Author: Bill Vallicella

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Wall (of Sound)

There is a lot of talk of walls these days. I need a break. Here are some of my favorite Phil Spector productions.  It wouldn't have been the 'sixties without him. I avert my eyes from his later misadventures and remember him for his contributions to the Boomer soundtrack.

Crystals, Uptown, 1962.

Crystals, He's a Rebel

Ronettes, Be My Baby

Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron

Curtis Lee, Pretty Little Angel Eyes.

Great dance video. Curtis Edwin Lee, one-hit wonder, hailed from Yuma, Arizona.  He died at 75 years of age on 8 January 2015.  Obituary here. His signature number became a hit in 1961, reaching the #7 slot on the Billboard Hot 100. When I discovered that the record was produced by the legendary Phil Spector, I understood why it is so good.  After the limelight, Lee returned to Yuma for a normal life. This tune goes out to wifey, with love.  When I first espied those angel eyes back in '82, I had the thought, "Here she is, man, the one for you. Go for it!" And I did, and its been very good indeed.

Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1960.

Crystals, Then He Kissed Me

Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. With a tribute to Marilyn M.

Paris Sisters, I Love How You Love Me, 1961.

Ronettes, Walkin' in the Rain

Possible Worlds Again: Thomist versus ‘Analyst’

Fr. Matthew Kirby by e-mail:

By the way, in thinking about my comments on the [your] SEP entry I realised that I had used the term "possible worlds" in an idiosyncratic way, one non-standard within the analytical school, applying a Thomist twist to it. Unlike standard usage, I do not include a hypothetical transcendent First Cause as an element within any "possible world", but instead define possible worlds in that context as potential concrete totalities that may result from God's choice with respect to creation. Thus God Himself is not an element of any possible world (though His supernatural actions ad extra can be) on this construal, as possible worlds are each a sum of finitised, dependent, created being/s considered across their development.

 

What Fr. Kirby says certainly make sense.  Talk of God existing in every possible world comes naturally to analytical theists who are concerned to affirm the divine necessity. Such talk, however, is bound to sound strange to those of a traditional bent who quite naturally think of God as the transcendent creator of the world, a creator who could have created some other world or no world at all, and its therefore 'outside of' every possible world.

 

Herewith, some comments in clarification.

 

Let's start with the obvious point that 'world' supports a multitude of meanings. (I once cataloged a dozen or so distinct uses of the term.)  If we use 'world' to refer to the totality of what exists, then, if God exists, he is in the world: he is a member of that all-inclusive totality of entities.  If, on the other hand, we use 'world' to refer to the totality of creatures, where a creature is anything at all that is created by God, then God is not in the world.  God, after all, does not create himself: he is the uncreated creator of everything distinct from himself.  So God does not count as a creature.

 

So far, then, two senses of 'world.' World as totality of entities and world as totality of creatures. God is in the first totality, but not in the second. But a Thomistic theist such as Fr. Kirby might balk at my placing God in the totality of entities.  If God exists or is, however, then God is an entity.  (I define an entity as anything that is or exists.)  To put it in Latin, even if God is esse, he is nevertheless ens, something that is.  God is at once both Being (esse) and ens (being).  Note my careful distinction between the majuscule and miniscule  'B/b.'  In fact, if God is ipsum esse subsistens, self-subsistent Being, then he can't be other than every being; he must be both Being and being.  God is Being in its prime instance, which is to say: God is both esse and ens, Being and being. More on this later, since Fr. Kirby seems to disagree.

 

Unless one is treading the via negativa with Dionysius the Areopagite and Co., one must admit that God is. 

 

I hasten to add that, while God is both esse and ens, and therefore is, he is not an ens among entia, a being among beings. So I grant that God fits somewhat uneasily within the totality of entities. For while he is an entity, he is the one being that is also identical to Being. (How is this possible? Well, that is the problem  or perhaps mystery of divine simplicity.) Still, God is.

 

I have distinguished two senses of 'world.'  World as totality of entities and world as totality of creatures. But there is a third sense: world as a maximal state of affairs.  "The world is all that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things." (These are the first two propositions of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)  This is pretty close to the main (not the only) analytic understanding of 'world' in talk of possible worlds.

 

Here, then, is one  'analytic' approach. The actual world is the total way things are. A merely possible world is a total way things could have been or could be. The actual world is the total way things are, but not the things that are that way. Thus the actual world is not the same as the universe, whether physical or physical plus any nonphysical items there  are.  Why not? 

