Scott R. Paeth is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. He works in the fields of Christian Social Ethics and Public Theology.
Mike Morrell has a post up about Thomas J. J. Altizer's "Death of God" theology as seen throgh the lens of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizik. It's fascinating to read and to watch Zizik's analysis (Zizik is always fascinating to watch perform). I was struk particularly by Altizer's assessment of his project, saying that it means "the opposite of what everyone thinks."
Unfortunately, the Emory Magazine article in which the quote is contained doesn't offer much further elaboration on the nature of the "opposite" character of Altizer's theology, but it does offer a useful primer on the "Death of God" theology moment in the 1960s, along with this helpful summary:
On a most basic level, Altizer studies God not as a separate presence but as a historical force that has been transformed by death. This God began giving himself to the world at its creation and ultimately died through Jesus Christ, whose earthly demise in turn poured the spirit of God into the world. Altizer calls for a dialectical form of faith that acknowledges the coincidence of opposites: through God’s death, the sacred becomes profane, and vice versa; one cannot exist without the other. Only in modernity, Altizer believes, can we fully realize the paradox of the death of God—that the very absence of God signifies God’s presence in all things.
This is clearly very different from Moltmann's approach in The Crucified God, which continues to rely on more traditional theological categories, but it is a useful reminder that there is often a difference between what is said and what is meant, particularly when what is said is framed in highly abstruse theological and philosophical language.
That said, clearly the core of this is the idea of the via negativa, the idea of encountering God in the midst of negation, which in our very positively oriented society, is always an important qualification.
We think we can know God, but ultimately any God worth knowing must be by definition beyond our capacity to truly know. That paradox stands at the heart of all things Christian.
Alvin Plantinga's new book Where the Conflict Really Lies has gotten some attention in the lat few days, since being reviewed sympathetically by Thomas Nagel in the New York Review of Books. Alas, despite the nature of the argument that Plantinga appears to be making, and that Nagel views appreciatively, the response has fallen along predictable lines.
Plantinga's argument, at least as summarized by Nagel and reflected in the clip above, is fairly straightforward: There is not any innate conflict between religion and science, and that properly understood the two disciplines can inform one another. The real culprit, he argues, is a form of metaphysical naturalism and materialism which is, he argues, ultimately self-contradictory.
The main thrust of his argument in the clip above is intriguing. He argues that metaphysical naturalism takes as its principle that evolution produces creatures that are well-adapted to their environment. But if that is so, he claims, then there is no necessary connection between being well-adapted to the environment and having the capacity to form true propositions about the environment. In other words, if it is evolutionarily advantageous for us to view the world in a way that does not reflect its "true" nature, then this is what evolution will select for. If the frog who "believes" that the fly he grabs with his tongue is gift from the Frog God is more effective at catching flies than the one who "believes" that both he and the fly are simply matter in motion, then the evolutionary argument is that the "religious" frog will have a survival advantage.
Plantinga's point, which Nagel appears to endorse, is that there is no way, from within a materialist metaphysical framework, to determine with any certainty that our beliefs about the world do in fact reflect the way that the world really is. This is not to say that we aren't quite well justified in behaving as though we had such certainty, but we can't establish it with certainty in the way that metaphysical materialist might like.
This is important in the ongoing science/religion debate because those scientists who view metaphysical materialism as the only rationally legitimate starting point for conversations about the nature of the world do so on the basis of the claim that their approach to naturalism operates within the context of things that we already "know" to be true. But Plantinga's point is that we only "know" them to be true in the sense that, on materialist terms, we are well-adapted to view the world as though it corresponded to materialist principles. The problem isn't that, as far as we know, they do in fact correspond to those principles. The problem is that we can say that only so far as we know, which is to say, not very far at all. The kind of certainty that the materialist wants to start with is no more available to him or her than the certainty that there is a God who exists. The materialst, just as much as the theist, argues from within an epistemic framework that he or she then works out from, rather than beginning from an epistemic blank slate and establishing unvarnished truths.
All of which is to say, in the hoary language of contemporary philosophy, that all of our knowledge about the world, both religious and scientific, is "theory-laden." We don't begin with a view from nowhere, but rather we begin from a framework, which is not itself subject to rational question. Or at least, to the extent that it is, it is so only to the degree that our questioning serves to establish enough grounds to proceed onto other questions with. Otherwise we'd spend all of our time questioning first principles and never get beyond the state that Descartes finds himself in at the beginnings of his Meditations on First Philosophy, a state of radical doubt from which we cannot escape. Descartes attempts to escape by establishing what he thinks he can know for certain. But these days many philosophers, myself included, would say that we proceed, necessarily, in the absence of any form of definitive certainty.
