Gnostic

In this post, I will give a review of a bit of my research into Gnosticism. This is a very long post (which readers of my blog are quite accustomed to!), so in order to keep in intelligible, I will work from the simple to the complex. I will begin by describing Gnosticism in a summary fashion and then work out the details in the rest of the post.

I want to clarify that the "Gnosticism" I am working out is of the sort that developed and was practiced in the early centuries B.C.E. This would include the varieties of Gnosticism that influenced (and were influenced by) the early church.

Gnosticism in a nutshell

The first thing I note is that "gnosticism" is not a very diverse category and not easily defined. So, while we list "common" characteristics of gnosticism, there will be many exceptions based on which particular group one is referring. This is true of any description of a religious or philosophical movement, but it is particularly the case for Gnosticism.

Much of the theological speculation of religions throughout the ages are centered on figuring out how to account for the brokenness of the world. Well, the answer for the ancient Gnostics was to simply say that the whole damned thing was helplessly evil, by its very nature. Gnostics developed a very radical dualism between the entire material world and the spiritual realm, and they relegated all of the material world as "evil." Often this meant developing two or more deities to account for the creation of the perfect, spiritual realm and the fallen, material world. "The world is the product of a divine tragedy, a disharmony in the realm of God, a baleful destiny in which man is entangled and from which he must be set free." (Rudolph, Gnosis, 66)

The only hope is to access the "divine spark" that is within. Connecting with the internal divinity was the process of redemption whereby one could connect with the Unknown God. This process was "gnosis," an esoteric form of knowledge that connected one with their true, spiritual self and with the Unknown God.

Hence, in Gnosticism one typically finds the most radical of dualisms: the entirety of the world and all experiences are evil. One does not (as in orthodox and mystical versions of Christianity) purify one's self from personal/individual sin via a process of connecting with God. The state of affairs is more hopeless. One must completely transcend the world and one day hope that the divine human soul will completely leave the world and transcend into the purity of the spiritual realm. The material world and the material body is a prison of the soul. This is a dualism more revolutionary than ancient Platonism or Christianity, both of whom preserved dualistic notions as central to their belief systems and practices.

Redemption and salvation is only found in death. In death, the divine soul is free to completely leave behind the evil of the material world and the material body and to ascend to the sphere of purity.

A parasitic movement

The Gnostic faith was a parasitic movement. Gnostic movements could easily spring up within any number of religious contexts, Christian or Jewish, or even within certain philosophical frameworks. But one of the things that characterized the Gnostic was that they discovered new, secret, unique, or deeper meanings within the texts and traditions of the already established movements of which they were a part. Says Perkins,

There is no simple account of the origins of Gnosticism. Traditions of esoteric and pseudo-scientific interpretation had been developing in different quarters throughout the Hellenistic period. The original interpretations may even have been more sophisticated than the versions we find embedded in mythological stories. By the time we find them in Gnostic writers, we are not dealing with direct readings of the Bible but established Gnostic traditions which are being reworked and reinterpreted . The Gnostics never take the further step achieved by both Judaism and Christianity—that of canonizing certain written embodiments of their tradition as Sacred Scripture.1

Hence, for these Gnostic traditions, “There was no gnostic ‘church’ or normative theology, no gnostic rule of faith nor any dogma of exclusive importance.”2 Also, “There was no gnostic canon of scripture, unless it was the ‘holy scriptures’ of other religions, like the Bible or Homer, which were employed and interpreted for the purpose of authorizing the gnostics’ own teachings.”3 Individuals of a Gnostic frame of mind were content merely to borrow the texts from an existing religious establishment and impress upon them deeper meaning/significance—a meaning that may have been lost somewhere along the way:

A further peculiarity of the gnostic tradition…lies in the fact that it frequently draws its material from the most varied existing traditions, attaches itself to it, and at the same time sets it in a new frame by which this material takes on a new character and a completely new significance. Gnosticism strictly speaking has no tradition of its own but only a borrowed one. Its mythology is a tradition consciously created from alien material, which it has appropriated to match its own basic conception. Considered in its own light, however, it is for Gnosticism a further confirmation of its truth, which it often traces back to a primal revelation, i.e. derives from primitive times; the knowledge of it was only temporarily extinguished or concealed.4

Gnosticism, then, is a “borrowed” tradition. Tradition is unimportant. What is important is only “gnosis” or “knowledge,” not a tradition or a text.

Gnostic characteristics in greater detail

In his classic text, Gnosis, Kurt Rudolph outlines seven principle areas that characterize the distinctives of the Gnostic movements: Gnosis, divine spark (upward, downward movement), Dualism, Cosmogony/Cosmology, Soteriology, Eschatology, Community/Cult.5 It is critical to stress and to reiterate the fact that the term “Gnostic” is a general label applied to a diverse number of individuals and communities who shared similar commonalities. This was not a monolithic movement and the following generalizations are subject, in many cases, to counterexample. As such, some scholars would even suggest that the term “Gnostic” should be done away with completely.6 Yet with these qualifications in mind it will still be helpful to use the term “Gnostic” and examine some of the general characteristics.

“Gnosticism” is a word often used to describe the phenomena and various movements of the second century.7 The use of “Gnosticism” can thus be distinguished from “gnosis,” which derives from the Greek meaning knowledge or understanding: “It is a knowledge given by revelation, which has been made available only to the elect who are capable of receiving it, and therefore has an esoteric character.”8 Gnosis is the first of Rudolph’s categories that we will analyze along with brief comment on the Gnostic conception of the divine.

Perkins describes gnosis as follows: “For the Gnostic, both God’s essence and his existence are unknown. Only gnosis overcomes the situation…These Gnostics reject the stable vision of God which the philosophic mind claims to attain.”9

Gnosis connects with the divine, and this conception of divinity is transcendent in a way that was very radical for the religious milieu of ancient religion. Perkins comments:

To a degree unparalleled by their pagan or Christian counterparts, Gnostic thinkers emphasized the radical transcendence and unknowability of the highest God. Such radical transcendence is founded on a discontinuity between God and the cosmos in which human beings find themselves....10 For the Gnostic, then, contact with the divine is mediated through the primordial revelation or through the rituals of the cult and not through its association with particular, contemporary teachers, seers or holy men.11

Perkins describes this transcendence as “radical” and unparalleled. Rudolph describes this perspective as “revolutionary.” For their contemporary counterparts, access to gods or the deity could be a relatively easy thing. But for the Gnostic, there was a gap and an enormous gulf that needed to be crossed. This, of course, is the role of gnosis. Rudolph comments further:

The gnostic conception of God is dictated by a contrast to all previously existing conceptions and so has a thoroughly revolutionary character. Certainly the terminology is indebted to contemporary philosophy…but the underlying world-denying tone cannot be mistaken. The counterpart to this highest being who can be described only in negative terms, the “unknown God”, is the revelation of his secret through intermediate beings of the elect, who are thereby enabled to attain to the “knowledge” of the (hitherto) unknown one. The gnostic idea of God is therefore not only the product of a dualism hostile to the world, but it is at the same time also a consequence of the esoteric conception of knowledge: “Gnosis” mediates the secret and leads men out of their ignorance concerning the true God.12

This leads naturally into two other aspects that pervade much of gnostic thought: that of the divine spark and a radical dualism. Within humankind is a divine spark that must be awakened or recovered. There is an upward/downward movement or structure here: the divine element and the fallen and perilous situation of man.

