Month: January 2010

Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Sunny’ Songs

Last time the theme was 'rainy' songs.  To balance things out, here are some 'sunny' songs.  Donovan, To Try For the Sun.  Forgot what a great tune that is.  Might have been the mid-60's since I last heard it.  And then there's the moody Sunny Goodge Street by the same artist.  The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun. 

Jimi Hendrix, Third Stone From the Sun from his first album.  A bit of psychedelia from '67.  It's good to see that Mose Allison is still at it, at age 83.  Here is his quirky verson of "You Are My Sunshine."  I used to catch Mose at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California, at the end of the '60s.  Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan try to do a duet of the same song.  If you can't stomach either of those versions, there is always Doris Day.

Cream, Sunshine of Your Love.  Bobby Hebb, Sunny (1966).  I had to reach my long arm far back into the musty mausoleum of moldy oldies for this Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee version of the old standard, The Sunny Side of the Street (1941). 

Finally, The Sun Also Rises, a tune that I heard in 1968 and have had in my head for four decades but haven't heard again until just now. For the last 42 years I have been trying without success to remember the name of the band and locate the tune.  'Fever Tree' it is, an obscure group that I heard together with Canned Heat at an L.A. club in '68.  If you remember them, I'll buy you a beer. 

Aquinas on Why Being Cannot Be a Genus

At 998b22 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle argues that being cannot be a genus. Thomas Aquinas gives his version of the argument in Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, ch. 25, para. 6. I find the presentation of the doctor angelicus clearer than that of the philosophus. After quoting Thomas' argument, I will offer a rigorous reconstruction and explanation of it. The argument issues in an important conclusion, one highly relevant to my running battle with the partisans of the 'thin' conception of being.

The Anton C. Pegis translation reads as follows:

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Augustine and the Child at the Seashore: Trinitarian Metatheory

St-augustine I was told this story as a child by a nun. One day St. Augustine was walking along the seashore, thinking about the Trinity. He came upon a child who had dug a hole in the sand and was busy filling it with buckets of seawater.

Augustine: "What are you doing?"

Child: "I am trying to empty the ocean into this hole."

Augustine: "But that’s impossible!"

Child: "No more impossible than your comprehending the Trinity."

The point of the story is that the Trinity is a mystery beyond our comprehension.  It is true, even though we cannot understand how could it be true, where 'could' expresses epistemic possibility.  It is a non-contradictory truth that lies beyond our mental horizon.  Could there be such truths?

Note that there are at least three other ways of thinking about the Trinity doctrine.  One could take the view that the doctrine is both true and contradictory, along the lines of dialetheism according to which there are some true contradictions. (b) Or one could take the view that the doctrine is all of the following: true, non-contradictory, and intelligible to us, even though we cannot know it to be true by reason unaided by revelation.  Under this head would fall putative solutions to the consistency problem that aim to provide an adequate model or analogy, a model or analogy sufficient to render the orthodox doctrine intelligible to us.  (c) Finally, one could take the line that the doctrine is contradictory and therefore false.

Thus there appear to be at least four meta-theories of the orthodox Trinity doctrine.  These are theories about the logico-epistemic status of the doctrine.  We could call them Mysterianism, Dialetheism, Intelligibilism, and Incoherentism.  The last two terms are my own coinages.

Note that I have been talking about  orthodox (Athanasian) Trinity doctrine.  But religion and theology are, I would urge, open-ended, analogously as science is, and so there is no bar to theological innovation and development.  Perhaps one of the doctrines that got itself branded 'heretical' can be rehabilitated and made to work. It is worth pondering that the orthodox are heretics to the heretics:  had a given heretical sect acquired sufficient power and influence, had it drawn to its side the best minds and most persuasive exponents, then it would not be heretical but orthodox.

Everyone likes to think of his own doxa as orthotes but not every doxa can be such on pain of contradiction.  So we ought to be humble.  Apply the honorific 'orthodox' to your doctrine if you like, but smile as you do so.

Trinity and Set Theory

Let S and T be mathematical sets. Now consider the following two propositions:

1. S is a proper subset of T.

2. S and T have the same number of elements.

Are (1) and (2) consistent? That is, can they both be true? If yes, explain how.

