tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post7406592775929102634..comments2024-03-25T13:40:30.747-04:00Comments on Faith and Theology: Neil MacDonald: Metaphysics and the God of IsraelBen Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-26256181387721110572008-02-07T20:26:00.000-05:002008-02-07T20:26:00.000-05:00OK Ben, thanks. I think the trouble is (or was) w...OK Ben, thanks. I think the trouble is (or was) with what passing a 'litmus test' amounts to. That is, I wasn't sure whether, as you and MacDonald were imagining things, a proposal's passing a litmus test was necessary for truth, or whether it was by itself sufficient for truth. If you take MacDonald's claim in the first way, then he's clearly right -- his proposal needs to be consistent! But if you take it in the other way, then it's clearly wrong, since, as you point out, logical consistency is easy to come by. (In short, I agree with Shane.) Anyway, "litmus test" seems ambiguousAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-18728442546622193012008-02-07T13:44:00.000-05:002008-02-07T13:44:00.000-05:00"Bravo, Shane!" cried the Zen master, as he clappe..."Bravo, Shane!" cried the Zen master, as he clapped with one hand.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-12059218808252001282008-02-07T08:37:00.000-05:002008-02-07T08:37:00.000-05:00Logical consistency is not a sufficient condition ...Logical consistency is not a sufficient condition for truth--that much is right. Think of a good novel, which presents an coherent, but fictional world. But, logical consistency is a necessary condition for truth. No contradictions obtain and nobody is ever justified in believing one. <BR/><BR/>(This is why I wince when I hear theologians say that things are "directly indirect" or "impossibly possible" or "possibly impossible" or so forth. It's an abuse of language at best and pure nonsense at worst.)Shanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14594090275917087869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-83229420925481910522008-02-07T03:46:00.000-05:002008-02-07T03:46:00.000-05:00Hi Patrick. No, I didn't mean to suggest that theo...Hi Patrick. No, I didn't mean to suggest that theology should be illogical. I just meant that "logical consistency" can't be a litmus test for theology, since the question of logical consistency is completely separate from the question of <I>truth</I>. (Just think of an argument like this one: All men are cabbages; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is a cabbage. It's logically perfect, but it's still a load of nonsense!)<BR/><BR/>So anyway, I think theologians should certainly be able to tell the difference between a good argument and a bad one; but I don't think we need to make a great fuss about it, or to treat logical precision as though it were a theological virtue in its own right. It's just a basic minimal requirement — a bit like using grammar, or wearing underpants: you need to know how to do it properly, but you don't need to draw attention to it.Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-17250349080578307582008-02-07T02:15:00.000-05:002008-02-07T02:15:00.000-05:00Hi Ben,When you say that logical consistency isn't...Hi Ben,<BR/><BR/>When you say that logical consistency isn't an adequate litmus test for theological claims of the relevant scope, do you mean that such theological claims needn't be logically consistent? Or do you mean merely that it isn't the *only* test such claims ought to meet (so that meeting the test of consistency doesn't make the proposal adequate)? Likewise, when you suggest that the requirements re: logic and rationality ought to "fade into the background", do you mean that it isn't important that theological proposals be logically consistent? Or are you merely suggesting that the theologian should have other (and perhaps higher) priorities? (e.g. One might make some proposals that *prima facie* seem logically consistent, but put the question of their consistency on hold in order to develop some further thought.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-56130488910088164122008-02-06T16:08:00.000-05:002008-02-06T16:08:00.000-05:00Indeed, “there could well have been … a world iden...<I>Indeed, “there could well have been … a world identical to the one we inhabit that was not created by God” (p. 34).</I><BR/><BR/>I am aware of nothing in Barth that would support this statement, his rejection of the analogy of being notwithstanding.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-66128990786022003902008-02-06T13:07:00.000-05:002008-02-06T13:07:00.000-05:00If prayer is a form of theology (the highest form?...If prayer is a form of theology (the highest form?), then the poets of the Psalms are most trustworthy guides.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-51371988492144383932008-02-06T12:58:00.000-05:002008-02-06T12:58:00.000-05:00There Ganymede is wrought with living art,Chasing ...<I>There Ganymede is wrought with living art,<BR/>Chasing thro' Ida's groves the trembling hart:<BR/>Breathless he seems, yet eager to pursue;<BR/>When from aloft descends, in open view,<BR/>The bird of Jove, and, sousing on his prey,<BR/>With crooked talons bears the boy away.