop at natural theology? Why not apply Tony’s analysis to theology too? If we cannot rely on reason, which is corrupted, to approach a corrupted book of nature, how is it that our corrupted minds can approach the holy book and study it? Our minds are so screwed up that we cannot apprehend the truths of scripture with our own minds. Now, one could just appeal to God and say God makes it so we can apprehend His truths. But, then why can’t we say that God makes it so that people are able to apprehend the truths of nature? Doesn’t this fit in with the fact the scripture itself teaches that men are without excuse since “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them”? It seems like Tony’s own argument undercuts his own enterprise of theology. No surprise there. So, let me formalize my argument using Tony’s own premise.

1. The fall affected our reasoning capabilities to the point that we cannot apprehend the truths of nature (Even if Nature were able to accurately and conclusively reveal details about God, we are so screwed up that we couldn’t get to those truths)

2. If the fall affected our reasoning capabilities to the point that we cannot apprehend the truths of nature, then it seems that we cannot trust our reasoning capabilities for anything.

3. Thus, we cannot trust our reasoning capabilities for anything. [1, 2 modus ponens]

4. If we cannot trust our reasoning capabilities, then we cannot trust this argument or any argument.

5. But we can trust this argument or any argument for that matter.

6. So, it is false that we cannot trust our reasoning capabilities. [4, 5 modus tollens]

7.  Therefore it is false that the fall affected our reasoning capabilities to the point that we cannot apprehend the truths of nature. [2, 6 modus tollens]

QED.

Note that my conclusion isn’t that the fall hasn’t affected our reasoning capabilities at all. It’s that it hasn’t affected it to the point of not apprehending any truths of nature. Surely, people apprehend moral truths, and this is based on a natural law conception. Surely, people apprehend mathematical truths. Unless you want to go as far as deny those. So, Tony’s second reason just utterly fails on all grounds. I mean I could go further and talk about moral truths and responsibility. But I think quoting Maverick Philosopher will suffice. He writes,

“Objection: ’You are ignoring the deleterious noetic consequences of original sin. Because our faculties have been corrupted by it, we fail to find evident what is in itself evident, namely, that the world is a divine artifact.  And it is because of this original sin that unbelief is inexcusable.’

This response raises its own difficulties.  First, how can one be morally responsible for a sin that one has not oneself committed but has somehow inherited? Second, if our faculties have been so corrupted by original sin that we can no longer reliably distinguish between the evident and the non-evident, then this corruption will extend to all our cognitive operations including Paul’s theological reasoning, which we therefore should not trust either.”

He brilliantly sums up the argument I just made in this entire section. If Tony wants to say that our reasoning faculties are that bad, then be my guest. If so, he just undermined theology and everything else with it.

III. Natural Theology usurps Sola Scriptura 

Now, I spotted something that bugs me a little. Perhaps I’m reading into it or not. You be the judge. Tony writes, “For example, philosopher William Lane Craig holds to a so-called Molinist understanding of God’s foreknowledge. Without getting into a lot of details, this means that God has exhaustive knowledge of not only what is, but also what could logically be. However, this system requires God to be bound by what is logically possible” (emphasis mine). So, is Tony implying that God is not bound by logic? So, then, God is not bound by the fact that something cannot be and not be at the same time in the same sense? So, if God is not bound by what is logically possible, then I guess God can exist and not exist at the same time in the same sense. I mean, why can’t God create himself too? Like I said, perhaps this is not what Tony was getting at, but it’s there and it stuck out to me.

Tony also comments on Craig’s remarks of molinism saying, “All of this, based on a philosophical system constructed by fallen creatures, with fallen logic, observing a fallen creation.” See my critique of his argument about reason. Now, am I implying that reasoning is somehow infallible and that we are infallible interpreters and reasoners? Of course not! That’s nonsense. We’re human, we’re finite, we’re limited, and fallible. I think we can trust reason as far as it goes. But to throw reason completely out the window is just, well, nonsense! To what degree our minds are affected by the fall is another question which I don’t look to answer here.

Tony goes on to say that “God has given us the Scriptures as a sufficient revelation for all things concerning faith and salvation. This includes all of Theology. To affirm Natural Theology is to say that God has also given us another source of revelation that is sufficient concerning faith and salvation, and often times is to say that there are aspects of God’s very nature or salvation that he has not revealed to us in scripture.”

I beg to differ with regard to the point that affirming natural theology means God has given us another source of revelation concerning faith and salvation. I don’t think that’s the case. I think God has given us tools to think deeply and evaluate these issues, i.e., reasoning and logic, but I in no way think that it serves as another piece of revelation. God tells us things in scripture but he doesn’t break it down in the nitty gritty. Philosophy comes in and assists with theology in this, e.g., looking at issues of freewill and sovereignty. In no way is natural theology elevated above scripture, or even general revelation for that matter. I see general revelation as complimentary and a little below special revelation. I don’t think anyone would affirm the claim that “To affirm Natural Theology is to say that God has also given us another source of revelation that is sufficient concerning faith and salvation.” I don’t think natural theology is sufficient. It gives us a starting point and gets us far, but it doesn’t get us the whole enchilada.

But I mean there’s a lot that isn’t really in scripture but is assumed in scripture. Such as language, the fact that we can understand language, logic, reasoning capabilities, and the fact that we can approach scripture and reason about it, unless, of course, you think we cannot trust our reasoning. Then we have a problem. But all these assumptions are used to approach scripture and theology to try and understand God. As I said before, I don’t think we’re infallible and I don’t think our reason is impeccable. I do think our will and intellects have been disordered by the fall and they need to be restored by God’s grace. How fallen they are and how much help we need is another question that I am not going to look at right now.

I hope this post didn’t come off as brash. I was just alarmed at some of the points raised in Tony’s post and I wanted to shed out some arguments as to why I think his reasons do not work.

Etienne Gilson on God

 

“What God is in His eternal self, He remains as cause of events. Creatures passing through time have given Him various names. But each name marks a relationship between creatures and Him, not between Him and creatures. Man emerges from nothingness–and calls God his creator. Man recognizes this creator as his supreme master–and calls him Lord. Man sins, is lost, is saved by the Word made Flesh–and he calls God his Redeemer. This long history is developed in time and in a changing world, but God is no more changed by it than a column which moves from right to left as we pass to and fro before it. God is Creator for those whom He creates and whom His eternal efficacy redeems each moment from nothingness. He is Savior of those whom He saves and Lord for those who profess to serve Him. But in Him creation and redemption are but His action which, like His power, is one with His act-of-being. In order that the first principle of philosophy rejoin in this way the God of religion, and in order that the same God of religion be Author of Nature and God of history at the same time, it has been necessary to follow the meaning of the name of God in its profoundest existential implication. I Am is the only God of whom it can be said that He is God of philosophers, and scholars, and God, too, of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.” (142-143)

-Etienne Gilson in The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas

OT Law

You always hear about how dreadful the OT is, but it’s time you understand what it really means. Proof-texting can only go so far. Context, culture, history, grammar, literary styles, etc are a essential to properly understanding such texts. This video looks like an excellent series. I have been a big fan of J.P. Holding’s work for a while now, he’s got some hilarious satire and informative defenses of our faith. Looking forward to watching the rest of this series!

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