Category: Christian Doctrine

Christianity and Intelligibility: A Response to Flood

Anthony Flood writes,

Beneath a post on his blog, Bill Vallicella commented on a matter of common interest. I stress that Bill wrote a comment, not a paper for a peer-reviewed journal, and that’s all I’m doing here. I offer the following only as a further, not a last word.

Last Sunday, in responding to one Joe Odegaard, Bill wrote:

While I agree that Christianity makes sense of the world and in particular of the scientific enterprise, and while I myself have argued against materialism/physicalism/naturalism and in favor of Divine Mind as source of the world’s intelligibility, it must be borne in mind that Xianity [Christianity] is a very specific religion with very specific tenets such as Incarnation and Trinity. Why should anyone think that such apparently unintelligible doctrines are necessary for the intelligibility of the natural world? (Emphasis added.—A. G. F.)

The short answer is that appearances can be untrustworthy. Unless it can be shown that those tenets are really, not just apparently, unintelligible, the implicit objection (in the form of a rhetorical question) has no force.

BV: Not so, and for two reasons.  Trinity and Incarnation may or may not be intelligible doctrines.  Either way, the question remains why an account of the intrinsic intelligibility of nature in terms of Divine Mind requires them.  That is the question I am posing to Joe, and indirectly to C. S. Lewis, and it is not rhetorical. I am genuinely asking it. But I have found that some people do not understand what a rhetorical question is. In fact, one night I caught the astute Mark Levin of Life, Liberty, and Levin (Fox News) misusing the phrase. So permit me a brief digression. 

A rhetorical question is a grammatically interrogative form of words that is not logically interrogative but either logically indicative or logically imperative.  Such a form of words is used to issue a command or to make a statement, not to ask a question.   For example, Daddy says to teenage girl, "Do you have to talk on the phone while driving?"  Clearly, the old man is not asking a question despite the grammatically interrogative formulation.  He is issuing a command, or perhaps a recommendation, in a polite way. A second example is from Hillary Clinton. "Do you really think Donald Trump has the temperament to be commander-in-chief?" When she said that in a speech, she was not asking whether Trump has the requisite temperament, but stating or asserting that he does not. And this despite her use of the grammatical interrogative.

Here is an interesting case. Someone sincerely asks, "Does God exist?" and receives the reply, "Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the Moon?" (Ed Abbey).  The first question is genuine; the second is rhetorical.  Another curious case: an uniformed person sincerely asks a genuine question, "Is Mayorkas lying about border security?" and receives in response a rhetorical question that expresses either a tautology, "Is a cat a cat?" or an analytic truth, "Is the Pope Catholic?" End of digression.

And so my question is not rhetorical. I am not asserting anything, I am genuinely asking why Joe or C. S. Lewis, to whom Joe links, or anyone thinks that an account of the intelligibility of nature (including its uniformity, regularity, and predictability) in terms of Divine Mind must also include such specifically Christian doctrines as Trinity and Incarnation.  By the intelligibility of nature I mean its intrinsic understandability by minds such as ours.  The natural world is intrinsically such as to be understandable by us. As opposed to what? As opposed to deriving its intelligibility from us via our conceptual schemes. If the latter derivation were the case, then the intelligibility would not be intrinsic but relational: relative to us and our conceptual frameworks.  (I note en passant that there are other ways of accounting for intelligibility without God. The late Daniel Dennett would probably say that it 'evolves.' I'll come back to Dennett later.)

After all, a Jew who rejects Trinity and Incarnation could  hold that nature is intrinsically intelligible only if it is a divine creation. And a Muslim could as well.  And our friend Dale Tuggy too! He is a  unitarian Christian.

So again: Why does an account of the intrinsic intelligibility of the natural world in terms of Divine Creative Mind require the specific doctrines of normative Christianity?  That and that alone is the question I am raising in my response to Joe and C. S. Lewis. 

Tony may have a defensible answer to my question. Or he may not. We can discuss it if he likes. But all of this is irrelevant to the initial post and the comment thread it generated.  The question I raised in the initial post was whether the knowledge involved when a person knows that the Sun has risen is exactly the same sort of knowledge involved  when a person knows — if he does know — that Christianity is true.