<BR/>In vain, with lifted hands and gazing eyes,<BR/>His guards behold him soaring thro' the skies,<BR/>And dogs pursue his flight with imitated cries. </I><BR/><BR/>Now that's good poetry! --Vergil, <I>Aeneid</I> Book V. The incident, by the way, is referring to Zeus rape of Ganymede. Plato in the Laws alleges that this myth was introduced by the Minoans to legitimate sodomy. <BR/><BR/>I wouldn't go so far as to banish the poets--but as I stated above, they are untrustworthy guides.Shanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14594090275917087869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-20981558926528189172008-02-06T10:31:00.000-05:002008-02-06T10:31:00.000-05:00Not half as worried as I am, Shane, by your dismis...Not half as worried as I am, Shane, by your dismissal of poetry from theological discourse!<BR/><BR/>Of course I agree with Auden when he wrote:<BR/><BR/>... it's as well at times<BR/>To be reminded that nothing is lovely,<BR/>Not even poetry, which is not the case.<BR/><BR/>But then Auden was a poet.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-59135112388244578092008-02-06T08:12:00.000-05:002008-02-06T08:12:00.000-05:00"Only poets can help us here."Looking to the poets..."Only poets can help us here."<BR/><BR/>Looking to the poets is like a blind man asking a deaf-mute for directions. They can't hear the question and couldn't give us any useful information even if they could.<BR/><BR/>etsi deus non daretur is fine as a methodological principle for the scientists--my worry is that MacDonald risks making it a methodological principle for the theologians!Shanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14594090275917087869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-74882538065603111932008-02-06T06:13:00.000-05:002008-02-06T06:13:00.000-05:00From what has been said, one might get the impress...From what has been said, one might get the impression that MacDonald is an armchair logician, obsessed with propositions and dismissive of history, wielding a scalpel on the body of systematic theology. Nothing could be further from the truth, as both the glowing blurbs from Robert Jenson and Brevard Childs on the book's back cover suggest, and two epigraphs from the book attest:<BR/><BR/>"Logic is doubtless unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living" (Kafka).<BR/><BR/>"Were the (biblical) narratives written or read as fiction, then God would turn from the lord of history into the creature of the imagination with disastrous effects ... Hence the Bible's determination to sanctify and compel literal belief in the past" (Meir Sternberg).<BR/><BR/>I am saying that although MacDonald certainly radically rejects not only the projects of natural theology but also all attempts to deduce divine action from historical events, he equally emphatically affirms that the world is <I>in fact</I>, though known only <I>through faith</I>, the theatre of God's glory and the stage on which God acts. Indeed MacDonald spends over half his book exploring the presence of God in the primeval and Deuteronomistic histories, and in expounding the gospel narratives in terms of the model of substitutionary atonement. Why? Precisely to delineate the ontological (and not just economic) identity of God.<BR/><BR/>In fact, given his deployment of Bauckham's thesis on the inclusion of Jesus in the divine identity, in the very Who of God, and, further, his excursus on Barth's exegesis of John 1 - "Logos is unmistakably substituted for Jesus" - issuing in his restatement of Nicaea, "There was not when he [Jesus of Nazareth] was not" (p. 240), so implicitly historical, not anti-historical, is MacDonald's thesis that we arguably have a case here against a <I>logos asarkos</I> and, by implication, if against his own overstatements, equally against a <I>theos acosmos</I> (a suggestion, to be sure, that needs careful qualification to safeguard the freedom of God and avoid a collapse into pantheism or panentheism - an argument, by the way, that must proceed precisely on the basis of the <I>logos ensarkos</I>). Of course Shane is right that this is a theological reconfiguration of the social scientific concept of history, but - for example - is there any way to talk about - as surely we <I>must</I> talk about - the resurrection as an historical event without insisting that this is history, but not as we know it, Spock?<BR/><BR/>Finally, back to the main thrust of the discussion, MacDonald's thought experiment about a parallel non-God-given universe is surely a foil deployed to secure the point, as Jüngel so powerfully and provocatively puts it, that "God is not necessary." After all, scientists and historians do, as a matter of fact, and must (I think) as a matter of methodology, work <I>etsi Deus non daretur</I>. And pace Ben's point about the resurrection of Jesus presupposing a corpse, well, yes, but I can't for the life of me see how science may "help us to understand ... the kind of reconfiguring which this [divine] action produces." Only poets can help us here.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, since everybody is beating up on MacDonald I thought I'd add a few more supportive thoughts to the mix.