Month: February 2010
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Negative and Positive Trinitarian Mysterianism
Dale Tuggy tentatively characterizes Lukas Novak's position on the Trinity as an example of negative mysterianism. This I believe is a mistake. But it depends on what we mean by 'negative mysterianism.' Drawing upon what Tuggy says in his Trinity entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, let us try to understand what mysterianism is in its negative and positive varieties.
A. The Problem. We first remind ourselves what the problem is. To put it simply in a 'binitarian' form, the problem is to understand how the following propositions can all be true:
1. The Father is not the Son.
2. The Father is God.
3. The Son is God.
4. There is only one God.
It is obvious that if in each sentence the 'is' is the 'is' of absolute numerical identity, then the quartet of propositions is inconsistent. The conjunction of (2) and (3) by the transitivity of identity entails the negation of (1). The conjunction of (1), (2), and (3) entails the negation of (4).
B. Positive Mysterianism. The response of the positive mysterian to the inconsistency is that, in Tuggy''s words:
. . . the trinitarian doctrine can't be understood because of an abundance of content. [. . .] So while we grasp the meaning of its individual claims, taken together they seem inconsistent, and so the conjunction of them is not understandable . . . . The positive mysterian holds that the human mind is adequate to understand many truths about God, although it breaks down at a certain stage, when the most profound divinely revealed truths are entertained. Sometimes an analogy with recent physics is offered; if we find mysteries (i.e., apparent contradictions) there, such as light appearing to be both a particle and a wave, why should we be shocked to find them in theology?
The position of the positive mysterian seems to be the following. The Trinity doctrine is true and therefore consistent in reality despite the fact that it appears to us (and presumably must appear to us given our cognitive limitations) as inconsistent and therefore as necessarily false. Thus positive mysterianism is not to be confused with dialetheism about the Trinity which is the doctrine that there are some true contradictions and that the Trinity doctrine is one of them. The positive mysterian is not saying that the doctrine is a true contradiction; what he maintains is that in itself it is both true and noncontradictory: it only appears to us as contradictory. It is a mystery in the sense of a merely apparent contradiction.
C. Critique. Positive mysterianism seems to entail the view that inconceivability does not entail impossibility. For it implies that the conjunction of (1)-(4), though inconceivable (i.e., not thinkable without contradiction) is true and therefore possible. That conceivability does not entail possibility is old hat. But that inconceivability does not entail impossibility is an innovation that should give us pause.
Why can't I be a positive mysterian about round squares? I cannot conceive of something that is both round and not round at the same time, in the same respect, and in the same sense of 'round.' Normally this inconceivability would be taken as definitive proof of the impossibility of round squares. But if positive mysterianism is true, then the inference fails. For what positive mysterianism countenances is the 'possibility' that a proposition which after due reflection and by all normal tests appears contradictory is in reality not contradictory. So it could be that — it is epistemically possible that — round squares are possible and actual. And similarly for an infinity of impossibilia. This seems to be a reductio ad absurdum of positive mysterianism.
Perhaps I will be told that positive mysterianism applies only to the Trinity and the Incarnation. But this restriction of the strategy would be ad hoc and unmotivated. if it works for the Trinity, then it should work across the board. But if it is rigged solely to save the theological doctrines in question, then one's labor is lost. One might as well just dogmatically affirm the two doctrines and not trouble one's head over philosophical justification. Just say: I accept the doctrines and that's that!
Or perhaps I will be told that God is incomprehensible and that the divine incomprehensibility is what warrants the acceptance as true of apparent contradictions. But God cannot be all that incomprehensible if we are able to know that the Father is God,the Son is God, the Father is not the Son, the Son is Jesus, etc. If these propositions are inconsistent when taken together how can unknown and unknowable facts about God remove the contradiction? The contradiction p & ~p cannot be removed by adducing q, r, s, etc. Conceivability can be nullified by the addition of further information; inconceivability, however, cannot be nullified by the addition of further information.
D. Negative Mysterianism. Among the senses of 'mystery' distinguished by Tuggy are the following: "[4] an unintelligible doctrine, the meaning of which can't be grasped….[5] a truth which one should believe even though it seems, even after careful reflection, to be impossible and/or contradictory and thus false." Tuggy then tells us that "We here call those who call the Trinity a mystery in the fourth sense “negative mysterians” and those who call it a mystery in the fifth sense 'positive mysterians'."
E. Critique. I don't think we need to waste many words on negative mysterianism. If the Trinity is an unintelligible doctrine, then there is nothing for me to wrap my mind around: there is no proposition to entertain, and so no proposition to accept or reject. If it is just a mass of verbiage to which no clear sense can be attached, then the question of its truth or falsity cannot even arise.