If you think (1) and (2) are consistent, then consider whether there is anything to the following analogy. If there is, explain the analogy. There is a set G. G has three disjoint proper subsets, F, S, H. All four sets agree in cardinality: they have the same number of elements.

Of Blood and Blog

I don't think my experience is unusual: our blood relatives tend not to give a hoot about our blogging activities. They say blood is thicker than water, but consanguinity  sure doesn't seem to translate into  spiritual affinity. No matter, the community that we can't find by blood, we'll find by blog.

The people who know us take us for granted. Is it not written that "no prophet is welcome in his hometown"? (Luke 4, 24: nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua.)

One could call it the injustice of propinquity. We often underestimate those nearby, whether by blood or space, while overestimating those afar.

An Escape From Reality?

If someone tells you that philosophy is an escape from reality, reply: "You tell me what reality is, and I'll tell you whether philosophy is an escape from it."

The point, of course, is that all assertions about reality and its evasions are philosophical assertions that embroil the objector in the very thing from which he seeks to distance himself.

From the Mail: Trinity and Incarnation

Dr. Vallicella,

Thank you for some exceptionally helpful posts lately! Regarding your point

(1) “Is there a clear scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Trinity?”

It would seem that a part of that question, or perhaps a prior question to it is:

 (1*) “Is there a clear scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Incarnation?”

It was because early Christians came to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was divine/God  that the question of how a divine Christ/God-Christ related to the ‘Father God’ to whom he prayed and in whom the Christians also first believed.  As a theologically-trained former minister, who still tries to keep up with contemporary work on the historical Jesus, I must confess that I fail to see that (1*) is the case, therefore I fail to see that (1) is the case.

 Mark Weldon Whitten, PhD   

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The Reclusive J. D. Salinger Dies at 91

SalingerTime Here.

We who are obscure ought to be grateful for it.  It is wonderful to be able to walk down the street and be taken for an average schmuck.  A lttle recognition from a few high-quality individuals is all one needs.  Fame can be a curse.   The unhinged Mark David Chapman, animated by Holden Caulfield's animus against phoniness, decided that John Lennon was a phony, and so had to be shot.

The mad pursuit of empty celebrity by so many in our society shows their and its spiritual vacuity.

 

 

UPDATE (1/30/10):  Apparently, today's teens cannot relate to Holden Caulfield.

Some Questions About the Trinity Distinguished

It may help to distinguish the following questions.

1. Is there a clear scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Trinity?

2. Is the doctrine, as formulated in the Athanasian creed and related canonical documents, true?

3. Is it possible for human reason, unaided by divine revelation, to know the doctrine to be true?

4. Is the doctrine of the Trinity possibly true?

5. Is the doctrine thinkable (conceivable) without contradiction?

I have little to say about the exegetical (1) since it is beyond my competence as a philosopher. I cannot pronounce upon (2), either for or against, until I have decided (4) and (5). The same goes for the epistemological question, (3). My present interest is in (4) and (5), which are logically prior to the first three, with (5) being logically prior to (4). 

(4) and (5) are distinct questions. An affirmative answer to (5) does not entail an affirmative answer to (4). This is because conceivability is no sure guide to real (extramental) possibility. Of the two questions, (5) comes first in the order of inquiry: if we cannot think the Trinity without contradiction, how could we advance to the further question of whether it is really possible?

(5) is the question at the center of my interest.

It is difficult to get some people to appreciate the force and importance of (5) because they are dogmatists who accept the Trinity doctrine as true simply because they were brought up to believe it, or because it is something their church teaches.  Since they accept it as true, no question of its logical coherence arises for them.  And so they think that anyone who questions the doctrine must not understand it.  To 'set the objector straight' they then repeat the very verbal formulas the logical coherence of which is in question.  "What's the problem? There is one God in three divine Persons!"  They think that if they only repeat the formulas often enough, then the objector will 'get it.'  But it is they who do not get it, since they do not understand the logical problems to which the doctrinal formulations give rise.