The world is the product of a divine tragedy, a disharmony in the realm of God, a baleful destiny in which man is entangled and from which he must be set free....13 Anthropology also is in Gnosis completely dominated by dualism. Here too a sharp line of distinction separates the bodily and psychic from the spiritual part of man. The latter is indeed even reduced to the “unworldly self”, the original divine constituent or “spark” in man which can be activated only through “knowledge” (gnosis), which is the pledge of redemption.14

There is a distinction, then, between the body and spiritual components of the human self. In some Gnostic conceptions there is a created dualism between the divine and the material. In other instances there is a gradual, downward movement from the divine to the darker, physical world of ignorance.15

But were not Platonic and other philosophical and religious systems of the day dualistic? How were the various Gnostic concepts of dualism different from Platonism. Rudolph is instructive in exploring this question. His comment here distinguishes the Gnostic dualism with Iranian Zoroastrian dualism, Platonic dualism, and Indian dualism by the “anti-cosmic” character of Gnostic dualism:

The gnostic dualism is distinguished from these above all in the one essential point, that it is “anti-cosmic”; that is, its conception includes an unequivocally negative evaluation of the visible world together with its creator; it ranks as a kingdom of evil and of darkness. The identification of “evil” and “matter”, which is not to be found in Iranian and Zoroastrian thought, occurs in Gnosis as a fundamental conception. In Greek thought also--apart from certain Orphic teachings, which however are of uncertain date--there is no such anticosmic development of the dualism of spirit and body. The Greek conception is unmistakably “procosmic”, and no less a person than Plotinus (3rd century A.D.), the leading figure of the late or Neoplatonism, defended this position over against the gnostic depreciation of the cosmos.16

Hence there is a moral element that is attached to the Gnostic dualism to be contrasted with philosophical dualistic notions on the contemporary scene. This is what Rudolph calls the anti-cosmic nature of the Gnostic dualism.

Although this dualism has a definite moral quality an important qualification must be made. Rudolph notes, “It should however be made clear that the dualism of these systems is to be seen first of all in a distinction between God and the Creator or between God and the world, not in that between God and the devil.”17 So, although there may be a moral dualism, good vs. evil, God vs. Devil, etc., for the Gnostic the dualism is first and foremost an ontological distinction between the divine/spiritual and material/physical world. Humanity is material, but within him/her resides the divine spark, which must be awakened.

The above dualism pervades Gnostic thought. We take note of it again as we continue on to Rudolph’s next categories: that of cosmogony/cosmology and anthropogony/anthropology:

The heart of the matter is that man is subordinated to the earthly sphere and hence to its powers only in part, namely in his physical existence; in another part, admittedly only a small one, he belongs to the supramundane spiritual realm. This part of man, often described as the “true” or “inner man”, “spirit” (pneuma), “soul” or “reason” (nous) is, over against the body which encloses him, in the same situation as the whole man over against the cosmos.18

Again, the radical dualism between the spiritual and the material is at work as the Gnostic develops conceptions of the cosmos and of the human being:

The verdict with regard to the earthly and visible world includes on the anthropological level a negative judgment upon the whole of bodily and psychic existence. This earthly material existence, like the world itself, is a product of the Demiurge and correspondingly is a sphere hostile to God, dominated by evil powers which are evident and active in the passions and desires. The psychic part of man is therefore represented as a product of evil powers (above all the planets) and through this man is not only the object but also the subject of the activity of such powers…Valentinus writes in one of his letters that the human heart is the abode of evil spirits who prevent its becoming pure, and instead treat it disgracefully through “unseemly desires”; it is comparable to an inn, which is full of filth and dissolute men.19

The “demiurge” is the fallen or foolish god who created the world contrary to the wishes of the Unknown or Highest God. The catastrophe that is now the physical world was counter-acted by the implanting of the divine spark by the Highest/Unknown God. In some cases Gnostic interpreters find the demiurge at work in the Genesis creation accounts. As Rudolph notes, the material world is a prison:

This view of the relation of man to the world and his imprisonment therein is however only one side. The other side is that which corresponds on the macrocosmic level to the kingdom of the “unknown God”: it is the deep and hidden relation to this higher world. Gnosis described this transcendent level in many images and expressions….In the Greek and Coptic texts the dominant concept is “spirit” (pneuma), in the relevant Hermetica “understanding” (nous), and the oriental or Semitic “soul”…Probably the most appropriate is the expression “spark” (Greek spinthēr), which occurs here and there. “Seed of light” is also found for it. In order to make use of a uniform expression scholars have become accustomed to speak of the “self” or “I”.20

The key to the cosmic dilemma in which mankind follows, then, comes back to gnosis and the divine spark: “The whole gnostic doctrine of redemption centers upon the restoration to its origin of this divine spark of light, which through fatal events has ‘fallen’ into the world, a restoration mythologically represented as an ‘ascent of the soul’.”21

Interestingly, then, the goal of this restoration results in what we might describe as a god-man, which is a somewhat unique conception in the history of religions, and again goes to the originality and revolutionary nature of Gnostic thought:

Behind this idea of the divine “Man”, who dwells both above and in the world, there is an entirely new conception of anthropology…it is not only that the (first) man, i.e. the unknown God, exists before him - the earthly man also, who is his product, is superior to him by reason of his supramundane divine relationship and substance. H. Jonas aptly says “this exaltation of “man” into a supramundane God who – if not the first – is at any rate earlier and more exalted than the Demiurge, is one of the most important aspect of gnostic mythology in the general history of religions…it indicates a new metaphysical status of man in the order of existence…” Behind this is expressed the whole revolutionary spirit of Gnosis in its rejection of the traditional values and ideas of faith…22

This brings us into a specific examination of redemption and soteriology. Rudolph comments from the Book of Thomas:

Gnosis is a religion of redemption…The word “gnosis” itself, as we have seen, has a predominantly soteriological value and in itself already clearly expresses the understanding of redemption. It is the act of self-recognition which introduces the “deliverance” from the situation encountered and guarantees man salvation…In the Book of Thomas (the Contender) Christ says at the very beginning to his “twin brother” Judas Thomas: “Examine yourself and know who you are and how you were and how you shall be…You have already come to knowledge, and you will be called “the one who knows himself”, for he who has not known himself has known nothing. But he who has known himself has already come to knowledge concerning the depth of the All.”23

Simply put, gnosis is redemption. Ignorance is darkness. The light of gnosis initiates one into redemption. However, this redemption, as one might suspect is not fully realized until death:

The process, introduced by “gnosis”, of bringing back the particles of light from darkness into the realm of light can naturally only be realised at death, when the “spirit” or “soul” (as descriptions of the divine particle of light) are separated from the body. Then begins the real liberation to which the gnosis aspires. “But when all the chosen ones lay aside the animal existence (i.e. the body) then will the light withdraw to its true beginning”, it is said the Book of Thomas the Contender....24 The gnostic is already redeemed, although the completion of the redemption is still outstanding. The laying aside of ignorance guarantees his freedom.25

The redemption from the body, then, is critical for the Gnostic, and is contrasted with the Christian idea of redemption from sin and guilt:

The gnostic redemption is a deliverance from the world and the body, not as in Christianity from sin and guilt, mainly in so far as the earthly and corporeal world as such represents the sin into which the divine soul had innocently fallen; through its involvement with the cosmic powers, however, it has become guilty, and it can be freed from this guilt only through insight and at the same time repentance.26

Continuing on this comparison with the Christian notion of redemption it is fascinating to investigate the Gnostic conception of the Christ figure and the role of the Redeemer. Rudolph finds the Gnostic teaching of Christ “remarkable”:

In order to bring the two aspects--the historical and the mythological--under a common denominator, the gnostic theologians brought about a division of the Christian redeemer into two completely separate beings, namely the earthly and transitory Jesus of Nazareth and the heavenly and eternal Christ, and thereby created one of the most remarkable pieces of gnostic teaching. In this way it was possible to appoint the Christian redeemer for several tasks in the gnostic systems.27

I note again the dualism at work within Gnostic thought. If a drastic dichotomy is drawn between the material and spiritual realm, then it follows the doctrine of Christ would split into two separate beings, or that the Christ would only “appear” to be a physical man. This is what we commonly refer to as the heresy of Docetism among Gnostic Christians:

What is meant is the idea widespread among the Christian gnostics that Christ appeared only “in semblance” (docēsei) as a man or in the flesh, and correspondingly neither suffered nor was really crucified. This conception is for Gnosis a necessary inference from its anti-cosmic dualism, according to which a clear devaluation attaches to what is earthly and bodily, and it therefore cannot enter into any serious mingling with what is spiritual and other-worldly.28

Concluding Observations

Ancient Gnosticism was a collection of loosely related beliefs that centered on a radical dualism between the material and immaterial worlds. For the Gnostic, all things material are evil and a part of the fallen world. Each soul contains (or is) a "divine spark" that allows one to connect with the Unknown God. Ultimately, true salvation only occurs when one transcends the evil of the material world and leaves the body behind.