F. Novak's View. If I understand Novak's view, it is certainly not a form of mysterianism. For he thinks that if we make the right metaphysical distinctions we will be able to see that the doctrine is noncontradictory. But I'll leave it to him to explain himself more thoroughly.
From the Mailbag: More on the Lewis Trilemma
Dear Mr. Vallicella,
I am a theologically-trained youth minister who has studied the Bible 'professionally' for almost 10 years. While I believe that Jesus Christ is in some sense God, I agree with your analysis of Lewis' ridiculous claim. I'd like to add one more dimension.
Lewis' claim presupposes that the Gospels are literal accounts of history. Very few Biblical historians consider that to be the case. Most historians believe Mark to be the oldest Gospel, and the closest to the original oral material. And Mark is a clearly adoptionist text. [hyperlink added by BV]Over time, Jesus is identified closer and closer with God. For a great exposition of, say, Paul's "Christology" which differs from what most people nowadays take to be orthodoxy, see Samuel Sandmel's THE GENIUS OF PAUL, one of the best books of New Testament History I've ever read. The Johannine Tradition which you indirectly mentioned, including the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John and especially Revelations, place Jesus' life, death and resurrection in a cosmic context, making them revelatory of the nature of God. (Notice, there is still a difference between Him being a REVELATION of the nature of God, and identical with God). Those later insights are written into the story of Jesus, and you see that evolution within the gospels, from Mark through Luke and Matthew and finally to John. In each Jesus is identified closer and closer with God.
I've brought this up to people who have tried to bring up Lewis' "Trilemma" and they accuse me of making the Gospels 'liars' rather than Jesus or God. But this is just to misunderstand the nature of myth, and to assume from the outset that God's revelation must be solely historical. It never occurs to them that the story itself, the mythos itself, could be revelatory in nature, that through the ideas and stories that surround the original historical events, God could be revealing Himself. In any event, the very fact that the exact nature of the Gospels themselves is in question shows that Lewis is wrong here. We need not take the Gospels literally to take them seriously. And that opens us up to a whole range of possibilities, including the ones you brought up.
Peace and Blessings
Joshua Orsak
A Different View of the Lewis Trilemma: The Trilemma Vindicated?
Dr. Lukáš Novák e-mails:
I am writing to you personally concerning your last post on your blog, "The Lewis Trilemma." I would like to offer you two things: first, a criticism of your criticism of the "trilemma" (you are right with your terminological quibble, but is there any other word to use instead?), and second, an answer to your question why it isn't possible that Jesus was just "exaggerating" or a "mystic".
I understand that I am quite flooding you with my texts lately, so please feel free not to respond to or even to read this! [Thank you for carefully addressing what I said. It is good so I am publishing it here. Comments are open.]
1. I think that you are mistaken in claiming that "people like Kreeft inadvertently concede [that there is a fourth horn to the trilemma] when they discuss the further possibilities that Jesus never claimed to be divine and that he might have meant his characteristic sayings mystically."
I think that it is clear that to claim that there are just X horns to a trilemma does not mean that it is impossible to suggest or even defend any additional (or seemingly additional) alternative. It is a platitude that to any x-lemma there can be potentially infinitely many other alternatives one can think of. I can think of several others, in this case: Jesus was an extraterrestrial making some research on humans, Jesus was a collective hallucination, Jesus was an incarnation of Quetzalcoatl who could not speak clearly in the Jewish milieu…
When someone is presenting a x-lemma, he must mean something else then: not that these are the only thinkable alternatives, but these are the only thinkable alternatives consistent both in themselves and with certain given data and reasonable assumptions.
[I see your point, but isn't it an extremely reasonable assumption that no man can be identical to God? On the face of it, that is an egregious violation of the logic of identity. I would say that that is a very reasonable assumption despite your attempt, in another thread, to defend a metaphysical framework which renders the Incarnation coherent. So if one grants that it is reasonable to assume that no man could be God, then it is reasonable to consider whether Jesus' words can be given a mystical interpretation or else interpreted as dramatic ways of making a claim that does not violate standard logic. Note also that you are not being quite fair in suggesting that my view opens the floodgate to a potentially infinite number of wild alternatives. It does not, because the mystical interpretation is not unreasonable, has been put forward, and is arguably much more reasonable that that a man is actually God. Its reasonableness is heightened by the extreme unreasonableness of the God-Man identity theory. Tertullian, Kierkegaard, and Shestov, you will recall, embrace the identity precisely because it is absurd. Of course, you will not grant that it is absurd. But I hope you grant that it is reasonable to believe that it is absurd. (I would argue that it would be unreasonable for you not to grant that it is reasonable to view the identity as absurd.) So although I agree that we must consider "the given data and reasonable assumptions" there is room for disagreement as to what these are.]