 

The plausible line to take is abstractist. Worlds are maximal (Fregean) propositions and thus abstract entities or maximal (abstract) states of affairs, as on A. Plantinga's scheme in The Nature of Necessity.  They are not maximal mereological sums of concreta, pace that mad dog extreme modal realist, David Lewis, may his atheist bones rest in peace.  If worlds are propositions, then actuality is truth. That is one interesting consequence. Another is that worlds are abstract objects which implies that the actual world must not be confused either with the physical universe (the space-time-matter system) or with that plus whatever nonphysical concreta (minds) that there might be. And if worlds are abstract objects then they are necessary beings.  So every possible world exists in every possible world.

Does Everyone Have a Religion? Even Atheists?

Andrew Sullivan opines,

Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. [. . .]

By religion, I mean something quite specific: a practice not a theory; a way of life that gives meaning, a meaning that cannot really be defended without recourse to some transcendent value, undying “Truth” or God (or gods).

Which is to say, even today’s atheists are expressing an attenuated form of religion.

Sully is not being specific enough. Consider Communist ideology. It is a practice, not just a theory. It is a way of life that gives meaning. It appeals to values that transcend the current situation such as the value of a classless society free of exploitation and alienation, a society with no need of the illusory consolations of religion, a society in which that opiate will not be needed because each will realize himself to the fullest in the here and now. Pie here below will obviate the hankering for pie in the sky. It is easy to see how so many millions in the 20th century could be recruited to the Communist cause. 

On Sully's definition, godless communism is a religion that rejects religion, which is to say: it is not a religion on any appropriate understanding of that term. Sully's definition is not specific enough, sullied as it is by being too broad.

Sullivan ought to say something sensible. I suggest the following. Human beings have very strong worldview needs.  Doxastic security needs, I call them. It is impossible not to have some worldview or other, tacit or explicit, unexamined or examined, uncritically imbibed from one's social environment or worked out for oneself. No human being lives, or can live, adoxastos, without beliefs, and in particular without action-guiding beliefs, beliefs that direct, as well as overarching beliefs that orient us in the scheme of things. Not even the Pyrrhonian can pull it off.

Now, in the genus worldview, distinguish two species: religious and non-religious.  Communism, being militantly atheistic and anti-religious, is a non-religious worldview. By contrast, Catholicism is a religious worldview.

At this point you ought to ask me for the specific difference.  If rationality is what distinguishes human from non-human animals,  what property or set of properties distinguishes religious from non-religious worldviews?  My answer in The Essence of Religion.

No good purpose is served by calling atheism a religion. It is a cheap piece of journalistic sloppiness too often maintained, too infrequently reflected upon.

Love Untranslated

Love untranslated into action remains an emotion and in many cases a mere self-indulgence. One enjoys the warm feeling of benevolence and risks succumbing to the illusion that it suffices.  Benevolent sentiments are no doubt better than malevolent ones, but an affectless helping of a neighbor who needs help, if that is possible, is better than cultivating warm feelings toward him without lifting a finger.  We ought to be detached not only from the outcome of the deed, but also detached from its emotional concomitants.

I occurs to me that what I just wrote has a Kantian flavor: one acts from duty, not inclination. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) held that the moral worth of an action accrues from its being done from duty, whether or not inclination is along for the ride. It is a mistake to read him as saying that only acts done from duty alone, with no admixture of inclination, have moral worth.  Doing from duty what one is disinclined to do has no more moral worth than doing from duty what one is inclined to do.

“And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us” (John 1:14)

Let us meditate this Christmas morning on the sheer audacity of the idea that God would not only enter this world of time and misery, but come into it in the most humble manner possible . . . . Read the rest here.

It is a 'sermon' you will not likely hear in any Catholic Church.  What you will hear in the decadent Catholic churches of the present day is all manner of diversionary pablum as if designed to keep one from confronting the Christian narrative in its full strength. The few exceptions will prove the rule.

 

A Christian Koan

Man is godlike and therefore proud.  He becomes even more godlike when he humbles himself.

The central thought of Christianity, true or not, is one so repellent to the natural human pride of life that one ought at least to entertain the unlikelihood of its having a merely human origin.  The thought is that God humbled himself to the point of entering the world in the miserably helpless and indigent way we in fact do, inter faeces et urinam, and to the point of leaving it in the most horrendous, shameful, and excruciating way the brutal Romans could devise, and from a most undistinguished spot, a hill in an obscure desert outpost of their empire.