The Sun Also Rises: On Solar and Christian Belief

A reader sends us to an article that begins like this:

The need for a return to God is clearly evident in today’s deranged and dysfunctional world. It is a need, exceeding all others, that must be fulfilled in order to keep enemies of God from interfering with human life. 

And then a little later we get an unsourced quotation from C. S. Lewis replete with a non-functioning hyperlink:

C.S. Lewis: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” This points directly to the essence of the faith in Christianity and to its need in life. A short explanation, found here, includes the observation: “At first glance, this quote may appear simple, but upon closer examination, its deep meaning and profound importance become evident. Essentially, Lewis suggests that his faith in Christianity is not solely based on tangible evidence but also on the transformative impact it has on his perception of the world.” [My emphasis.]

Since the quotation is unsourced, I cannot check whether Lewis said what he is quoted as saying. If he did, it is a silly thing to say. Let me explain.

This morning I observed a beautiful sunrise. And so I believe that the Sun rose this morning. I also believe that the Sun is the source of the natural light we enjoy on Earth.  But it is false, and indeed silly, to say that one who believes in Christianity believes in the very same way.  The difference is obvious. I cannot help but believe that the Sun rose this morning: I saw it with my own two eyes!  Seeing is believing in a case like this.* That the Sun rose is given, if not indubitably, then for all practical purposes.** There is no need for a leap of faith beyond the given.  The will does not come into it. In no way do I decide to believe that the Sun has risen. Examples like this one refute a universal doxastic voluntarism.

But if you believe that God became man in Jesus of Nazareth, if you believe that the God-Man is fully divine and fully human, that he is one person in two natures, then you believe beyond the sensorily given.  (You also arguably believe beyond what is intelligible to the discursive intellect.) You cannot see God the way you see the Sun. To 'see' God in Jesus you need the 'eye' of faith which is quite obviously not a physical eye but a spiritual 'eye.'  The last sentence in the quotation reads:

Essentially, Lewis suggests that his faith in Christianity is not solely based on tangible evidence but also on the transformative impact it has on his perception of the world.

Better, but still bad. Someone who comes to embrace Christianity comes to view the world in a way very different from the way he viewed it prior to his becoming a Christian. True! So, yes, his worldview has been transformed. But that transformation is no part of the evidence of the truth of Christianity; if it were, then the transformation that occurs in someone who goes from being a Christian to an atheist or a Christian to a Communist  or a Christian to a Buddhist, etc. is a transformation that is evidence of the truth of atheism, Communism, Buddhism respectively, etc.

Article here.

______________

*There may be other cases in which seeing does not suffice for belief. I am thinking of G. E. Moore's putative counterexample: "I see it, but I don't believe it!"

** The hyperbolic skepticism of Descartes is not to the point here.

Richard Dawkins on Christianity and Islam

Here (HT: Catacomb Joe):

Famed atheist and self-styled intellectual Richard Dawkins shared in a recent interview that he was “horrified” to find that Oxford Street in London had lit up its public signs and displays to celebrate the Muslim fasting period called Ramadan, just days before Easter Sunday. “I have to choose my words carefully: If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time,” Dawkins declared, expressing concern over the thousands of Muslim mosques being constructed across the U.K. He added, “It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion, in a way that I think Islam is not.”

I hope to say more about this later. Now I have to prepare for a meeting with Brian the Calvinist.  First lunch and casual conversation about the events of the day and the latest outrages of the depredatory Left, then intense philosophical conversation about Jesus and the Powers, a stimulating albeit flawed book, and finally  two or so hours of battling over the 64 squares. 

That's the kind of socializing I like. Otherwise, solitude rules. 

The Christian ‘Anatta Doctrine’ of Lorenzo Scupoli

Buddhism and Christianity both enjoin what I will call moral self-denial. But Buddhism is more radical in that it connects moral self-denial with metaphysical self-denial. Thus Buddhism denies the very existence of the self, whereas Christianity in its orthodox versions presupposes the existence of the self: Christian self-purification falls short of eliminativism about the self. Nevertheless, there are points of comparison between the 'No Self' doctrine of Buddhism and the Christian doctrine of the self.  Just as the full appreciation of the mother tongue comes only to those who study foreign languages, the  full appreciation of the 'mother religion' comes only to those who study foreign religions.