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-11555664343280381652008-02-06T01:53:00.000-05:002008-02-06T01:53:00.000-05:00Thanks for the review Ben. I had a go at this book...Thanks for the review Ben. I had a go at this book a few months ago and got a bit bogged down. Keep the reviews comingAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-81953396556723451502008-02-05T22:12:00.000-05:002008-02-05T22:12:00.000-05:00MacDonald's earlier book "Karl Barth and the Stran...MacDonald's earlier book "Karl Barth and the Strange New World within the Bible" seems to make some points which would clarify what MacDonald is up to here, I think. (Fair disclosure--I'm writing a review of it right now for the Princeton Barth Center). MacDonald is throughout arguing that Barth's theology allows one to recover a 'sui generis historicality' which is like ordinary history, except that you can't do history about it--apparently. MacDonald is arguing there that just like Kant makes a transcendental turn to create a sui generis realm (the synthetic a priori) which avoids the prongs of <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hume's_fork" REL="nofollow">Hume's fork</A>, just in the same way Barth offers something like a transcendental argument (!) which saves theology from Overbeck. Whereas Hume wanted to reduce philosophy to logic and natural science, Overbeck wanted to reduce theology to church history and apocalyptic.<BR/><BR/>I'm not too optimistic about the success of the Barthian position MacDonald stakes out there, but it does seem to be directly relevant to the matter at hand here: in response to Halden, MacDonald could say that God's interactions with the world aren't historical, but that they aren't ahistorical either. He'd probably say they were ahistorically historical or historically ahistorical (or both, perhaps alternating the italics from one word to another). Presumably he would mean by this that God's relation to the world is 'historical' in the sense in which theology has to do with a 'sui generis historicality' and not with the sense of history invoked by, say, the social sciences.<BR/><BR/>I don't really think that's a coherent reply, at least not without a lot of discussion about what exactly 'sui generis historicality' is supposed to be. But, of course, he might just point us back to the earlier book to find the account spelled out there.Shanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14594090275917087869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-5481644154209995612008-02-05T21:44:00.000-05:002008-02-05T21:44:00.000-05:00Yes, that's an excellent point, Halden.Yes, that's an excellent point, Halden.Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-21365886988183892532008-02-05T21:39:00.000-05:002008-02-05T21:39:00.000-05:00Doesn't the notion that the world could have been ...Doesn't the notion that the world could have been exactly like it is without God as the creator imply an essentially ahistorical cosmology? In other words, the Christian understanding of the "world" is that it is fundamentally a historical drama in which God is the actor. If God was not the creator of the world, it seems to me that the world would be entirely different. In the first place, if God were not the creator of the world, I cannot imagine that the world would be the place in which Jesus rose from the dead, which is an essential part of the Christian undestanding of the world-as-history.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-57043568103989325222008-02-05T18:43:00.000-05:002008-02-05T18:43:00.000-05:00The claim that 'there could well have been … a wor...The claim that 'there could well have been … a world identical to the one we inhabit that was not created by God' does minimize the damage that science could potentially do to Christianity. But at the same time, it minimizes the good that Christianity could potentially do for science. That doesn't mean it isn't true of course, but if one cares about science, it's a reason to pause.<BR/><BR/>Also, this claim seems either to imply that history could be exactly the same in the absence of God, or else that history is in some sense not of this world. I don't mean 'provable' history here (a concept about which I'm skeptical in any case). I mean rather the stories we affirm about the past. If we affirm the Christian story, can we in the same breath claim that history would have been identical in a world without God?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-83647857650155777912008-02-05T18:06:00.000-05:002008-02-05T18:06:00.000-05:00Thank you for the fine review, Ben. The discomfort...Thank you for the fine review, Ben. <BR/><BR/>The discomfort among the comment-leavers thus far with the notion of a Creator-less creation, is a discomfort worth heeding to my mind. <BR/><BR/>Can the blunt fact (at least <EM>pro nobis</EM>) that we are around to formulate the question help us to decifer whether we inhabit W or W* (to continue using Shane's terms). The reference to Descartes above might be helpful, insofar as our own presence pondering here points us in the direction of thinking that this world is indeed the created one. Perhaps its a limitation in my logic, and one that science can eventually cure me of (!), but it's difficult to imagine the existence of finitude without beginning.<BR/><BR/>What could a world (W*) to which no Creator had ever said "I am the Creator" be like? What clue could we have that we were living in such a world? It would have to be some hint of our participation in un-created-ness. Now, something un-created either exists without bounds, or it doesn't exist. <EM>We</EM> can hardly presume that we don't exist---so our best option would be to imagine ourselves in a boundless universe, mere Being. It would be hard to avoid a few natural-theological extrapolations from that, most of which I imagine would tend toward something resembling Buddhist or Stoic detachment (or gnostic escape). <BR/><BR/>Creation-as-we-find-it is a theological reality, not one that comes with its own explanation, but one that must be reckoned with nonetheless. MacDonald seems to be trying to grease the scant foothold natural theology finds in the basic question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Which is, as Shane argued, to cede too much territory to science's hypothetical discoveries---even as the evidence that science offers seems to point to a bounded (but open), rather than boundless universe.