Ancient Gnostic cosmology represents one of many approaches to interpreting the world in its brokenness, to comprehending a reality that seems so incomplete. It is one of many explanations that seek something "more real" or "more perfect" in a world beyond. Platonism and Christianity sought to connect the less perfect, fallen, or less real world with that of the eternal realm. That is, the material world could have degrees of goodness, realness, and perfection, depending on how closely the material world correlated to the immaterial world.

In Christianity, for example, one might try to connect the soul with God in order to become more pure. Or, one might seek to align the bodily actions with God's design or intention for it. Also, one might attempt to align one's morality with the moral law of God.

Though the overlap between Platonism and Christianity is well beyond the scope of this post, I think there are still good questions to consider: to what degree is it beneficial to incorporate dualism into one's theology? What kind of dualisms are healthy, true, world-affirming, and productive? What dualisms seem to be counter-productive, phobic, or escapist? Also, if one believes that God inhabits all of reality ('For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' Acts 17), then we have reason to question whether dualisms of any kind are appropriate. Finally, in good poststructuralist style, one could question whether any dichotomy or dualism can ultimately hold.

Footnotes

1 Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue: The Early Church and the Crisis of Gnosticism (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 18-19.
2 Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis, Translation edited by Robert McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1983), 53.
3 Ibid, 53.
4 Ibid, 54-55.
5 Rudolph, Gnosis, 1983.
6 See M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism” (Princeton University Press, 1996)
7 Nicholas Perrin, “Gnosticism”, in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Grand Rapids: Baker Academics, 2005), 256.
8 Rudolph, Gnosis, 55.
9 Perkins, Gnostic Dialogue, 168.
10 Ibid, 167.
11 Ibid, 11.
12 Rudolph, Gnosis, 65. (emphasis added)
13 Ibid, 66.
14 Ibid, 66.
15 The later view is the view of the majority of the texts, including the Nag Hammadi texts. See Rudolph, Gnosis, 65.
16 Rudolph, Gnosis, 60. (emphasis added)
17 Ibid, 66.
18 Ibid, 70.
19 Ibid, 88.
20 Ibid, 88.
21 Ibid, 91.
22 Ibid, 93.
23 Ibid, 113.
24 Ibid, 115.
25 Ibid, 115.
26 Ibid, 116-17.
27 Ibid, 151.
28 Ibid, 157.

Warranted Christian Belief - Kant

Alvin Plantinga
Review of Warranted Christian Belief (2000)
Chapter 1 - Kant

The interest of Plantinga's book, Warranted Christian Belief (referred to here as WCB) is whether Christian belief is rational, reasonable, justifiable, or warranted. (p. 3) The first two chapters form Part 1 address whether there is a question. That is, are we even able to talk, sensibly, about "God." Says Plantinga,
"It seems many theologians and others believe that there is real difficulty with the idea that our concepts could apply to God - that is, could apply to a being with the properties of being infinite, transcendent, and ultimate. The idea is that if there is such a being, we couldn't speak about it, couldn't think and talk about it, couldn't ascribe properties to it." (4)

The first chapter addresses that great philosopher, Immanuel Kant:

"It seems to be widely accepted, among theologians, that Kant showed that reference to or thought about such a being (even if there is one) is impossible or at least deeply problematic, or at any rate much more problematic than the idea that we can refer to and think about ourselves and other people, trees and mountains, planets and stars, and so on." (5)

The first thing that Plantinga notes is that Kant, himself, seems to refer to "God" and to issues of "faith." Plantinga references Kant's famous statement, "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith." (9 note 13)

The next matter is a problem of interpreting Kant. Specifically, it has to do with his concept of noumena (or Dinge an sich) and phenomena. Plantinga differentiates two interpretations: A "Two World View" and a "One World View." The more traditional view is the Two World perspective. Here the noumena is completely separate and distinct from the phenomena. We can experience the phenomena, but not the noumena. Plantinga explains by way of summary the Two World View:

"This is the more traditional way of understanding Kant, the way Kant was taken by his great successors. To put it briefly and all to baldly, there are two realms of objects; our experience is only of one realm, the realm of phenomena, which themselves depend on us for their existence; if we should go out of existence, so would they. That is because the phenomenal realm is somehow constructed by us out of the given, the date, the raw material of experience. The noumenal realm, however, is not thus dependent on us but is also such that we have no intuition, no direct experience of it." (12)

Yet on the One World view the noumena is basically the world, while the phenomena is the way that we perceive that same world. Of this view Plantinga says,

"There is only one world and only one kind of object, but there are (at least) two ways of thinking about or considering this one world. All objects are really noumenal objects, and talk about the phenomena is just a picturesque way of talking about how the noumena the only things there are, appear to us. The phenomena-noumena distinction is not between two kinds of objects but, rather, between how the things are in themselves and how they appear to us." (12)

Plantinga's concern is not with which interpretation of Kant is correct, but whether either interpretation of Kant, so taken, constitutes a reason that we cannot think about God or discuss the question of who God is. As such, Plantinga deals with both the One World and Two Worlds interpretations as they relate to the question of whether or not it is possible to speak of God.[1]

Plantinga dismisses the One World view rather quickly stating that the issue of "God" on this view poses no special problem, for if everything is noumena then this includes God and there is no problem with knowledge of God that is not true of other knowledge:

"For present purposes, what we need to see is that on this way of thinking, it would not really be the case that our concepts fail to apply to God in such a way that we cannot refer to and think about him. What would follow, given that he is a noumenon (of course, in this way of thinking, everything is a noumenon), is that God would not have any of the positive properties of which we have a grasp....Here there would be nothing at all special about God; what holds for him also holds for everything else." (16)

The Two World interpretation becomes more interesting, particularly the more "radical" view. Plantinga sees two different forms of the Two World interpretation. The first is the "moderate" subpicture. Here, we may refer to the Dinge (the noumena), but it is merely a matter of speculation. There is no real knowledge of Dinge, rather it it is reduced to opinion and conjecture. "God" would be a part of the Dinge and all of the concepts we apply to "God" is just guess work. Still, Plantinga does not find in this moderate view the suggestion that our concepts do not, in fact, apply to God, and as such it does not represent a threat to any project (such as Plantinga's) that seeks to inquire as to whether it is rational/reasonable/etc. to believe in God.

I find the moderate subpicture very interesting because it does not eliminate the "speculation," but rather makes the more mild (and perhaps more threatening) suggestion that such speculation is trivial. In this way, then, we have a reflection of much of the greater American culture at large, that is, that our speculation about God is only as important as the meaning that it produces within the believer. So, the speculation is "trivial" because what we say about God is nothing that we know. If, however, it produces something significant for the believer then it becomes valuable.

On to the more "radical" subpicture.

"On both versions of the two-world picture, the appearances are distinct from the things in themselves. The appearances are objects; they exist; they are empirically real. But they are also transcendentally ideal. And what this means, in part, is that they depend for their existence on us (on the transcendental ego[s]) and our cognitive activity. We ourselves are both noumena and phenomena: there is both a noumenal self and an empirical self." (18)

This view becomes more complicated. For example, we are now "transcendental egos" such that we are both noumena and phenomena. As a transcendental ego we undergo experiences, which is a result of the things in themselves impinging upon us. This "impinging" is the experience. This is a rather confusing state of affairs, as Plantinga notes, "As it is initially given to us, this manifold of experience is a blooming, buzzing confusion with no structure." (18)

That we are both noumena and phenomena, then, implies to me that we have the noumena impinging upon us, but that we also impinge upon other(s) is some way. Regardless, we have the manifold of experience, which is a blooming and buzzing confusion. So, what do we do? Impose structure, of course: "We impose structure and form on it, and in so doing we construct the phenomena, the appearances. So the phenomena, the things fur uns, are constructed out of the manifold of experiences." (18)

Interestingly, for Kant this structuring does not necessarily occur at the conscious level: "Kant says we are largely unconscious of the activity whereby we structure the manifold and construct the phenomena. Still, it proceeds by way of the application of concepts to the blooming buzzing manifold of experience."[2] (18)

How does the structuring occur? Through "rules" and "law." Plantinga cites Kant as saying, "Sensibility gives us forms (of intuition) but understanding gives us rules." (19) What is the relation of "rule" and "law"? Again Plantinga cites Kant,

"Rules, so far as they are objective...are called laws. Although we learn many laws through experience, they are only special determinations of still higher laws, and the highest of these under which the others all stand, issue a priori from the understanding itself. They are not borrowed from experience; on the contrary, they have to confer upon appearances their conformity to law, and so to make experience possible. Thus the understanding is something more than a power of formulating rules through comparison of appearances; it is itself the lawgiver of nature." (19)

So, Plantinga suggests that the rules synthesize the manifold of experience. The lawgiver of nature structures the blooming and buzzing confusion of experience. Plantinga calls this the heart of the radical subpicture. On this view, the process of structuring experience results in the "phenomena."