Continue reading “A Different View of the Lewis Trilemma: The Trilemma Vindicated?”
The Lewis ‘Trilemma’
A commenter on my old blog referred me to this famous passage from C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
The commenter offered this as a specimen of good writing, which it undoubtedly is. But content is king and style is arguably mere 'packaging,' or, if "style is the physiognomy of the mind," (Schopenhauer), then content is the mind itself. So let's consider the content of the passage, the famous Lewis Trilemma: Jesus is either the Son of God, or he is a lunatic, or he is the devil. This trilemma is also sometimes put as a three-way choice among lord, lunatic, or liar.
God and Evil, Mind and Matter
It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both true, then they are logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be consistent. This is so whether or not anyone is in a position to explain how it is possible that they be consistent. If something is the case, then, by the time-honored principle ab esse ad posse valet illatio, it is possible that it be the case, and my inability, or anyone's inability, to explain how it is possible that such-and-such be the case cannot count as a good reason for thinking that it is not the case. So if it is the case that God exists and Evil exists are logically consistent, then this is possibly the case, and a theist's inability to explain how God and evil can coexist is not a good reason for him to abandon his theism — or his belief in the existence of objective evil.
The logical point I have just made is rock-solid. I now apply it to two disparate subject-matters. The one is the well-known problem of evil faced by theists. The other is the equally well-known 'problem of mind' that materialists face, namely, the problem of reconciling the existence of the phenomena of mind with the belief that nothing concrete is immaterial.
The theist is rationally entitled to stand pat in the face of the 'problem of evil' and point to his array of arguments for the existence of God whose cumulative force renders rational his belief that God exists. Of course, he should try to answer the atheist who urges the inconsistency of God exists and Evil exists; but his failure to provide a satisfactory answer is not a reason for him to abandon his theism. A defensible attitude would be: "This is something we theists need to work on."
Atheists and naturalists ought not object to this standing pat since they do the same. What materialist about the mind abandons his materialism in the face of the various arguments (from intentionality, from qualia, from the unity of consciousness, from the psychological relevance of logical laws, etc.) that we anti-materialists marshall? Does the materialist give in? Hell no, he stands pat, pointing to his array of arguments and considerations in favor of materialism, and when you try to budge him with the irreconcilability of intentionality and materialism, or qualia and materialism, or whatever, he replies, "This is something we materialists need to work on."
Cottingham on the Origin of the Religious Impulse
John Cottingham, On the Meaning of Life (Routledge 2003), p. 52:
. . . the whole of the religious impulse arises from the profound sense we have of a gap between how we are and how we would wish to be . . . .
This is not quite right, as it seems to me. The sense of the gap between 'is' and 'ought' is undoubtedly part of the religious impulse, but there is more to it than this. It must be accompanied by the sense that the gaping chasm between the miserable wretches we are and what we know we ought to be cannot be bridged by human effort, whether individual or collective. Otherwise, the religious sensibility would collapse into the ethical sensibility. There is more to religion than ethics. The irreligious can be aware of the discrepancy between what we are and what we should be. The religious are convinced of the need for moral improvement together with a realization of their impotence in bringing it about by their own efforts.
But now, if I may be permitted to argue against myself: "Haven't you maintained more than once that Buddhism is a religion? And isn't Buddhism a religion of self-help? And haven't you quoted the 'Be ye lamps unto yourselves' verse? So something has to give. If Buddhism counts as a religion, then it cannot be essential to a religion that it invoke 'other-power' for moral improvement. And if the latter invocation is essential to religion, then Buddhism is not a religion."
Well, my man, it looks like we are going to have to think about this some more.
"And another thing. You say that there is more to religion than ethics. This implies that ethics is an essential component of religion. But doesn't Kierkegaard speak of the teleological suspension of the ethical? Might it not be that one can have religion without ethics?"
A religion worth having cannot be decoupled from ethics. See Abraham, Isaac, and an Aspect of the Problem of Revelation and Kant on Abraham and Isaac.
How to Tell Whether a Definition of ‘Religion’ is Adequate
Apply the Reppert Criteria: "There are two tests that I use to determine if a definition of religion is adequate. It has to include Buddhism. And it has to exclude the Dallas Cowboys." (See comment thread to this post.)
