Bill Vallicella – Page 735 – Maverick Philosopher

Another Look at Anderson’s Trinitarian Mysterianism (Peter Lupu)

(Hauled up from the vasty deeps of the ComBox into the light of day by BV who supplies minor edits and comments in blue.)

I strongly recommend to everyone interested in the subject to read Anderson’s “In defense of mystery: a reply to Dale Tuggy” (2005), Religious Studies, 41, 145-163 in which he replies to Dale Tuggy’s paper “The unfinished business of Trinitarian theorizing”, Religious Studies, 39(2003), 165-183. I was unable to obtain Dale Tuggy’s original paper.

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The Infirmity of Reason Versus the Certitude of Faith

Reason is infirm in that it cannot establish anything definitively. It cannot even prove that doubting is the way to truth, "that it is certain that we ought to be in doubt." (Pyrrho entry, Bayle's Dictionary, tr. Popkin, p. 205) But, pace Pierre Bayle, the merely subjective certitude of faith is no solution either! Recoiling from the labyrinth into which unaided human reason loses itself, Bayle writes:

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Athens and Jerusalem at Loggerheads Over the One Thing Needful

The following is highly relevant to our Trinitarian/Christological discussions:

For Leo Strauss, ". . . Western civilization consists of two elements, or has two roots, which are in radical disagreement with each other." ("Progress or Return?" in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, p. 245) These two elements are the Bible and Greek philosophy, Jerusalem and Athens. The "whole history of the West" is an attempt at harmonizing this radical disagreement. But the various attempts at harmonization were doomed to fail for the following reason:

. . . each of these two roots of the Western world sets forth one thing as the one thing needful, and the one thing needful as proclaimed by the Bible is incompatible, as it is understood by the Bible, with the one thing needful proclaimed by Greek philosophy, as it is understood by Greek philosophy. To put it very simply and therefore somewhat crudely, the one thing needful according to Greek philosophy is the life of autonomous understanding. The one thing needful as spoken by the Bible is the life of obedient love. The harmonizations and synthesizations are possible because Greek philosophy can use obedient love in a subservient function, and the Bible can use philosophy as a handmaid; but what is so used in each case rebels against such use, and therefore the conflict is really a radical one. (Ibid., p. 246, emphasis added.)

I should point out that Strauss goes on to speak of an underlying agreement between the Bible and Greek philosophy, but I'll leave that for a subsequent post. What he says above, though, strikes me as exactly right. First, Western civilization does have the two roots mentioned, a fact apparently missed by the Reverend Jesse Jackson when he sang at Stanford University, "Hey hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go." Did Brother Jesse realize that he was advocating the throwing out of his own bread and butter?

Second, the two roots or elements are in radical, albeit fruitful, tension. Indeed, the vitality of the West, as Strauss remarks elsewhere, derives in good measure from this tension, a tension which, absent in the Islamic world, may help explain the inanition in that world.

ADDENDUM

A reader suggests that Pope Benedict's Regensburg address can be read, in part, as an implicit response to the Straussian thesis of radical disagreement between the Bible and Greek philosophy. Compare this passage:

Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word – a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) – this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

A Review of Jerrold J. Katz, Sense, Reference, and Philosophy

Here. By Kelley L. Ross, whose site contains a great deal of interesting material. But why anyone would use a black background escapes me.

Another Example of a Necessary Being Depending for its Existence on a Necessary Being

The Father and the Son are both necessary beings. And yet the Father 'begets' the Son. Part, though not the whole, of the notion of begetting here must be this: if x begets y, then y depends for its existence on x. If that were not part of the meaning of 'begets'' in this context, I would have no idea what it means. But how can a necessary being depend for its existence on a necessary being? I gave a non-Trinitarian example yesterday, but it was still a theological example. Now I present a non-theological example.

I assume that there are mathematical (as opposed to commonsense) sets. And I assume that numbers are necessary beings. (There are powerful arguments for both assumptions.) Now consider the set S = {1, 3, 5} or any set, finite or infinite, the members of which are all of them necessary beings, whether numbers, propositions, whatever. Both S and its membership are necessary beings. If you are worried about the difference between members and membership, we can avoid that wrinkle by considering the singleton set T = {1}.

T and its sole member are both necessary beings. And yet it seems obvious to me that one depends on the other for its existence: the set is existentially dependent on the member, and not vice versa. The set exists because — though this is not an empirically-causal use of 'because' — the members exist, and not the other way around. Existential dependence is an asymmetrical relation. I suppose you either share this intuition or you don't. In a more general form, the intuition is that collections depend for their existence on the things collected, and not vice versa. This is particularly obvious if the items collected can also exist uncollected. Think of Maynard's stamp collection. The stamps in the collection will continue to exist if Maynard sells them, but then they will no longer form Maynard's collection. The point is less obvious if we consider the set of stamps in Maynard's collection. That set cannot fail to exist as long as all the stamps exist. Still, it seems to me that the set exists because the members exist and not vice versa.