Or the adherent may think that the objector is merely 'attacking' or polemicizing against his faith; it doesn't occur to the adherent that there are people whose love of truth is so strong that they will not accept claims without examination.  Now if one examines the creedal formulations, one will see that the gist of the Trinity doctrine is as follows:

1. Monotheism: There is exactly one God.

2. Divinity of Persons:  The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God.

3. Distinctness of Persons:  The Father is not the Son; and the Holy Ghost is not the Father or the Son.

The problem is to show how these propositions are logically consistent, that is, how they can all be true, but without falling into heresy.  If you cannot see the problem, you are not paying attention, or you lack intelligence, or your thought-processes are being distorted by ideological commitments.  Whatever you think of Brower and Rea's solution to the problem, their exposition of it is very clear and I recommend it to you.  My reason for not accepting their solution is here.

 

Bertrand Russell on Arabic Philosophy

The following passage is from Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1945), p. 427. I found it here, but without a link and without a reference. So, exploiting the resources of my well-stocked library, I located the passage, and verified that it had been properly transcribed. Whether Russell is being entirely fair to the Arabs is a further question.

Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking generally, the views of the more scientific philosophers come from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, from Galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed some originality in mathematics and in chemistry; in the latter case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches. Mohammedan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and in many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. Its importance, which must not be underrated, is as a transmitter. Between ancient and modern European civilization, the dark ages intervened. The Mohammedans and the Byzantines, while lacking the intellectual energy required for innovation, preserved the apparatus of civilization, books, and learned leisure. Both stimulated the West when it emerged from barbarism; the Mohammedans chiefly in the thirteenth century, the Byzantines chiefly in the fifteenth. In each case the stimulus produced new thought better than that produced by the transmitters — in the one case scholasticism, in the other the Renaissance (which however had other causes also).

What Explains the Hard Left’s Toleration of Militant Islam?

From 1789 on, a defining characteristic of the Left has been hostility to religion, especially in its institutionalized forms. This goes together with a commitment to such Enlightenment values as individual liberty, belief in reason, and equality, including equality among the races and between the sexes. Thus the last thing one would expect from the Left is an alignment with militant Islam given the latter’s philosophically unsophisticated religiosity bordering on rank superstition, its totalitarian moralism, and its opposition to gender equality.

So why is the radical Left soft on militant Islam?  The values of the progressive creed are antithetic to those of the Islamists, and it is quite clear that if the Islamists got everything they wanted, namely, the imposition of Islamic law on the entire world, our dear progressives would soon find themselves headless. I don’t imagine that theylong to live under Sharia, where ‘getting stoned’ would have more than metaphorical meaning. So what explains this bizarre alignment?

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On the Trinity: A Medievalist Takes Me to Task

 Long-time reader Michael Sullivan e-mails:

In my experience a lot of the problems in modern philosophy of religion come about from not taking enough care to get right the religious position the philosopher is analyzing. Part of this difficulty stems from the way terminology shifts across the centuries, so that the modern philosopher takes for granted an anachronistic understanding of key terms.

I think something like this is happening in your most recent post "Some Water Analogies for the Trinity". You write: " The sense in which water is a substance is not the sense in which God is a substance. Water is a substance in the sense of a stuff; God is a substance in the sense of a hypostasis (that which stands under) orhypokeimenon (that which is placed under), or as I prefer to say, an individual."

From the standpoint of traditional, classical Trinitarian theology, this is incorrect. God is a substance neither in the sense of stuff (hyle) nor in the sense of individual (hypostasis). Here's a representative explanatory snippet from St John of Damascus, showing the universal traditional use of the terms, from "De Fide Orthodoxa" c.48: "Substantia quidem communem speciem et complectivam speciem homoiodon (id est earum quae unum sunt specie) hypostaseon (id est personarum) significat, utputa Deus, homo; hypostasis autem atomon (id est individuum) demonstrat, scilicet Patrem, Filium, Spiritum Sanctum, Petrum, Paulum."

So "substance" here means something like "essence" or "being" (in the sense of ousia) rather than hypostasis; the whole doctrine of the Trinity depends on this distinction between the one nature, substance, being, essence, etc. on the one hand and the three individual persons or hypostases on the other. In most cases where there is one existing human nature (man), there is one individual hypostasis (Peter or Paul); in the case of the Trinity there is one divine nature (God) instantiated in three hypostases (Father and Son and Holy Spirit); conversely, in the Incarnation there are two existing natures (God and man), but only one hypostasis (Christ the Incarnate Logos).

I hope you don't think this too presumptuous; but Christian doctrine really does turn to unintelligible mush in these crucial distinctions are not carefully preserved.

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