Now, like this argument or not, it is a philosophically important statement about the nature of both religious and scientific knowledge that calls into question some basic epistemic claims that materialists make in favor of their own positions. This appears to be what Nagel appreciates about the argument, as he notes here:
I say this as someone who cannot imagine believing what he believes. But even those who cannot accept the theist alternative should admit that Plantinga’s criticisms of naturalism are directed at the deepest problem with that view—how it can account for the appearance, through the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry, of conscious beings like ourselves, capable of discovering those laws and understanding the universe that they govern. Defenders of naturalism have not ignored this problem, but I believe that so far, even with the aid of evolutionary theory, they have not proposed a credible solution. Perhaps theism and materialist naturalism are not the only alternatives.
Now what Nagel is saying here is a restatement of Plantinga's point, namely that a naturalistic or materialistic account of the world cannot, in principle, step outside of its metaphysical presuppositions in order to establish with certainty that it is saying something true about the world. The way he phrases it, however, makes it sound as though he is saying that we lack a particular data point or set of data points that, as a result of our lacking it, makes a religious perspective justifyable. At this point, Jerry Coyne jumps in to accuse Nagel of falling for a classic "God-of-the-gaps" arguement:
Nagel has fallen for the God-of-the-gap trap. The credible solution is to do more work to find out how the structure of the mind produces consciousness, and how natural selection might have acted to promote that feature. Does Nagel think that science has used all its resources on this problem, and failed? Does he not know how relatively primitive neurobiology is right now? Nagel has just thrown up his hands and said, “You people haven’t explained it, therefore perhaps Plantinga is right.” Or there might be “another alternative.” Curious that Nagel doesn’t propose what that alternative might be. I guess he’s purveying a Philosophy of the Gaps.
The problem is that this is not what Plantinga appears to be arguing, nor what Nagel appears to be endorsing. The issue is not that we, as of now, lack a scientific account for how a certain kind of knowledge arises in the world, or that this account can be explained within the parameters of a certain kind of neurobiology. Coyne thinks that this is a question that is subject to scientific resolution. Plantinga and Nagel think it is not -- it is a philosophical quandry rooted in a philosophical position, vis., naturalistic materialism. If Plantinga's point is wrong, then it's wrong on the basis of some flaw in his argument, not on the basis of the development of more sophisticated tools for analysis of the natural world.
In a similar vein, Sean Carroll argues against Plantinga's understanding of the idea of "faith":
So what about faith? Even if your faith is extremely strong in some particular proposition, e.g. that God loves you, it’s important to recognize that there’s a chance you are mistaken. That should be an important part of any respectable road to knowledge. So you are faced with (at least) two alternative ideas: first, that God exists and really does love you and has put that belief into your mind via the road of faith, and second, that God doesn’t exist and that you have just made a mistake.
The problem is that you haven’t given yourself any way to legitimately decide between these two alternatives. Once you say that you have faith, and that it comes directly from God, there is no self-correction mechanism. You can justify essentially any belief at all by claiming that God gave it to you directly, despite any logical or evidence-based arguments to the contrary. This isn’t just nit-picking; it’s precisely what you see in many religious believers. An evidence-based person might reason, “I am becoming skeptical that there exists an all-powerful and all-loving deity, given how much random suffering exists in the world.” But a faith-based person can always think, “I have faith that God exists, so when I see suffering, I need to think of a reason why God would let it happen.”
Now, it may very well be that Plantinga's view of the nature of faith includes such certainty. His statements about the nature of what he calls "properly basic" beliefs might give one grounds for making that argument. But that is by no means a necessity. It is entirely possible to hold a proposition by faith while also being simultaneously completely aware of the possibility that it is wrong. This seems to me to be a mischaracterization of faith based, is is the god-of-the-gaps arguement, on a misunderstanding of the kind of claims that Plantinga is making, and that are supported within the broader field of the philosophy of religion.
The work of "saving the appearances" in a loving and all-powerful God in the face of the reality of suffering can take place within the context of the recognition that one may be wrong, and even within the context of grave doubts about the goodness and power of God. And here again the analogy to the work of science is a propos, because science too operates within the framework of accepted theories that have to find ways to maintain themselves in the face of counter-evidence.
To me the deep connection between science and religion isn't that they ultimately confirm or must support the same picture of reality, but that they are in many ways analogous approaches to thinking about how we know and what we know about the world, which run on parallel tracks with one another. They may view the same phenomena, and come to different conclusions, but they both operate with the context of human attempts to reason about and make sense of the world within which we dwell. And in that regard both are valuable and necessary.