And similarly in the case of T. {1} depends existentially on 1 despite the fact that there is no possible world in which the one exists without the other. If, per impossibile, 1 were not to exist, then {1} would not exist either. But it strikes me as false to say: If, per impossibile, {1} were not to exist, then 1 would not exist either. These counterfactuals could be taken to unpack the sense in which the set depends on the member, but not vice versa.

It therefore is reasonable to hold that two necessary beings can be such that one depends for its existence on the other. And so one cannot object to the notion of the Father 'begetting' the Son by saying that no necessary being can be existentially dependent upon a necessary being. Of course, this is not to say that other objections cannot be raised.

Can A Necessary Being Depend for its Existence on a Necessary Being?

According to the Athansian Creed, the Persons of the Trinity, though each of them uncreated and eternal and necessary are related as follows. The Father is unbegotten. The Son is begotten by the Father, but not made by the Father. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Let us focus on the relation of the Father to the Son. When I tried to explain this to Peter Lupu, he balked at the idea of one necessary being begetting another, claiming that the idea makes no sense. One of his arguments was as follows. If x begets y, then x causes y to begin to exist. But no necessary being begins to exist. So, no necessary being is begotten. A second argument went like this. Begetting is a causal notion. But causes are temporally precedent to their effects. No two necessary beings are related as before to after. Therefore, no necessary being begets another.

I first pointed out in response to Peter that the begetting in question is not the begetting of one animal by another, but a begetting in a different sense, and that whatever else this idea involves, it involves the idea of one necessary being depending for its existence on another. Peter balked at this idea as well. "How can a necessary being depend for its existence on a necessary being?" To soften him up, I looked for a non-Trinitarian case in which a necessary being stands in the asymmetrical relation of existential dependency to a necessary being. Note that I did not dismiss his problem the way a dogmatist might; I admitted that it is a genuine difficulty, one that needs to be solved.

So I said to Peter: Look, you accept the existence of Fregean propositions, items which Frege viewed as the senses of sentences in the indicative mood from which indexical elements (including the tenses of verbs) have been removed and have been replaced with non-indexical elements. You also accept that at least some of these Fregean propositions, if not all, are necessary beings. For example, you accept that the proposition expressed by '7 + 5 = 12' is necessarily true, and you see that this requires that the proposition be necessarily existent. Peter agreed to that.

You also, I said to him, have no objection to the idea of the God of classical theism who exists necessarily if he is so much as possible. He admitted that despite his being an atheist, he has no problem with the idea of a necessarily existent God.

So I said to Peter: Think of the necessarily existent Fregean propositions as divine thoughts. (I note en passant that Frege referred to his propositions as Gedanken, thoughts.) More precisely, think of them as the accusatives or objects of divine acts of thinking, as the noemata of the divine noesis. That is, think of the propositions as existing precisely as the accusatives of divine thinking. Thus, their esse is their concipi by God. They don't exist a se the way God does; they exist in a mind-dependent manner without prejudice to their existing in all possible worlds. To cop a phrase from the doctor angelicus, they have their necessity from another, unlike God, who has his necessity from himself.

So I said to Peter: Well, is it not now clear that we have a non-Trinitarian example in which a necessary being, the proposition expressed by '7 + 5 = 12,' depends for its existence on a necessary being, namely God, and not vice versa? Is this not an example of a relation that is neither merely logical (like entailment) nor empirically-causal? Does this not get you at least part of the way towards an understand of how the Father can be said to beget the Son?

To these three questions, Peter gave a resounding 'No!' looked at his watch and announced that he had to leave right away in order to be able to teach his 5:40 class at the other end of the Valle del Sol.

Dale Tuggy’s Weblog

Thanks to Dale Tuggy for his linkage. Dale is an expert on Trinitarian topics so get thee hence and feast at his table.

Substance and Suppositum: Notes on Fernand Van Steenberghen

Here is another of the scholastic manuals I pulled off my shelf: Fernand van Steenberghen, Ontology (Nauwelaerts Publisher, Brussels, 1970, tr. Moonan). A paragraph from p. 278 supports my thesis that the distinction between primary substance and suppositum is an ad hoc device invented for a theological purpose, a device for which there is no independent philosophical warrant:

4. The problem of subsistence or personality. This problem was inserted into metaphysics for the benefit of theology, as is quite plain, in order to prepare the way for a satisfactory explanation of the theological mystery of the incarnation, the question of knowing how and why the human nature of Jesus Christ does not constitute a human person. But this problem is extraneous to philosophy and must remain so, for from the metaphysical point of view, there is no reason for distinguishing individual nature and individual. It is therefore contrary to any sane method to ask in ontology on what conditions an individual nature might not be a suppositum (or person, where it is an intelligent nature that is in question.)

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Why Run?

If the sky is the daily bread of the eyes (Emerson), then hiking, running, and cycling are the daily bread of the legs and lungs. And what better way to appreciate the sky, and the lambent light of the desert Southwest, than by running over mountain trails at sunrise? Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.

From the Mail Bag: Occasionalism

Todd Wright e-mails:

Great blog, thanks for writing it!

[. . .]