Waves and Particles
Michael G. Pratt, Queen's College, writes:
Greetings from Kingston, Canada.
I enjoy your blog, and have been reading it regularly for over two years now.
I was reminded of you as I read this story about an unallied, iconoclastic particle physicist whose independence appears to be spawning some important insights into the nature of the universe.
Supposita
We have been discussing the question of the logical consistency of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Dr. Lukas Novak (Charles University, Prague) has offered a solution to the consistency problem that relies crucially on the notion of a suppositum or supposit. If I have understood him, his suggestion is that there is nothing logically problematic in the suggestion that the individual divine nature has three supposits, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
It is worth reminding ourselves that any solution to the consistency problem will depend on one's background logic and general ontology. And the same holds if one decides that the problem is insoluble.
But being none too clear about what a supposit is supposed to be, I asked Novak if he could define the term and how it stands vis-a-vis such terms as 'bare particular' (Gustav Bergmann) and 'thin particular' (David Armstrong). He responded as follows:
Ad 4) X is a suppositum iff X is something endowed with individual nature and suppositality, that is, X is both uninstantiable and incommunicable to a subject (and not a part nor an aggregate).
Ad 5) It is better said that Socrates' humanity inheres in Socrates, who is a suppositum. Suppositum is not a bare or thin particular. If there were bare particulars, they would probably be classified as supposita, but classically supposita are not considered to be "thin" or "bare" – they have their rather "thick" essences or natures de re necessarily. Socrates is identical to Socrates' suppositum. Socrates' humanity inheres in Socrates and is a metaphysical constituent of Socrates. Socrates' humanity plus his suppositality makes up Socrates. Neither Socrates' humanity nor his suppositality are entities in their own right, they are just aspects or metaphysical constituents of Socrates. So I use "inhere" here as _not_ implying any particular kind of distinction between the nature and the suppositum.
Of Pasta and Perichoresis
Dr. Vallicella,
Regarding your recent posts on the trinity and the incarnation, I wanted to float something by you again. I referred you some time ago to a book by James Anderson titled, Paradox in Christian Theology: An Analysis of its Presence, Character, and Epistemic Status . I am writing you again to suggest that its argument be taken into account as you are looking into the questions and problems that arise from thinking about the trinity and the incarnation.
Regards,
Paul Manata (a fellow Italian who cooks his pasta just the way you like it)
Mr. Manata,
Now I have to take the book seriously! The book has been placed on my list. I recently became aware of Anderson via Dale Tuggy. Tuggy classifies his Trinitarian metatheory as positive mysterianism. The pasta allusion is to my The Seven Deadly Sins of Pasta. As for perichoresis, this Wikipedia article appears to be competent.
UPDATE from Mr Manata:
Thanks. I should add that I did write a very lengthy review of Anderson's book (located here). It's about 30 pages long and might serve to whet the appetite of some of your readers. Dr. Anderson was sent a copy of the review and feels it is a good summary of the book.
Contemporary Czech Analytic Scholasticism
Vlastimil Vohánka reports:
I observe you're discussing with my friend Lukas Novak.
Here, in the Czech Republic, one of the most atheistic and secularist countries in the world, one can, paradoxically, observe a sort of revival of Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy, including the inauguration of philosophical organizations and of a Neo-Aristotelian journal, several conferences, and interaction with the mainstream, sometimes with original results, both in the history of philosophy and systematic philosophy. You can take a look at these sites:
Studia Neoaristotelica (a new journal of the societies; partially in Czech and Slovak, in the future to a greater degree in world languages).
The leading figure of the young Czech scholastics, who are my friends, is Prof Stanislav Sousedík (* 1931), a historian of baroque philosophy and systematically a theorist of predication. He has published extensively in Czech and German.
There will be a conference on the synthesis of ontology of scholasticism and analytic philosophy (Prague, Czech Republic, 2010, c. June 28 — June 30, organized by Charles University in Prague – Catholic Theological Faculty).
The themes are:
Aristotelian metaphysics and its plausibility; scholastic development of Aristotelian metaphysics; contemporary metaphysics: being and existence, realism vs. nominalism, structure of particulars, persistence through time, the necessary and the possible, propositions and states of affairs, causes and explanation; God. From the invited speakers, E. J. Lowe, Michael J. Loux, Gyula Klima, David S. Oderberg, Robert Passnau, Edward Feser, and Uwe Meixner have confirmed their attendance. I repent that before the budget of the conference was run out I had not asked you whether you would come.