As for the masses, serious thinkers have shared Rand’s concern about their impact on society: de Tocqueville spoke of the tyranny of the majority and Ortega y Gasset of their “revolt.” There was a time when the concept of mass society was taken seriously in academic sociology: Daniel Bell wrote an essay about it, C. Wright Mills a chapter, and William Kornhauser a book. But while we continue to discuss mass media and mass culture, we have also learned, as Mills tried to teach us, that elites have flaws of their own. A theory of society that attributes virtues to one group and vices to another cannot pass the realism test: Rand’s “inverted” Marxism, as Chait calls it, is as myopic as its opposite.
Right-wing think tanks can have Rand (even if she had little use for them). In the academy, she is a nonperson. Her theories are works of fiction. Her works of fiction are theories, and bad ones at that. Should the Republicans actually win in 2012, we might need to study her in the academic world. It would be for the same reason we sometimes need to study creationism.
All of which of course, in the minds of Rand's cultists, makes her infallible greatness all the more obviously true.
The news last week that the Vatican, after six years of study, had issued an "instruction" on Margaret Farley's book on sexual ethics, Just Love , resulted, hilarously, in the book becoming the number one seller in religion and spirituality on Amazon.com. And in case you're interested in buying the book, here's a link to it. I strongly urge you to go get yourself a copy.
Today, Mary Hunt at Religion Dispatchesdiscusses the book and offers some analysis of what the Vatican crackdown on Farley and other women religious means. Here's a snippet of her take:
Dr. Farley’s scholarly work is characterized by a careful, reasoned realism about the human condition. She brings a thorough grounding in the Christian tradition with an emphasis on Catholic thought to her books on commitment, embodiment, respect, and, the most recent and controversial one, on love. Rather than embrace her project and explore, as she does, the range of ways that good people try to love—with an emphasis on the demands of justice in every intimate relationship—the CDF theologians boiled down her opus into five cherry-picked nuggets on sex and marriage that reflect their priorities, not hers. They missed the forest for the trees. Their statement is deeply insulting, not to mention morally suspect, in that such a stellar scholar’s reputation is impugned. As my mother would say, “Consider the source.”
Given the Bishops' record on sexual matters over the last several decades, and the strange battles on which they choose to take their stands, consider the source seems like excellent advice.
EDIT: Let me just add a brief P.S. to note this week's Sightings, published by Martin Martin, which treds similar ground. A relevant passage, referencing the latest issue of Commonweal:
Let me lift out some summary sentences by the writers and editors. “There are compelling reasons within modern states to carve out a protected space for dissenting moral voices. But in the end, the tensions between the laws of the state and the demands of faith cannot be fully resolved.” Amen. We’ve long argued that there is no way to draw lines between “religion and the civil authorities” (James Madison’s term) in ways that can satisfy all legitimate but necessarily conflicting interests. William A. Galston, Michael P. Moreland, Cathleen Kaveny, Douglas Laycock, Mark Silk, and Peter Steinfels, authors whose names will be familiar to anyone who reads “church-state” arguments, have sympathy for the bishops, but find their present arguments of no help. Thus the “bishops cannot base their teachings on opinion polls, but if they intend to argue effectively for religious liberty, they need to acknowledge the difficult ground on which they stand.”
At Religion Dispatches Paul Harvey reviews a new book that seeks to debunk the pseudo-scholarship of non-historian David Barton. The authors, he says, do a fine job of explaining the various ways in which Barton misleads his readers about Thomas Jefferson:
As the poster child for tendentiousness, Barton makes easy pickings for dispassionate truth-seekers like Throckmorton and Coulter. One by one, they consider, historicize, and debunk Barton’s claims: that Jefferson used federal funds to promote missions to the Indians, that he sought a theological professorship at the University of Virginia, that in only a very few of his letters did he attack basic Christian theological beliefs, that he believed not in a “wall of separation” of church and state but in a Republic that would actively promote Christianity, that his sexual morality was unimpeachable, that he didn’t really edit out the miraculous stories of the New Testament, that he founded the Virginia Bible Society, and on and on.
They find without fail that the claims fall into one of the following categories: 1) complete falsehoods (there are plenty of those); 2) misleading falsehoods (such as the story about wanting Christian imagery on the national seal—true, but on the other side of the seal, had Jefferson gotten his wish, would have been a pagan story); 3) true, but entirely irrelevant and ultimately misleading statements (such as signing documents with “the Year of our Lord,” which he did because pre-packaged treaty forms had that language, and had about as much meaning as signing “Dear” in our salutations in letters to complete strangers); 4) statements with a “kernel” of truth but blown so far out of proportion as to end up being false (such as Jefferson wanting federal funding for Indian missions, when in fact the titles of the bills simply took on the name of already existing religious societies); 5) baffling assertions that are so far out of the realm of reality as to be neither “true” nor “false,” but simply bizarre (such as Barton’s defense of Jefferson’s views on race, which were disturbingly ugly even by the standards of his era).