Plantinga provides an example of a "rule" providing structure: "Consider your concept of a horse: it instructs you to associate, think together a variety of representations, a variety of items of experience, thus unifying that bit of manifold into an empirical object: a horse." (19)

In the One World view and also on the moderate subpicture Plantinga did not see a threat to applying our concepts to God. However, such is not the case on the radical subpicture. On this view God is noumenon: "God would not be something we have constructed by applying concpets to the manifold of experience (God has created us, we have not constructed him.) So, on the radical subpicture, we can't refer to, think about, or predicate properties of God." (20)

The results of the radical view might be damaging and stop us in our epistemological tracks, but Plantinga concludes that the radical view "displays a deep incoherence." (20) After discussion various possible solutions to the perceived incoherence Plantinga concludes by way of summary: "If we really can't think the Dinge, then we can't think them (and can't whistle them either); if we can't think about them, we can't so much as entertain the thought that there are such things. The incoherence is patent." (29)

One of the issues that I see as problematic for the radical viewpoint is how it is that the noumena "impinge" on us while at the same time remaining unthinkable and distinct. That is, if they are truly distinct and disjointed - if the noumena is truly transcendent - then it would seem problematic that it could still "impinge" in such a way as to create "experiences" for us to structure. I do note, however, that this problem is the same that theology must reckon with. For example, how is God truly and wholly Other - transcendent - and yet immanent enough to intrude into our reality and impact the world in which we operate. So, it seems as though some of these problematic issues surface in various areas of thought.

Having concluded that the radical subpicture is incoherent, Plantinga concludes this chapter by noting, "It doesn't look as if there is good reason in Kant or in the neighborhood of Kant for the conclusion that our concepts do not apply to God, so that we cannot think about him. Contemporary theologians and others sometimes complain that contemporary philosophers of religion often write as if they have never read their Kant. Perhaps the reason they write that way, however, is not that they have never read their Kant but rather that they have read him and remained unconvinced." (30)

Notes and References
[1] In regards to whether the One World or Two World interpretation is correct Plantinga does say the following regarding the One World interpretation: "Although this second picture is perhaps now the majority opinion, it seems a bit difficult to reconcile it with Kant's own view that his thought constituted a revolution - his famous second Copernican revolution." (13) Plantinga also cites Kant regarding the "Copernican" nature of his thought: Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But also attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis.

[2] This idea of "unconscious structuring" raises many important issues in the history of philosophy as far as it relates with psychology. The fact that structuring occurs at the unconscious level is an obvious are of intrigue for those of us Post-Freud. Yet the idea that there is "structure" to this unconscious activity raises an issue of debate that finds a full expression in various postmodern philosophy and psychology. I would recommend three posts by John Doyle, who currently practices psychology and holds a Ph.D. in the field. These intriguing posts by Doyle integrate this philosophical issue of "structure" with the psychological implications of the un/conscious, while sifting through various implications for counseling:
"The Self as Something Spoken"
"Decentering the Self"
"The Anxieties of Free Play"

In comment 10 from "Decentering the Self" Doyle states, "Descartes placed consciousness at the center of the self. He followed a long tradition dating back at least to Plato and Aristotle, for whom the rational self resonates with pure Logos that is the center of the universe. Certainly for the Greeks the passions were of lower quality than reason; the challenge of the virtuous man was to subject the passions to the mastery of reason. The Greeks were very structural in their tripartite topography of the self: body, passions/emotions, mind/spirit. Freud was too, though his categories were different: id, ego, superego. For Freud the reasonable ego was demoted from master to arbiter, balancing the more powerful structures of id and superego."

In "Anxieties of Free Play" Doyle notes, "Derrida begins by contrasting structure with event, stability with “rupture.” Historically, structures have been constructed around a center, a fixed point of origin. The center serves as the basis for coherence and balance within the structure. Having a fixed center makes it possible to “play” with the elements of the structure, but this play is also limited by needing to remain compatible with the center. The center, while giving shape to both the form and the freedom of the structure that surrounds it, isn’t really part of the structure....The rupture, says Derrida, came with the realization that the center was not the center, that the actual center was the desire for security rather than the specific presence on which this desire happened to land."

The above citations go to the overlap and interaction between one's view of "structure" and the activity of the "conscious" or "unconscious" mind. All of these are issues of our philosophy of "self" and the questions that Kant is raising in regards to how the self interacts with the world. Plantinga notes that for Kant the impinging of the noumena/Dinge produce "experiences", which is a "blooming and buzzing confusion" until it is structured by the unconscious (though perhaps at times by the conscious) mind.

Warranted Christian Belief - Preface

After blogging on Plantinga's God and Other Minds much stimulating and energetic discussion ensued that demands follow up. Plantinga has been a significant philosophical influence for me, and I have always wanted to do some serious blogging through his Warrant trilogy. Well, my friends, the time has arrived. As the leaves turn colors and the cool weather begins to push us indoors and into the company of good books and even better blogs, I would like to start working through Plantinga's third book in the Warrant trilogy, Warranted Christian Belief (WCB).

WCB was published in 2000, some seven years after the publication of Warrant: The Current Debate (1993) and Warrant and Proper Function (1993). These first two works were strictly epistemological, written within the tradition of Analytic philosophy for a scholarly and academic audience. The third book applies Plantinga's epistemology specifically to the Christian faith and asks various questions regarding the rationality of Christianity. Says Plantinga, "This book is about the intellectual or rational acceptability of Christian belief." (vii)

Plantinga recognizes the need to address the contemporary thinking and hence asks if Christianity is "rational" for the twenty-first century educated populace: "Our question is this: is belief of this sort intellectually acceptable? In particular, is it intellectually acceptable for us, now? For educated and intelligent people living in the twenty-first century, with all that has happened over the last four or five hundred years?" (viii)

As we move through the preface, Plantinga notes two, specific objections:
"Western thought since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment has displayed at least two distinct styles of objection. First, there have been de facto objections: objections to the truth of Christian belief. Perhaps the most important de facto objection would be the argument from suffering and evil.

Even more prevalent, however, have been de jure objections. These are arguments or claims to the effect that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or contrary to sound morality, or without sufficient evidence or in some other way rationally unacceptable, not up to snuff from an intellectual point of view." (viii-ix)

The two objections, then are de facto and de jure. As the name implies, de facto objections deal with the issue of truth and falsity. Simply put, is Christianity in fact true? Or, can we establish from arguments (such as the argument from suffering and evil) that Christianity is false? De jure objections, on the other hand, deal with the idea of rationality. Even if one may not be able to establish that Christianity is false, perhaps one simply finds various aspects of the faith to be unreasonable or irrational.

As noted above, Plantinga's interest in this book is the de jure question - is Christianity rational? (see p. 3) But Plantinga's distinction between de facto and de jure - between truth and rationality - immediately raises the question of what the connection is between the two. Is not that which is rational also true? And is not that which is true always rational??? Why does Plantinga separate the two? Well, my friends, this question is a critical one. It forces us to ask what the relationship is between rationality and truth, and at this point I make an unprecedented move for my readers at the very outset of our investigation: I give away the ending! I cite Plantinga's last paragraph where he asks about the truth of Christianity:
"But is it true? This is the really important question. And here we pass beyond the competence of philosophy, whose main competence, in this area, is to clear away certain objections, impedances, and obstacles to Christian belief. Speaking for myself and of course not in the name of philosophy, I can say only that it does, indeed, seem to me to be true, and to be the maximally important truth."