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-5286542408577871562008-02-05T18:05:00.000-05:002008-02-05T18:05:00.000-05:00Shane, thanks for that clarification: yes, MacDona...Shane, thanks for that clarification: yes, MacDonald is definitely advancing both E and O. (As a side point, he cites the opening section of Barth's <I>CD</I> III/1 in support of O, but Barth is clearly only talking about E. That's why I think MacDonald is radicalising Barth's position.) <BR/><BR/>I hope that helps!Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-72569947178193734072008-02-05T17:49:00.000-05:002008-02-05T17:49:00.000-05:00Dammit, logical *inconsistency* aboveDammit, logical *inconsistency* aboveShanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14594090275917087869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-14775877343321187802008-02-05T17:48:00.000-05:002008-02-05T17:48:00.000-05:00"Logical consistancy [sic] is the hobgoblin of lit..."Logical consistancy [sic] is the hobgoblin of little minds." <BR/><BR/>Logical consistency is the refuge of lazy theologians.Shanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14594090275917087869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-7544319210137836732008-02-05T17:46:00.001-05:002008-02-05T17:46:00.001-05:00Let E be the epistemological claim that we cannot ...Let E be the epistemological claim that we cannot know that the world is created.<BR/><BR/>Let O be the ontological claim that there can exist a world identical to this one, except that it is not created by God.<BR/><BR/>The two claims are related but they clearly aren't the same. The truth of E and the truth of O are logically independent. E does not logically entail O, nor does O logically entail E. (There might be a metaphysical argument to be made, but I don't see any logical connections between them).<BR/><BR/>So which claim is MacDonald advancing, E or O? Your post made it sound like he was advancing O, but that strikes me as a pretty bold claim.<BR/><BR/>If all he's advancing is E, then his claim seems a bit more in line with the traditional rejection of natural theology. E seems like a much weaker, and therefore more plausible, claim.Shanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14594090275917087869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-87410759774478004322008-02-05T17:46:00.000-05:002008-02-05T17:46:00.000-05:00"There is nothing in the world itself which could ..."There is nothing in the world itself which could ever tell you that God created it."<BR/><BR/>How about the Exodus? Is this not how Israel came to its conclusion that God created the world? I think it is wrong to define creation simply as the physical matter and givenness of what we see and experience apart from God.<BR/><BR/>Following Barth (as Kevin pointed out) I would want to talk about creation as that which is specifically fitted for the covenant. You cannot separate creation from covenant.<BR/><BR/>Jenson does the same thing when he defines creation as that act whereby God creates and moves along a history. Creation is creation because God is involved in it. Our world would be completely different if God had decided not to make it the realm of his covenant.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-59865763796027929752008-02-05T17:44:00.000-05:002008-02-05T17:44:00.000-05:00Ben,Thanks for the review. I think you are spot o...Ben,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the review. I think you are spot on regarding your critique of the primary criterion of "logical consistancy." As Emerson aptly noted, "Logical consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds." Furthermore, I think this problem is seen in contemporary analytic disucussions of the problem of evil in the distinction between theodicy and defence wherein a defense is not positing a true but a possible scheme to explain the existence of evil.John B. Higginshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09958800056185703557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-9516095672021357962008-02-05T17:27:00.000-05:002008-02-05T17:27:00.000-05:00Except for this year's Super BowlExcept for this year's Super BowlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-82134301376529769132008-02-05T16:44:00.000-05:002008-02-05T16:44:00.000-05:00Richard, you ask: "But is he doing any real creati...Richard, you ask: <I>"But is he doing any real creating or is God just applying a label to himself ('I am the Creator')?"</I> This is definitely an important problem — but just to clarify, MacDonald's whole idea is that "creating" simply <I>is</I> God's "applying a label to himself". So MacDonald could answer: yes, God is really creating! <BR/><BR/>Incidentally, he still thinks that God really brings the world into being through this act of self-labelling — but he wants to insist that there's nothing in the world itself which could ever tell you that God created it.Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.com