Alas, he argues, all the authors' work may be irrelevant given the larger context in which Barton is writing:
Thus, in a book ostensibly about Jefferson, Barton has in reality sketched out his case connecting liberalism of any sort with a rejection of Truth. His specific claims about Jefferson can be, and will be, debunked to death, probably nowhere more effectively than in Getting Jefferson Right, but the pseudo-philosophical worldview behind them, complete with Big Words such as “Poststructuralism or (gasp) “Academic Collectivism,” is the intellectual red meat that his sizable audiences show up to hear. And for that reason, when all the trees in his forest fall, his detractors yell “timber!,” and scholars analyze the reason for their crash to the ground, no one in his audience will be there to notice. They already know the Truth, and the Truth has set them free.
Well, this is what I get for opening my big mouth! Tony Jones linked back to my blog post on Creatio Ex Nihilo on his blog, which led to some very constructive remarks by many of his commentators. I felt compelled to reply, and figured I'd cross-post what I wrote here. Tony has also posted my reply on his blog.
1. First of all, I should clarify that I do appreciate a lot about process theology. I think that it's emphasis on the divine immanence can be an important corrective to theology that overly accentuate the divine transcendence, and to that degree, it serves an important theological role that I in no way want to deny. It's also among the most fresh and creative approaches to theology to emerge from the 20th century and I appreciate it if for no other reason than simply that it's interesting.
2. My own position could probably be best described as "panentheistic" in the Moltmannian sense of the term, which, at least as I read him, depends on the idea which is rooted in Anselm's ontological argument that God's being does not depend on the contingency of the world, but that God chooses to enter into the contingency of creation as an act of divine self-emptying for the sake of creation. What this approach offers is a way of understanding divine immanence that does not rely on a necessary God/world connection as does the God of process theology. God is, as one commentator noted, both within creation and transcendent, and God's being is not in that sense reliant on creation, but God in love chooses to descend within creation, ultimately even unto death.
3. That said, I want to make clear that it's entirely possible that process theology has some compelling responses to this, and Scot offers some insights that are certainly worth considering. However, I have yet to find an argument that I've found compelling to convince me that process thought does not, by virtue of taking away crucial elements of the divine omnipotence, seriously vacate the notion of divine providence. If the universe is free to act either in accord with or against God's plan then it is possible that, contrary to God's desires or intentions, the universe could propel itself, not toward God's salvific purposes, but into a cosmic death spiral. Only if God's intentions for the universe are understood to be implied by divine transcendence, and unalterable in principle except by God, is the idea of soteriology in any cosmic sense possible. This does require, as J.J. suggests, an eschatological reference point for salvation, though I would disagree that this is either untenable or immoral.
4. Again, I make no claims to comprehensive knowledge of all of the arguments made by process theologians, but I have mostly been interested in the approach offered by Charles Hartshorne (if I had gone a different way at PTS, I might have done my dissertation on him!). As philosophical theologians with a process orientation go, I think he's fascinating, but again, as I read his interpretation of the subject, ultimately God is, quite explicitly not the Ground of Being or a transcendent entity, but simply the greatest possible being within the universe. Now, other process theologians may have taken a different tack, and attempted to preserve a greater degree of divine sovereignty, and maybe some of them have solved the problems that I've suggested, but no process thinker that I've read has quite overcome these problems to my satisfaction.
5. On a positive note, I think that one of the contributions of process theology has been in the theology of science, insofar as it has given theologians of science a way of understanding divine agency in a scientifically understood world in a new and interesting way, but in the end, I think the approach to divine agency in the material world is better described by the view of someone like Austin Farrer than by John Polkinghorne or Ian Barbour (both of whom I love, but both of whom I wish leaned less heavily on elements of process thought.
You know the old saw, about how you never talk about religion or politics in polite company. Since that's my field, if I listened to that advice, I'd be rendered mute at any social function the moment anyone asked what I do.
Fortunately, there are others who want to be able to talk about these topics as well, even "in polite company," and among them is John Danforth, former Missouri Senator and Episcopal Priest. The Danforth Center at Washington University was founded in 2010 and sponsored a number of events on the intersection of religion and politics:
Now the center is unveiling its most visible and far-reaching endeavor, with the release of its new online journal, "Religion & Politics." Officials at the center are calling "Religion & Politics" a journal, in the tradition of academic publications, but it's ambitions are more akin to magazines with a mix of narrative journalism, feature news reporting and informed commentary — Harper's, the New Yorker or the Atlantic.