Note first that for Plantinga the truth question is still important, indeed, it is "maximally important." And yet to say that the question of "truth" is settled by argumentation is not a contention that Plantinga makes. This will be important to keep in mind as we further into the book. Plantinga is no fideist. He believes in rationality and reason. He also utilizes argumentation and logic. Yet the critical issue carried throughout this book is in regards to the purpose, place, and use of reason within epistemology and the process of human thought and belief. It is this issue that requires us to explore the heart of the Modern epistemological debate. So in this regard, although I have cited the ending at the beginning, the critical issues of the book remain spread out before us. We must still ask about the rationality of Christian belief. But to even do this, we must ask about Plantinga's own ideas of rationality and how they fit within one's belief system.

My hope is to blog through WCB chapter by chapter. Each chapter raises its own fascinating issues related to knowledge and Christian belief, and hence there is much fodder for thought. If I may take a moment for self-promotion, I think I am in a unique position to blog on Plantinga. For one thing, I very much appreciate and respect the Analytic philosophical tradition from which Plantinga emerges. However, I have by no means sold my intellectual soul to some of the more detailed (and in my opinion "mundane"!) aspects of Analytic philosophy (symbolic logic being one area where my patience is worn very thin!). In Plantinga's philosophy and theology I find ideas and lines of thought that are not strictly limited to the realms of Analytic philosophy. One example of this is the concept of sensus divinitatis, which I have blogged on from time to time. It is my hope to open up these discussions beyond the circle of purely Analytic philosophy, and Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief, makes this transition very smooth and quite natural.

Alvin Plantinga was one of the most significant figures in twentieth century Christian thought. So much of the last century's philosophical and theological thought was either unoriginal, uninspiring, or even downright embarrassing. (I think about how much ink was spilled plotting charts for the end of the age!) I think that Plantinga is an important point of departure for Christian thinking as we move into the 21st century. My goal is to open up these issues for our mutual exploration. I confess that I will likely defend Plantinga in most cases, but on some issues (important issues, even) I think he misses some critical points, particularly related to his perception and refutation of various postmodern perspectives. But this is, after all, the blogosphere and no one is safe! No man is an island unto himself

And so, my friends, let the games begin and the discussions ensue.

God and Other Minds - Alvin Plantinga

A review of God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (1967)
Cornell University Press
by Alvin Plantinga


In this early work by Alvin Plantinga the first two parts deal with arguments for and against Christianity. Though a Theist and a Christian, Plantinga concludes that the arguments for God's existence are unsuccessful. After reviewing the atheological arguments against Christianity, Plantinga concludes:
"These atheological arguments are as unsuccessful as the arguments from natural theology we considered in Part I; natural atheology seems no better than natural theology as an answer to the question, 'Are religious beliefs rationally justified?'" (183) Part Three attempts "a different approach." (183)

Plantinga beings the third part by saying,
"It may be said, with the existence of God: the theist must be able to answer the question 'How do you know or why do you believe?' if his belief is to be rational; or at any rate there must be a good answer to this question. He needs evidence of some sort or other; he needs some reason for believing." (187)

Is belief in God "rational"? What are the "reasons" for believing in God? These have been questions of much historical debate, and at this point in Plantinga's book it is of considerable interest in light of the fact that he has rejected all arguments put forward thus far forward thus far. But rather than simply presenting another argument for the existence of God, Plantinga next makes a very interesting move:

"Obviously this raises many question. What is evidence? What relation holds between a person and a proposition when the person has evidence for the proposition? Must a rational person have evidence or reasons for all of his beliefs? Presumably not." (187-88)

So, Plantinga's question goes deeper: What is evidence? And must the rational person have evidence for all beliefs. Plantinga somewhat casually suggests, "presumably not," which will come as quite a startling conclusion for those coming out of Modernity and the various philosophical systems that are so rooted in the epistemologies of Classical Foundationalism.

Plantinga continues, "But then what properties must a belief have for a person to be justified in accepting it without evidence? Is a person justified in believing a proposition only if it can be inferred inductively or deductively from (roughly) incorrigible sensory beliefs? Or propositions that are obvious to common sense and accepted by everyone?" (188) These questions await further development by Plantinga in his future works. (See below) We leave these for now and proceed toward Plantinga's conclusion.

The primary point of Plantinga's work is to suggest that the belief in God is like the belief in other minds:
"There may be other reasons for supposing that although rational belief in other minds does not require an answer to the epistemological question, rational belief in the existence of God does. But it is certainly hard to see what these reasons might be. Hence my tentative conclusion: if my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter."

The conclusion is worded in such a way ("my tentative conclusion") that seems rather disappointing at first, or perhaps even trivial and irrelevant. But two things are important to bear in mind. The first is the historical perspective. In his 1970 review of God and Other Minds Michael A. Slote said, "This book is one of the most important to have appeared in this century on the philosophy of religion." (The Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970): 39-45) Over the course of his career, Plantinga's work within the Analytical field of philosophy has helped contribute to vigorous debate in the belief in God and the place of evidence within that debate.

Secondly, it is important to understand the scope of the work and how it shifts the burden of proof. There is something of a paradigm shift that must occur by those who demand evidence for belief in God and yet take the existence of other minds for granted. There is a shift of the burden of proof from the assumption that the Theist must provide evidence for God's existence to now questioning whether this assumption is valid.

Must the Theist provide evidence? If so, then what about the existence of other minds? This is something we seem to take for granted, while at the same time demanding proof of the existence of God.

The purpose of this review, then, is primarily to highlight Plantinga's conclusion. In his 1990 Preface to the reissue of the book, Plantinga restates his conclusion:
"'If my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rationa; so, therefore, is the latter.' As I now see (with the acuity of hindsight), my chief aim was to make a suitable reply to the evidentialist objection to theistic belief: the objection that theistic belief is irrational or unreasonable or intellectually second- or third-rate because there is insufficient evidence for it. More exactly (and relying even more heavily on hindsight) my aim was to reply to that objection taken in the context or from the perspective of classical (Cartesian and Lockean) foundationalism. The main argument of the book is really an argument against that objection, so taken." (xi)

Again, Plantinga is boldly suggesting a shift of the burden of proof. Why do we believe in the existence of other minds. It seems to be something that we all take for granted. Are we thus irrational??? Or unreasonable??? Surely not, one would think. (One would hope!) And yet, if we do not need evidence for the existence of other minds, what does that suggest about our evidence for the belief in God? Is it possible that Modernity/Enlightenment epistemology is so deeply rooted in our thinking that we do not even have a paradigm for looking at the question of God's existence as one that does not require evidence or rational proof?

As I close the review I return to Plantinga's 1990 preface: "What I argued, in essence, is that from this point of view belief in other minds and belief in God are on an epistemological pare. In neither case are there good arguments of the sort required; hence if the absence of such arguments in the theistic case demonstrates irrationality, the same goes for belief in other minds." (xi-xii)

This book finds itself a bit bogged down in the mire of Analytical argumentation. In my opinion this is a weakness, because those unfamiliar with the Analytic tradition will find many parts to be a bit convoluted. Yet the basic points made and the conclusions drawn are historically important in the history of philosophy and also of ongoing importance to the discussion of the existence of God.

Notes and References:
The above review is of a very early work by Plantinga, and merely represents a few early (albeit important) questions. To understand Plantinga's thoroughgoing epistemology, see the Warrant trilogy:
Warrant: The Current Debate (1993)
Warrant and Proper Function (1993)
Warranted Christian Belief (2000)
The first two works are epistemological in the Analyitc tradition, while the third (and perhaps most accessible) deals specifically with Theism and Christian belief.

Is there still a problem with evil?

Humor me on this one.

I'm thinking in terms of traditional Christian apologetics when I ask this question. In the past apologetics has looked at evil as a problem to be solved. That is, the existence of evil poses a fundamental contradiction to the basic, core theological positions of Christianity:

God is all powerful
God is all Good
Evil Exists

Ergo,
Either God is not powerful enough to stop evil
Or God is powerful enough, but by golly he isn't good - because a Good God would use his power (as most of us would) to rid the world of evil.