In his Combattimento Spirituale (1589), Lorenzo Scupoli writes:

You my mind, are not mine: you were given me by God. Neither are the powers active within me — will, with its energy — mine. Nor does my feeling, my ability to enjoy life and all my surroundings belong to me. My body with all its functions and requirements, which determine our physical well-being, is not mine either . . . . And I myself belong not to me, but to God. (Unseen Warfare, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995, p. 172)

I'll hazard a gloss: I am not the master of my fate nor the captain of my soul. Everything I have I have from God who created me ex nihilo and sustains me  moment-by-moment. I am not my own man. I do not have property-rights in my body nor in any attribute or adjunct of what I take to be my self. For this very reason, suicide is a grave sin. If a substance is anything metaphysically capable of independent existence, then I am not a substance: only God is a substance in the plenary sense of the term.  

Apart from the references to God, this meditation of Scupoli, of which the above is merely an excerpt, bears a striking resemblance to the  Anattalakkhana Sutta. Buddha there examines each of the khandas, body, feeling, perception, etc., and concludes with respect to each of them that "This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am." In Scupoli we encounter virtually the same litany: body, feeling, mind . . . of each of which it is true that "This is not mine," etc.  Of course, nothing depends on the exact taxonomy of the khandas or personality-constituents. The point is that however one classifies them, no one of them, nor any combination of them, is veridically identifiable as one's very self. I say 'veridically,' since we do as a matter of fact falsely identify ourselves with all manner of item both within us (feelings, memories, etc.) and without us (property, progeny, etc.) My house, my child, my brilliant insights.  A theologian might identify himself with his theology, when he must know that his theology could be light-years away from God's theology (God's self-knowledge).

These false self-identifications are part of what our ignorance/sinfulness consists in. (The forward slash in my typography stands for inclusive disjunction, the inclusive 'or.')

Thus Scupoli (whom I take to be a representative Christian, and who is of interest here only as such) and Buddha agree with respect to the (negative) thesis that nothing in one's outer or inner experience is veridically identifiable as one's very self. Thus nothing that we ordinarily take to be ourselves (our bodies, our thoughts, feelings, memories, etc.) can in truth be one's self. But there is also similarity in their reasoning. One way Buddha reasons is as follows.

If x (body, feeling, perception, etc.) were my very self, or were something that belonged to me, then I would have complete control over x. But it is evident that nothing is such that I have complete control over it. Therefore, no x is either my self or anything that belongs to me. This could be called the 'complete control argument' against the existence of the self.  Scupoli has something similar:

Let us remember that we can boast only of something which is a direct result of our own will and is done by us independently of anything else. But look how our actions proceed. How do they begin? Certain circumstances come together and lead to one action or another; or a thought comes to our mind to do something, and we do it. But the concurrence of circumstances does not come from us;  nor, obviously, is the thought to do something our own; somebody suggests it. Thus, in such cases, the origin or birth of the thought to do something cannot or should not be an object of self-praise. Yet how many actions are of this kind? If we examine them conscientiously, we shall find that they almost all start in this way. So we have nothing to boast of. (174)

This passage suggests the following argument: One cannot justifiably take credit for or take pride in anything (an action, a physical or mental attribute, etc.) unless one originates it "independently of anything else." But nothing is such that one originates it in sublime independence of all else. Therefore, one cannot justifiably take pride in anything. Here is a reason why pride is listed among the Seven Deadly Sins.

But does this amount to a metaphysical denial of the very existence of the self?  Not within Christian metaphysics. For that what is needed is the Buddhist assumption, crucial to the reasoning in the Anattalakkhana Sutta, that a self is an entity that has complete control over itself. Such a self could justifiably take pride in its actions and attributes. For it would be their fons et origo. So if one cannot justifiably take pride in any of one's actions or attributes, then one is not a self  in the sense in which this term is employed in the Anattalakkhana Sutta.  

In sum, both Buddha and Scupoli set the standard for selfhood very, and perhaps unattainably, high. Both claim that no one of us is a self for the reason than no one of us is in complete control of any of his actions or attributes. None of the things which one normally takes to be oneself or to belong to oneself (e.g., one's body, habits, brave decisions, brilliant insights, distinguished career, foolish mistakes, etc.) is such that one has originated it autonomously and independently.