A Weird ‘Fregean’ Ontological Argument

London Ed asks:

Which step of the argument below do you disagree with?

a) If a sentence containing a proper name is meaningful, then the proper name is meaningful, i.e. it designates.

This is a standard assumption about compositionality.

BV: I have a  problem right here. I accept the compositionality of meaning. But a proper name can have meaning without designating anything.  As I see it, meaning splits into sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung).  And I don't see any need to distinguish between reference and designation. So there can be a proper name that has meaning (sense) without designating anything. 'Vulcan' (the planet) is an example.   Here is another:

'Kepler died in misery.'  The sentence is meaningful; hence, by compositionality, 'Kepler' is meaningful.  Now assume that presentism is true and that only present items exist. Then Kepler does not exist.  (Of course he does not exist now; the presentist implication is that he does not exist at all.)  If Kepler does not exist at all, then he cannot now be referred to or designated.  But when I now assertively utter 'Kepler died in misery,' I assert a proposition that is true now and is therefore meaningful now. It follows that the meaning of 'Kepler' is not exhausted by its designatum.  'Kepler' is not a mere Millian tag.  There may be Millian tags, but ordinary proper names are not such. 

Now London Ed is, I think, a presentist. If so, he ought to be open to the above argument.

b) If the proper name does not designate, the sentence containing it is not meaningful (contraposition).

BV: That is the case only if the meaning of a name = its referent, the thing designated.  That cannot be. Consider 'Vulcan does not exist.' It's true, hence meaningful. So 'Vulcan' has a meaning, by compositionality. If so, and if meaning = referent, then 'Vulcan' does not have meaning. Contradiction. Ergo, a proper name can have meaning without designating anything.  Negative existentials are a real problem for Millian theories of names.

c) If ‘God does not exist’ is true, then ‘God’ does not designate.

BV: No doubt.

d) If ‘God does not exist’ is true, then ‘God does not exist’ is meaningless.

BV: That is the case only on the assumption that the meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference, i.e., that the meaning of a name just is its designatum.  The assumption is false.

e) ‘God does not exist’ is not meaningless. (it is something debated over many centuries, no firm conclusion so far)

BV: That's right!

f) ‘God does not exist’ is meaningful, but not true (d and e above)

BV: That follows, but (d) is false.

g) ‘God does exist’ is true (excluded middle)

 BV: Valid move, but again (d) is false. So argument unsound.

h) Therefore God exists (disquotation)

BV: Valid inference, but again unsound.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tunes of the Season

BoulevardierMerry Christmas everybody.  Pour yourself a drink, and enjoy.  Me, I'm nursing a Boulevardier.  It's a Negroni with cojones: swap out the gin for bourbon.  One ounce bourbon, one ounce sweet vermouth, one ounce Campari, straight up or on the rocks, with a twist of orange.  A serious libation.  It'll melt a snowflake for sure. The vermouth rosso contests the harshness of the bourbon, but then the Campari joins the fight on the side of the bourbon. 

Or you  can think of it as a Manhattan wherein the Campari substitutes for the angostura bitters.  That there are people who don't like Campari shows that there is no hope for humanity.

Cheech and Chong, Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Canned Heat, Christmas Boogie

Leon Redbone and Dr. John, Frosty the Snowman
Beach Boys, Little St. Nick.  A rarely heard alternate version.

Ronettes, Sleigh Ride
Elvis Presley, Blue Christmas.  This one goes out to Barack and Michelle as their legacy continues to wither away.

Jeff Dunham,  Jingle Bombs by Achmed the Terrorist.  TRIGGER WARNING! Not for the p.c.-whipped.

Porky Pig, Blue Christmas

Captain Beefheart, There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evening Stage

Charles Brown, Please Come Home for Christmas

Wanda Jackson and the Continentals, Merry Christmas Baby
Chuck Berry, Run Rudolph Run

Eric Clapton, Cryin' Christmas Tears
Judy Collins, Silver Bells

Ry Cooder, Christmas in Southgate
Bob Dylan, Must Be Santa

Is this the same guy who sang Desolation Row back in '65? 

Bob Dylan, Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache. Not Christmasy, but a good tune.  Remember Bob Luman? His version. Luman's signature number.