Why is it that this question no longer interests me? It's not as if I haven't spent years of my life thinking about it (because I have). And it isn't as if I have a good solution (because I don't). So, why does the question no longer interest me?

I understand that I am asking you to comment on my own, personal state of mind, and help me figure myself out a bit here. But I could also tack on this question: By and large, do folks still care about the above "problem"? Hence, is there still a problem with evil? Not all cultures and societies wrestle with the tension. Are there still a significant number of believers who would reject their faith b/c of the perceived problem? Are there still a significant number of intelligent atheists who find the tension to be problematic and a barrier to belief?

Biblical Apologetics

In a recent essay (hithertofore unposted/unpublished) that I have been working on I explore the issue of how Scripture is meaningful/significant. I take pains to establish the fact that meaning is relative to the person or to the community. That is, something is significant/meaningful to each of us in different ways.

This idea applies to the theological doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture. That is, the Scripture will seem meaningful to some and not to others. So, if meaning is relative to the individual/community, then I ask the question of whether there is any "inherent" meaning in the text of Scripture. Further, if meaning is relative then what gives a believer the audacity to suggest that the Scripture should be meaningful to others? This is a fair question/objection. I respond by talking about the "ought-ness" of meaning. The sense that if we find something meaningful/significant we typically think that it ought to be meaningful/significant to others. For example, if you read a good book or see a good film then we usually think that others ought to think the same. As such, just because meaning is relative does not, in and of itself, exclude us appealing to others that they should find meaning in something.

The below quotation from my essay comes after discussing the above points. The second paragraph is the point that I think is interesting.

The ought-ness of meaning also extends out of the Scripture’s appeal to the shared existential and spiritual situations of humankind. The ability for the text to resonate within so many diverse contexts is similar to the ability of a film to reach across cultures and speak to the commonality of human experience. The ought-ness in film proceeds from the unique and distinguishing character of the film, itself. The same is true of the text, and this leads us back into Calvin’s analogy of the “sweet” taste of Scripture. There is a similar sensual appeal that seems to transcend diverse contexts to speak to a common spiritual and existential dimension. It does not, of course, follow that all will find the text meaningful or significant, nor does it follow that all will find the text meaningful/significant in the same way or to the same degree. In our examination of meaning we have found that the meaningfulness of Scripture occurs at the intersection of text, reader, and Spirit at specific moments in time. But we have been exploring the ought-ness of meaning, which occurs when we experience something deeply meaningful that feels so deep and so basic that it seems to carry with it a meaningful and significant message for all of humankind. There is a sense that others might also be profoundly affected by the text. It is this sense that I call the feeling of ought-ness.

A critical apologetic and philosophical note along these lines is that it may be misguided to attempt to establish the truth of Scripture prior to a person engaging the text, itself. To attempt to establish the priority of the text at the outset could be a potentially frustrating endeavor. Analogously, it would seem backward and awkward to persuade an individual that a film is meaningful prior to viewing the film! This is simply not how we go about this sort of thing. We may share our excitement and attempt to convey a sense of the significance we have derived from a film, but ultimately our call is, “Give the film a viewing”! Similarly, when presenting the Scripture in the public square the church’s call is to give the text a reading; that the individual would open themselves to the possibility of a meaningful and significant engagement with the text. It is in this sense, then, that we can do justice to Calvin’s analogy and the examination of meaning as we have explored it in this essay.

Traditionally, apologetics has sought to establish the meaningfulness of the Scripture at the outset. In other words, there were logical and philosophical reasons for considering the Scripture as "true" or as the "Word of God." We had to have a reason considering the biblical text as meaningful. In this sense, I think we extracted the text from the stream of life and abstracted it away from its original and primary function: To guide humanity through life and to ultimately guide them to a dynamic Encounter with their Creator.

Here are a few examples of biblical apologetics in action:
Is the Bible from God?
How do you know the Bible is true?
The Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Authority of the Bible
“You Can’t Trust the Gospels. They’re Unreliable.” by Paul Copan
Here is an interesting quote from this article that kind of illustrates my above point: "The Christian has no way to refute skepticism about the unique claims and deeds of the historical Jesus without first establishing that the texts that record his claims are generally reliable. If the Gospels are fictitious, then a defense of Jesus’ self-understanding and unique role in salvation will also come under fire. So what follows are a few points to keep in mind when discussing the Bible’s historical reliability."

My thought is that perhaps we need to guide the non-believer to the text and suggest that it may be meaningful for them. In some sense it makes the Word prove itself as significant/meaningful in each and every life-situation. I think this is the direction that Apologetics is moving. In general, I think that Apologetics is dying out. If it is going to be revived it must undergo complete reconstructive surgery.

Trauma and the Sensus Divinitatis - That's hot!

Generally speaking, there are certain life cycles that most all of us experience. When we are in junior high and high school we need the approval and companionship of our peers. When we are in college or post-high school we focus on developing self-identity and starting on some sort of career path. In our 20's we start down that path and some time in our 20's or 30's we usually switch courses at least once.

Another natural life experience is to find God. Such is the case for Paris Hilton:

After spending three days in jail last week, Hilton was briefly released to electronically monitored home confinement Thursday for an undisclosed medical condition.
An outraged judge sent her back to jail Friday.
The call came over the weekend after Hilton's mother, Kathy, phoned Walters. Paris Hilton called her mother on another line, found out her mother was talking to Walters, and then called Walters collect. All inmates must call collect.
Hilton reiterated assertions that jail has changed her: "Now, I would like to make a difference. ... God has given me this new chance." Daily Breeze

PARIS Hilton believes her jail sentence was a message from God to change her party-loving lifestyle and become a positive role model for people who look up to her.
In her first interview since she was dramatically sent back to jail on the weekend, Hilton said her imprisonment had been a life-changing wake-up call.
"I used to act dumb -- it was an act," she said. Herald Sun

Paris found God. Or else her PR guy did. But whatever, let's roll with it. A tragic event triggers a deeper spiritual sense. The self-absorbed socialite has to stay in a small cage, eat bad food, and can't wear make up. That's basically my daily life, but for Paris it is a major shock to the system.

Might we correlate this with the sensus divinitatis that we have been discussing? Is this part of the way we were wired? Traumatic events trigger a deeper focus on the most meaningful things in life and most often this involves God in some way or another: Plead to God, repent before God, get angry with God, question God, vow to live a different life, etc.

Why is it that we puny mortals turn to God in crisis? Is it the last, desparate hope? If all else fails call on God? Perhaps. But this is not the case in all instances, and even in the instance of the last-ditch-effort crowd there is at least some sense that there is a God and that he has the power to do something and that he just might be merciful enough to help.

The scenarios for the Traumatic-Event-God-Seeker are very diverse. But amidst all of them there seems to be some sense that God is real, that God has the power to make a difference, and that God might (or should) do something to intercede.

Birth, Family, and the sensus divinitatis

The following is a long quote on families and religious inclinations from Hoover Institution. The general line of thought being that the experience of birth and family draws human beings into a transcendental frame of mind.

The conventional causal chain runs something like this. One by one, and thanks mostly to the Enlightenment, a few brave souls in Europe came to recognize the charlatanry of the continent’s historic Jewish and Christian faiths. As they did, it became clear that more and more people would eventually come to their point of view — that such a transformation is ultimately inevitable and, once widespread enough, would usher in a new and better era of history. (“There never was a greater event — and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!”)

To begin sketching an explanation of religious belief complementary to this one, one must answer this question: What could it be about the experience of the natural family that might make an individual more disposed toward religion than he is without it? Though merely a preliminary attempt at an answer, several lines of explanation suggest themselves.

First, there is the phenomenological fact of what birth itself does to many fathers and just about every mother. That moment — for some now, even that first glimpse on a sonogram — is routinely experienced by a great many people as an event transcendental as no other. This hardly means that pregnancy and birth ipso facto convert participants into zealots. But the sequence of events culminating in birth is nearly universally interpreted as a moment of communion with something larger than oneself, larger even than oneself and the infant. It is an elemental bond that is cross-cultural as perhaps no other — a formulation to which most parents on the planet would quickly agree....