2. Are you familiar with the writings of the muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali and his idea now called "Occasionalism"? It seems to me that the person of faith must give up his/her faith in cause and effect for the supernatural to make sense, and Al-Ghazali seems to be the only person to have ever understood this.

Thanks again for your blog! It's fantastic!

Am I familiar with occasionalism? Indeed I am and have given it quite a bit of thought. I advocate a contemporary version of occasionalism in "Concurrentism or Occasionalism? American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. LXX, no. 3, Summer 1996, pp 339-359. This post will give the reader some idea of what occasionalism is.

Does the believer have to give up his faith in cause and effect for the supernatural to make sense? No, at the very most he would have to abandon certain views of causation. That there is causation in the natural world is undeniable, a 'Moorean fact,' a datum. Anyone who denies this is a lunatic who belongs in the same 'bin' with eliminativists in the philosophy of mind. For if one were to deny causation, then one would in effect be denying that there is any difference between causal and noncausal event sequences. But surely there is such a difference as all will admit including al-Ghazali and Malebranche. I flip a switch (e1) and the light goes on (e2). At the same time the phone rings (e3). E1-e2 is a causal event sequence. E1-e3 is not. Philosophers are not in the business of denying such data as these. Philosophical questions first arise when we ask what it is for one event to cause another. That there is causation is a pre-philosophical datum. What causes what is a question for experience and science. What causation is is a philosophical question.

Some theories of causation are inconsistent with theism, but not all are. For example, if it is maintained that all causation is event-causation and that there cannot be be agent-causation, then classical theism is ruled out. And I should also point out that one can be a theist without holding an occasionalist theory of causation. For example, once could be a concurrentist. But this is not the place to go into these details.

Oscar the Cat, Harbinger of Death

If this dude jumps into your bed, you know you're a goner. A strange but touching tail tale from The New England Journal of Medicine.

The 26.2 Club

I affixed my 26.2 decal to the rear window of my Jeep Liberty this morning. I've earned and have the right to advertise my entry into an elite club. Sunday's Lost Dutchman was my second attempt but my first success. The first attempt was Boston 1979. My training had been overzealous and my knees were giving me serious trouble; fearing permanent injury I dropped out at the top of Heartbreak Hill, 21.3 miles into it, with Boston a mere five miles downhill. (It was my first road race, I confess to running as a tag-along or a 'bandit' in today's parlance, I was young, I didn't know any better. Mea maxima culpa.)

How elite a club? Joe Henderson, who has been marathoning and writing about it since the late '60s, says it well:

If you really want to know where you stand, don't count how many runners finish ahead of you. Instead, turn around and look behind you. Look especially at the people you can't see: those who trained for a marathon and didn't reach the starting line . . . who race but not at this distance . . . who run but never race . . . who used to run but don't any more . . . who never ran and never will. [. . .] Being a marathoner make you one in a thousand Americans. Pat yourself on the back for doing something that 99.9 per cent of your countrymen or women couldn't or wouldn't do.

Don't call yourself slow, because you are not. You are fast enough to beat everyone who isn't in the race. (Marathon Training, 2nd ed. 2004, p. 10)

Substance and Suppositum: Notes on Klubertanz

This recent excursion into the philosophy of The School is proving to be quite fascinating, and I thank Dr. Novak et al. for their stimulation. I should say that I have read thousands upon thousands of pages of scholastic material, from Aquinas to Zubiri, from Maritain to Marechal, over the past 40 years, so it is not as if I am a complete stranger to it; I do confess, however, to finding some of it mumbo-jumbo and lacking in the sort of analytic rigor that we broadly analytic types prize. To get a better handle on the notion of suppositum ('supposit' in English), this morning I pulled down from the shelf a number of scholastic manuals.

Let us first turn to George P. Klubertanz, S. J., Introduction to the Philosophy of Being, 2nd ed. (Meredith Publ., 1963). Back in the day, when Catholic colleges were Catholic as opposed to catholic, this textbook was inflicted upon many a bored undergraduate in required courses. In those days, philosophy was taught systematically; this was before and during Vatican II, before and while the rot set in (if rot it was) and before chaos descended, the kind of chaos that issued in the Vagina Monologues being presented at the University of Notre Dame. (To cop a riff from Dennis Prager, there is no coward like an academic coward, and the abdication of authority on the part of university officials from the 60s on is something to marvel at.)

But I digress. According to Klubertanz, "The first substance is the singular substance which exists. When we want to designate the being precisely as an existing, substantial, complete individual, we call it a 'supposit.'" (251) He goes on to say that a supposit is a "complete individual" and therefore not something common to many in the manner of a secondary substance. Nor is a supposit an integral part, or an essential part, of a substance. Klubertanz gives the example of the body of a living thing as an example of an essential part of it — presumably because a living thing cannot exist without a body — and the example of a hand as an example of an "integral part." Klubertanz gives no rigorous definition of the latter phrase, but I surmise that an integral part is a part that is not essential to the whole of which it is a part. Thus a primary substance such as a particular man can exist without a hand.

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