Who could possibly follow Dylan's growl except

Tom Waits, Silent Night.  Give it a chance. 

A surprising number of Christmas songs were written by Jews.  

The Spam Corral is Acting Up Again

Esteemed commenters Fr. Kirby and Mr. Bagwill got sent to the spam corral for no good reason. Or rather their comments did. I apologize for that. Their comments are now visible. I shall have to descend into Comment Limbo on a daily basis now to see who is hanging out in those murky precincts.

Rationalistic Fideism, Mysterianism, Misology, and Divine Simplicity

I want to thank the perspicacious Lukas Novak for helping me in my endless quest to know myself.  Professor Novak comments:

Is Bill a Gnostic?

Well, I am not sure about the precise meaning of this epithet, but to me Bill appears as a strange amalgam of a rationalist and a fideist. The rationalist comes first and sets up certain rather strict requirements on the contents of faith — so that everything that does not fit in comes out as "incoherent" or "incomprehensible". Then, entre fideist and says that we nevertheless are still justified in believing these contents because we can justifiably assume that our intellect is so incompetent.

To me, this puts too much confidence in our reason in the first stage and too little in the last. It seems to me that Bill is always too eager to conclude that there is an impasse, an insoluble problem, a contradiction etc. in a given particular case. In this, he seems to be putting way too much confidence in his reasonings. The overall, habitual outcome of this is, however, the exact opposite: a significantly diminished confidence in the competence of our intellect as such. (This reminds me of the mechanism of how "misology" is generated, in Plato's Phaedo.)

Lukas Novak Prague white shirtWe were discussing ecclesiology and the Incarnation, but at the moment I am revising my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  Divine Simplicity entry, so I want to shift over to this topic since similar structural patterns emerge.  What follows is a section I will add to the entry, one on a recent paper by Eleonore Stump of St. Louis University. Professor Stump is a distinguished Aquinas scholar and defender of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS).

4.4 Stump's Quantum Metaphysics

Like Dolezal, Eleonore Stump thinks of God as self-subsistent Being (esse). If God is absolutely simple, and not just simple in the uncontroversial sense of lacking material parts, then God must be self-subsistent Being. God is at once both Being and something that is. He has to be both. If he were Being (esse) but not a being (id quod est), he could not enter into causal relations. He could not do anything such as create the world, intervene in its operations, or interact with human persons. Such a God would be "religiously pernicious." (Stump 2016, 199) Indeed, if God were Being but not a being, then one could not sensibly maintain that God exists. For if Being is other than every being, then Being is not. (It is instructive to note that Martin Heidegger, the famous critic of onto-theology, who holds to the "ontological difference" of Being (Sein) from every being (Seiendes) ends up assimilating Being to Nothing (Nichts).) On the other hand, if God were a being among beings who merely has Being but is not (identically) Being, then he would not be absolutely transcendent, worthy of worship, or ineffable. Such a God would be "comfortingly familiar" but "discomfiting anthropomorphic." (Miller 1996, 3)

The problem, of course, is to explain how God can be both Being and something that is. This is unintelligible to the discursive intellect. Either Being is other than beings or it is not. If Being is other than beings, then Being cannot be. If Being just is beings taken collectively, then God is a being among beings and not the absolute reality. To the discursive intellect the notion of self-subsistent Being is contradictory. One response to the contradiction is simply to deny divine simplicity. That is a reasonable response, no doubt. But might it not also be reasonable to admit that there are things that human reason cannot understand, and that one of these things is the divine nature? "Human reason can see that human reason cannot comprehend the quid est of God." (Stump 2016, 205) As I read Stump, she, like Dolezal, makes a mysterian move, and she, like Dolezal (2011, 210, fn 55), invokes wave-particle duality. We cannot understand how light can be both a wave phenomenon and also particulate in nature, and yet it is both:

What kind of thing is it which has to be understood both as a wave and as a particle? We do not know. That is, we do not know the quid est of light. [. . .] Analogously, we can ask: What kind of thing is it which can be both esse and id quod est? We do not know. The idea of simplicity is that at the ultimate metaphysical foundation of reality is something that has to be understood as esse —but also as id quo est. We do not know what this kind of thing is either. (Stump 2016, 202)

Stump, E., 2016, “Simplicity and Aquinas's Quantum Metaphysics” in Gerhard Krieger, ed. Die Metaphysik des Aristoteles im Mittelalter: Rezeption und Transformation, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 191–210.