Having set the standard for selfhood so high, Buddhism must deny that we are selves.  Christianity, however, is far less radical, holding as it does that we are selves all right, but ontologically derivative selves: we derive our being from the Creator, who is Being itself. (Deus est ipsum esse subsistens.) We are creatures of the one and only Absolute Self who brought us into being and sustains us in being. On Buddhism, nothing at all has 'self nature' in the eminent and plenary sense; on Christianity, one thing does, God. For Buddhism, there is no Absolute Self, there is in reality nothing like the Hindu Atman. For Christianity, there is an, or rather, the uniquely unique Absolute Self, namely, God. 

What about us? One thing is clear to both Buddhists and Christians: no one of us is identical to the Absolute Self.  For Buddhists, there is no Absolute Self, and for Christians, while there is an the Absolute Self, no one of us, no finite self, is or ever becomes identical to it, not even in the Beatific Vision.  If the visio beata involves a participation in the divine life, this does not involve a total assimilation: the finite self never loses its self-identity or individuality. In the Beatific Vision, creator-creature duality is mitigated, but never wholly eliminated.   

The main difference between Buddha and Scupoli is that the latter maintains that God gives us what we do not have under our control, our derivatively real selves. Thus for Scupoli, what we do not have from ourselves, we have from another, and so have. But for Buddha, what we do not have from ourselves, we do not have at all.

So in what sense does Scupoli embrace a 'no self' (anatta, anatman) doctrine? In the sense that in orthodox — miniscule 'o' — Christian metaphysics no one of us enjoys selfhood in the plenary sense of the term.

Crucifixion as Incarnation in extremis

In an earlier thread, Vito Caiati  states:

Thus, while Christ’s physical suffering is comparable to ours, his emotional suffering is not: He is in a unique and privileged existential position, one that derives from his absolute knowledge of all things, which permits him to die [in horrific] pain but without the terrors of the unknown that plague us ordinary human beings.

I responded:

But then Christ is not fully human. The orthodox line is that he is fully human and fully divine. To be fully human, however, he has to experience the horror of abandonment which is worse than physical suffering. The scripture indicates that he does: "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" On the cross, Christ experiences the terrifying doubt that he was deluded in thinking himself the Son of God or perhaps even that there is a God in the first place. If he didn't experience at least the first of these, then the Incarnation is not 'serious' and he didn't become one of us in full measure.

And then this Good Friday morning it occurred to me that I may have gotten this idea from Simone Weil, an idea that I discuss in At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron which I uploaded to Substack on Good Friday three years ago.  There I wrote:

The Crucifixion is the Incarnation in extremis.  Christ’s spirit, 'nailed' to the flesh, is the spirit of flesh nailed to the wood of the cross. At this extreme point of the Incarnation, doubly nailed  to matter, Christ experiences utter abandonment and the full horror of the human predicament.  He experiences and accepts utter failure and the terrifying thought that his whole life and ministry were utterly delusional. 

The darkest hour.  And then dawn. 

The reason?

If God were to become one of us, fully one of us, a slob like one of us, would he not have to accept the full measure of the spirit's hostage to the flesh?  Would he not have to empty himself fully into our misery?  That is Weil's point.  The fullness of Incarnation requires that the one incarnated experience the worst of embodiment and be tortured to death.  For if Christ is to be fully human, in addition to fully divine, he must experience the highest exaltation and the lowest degradation possible to a human. These extreme possibilities, though not actual in all human beings,  define being human. 

But Vito has a response:

I would suggest that when we speak of Christ’s humanity, we are referring to a human nature that is not deformed by original sin. Thus, the human nature that he shares with us is the prelapsarian one intended by God [for us before the Fall].

But this complicates the theological picture. For not only is the man Jesus born of a virgin, supernaturally impregnated by the Holy Spirit, the virgin Mary cannot be a transmitter of Original Sin. Hence the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception: the BVM had to be conceived without Original Sin.  The further theological 'epicycle,' even though it does not render the whole narrative incredible, does make it more difficult to believe.

But even if it is all true, Original Sin, Trinity, Incarnation, Virgin Birth, Immaculate Conception, Weil's point would seem to retain its merit. Perhaps it could be put like this. For the redemption of such wretches as we are, God, or rather the Second Person of the Trinity, would have to enter in full measure into our miserable animal predicament if he is to be fully and really human.