Thus does a complementary religious anthropology begin to emerge, grounded on the primal fact that the mother-child and father-child bond, as no other, appears to push at least some people toward an intensity of purpose they might never otherwise have experienced. And it’s not as if birth is the only familial experience that has this transcendental effect. So do other common family events that defy ordinary, atomized human pleasure-seeking, including, say, the selfless care of an ailing family member, the financial sacrifices made for those whose adulthood one may never live to see, even the incredible human feat of staying married for a very long time. Further, in binding those alive to relatives both past and yet to come, family is literally death-defying — another feature that might make it easier for those living in families to make related transcendental leaps of the religious variety. Third, families and especially children also transform people in other ways — and not just by clipping adult wings, turning the former midnight rover into a man in slippers watching O’Reilly at 8 pm, but also in what may be the deepest way of all. All men and women fear death; but only mothers and fathers, and perhaps some husbands and wives, can generally be counted upon to fear another’s death more than their own. To put the point another way, if 9/11 drove to church for weeks on end millions of Americans who had not darkened that doorstep in years — as it did — imagine the even deeper impact on ordinary mothers and fathers of a sick child or the similarly powerful desire of a devoted spouse on the brink of losing the other. Just as there are no atheists in a foxhole, so too would there appear to be few in the nursery or critical care unit, at least most of the time.

In sum, because it treats belief as an atomistic decision taken piecemeal by individuals rather than a holistic response to family life, Nietzsche’s madman and his offspring, secularization theory, appear to present an incomplete version of how some considerable portion of human beings actually come to think and behave about things religious — not one by one and all on their own, but rather mediated through the elemental connections of husband, wife, child, aunt, great-grandfather, and the rest. [All bolding is mine]


I tie this in with our recent discussions on the sensus divinitatis (SD for short), the idea that human beings have the capacity to experience a sense of God through their interaction in the world and with the creation. Typically I think of SD in terms of experiencing awe in viewing a grand scene of nature. Or a sense of accountability to a higher power when we do something wrong. I had not thought about the experience of family and birth as something that might trigger SD, but the more I think about it the more it seems to fit the God-sense that human beings seem to posses.

Mommy, it's Princess Leia!

As the orchestra closed the pops concert this afternoon with one of John William's Star Wars themes I heard a little girl say, "Mommy, that's Princess Leia!" The music had triggered some sort of association between the sound and the movie. Because of a recent post on John Calvin's sensus divinitatis (or SD for short) I had been ruminating on the nature of the SD. So, when I heard the little girl react the way she did methinks to myself, "Ah, that's a great example of SD!"

SD is the Latin for "sense of the divine" or perhaps we might say, "God-sense".

We are configured such that we make associations between sounds and experiences. Hence, the little girl can be easily conditioned to think of Princess Leia when she hears music from the Star Wars movies. This is something of the same thing that goes on with SD: God designs us such that certain circumstances should (if all things are working properly) produce in us some sort of notion or understanding of God. Hence, a majestic mountain top can trigger a sense of awe of God's power. Or committing wrong-doings can trigger a sense of accountability and culpability to the Ultimate Judge.

The two questions that arise in my mind as I think about SD are these:
1) What if someone has no sense of God? Is it possible that the SD can be defective?
2) Is it also possible that SD might just be some kind of cultural, religious conditioning? If Pavlov can condition his dogs to salivate when he rings a bell, then perhaps we can train ourselves to think about God in certain circumstances.

According to SD we are created to respond to the experiences of life in a way that either: produces belief in God, gives us a sense of God's nature and/or presence, or somehow reveals something about ourselves in relation to God (i.e. guilt when we do evil). Hence SD is something intrinsic to the design of human beings, something within us. (Crf. Romans 1:18) But one might argue that this is simply something we are conditioned with, and that, in fact, we might be conditioned to do just the opposite. A person might be conditioned to scoff at the very idea of God when s/he views a breathtaking scene of nature! Or a person might be conditioned to think that when s/he does something evil that God is actually the one who is accountable!

But these scenarios seem awkward to me. They do not seem very human to me, at all. They actually seem very unnatural and inhuman. There seems to be something very primordial about the response that humans have to God. The God question seems to permeate cultures and societies in a way that seems more than superstition. Who and what God is seems to penetrate each individual at a very deep and personal level. Whether we like it or not many of our most basic questions have to do with God. This strikes me as something that is more basic than rational. After all, what do I need God for if I want to make a million dollars and drive a sweet car and build a vacation home in Miami? The God-question nags at us at a more soulish and personal level. This is what the theory of SD attempts to discuss.

A strange brew

Theologically, I've always thought of myself as some sort of an odd mixture of Calvinist theology and Postmodern theory. I recently took two quizes that confirmed my suspicions...

You scored as John Calvin. Much of what is now called Calvinism had more to do with his followers than Calvin himself, and so you may or may not be committed to TULIP, though God's sovereignty is all important. John Calvin 100% Paul Tillich 67% Friedrich Schleiermacher 67% Anselm 67% Charles Finney 67% Martin Luther 33% Jonathan Edwards 33% Jürgen Moltmann 33% Karl Barth 0% Augustine 0% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to postmodern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this. Emergent/Postmodern 86% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 86% Fundamentalist 57% Classical Liberal 57% Charismatic/Pentecostal 43% Neo orthodox 29% Modern Liberal 21% Reformed Evangelical 14% Roman Catholic 14% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

Gnosis

Here are a few interesting posts from a scholarly pro-Gnostic blog:
http://forbiddengospels.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-is-gnosticism.html
http://forbiddengospels.blogspot.com/2007/03/more-about-gnosticism.html

The study of Gnosis and Gnosticism is a fascinating one. As the above links point out there was no such thing as "Gnosticism". We use the term "Gnosticism" to label a general set of similar beliefs that developed a radical dualism (recall Plato, but with a unique, anti-cosmic twist!), and focussed on the personal connection and participation in the divine through gnosis (knowledge, secret knowledge) available to only the elect few, typically the elite. However, there was no tangible "Gnostic" religious group, per se. At least, no major religious movement that defined themselves as such. It was primarily a diverse set of groups that were involved with various segments of Judaism and Christianity.

Gnosticism seems to have had mixed reactions from the church fathers. Irenaeus condemned it to hell, while others like Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr seem more sympathetic to Gnostic theology due perhaps to Clement/Justin's Platonic sympathies. Ultimately, though, it was thoroughly rejected by the church and their writings were largely lost - lost, that is, until they were found by two Egyptian brothers in the deserts of Nag Hammadi. Their mother burned a few of the documents in her stove, but an extensive number of manuscripts survived giving us some fascinating looks into the various forms of Gnostic philosophy.

Gnostic theology raises many interesting questions relevant to contemporary discussion:

• How do we interpret texts? Do we go for the strictly literal meaning, or is there "deeper" meaning hidden in the symbols and metaphors that give us insight into the "deeper" things of the divine?
• What is the role of religious experience? And what if our religious experience is at odds with established religious circles? Does my experience trump the community?
• Was Gnosticism heresy? And for that matter, what is heresy? Is it simply those who do not agree with me and my church, thank you very much, or can we establish criteria to evaluate the legitimacy of the religious experience of others?
• And what about canonicity? How do we decide whose religious writings are the "right" ones and whose are the wrong ones?
  

Obviously, there are many hot-button topics in the Gnostic discussion related to contemporary philosophy of religion and postmodern culture.

Is God logical?

After lunch today a friend handed me a 6 page theodicy that he had put together. What is a theodicy, you ask? It is, basically, a theory that deals with God and the problem of evil in the world. It asks and attempts to answer the age old question: If God is all-good and all-powerful why is there evil in the world?

But even before I got into his arguments I couldn't quite get past the second sentence:
It is important to have internal consistency amongst our beliefs - especially those concerning our Creator.

But this is an assumption, and I'm wondering how well grounded it is. On the face of it I suppose it is true in most cases, i.e. most of my life I go around trying to be logically consistent. I certainly don't want to be illogical or irrational! But why do I do this??? Do I have a reason for reason?