Dolezal, J. E., 2011, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness, Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications.

Miller, B., 1996, A Most Unlikely God, Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press.

Now for my apologia.

Novak's characterization of me as both a rationalist and a fideist is basically accurate.  And yes, the rationalist comes first with exacting requirements. Let me try to illustrate this with DDS.  God is the absolute reality, a stupendously rich reality who transcends creatures not only in his properties, but also in his mode of property-possession, mode of existence, mode of necessity, and mode of uniqueness. God is uniquely unique. Such a being cannot be a being among beings. He is uniquely unique in that he alone is self-subsistent Being. Deus est ipsum esse subsistens.

One can reason cogently to this conclusion. Unfortunately, the conclusion is apparently self-contradictory.  The verbal formula does not express a proposition that the discursive intellect can 'process' or 'compute.' It is unintelligible to said intellect.  For the proposition the formula expresses appears to be self-contradictory. Stump agrees as do the opponents of DDS.

Now there are three ways to proceed. 

1) We can conclude, as many distinguished theists do, that the apparent contradictions are real and that God is not absolutely simple, that DDS is a 'mistake.'  See Hasker, William, 2016, “Is Divine Simplicity a Mistake?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 699-725.  For Hasker, DDS involves category mistakes, logical failures, and a dehumanization of God.  (One mistake Hasker himself makes is to think that a defender of DDS can only tread the via negativa and must end up embracing radical agnosticism about the nature of God. Stump has some interesting things to say in rebuttal of this notion. See Stump 2016, 195-198.)

In short: God is not reasonably believed to be simple.

2) A second way is the mysterian way.  The conjunction of God is esse and God is id quod est is an apparent contradiction.  But it is not a real contradiction. Characteristic of the mysterian of my stripe is the further claim that the structure of the discursive intellect makes it impossible for us to see that the contradiction is merely apparent.

In short: God is reasonably believed to be simple despite the ineliminable apparent contradictions that this entails because, as Stump puts it, "Human reason can see that human reason cannot comprehend the quid est of God." (Stump 2016, 205) To put the point more generally, it is reasonable to confess the infirmity of human reason with respect to certain questions, and unreasonable to place an uncritical faith in its power and reach.  This is especially unreasonable for those who accept the Fall of man and the noetic consequences of sin.

Besides, if God is not a being among beings, then one might expect the discursive intellect to entangle itself in contradictions when it tries to think the Absolute Reality.  God, as Being itself, cannot be subsumed under any extant category of beings. 

3) A third way is by maintaining that the apparent contradictions can be shown to be merely apparent by the resources of the discursive intellect. In short: God is reasonably believed to be simple, and all considerations to the contrary can be shown to rest on errors and failures to make certain distinction.

What is my argument against (3)? Simply that the attempts to defuse the contradictions fail, and not just by my lights.  Almost all philosophers, theists and atheists alike, judge the notion of a simple God to be contradictory.

What is my argument against (1)? Essentially that those who take this line do not appreciate the radical transcendence of God. This point has been argued most forcefully by Barry Miller (1996).  Theists who reject divine simplicity end up with an anthropomorphic view of God.

As for Novak's charge of misology or hatred of reason and argument, I plead innocent. One who appreciates the limits of reason, and indeed the infirmity of reason as we find it in ourselves here below, cannot be fairly accused of misology. Otherwise, Kant would be a misologist.  I will turn the table on my friend by humbly suggesting that his doxastic security needs sometimes get the better of him causing him to affirm as objectively certain what is not at all objectively certain, but certain only to him.  For example he thinks it is epistemically certain that there are substances. I disagree.

But I want to confess to one charge. Lukas writes, "It seems to me that Bill is always too eager to conclude that there is an impasse, an insoluble problem, a contradiction, etc."  It may be that I am too zealous in my hunt for aporiai.  But I am deeply impressed by the deep, protracted, and indeed interminable disagreement of philosophers through the ages over every substantive question.  My working hypothesis for the metaphilosophy book I am trying to finish is that the core problems of philosophy are most of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but all of them insoluble by us.  And then I try to figure out what philosophy can and should be if that is the case, whether it should end in mystical silence — that is where Aquinas ended up! — or fuel a Pyrrhonian re-insertion into the quotidian and a living of life adoxastos, or give way to religious faith, or something else.