It is almost as if there is a whiff of docetism in Vito's suggestion.   It would be instructive to work through all of the Christological 'heresies.'

An Overlooked Argument for the Resurrection

Michael J. Kruger

In my jargon, the argument is rationally acceptable, but not rationally compelling (rationally  coercive, philosophically dispositive). There is no getting around the fact that, in the end, you must decide what you will believe and how you will live. In the end: after due doxastic diligence has been exercised and all the arguments and considerations pro et contra have been canvassed. The will comes into it.

Don't confuse argument with  proof or faith with knowledge.  And forgive me for this further repetition: We cannot decide what the truth is, but we must decide what we will accept as the truth. The truth is what it is in sublime and objective indifference to us, our hopes, dreams, needs, wants,  and wishes. But the only truth that can help us, and perhaps save us, is the truth that we as "existing individuals" (Kierkegaard) existentially and thus subjectively appropriate, that is, make our own. In this sense lived truth is subjective truth. In this sense, S. K. is right to insist that "truth is subjectivity" in Concluding Scientific Postscript.

More in this vein in Notes on Kierkegaard and Truth.

Realpolitik and What it Excludes

It has been said that war is politics with bloodshed while politics is war without bloodshed. The saying is strongly reminiscent of Carl von Clausewitz: "War is politics by other means." Both exemplify Realpolitik. What does Realpolitik exclude? It excludes any politics based on otherworldly principles such as Christian principles. Does it not?

The exclusion is implied in the following passage from  Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin, 1968, p. 245):

The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth interests of the community.) [Arendt cites Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

"Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters." Nietzsche says something similar somewhere in his Nachlass.  I paraphrase from memory. (And it may be that the thought is expressed in one of the works he himself published.)

The philosopher is like a ship with insufficient ballast: he rides too high on the seas of life for safe navigation. Bobbing like a cork, he capsizes easily.  The solid bourgeois, weighted and freighted with the cargo of Weib und Kind, Haus und Hof, ploughs deep the waves and weathers the storms of Neptune's realm and reaches safe harbor.

The philosophers who shouldn't be given any say in matters mundane and political are of course the otherworldly philosophers, those I would dub, tendentiously, the 'true philosophers.' There are also the 'worldly philosophers' discussed by Robert L. Heilbroner in his eponymous book, such thinkers as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.

The 'true philosophers,' which include Plato and his opposite number Nietzsche, have something like contempt for those who would occupy themselves with the human-all-too-human alone.

I am of the tribe of Plato, more a spectator of all time and existence than a participant in the flux and shove of the order of impermanence. It is this perch above the fray that enables the true philosopher to see the nature of the political that is hidden to those in the grip of the vita activa. 

Rod Dreher on the Ben Op and the Bon Op

One of the few free ones.

Excerpt:

“The Benedict Option is not available to us; it is either the Boniface Option or destruction,” he writes. “You cannot run and hide from Trashworld. Our only option is to despise it and to fight back.”

Leaving aside this inaccurate caricature of the Ben Op, what does Isker mean by despising it and fighting back? Though he doesn’t think so, that’s what we’re both after: rejecting what is evil in this post-Christian world, and devising a method of resistance. Having read Isker’s book, and sincerely appreciating what is good in it, my view is that his Bon Op is primarily about seeking worldly power as a means to impose Christianity — his kind of Christianity — on the people. (In this, the Calvinist Bon Op is a dwarfish parallel to the elvish proposals of the Catholic integralists.)

I like the parenthetical remark at the close of the quotation. Compare my Integralism in Three Sentences: Reasons Contra.

Body, Soul, and Self Revisited

On 4 December of last year, a Substack entry of mine entitled Care of Body and Soul occasioned a comment by Tony Flood to which I replied on 10 December in Body, Soul, Self. Today, 25 June 2023 Tony responds to my response in a piece entitled Man's "True Self": A Reply to Critics.

Now at the moment I do not have the time or the energy to examine Tony's article in detail. But in the last few days I have been reading Hans Urs von Balthasar who has illuminating things to say on the topic. So for now I will simply add to the mix by referring Tony and anyone who is interested to Chapter 2 ("Flesh and Spirit") of Part III of Balthasar's Prayer (Ignatius Press, 1986) which includes the line "scripture itself seems to legitimize the adoption and christening of Hellenic terms at the very outset, especially in the Pauline use of 'flesh' (sarx) and 'spirit' (pneuma, nous)." (pp. 260-61)

“This is My Body”: Literal or Metaphorical?