And what about the Creator God? Is he bound by our own "internal consistency"? What is internal consistency? By my guess it has something to do with logic and rationality. We use logic/rationality to measure whether various statements (like "God is good" and "God is all-powerful" and "evil exists") are consistent with themselves. We use logic and rationality all the time to help us through life. We don't really need to be taught logic - most people develop some form of rationality quite naturally. On the other hand, it doesn't hurt to have people teach us logic and to sharpen our reasoning through argument or debate.

So, because of our use of logic in so many areas of life we develop systems of logic. Online you can cross reference several philosophy sites to have a look at various developments in the field of logic:
You can scan through the various articles on logic at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html#l
Same thing at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/
You can jump over to Wikipedia to get an overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic

The interesting thing you will find if you are new to logic is the very diverse perspectives that philosophers have on just what logic is and what its place is. Same thing with rationality - a plurality of perspectives on what it is and what it means.

This will be a contested and debated point, but I would put forth that logic/rationality is a human construct. (I'm not a Kant scholar by any means, but I think my thoughts here would be close to what Kant calls a synthetic apriori judgment.) We need to use logic. We have to rely on rationality. We just do it - it's part of our world and how we live life, and it explains so much. But where do we get logic? And whence cometh rationality? The "Laws" of logic didn't drop from the heavens - they are debated. Exactly what constitutes a "law" and what it means for us is something that we construct. We can't really deny logic, but does that mean we can absolutely affirm it?

And that all brings us to God. Must God be "logically consistent"? Especially in a world where "logic" and "consistency" are debated and contested terms.Why must God be internally consistent to my mind? Some have denied their belief in God based on the fact that the idea of God and/or God's revelation is not "internally consistent" on their definitions. So, in essence, they have defined God out of existence!

But what if God is beyond logical constructs of our minds? What if God is not "rational" on our terms? Is this possible? Or even desirable?

Again, I'm not being anti-logical here. As I said, I love logic and I use it all the time. So, for me the question is not the value of logic, but simply the place of logical consistency when it comes to God and his actions. Has God ever made a point of telling us that he is logically consistent?? Or that he is rational? Or that he is even reasonable in all circumstances?

Open Theism in a nutshell

For the past decade or so there has been a raging controversy about a new theological position known as Open Theism. A couple of years back I did some research on Open Theism and put together a rather lengthy paper introducing and discussing some of the main issues: Open Theism - An Introductory Presentation. My research was based almost exclusively on the proponents of Open Theism, themselves. Due to the polarizing debates I thought it would be best to avoid some of the purely polemical and inflaming rhetoric coming from the opponents of Open Theism.

I would like to break down Open Theism and provide a more concise summary. This summary comes from my paper, which means that it is primarily based on what the Open Theists say, themselves. The main advocates are Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, and Greg Boyd.

It is important to understand that Open Theism, as a theology is rooted in the biblical text. It is, first and foremost, an attempt to take seriously the language of Scripture that describes God and the world as open, changing, and constantly in flux.

The issue of metaphor is important. There are a wide variety of metaphors in Scripture that describe God. Of these metaphors it is important to determine what is being said of God and what is not being said about God. The metaphors in question are those that describe God in some way as changing or being open. How do we take these open metaphors? Traditionally these metaphors have been marginalized as not depicting who God really is. The metaphors are given for our benefit or for various reasons, but the openness metaphors are not depicting who God actually is. The Open Theist tends to differ.

For Open Theists these metaphors are reality depicting. Pinnock talks about taking seriously the “dynamic and relational” metaphor. These are metaphors that depict a dynamic, relational, suffering, changing, and repenting God. Not only are these metaphors that should be taken seriously, but for an Open Theist these metaphors are “controlling metaphors.” A controlling metaphor is “able to bring coherence to a range of biblical thinking about God; they provide a hermeneutical key for interpreting the whole.” (The Suffering God, 11) So, not only are open metaphors taken seriously, but they are also crucial: We must interpret other passages of Scripture in light of the metaphors of openness.

On pages 8-13 of my Introductory Presentation I review Greg Boyd’s interaction with the themes and metaphors of openness found in Scripture. He lists several categories and Scriptural passages that suggest the openness of God and of our world: God regrets, God asks questions about the future, God confronts the unexpected, God is frustrated, God tests people to know their character, God speaks in terms of what may or may not be, and in Jeremiah 18 Boyd considers the flexible potter (for Boyd the flexible potter is one of the quintessential examples of openness). For more on this I will direct you to my paper and also to Boyd’s God of the Possible.

Going along with the Scriptural theme of the openness of God is a philosophical position of free will. More specifically, most Open Theists hold to some form of Libertarian free will or Incompatibilism. Incompatibilism holds that free will is incompatible with determinism. What is determinism? Determinism holds that one’s actions are determined by factors outside or exterior to one’s self. For example, a chain of causes and effects have been put in place so that we could not do other than we did. Or that we could not make a choice other than the choice that we made. Our actions and choices are predetermined. Incompatibilism allows for moments of decision that could, legitimately, go either way. That there are at least some choices of freedom that cannot be determined or predicted. That freedom just is the fact that a choice could go either way, and cannot be predetermined.

Aside from arguing from the biblical text Sanders uses three rather standard arguments for libertarian freewill. Briefly, they are as follows: Libertarian free will is necessary if we are to have genuine loving relationships, Libertarian free will is necessary if our thought is to be rational, Libertarian free will is necessary if we are to be held morally responsible for good/evil in a way that really makes a difference. Furthermore, the libertarian can maintain that God did not want Adam to sin but would not control Adam’s sin. And libertarian freedom must be presupposed in order to make sense of God’s grieving over sin and entering into genuine dialogue with us. You can reference these in more detail on pages 17-18 of my Introductory Presentation.

Open Theists have also called into question what it means that God is “perfect.” What is perfection? Is a being imperfect if they change? If they are open? If they are flexible? Is God imperfect if he is a part of time and space and allows himself to be influenced by it? Clark Pinnock states, “It is tempting to think of God abstractly as a perfect being and then smuggle in assumptions of what ‘perfect’ entails.” (Most Moved Mover, 65-66)

It is sometimes argued that Open Theists limit God’s knowledge or do not believe that God is omniscient (all knowing). But for Open Theists God is all knowing, but because the universe is open and not foreknown or predetermined even God cannot know what will happen in the future. This is a debatable issue, even within Open Theism because as soon as you posit that the future is unknown then it begs the question of how God will fulfill his promises for the future. Or how will God bring about ultimate justice? For the Open Theist these promises and future fulfillments will come about, but it is usually based on God’s superior power to conquer, rather than on God having knowledge of all the details of how things will work out. Because the universe is open and not closed/predetermined even God cannot see into the future. (For more a bit more of the details on the philosophy behind knowledge of the future see my Introductory Presentation, 18-21.)

Thus far we have looked at some of the biblical positions of Open Theists as well as their philosophical positions on certain issues. The final argument developed by Open Theists is an existential argument: Open Theism is presented as a more livable theology. Open Theists argue that often the traditional theological formulations of doctrine develop a tension between belief and lifestyle. For example, a Christian will believe that the future is closed and determined, and yet he or she will be expected to pray for a certain outcome to take place. This begs the question of why one should pray at all if the future is determined.

Open Theists also argue that a theology of openness better allows believers to live with the evil in the world. Traditional theologies have a difficult time excusing God of blame for the evil in the world. If God has predetermined all things, then God has predetermined evil. This is a difficult reality to live with. Open Theism holds that evil exists, not because God predetermined that it should exist, but because God gave humanity free will – a free will that could go either will and was completely undetermined – and that because of free choices evil came into being. As such, evil is the result of sinful choices.

And what about genuine relationships? It is argued by Open Theists that for a relationship to be real both parties must undergo change – they must be affected by each other. This is no different in the God-human relationship. Both the person and God are affected by their relationship. Furthermore, for this relationship to be authentic we must not be preprogrammed to love – love must be a free choice. We must be able to accept or reject our relationship with God and our decision in this matter cannot be predetermined.

Links of Interest:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Theism
Open Theism Information Site: http://www.opentheism.info/
Theopedia: http://www.theopedia.com/Open_theism