On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion

Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of P. B., vol. 12, part 2, p. 34, #68:

A public place is an unnatural environment in which to place oneself mentally or physically in the attitude of true prayer.  It is far too intimate, emotional, and personal to be satisfactorily tried anywhere except in solitude.  What passes for prayer in temples, churches, and synagogues is therefore a compromise dictated by the physical necessity of an institution.  It may be quite good but too often alas! it is only the dressed-up double of true prayer.

Where would we be without institutions?  We need them, but only up to a point.  We are what we are because of the institutions in which we grew up, and natural piety dictates that we be appropriately grateful.  But their negative aspects cannot be ignored and all further personal development requires those who can, to go it alone.

We need society and its institutions to socialize us, to raise us from the level of the animal to that of the human.  But this human is all-too-human, and to take the next step we must tread the solitary path.  Better to be a social animal than a mere animal, but better than both is to become an individual, as I am sure Kierkegaard would agree.  To achieve true individuality  is one of the main tasks of human life.  Spiritual individuation is indeed a task, not a given. In pursuit of this task institutions are often more hindrance than help.

For some, churches and related institutions will always be necessary to provide guidance, discipline, and community.  But for others they will prove stifling and second-best, a transitional phase in their development.

For any church to claim that outside it there is no salvation — extra ecclesiam salus non est — is intolerable dogmatism, and indeed a form of idolatry in which something finite, a human institution contingent both in its existence and configuration, is elevated to the status of the Absolute.

But now, having given voice to the opinion to which I strongly incline, I ought to consider, if only briefly, the other side of the question.

What if there is a church with a divine charter, one founded by God himself in the person of Christ? If there is such a church, then my charges of intolerable dogmatism and idolatry collapse. Such a church would not be just a help to salvation but a means  necessary thereto. Such a church, with respect to soteriological essentials, would teach with true, because divine, authority.

But is there such a divinely instituted and guided church? To believe this one would first have to accept the Incarnation.  And therein lies the stumbling block.

If the Incarnation is actual, then it is possible whether or not we can explain or understand how it is possible. Esse ad posse valet illatio.  Necessarily, what is, is really possible, whether or not conceivable by us. It is not for our paltry minds to dictate what is actual and what is possible. On the other hand, if the best and the brightest of our admittedly wretched kind cannot see how a state of affairs is possible, then that is evidence that it is not possible.  If, after protracted and sincere effort motivated by a love of truth, the Incarnation keeps coming before the mind as contradictory, and the attempts at defusing the apparent contradiction as so much fancy footwork, then here we have (admittedly non-demonstrative) evidence that the Incarnation really is impossible. 

And then there is the ethical matter of intellectual integrity. (Beliefs and not only actions are subject to ethical evaluation.) One can easily feel that there is something morally shabby about believing what is favorable to one when what one is believing is hard to square with elementary canons of logic.

This then is the predicament of someone with one foot in Athens and the other in Jerusalem.  The autonomy of reason demands insight lest it affirm beyond what it is justified in affirming. At the same time, reason in us realizes its infirmity and helplessness in the face of the great questions that bear upon our ultimate fate and felicity; reason in us is therefore inclined in its misery to embrace the heteronomy of faith.

How are we to resolve this problem?  Are to accept a revelation that our finite intellects cannot validate? Or are we to stand fast on the autonomy of finite reason and refuse to accept what we cannot, by our own lights, validate? (By 'validate' I do not mean 'show to be true' but only 'show to be rationally acceptable.')

My answer, interim and tentative, is this.  The ultimate resolution involves the will, not the intellect. One decides to accept the Incarnation or one decides not to accept it.  That is to say: the final step must be taken by the will, freely; which is not to say that the intellect is not involved up to the final step. The decision is free, but not 'arbitrary' in the sense of thoughtless or perfunctory.  No proof is possible, which should not be surprising since we are in the precincts of faith not knowledge.  One who accepts as true only what he can know or come to know has simply rejected faith as a mode of access to truth.

"But if the doctrine is apparently contradictory and an offense to discursive reason, then one's decision in favor of the Incarnation is irrational." 

I think this objection can be met. What is apparently contradictory may or may not be really contradictory, and it is not unreasonable to think that there are truths, non-contradictory in themselves, that must appear contradictory to us in our present state.  This is a form of mysterianism, but it is a reasoned mysterianism.  Human reason can come to understand that human reason cannot validate all that it accepts as true.