The question is moot, according to to Anthony G. Flood. The question of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist cannot arise for one who understands scripture.

“This do in remembrance of Me,” Jesus commanded His disciples at His last Passover, two days before the official Passover preparation that was concurrent with His passion. (He probably elected to follow Moses’ calendar.)

The antecedent of “this” is the Passover, given by God to the Israelites in Egypt and performed every year since until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. Henceforth, as often as His disciples would perform that ceremony, that is, annually, they were to contemplate not their ancestors’ miraculous escape from bondage, but Him, whose body, whose very Life, would soon be given for them.

Most Christians, from Roman Catholics to Plymouth Brethren, believe that Christ instituted an “ordinance” or “sacrament” at His last  Passover. The evidence for that belief, however, lies in tradition, not Scripture.

Comments? I myself am insufficiently equipped to weigh in on this topic.

Addendum (6/5).  Tony Flood asked me why I linked to his article if I am "insufficiently equipped" to comment upon it. The main reason is that, while I am not, others may be. I am not a Biblical scholar.  In any case, my interest is in the issues and  problems the real presence raises.  My thinking is problem-oriented and I have an aversion to interminable and inconclusive exegetical-historical disputes.  I linked to Flood's article because it raises the logically prior question whether the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements is to be understood literally or metaphorically.  If literal, then we can proceed to examine the various theories of real presence as found in Aquinas, Scotus, Suarez, Descartes and contemporaries.

Platonism and Christianity: Josef Pieper on Phaedrus 246c

At the center of the confrontation between Platonism and Christianity on the question of the survival of death lies the tension: immortality of the soul or resurrection of the body? More fully:  immortality of the disembodied soul or resurrection of the en-souled body? Connected with this is the question of whether and to what extent Christianity has been illegitimately Hellenized, in particular, Platonized. Platonism holds that the soul is the true self and that death is liberation of the soul from its entrapment by the body. This puts Platonism at odds with Christianity which teaches the resurrection of the body and which comports better with the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) view of the human person as a soul-body composite, and thus as essentially embodied. For Platonism, I am (identical to) my soul, and my body is an accidental adjunct. On the A-T view, however, I am not my soul, but a soul-body composite, both components of which are essential to me and to each other. But Platonism is one thing, Plato another. It is not clear that Plato was a Platonist.

Josef Pieper takes it a step further and roundly asserts that "Plato himself, however, is no Platonist." He refers us to the late dialogue, Phaedrus, and to the passage at 246c. The passage is concerned with the question "how it is that a living being is called mortal and immortal." Pieper takes Plato to be suggesting:

If ever immortality is conferred upon us, not just the soul but the entire physical human being will in some inconceivable manner participate in the life of the gods; for in them alone is it made real in its original perfection. . . . Plato himself, therefore, here concedes that it is a catachrestic, inadequate, use of language to call the soul immortal. (Death and Immortality, Herder and Herder, 1969, p. 116.)

Unfortunately, Pieper's interpretation, which attempts to assimilate Platonism to Christianity, is not borne out by the text:

This composite structure of body and soul joined together is called a living being and is further designated as mortal. Immortal it is not on any reasonable supposition: in fact, it is our imagination, not our vision, not our adequate comprehension, that presents us with the notion of a god as an immortal living being equipped both with soul and with body, and with these, moreoever, joined together for all time. (trs. Helmbold and Rabinowitz, emphasis added)

Pieper's mistake is a surprising one for a philosopher of his stature to make. But it is a mistake that does not detract much from the high quality of Death and Immortality, which I strongly recommend, and to which I regularly return.

Tongue and Pen

Top o' the Stack.

Christ has harsh words for those who misuse the power of speech at Matthew 12:36: "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment."  But what about every idle word that bloggers blog and Substackers stack?  Must not the discipline of the tongue extend to the pen?

A Response to My Is Sin a Fact?

Brian Bosse is not convinced by my Substack article, Is Sin a Fact? A Passage from Chesterton Examined.   Brian writes,

Your Argument Against Chesterton

(1) If the existence of sin is a fact one can see in the street, then the existence of God is a fact one can see in the street. 

(2) It is not the case that the existence of God is a fact one can see in the street.

From (1) and (2), it follows that

(3) It is not the case that the existence of sin is a fact one can see in the street.  

Bill’s Prior Commitments

(4) The existence of moral evil is a fact one can see in the street.

(5) There are objective moral values/laws.

It seems to me that from (4) and (5) one must conclude that…

(6) The existence of objective moral values/laws is a fact one can see in the street.

Bill, do you accept (6)?  If so, do you think it is possible for there to be objective moral laws in a non-theistic worldview? 

I endorse the first argument. It is obviously valid in point of logical form, instantiating as it does modus tollens.  And I claim that both premises are true. You will agree with me that the first is true if you agree that sin is an offense against God, which implies that if there is no God, then there is no sin.  The first premise is uncontroversially true because true ex vi terminorum, which is a fancy way of saying that it is true by definition. You will agree with me that the second premise is true if you agree that the existence of sinful acts and sinful omissions is not perceivable via the senses. (More on this in a moment.)

As for the second argument, I did not give it and I do not endorse it. I do not consider (4) to be true. And I reject (6). Brian is omitting some important distinctions I make. I affirm the existence of moral evil (evil that comes about through the actions and omissions of free agents), but I say nothing in that Substack article about how the fact of moral evil is known. Is there moral evil? is one question. How do we know that there is moral evil? is a different question. 

Do we literally see moral evil? Is there any empirical access to it? Can we build a 'ponerometer,' an evil detector?  Do we humans possess a non-empirical sensus moralitatis whereby we discern the existence of moral evil? These are just some of the questions that naturally arise.  I deny that we literally see instances of moral evil.  I will give a graphic example in a moment. 

It is also important not to leave out the distinction I make between two senses or uses of fact.' On one use of 'fact,' a fact is a true proposition. On a second use, a fact is a true proposition known to be true.  If  the existence of moral evil is a fact in the second sense, that leaves open the question as to how we know that moral evil is a fact in this second sense. I deny that we can see it (with our eyes) "in the street." The fact of moral evil is not "as plain as potatoes," to use Chesterton's expression. I know that the vegetable on my counter is a potato by seeing it (with my eyes). I do not see moral evil with my eyes. I maintain that there are actions that are morally evil, but I deny that their being morally evil is a fact that one can literally see. Now for the example. 

There is a video online that depicts a black thug nonchalantly loading his semi-automatic pistol and shooting  in the back of the head a homeless man sitting on a curb.  What do you see? You see a man shooting another man in the head. You do not see the evil of the act. (You do not see the illegality of the act either. You see a killing; you do not see a murder.) That is not to say that the act is not evil; it is to say that the evilness of the act is not visible or in any other way empirically detectable by our outer senses even when instrumentally extended.  Suppose you saw the shooting from different angles in great detail, with the blood surging out of the wound, etc. You would still not thereby know by empirical means that the the act of shooting is an evil act.  Suppose you had a videotape of the entire execution and then analyzed it frame-by-frame. Would you then see (with your eyes) the evilness of the act? Of course not.

In sum, I affirm the existence of moral evil.  But I deny both that the existence of moral evil is a fact one can see in the street, and that the existence of sin is a fact that one can see in the street. The crucial point however, as Brian appreciates, is that moral evil is not the same as sin.  It is perfectly plain that sin presupposes the existence of God. It is not perfectly plain that objective moral evil presupposes the existence of God.  

Brian asks, "Do you think it is possible for there to be objective moral laws in a non-theistic worldview? [i.e., in a world in which God does not exist?]"  Well, there cannot be objectively binding moral commandments without a very special commander, or objectively binding moral imperatives without an Imperator.  But why couldn't there be objectively true moral declaratives — e.g., it is wrong always and everywhere to torture innocent human beings for one's sexual gratification — in the atheist's world?

But these questions go well beyond the topic of my article which was merely to show that Chesterton was blustering when he claimed that it is empirically obvious — "plain as potatoes," a fact in the second sense — that there are sinful deeds and omissions. That could be true only if it is empirically obvious that God exists. But the latter is not empirically obvious.