Scholarly research and classroom teaching make up one prong of the Danforth Center's mission, said its director, Marie Griffith, who is also the editor of "Religion & Politics." The other is to engage the public, and the confluence of academia and journalism is a key feature of the journal. Through its content, the center will be introduced to the wider world beyond Washington University's campus.
"We're very much writing to a broad, educated audience, as diverse an audience as we can reach," said Griffith. "So we wanted high quality writing, not a bunch of academics talking amongst ourselves."
The journal's motto — "Fit for polite company" — fits Danforth's original motivation for founding the center: a belief, laid out in his 2006 book, "Faith and Politics: How the 'Moral Values' Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together," that religion had become a political wedge.
This is a project that sounds like it has a lot of potential. I'm looking forward to seeing what develops.
Paul Ryan has, on more than one occasion, praised the work of atheist libertarian whack-job Ayn Rand. Apparently, he's realized that might play so well at Georgetown:
"I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them," Ryan says. "They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman," a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. "But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist."
"I reject her philosophy," Ryan says firmly. "It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas," who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. "Don’t give me Ayn Rand," he says.
As Sarah Posner points out, Ryan's shift may have to do with the argument that he and some of his conservative Catholic kindred are attempting to make that liberal economic policies are contrary to Catholic social teaching and that their pro-rich, pro-ginormous corporations, pro-unfettered and uncontrolled capitalist policies are more authentically Catholic.
At the heart of their argument is a debate on the meaning of the Catholic term "subsidiarity," which means, as Dan Maguire explains, "that nothing should be done by a higher authority that can be done by active participation at lower levels." In other words, Catholic teaching has a preference for policies that originate and are controlled as close to the local level as possible. Conservative Catholics like Ryan believe that means that Catholic social teaching is "anti-statist" and thus opposed to the "statist" policies of the Obama administration. As Maguire notes, this is garbage and demonstrates a deep and abiding ignorance of Catholic thought.
Yet here is Ryan, throwing Rand under the bus and pledging alligience to Thomas Aquinas. Of course, he still buys Rand's economics, he just thinks Aquinas would too. Unfortunately for Ryan, Thomas Aquinas's position is very clear: Private property is necessary for the creation and maintainance of a good society, but only if it is used for the sake of the common good:
Two things are competent to man in respect of exterior things. One is the power to procure and dispense them, and in this regard it is lawful for man to possess property. Moreover this is necessary to human life for three reasons. First because every man is more careful to procure what is for himself alone than that which is common to many or to all: since each one would shirk the labor and leave to another that which concerns the community, as happens where there is a great number of servants. Secondly, because human affairs are conducted in more orderly fashion if each man is charged with taking care of some particular thing himself, whereas there would be confusion if everyone had to look after any one thing indeterminately. Thirdly, because a more peaceful state is ensured to man if each one is contented with his own. Hence it is to be observed that quarrels arise more frequently where there is no division of the things possessed.
The second thing that is competent to man with regard to external things is their use. On this respect man ought to possess external things, not as his own, but as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to communicate them to others in their need.
Notice that last clause. It's important. We posses things, not as our own but as common, and are prepared to give them to others in their need. I invite you to consider whether this bears any resemblance at all to Republican attitudes on matters of economics and taxation. I don't believe it does.
Needless to say, the theological faculty at Georgetown were unimpressed:
In terms of understanding the Catholic Church’s doctrine on social issues, “we’d give that speech an F,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Center. “Catholics believe that problems should be dealt with at the lowest levels. But if families could take care of themselves, and the local government could, we wouldn’t have the crisis that we’re facing right now.”
In James Cone's new book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree he offers a sustained critique of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguing that Niebuhr, despite the principled radicalism of much of the rest of his writing, was notably mild when it came to the ugliness of racism in the United States. As John Blake writes:
Today, Niebuhr’s importance is acknowledged by both liberal and conservative Christian leaders. President Obama once called him one of his favorite philosophers. Niebuhr, the author of classics such as “The Irony of American History,” died in 1971 after a lifetime of political activism.
Cone, however, said neither Niebuhr nor any other famous white pastor at the time spoke out against the most brutal manifestation of white racism in the 20th century America: lynching.
Between 1880 and 1940, Cone says, an estimated 5,000 black men and women were lynched. Their murders were often treated as festive affairs. Women and children cut off the ears of lynching victims as souvenirs. People mailed postcards of lynchings. One postcard of a charred lynching victim read, “This is the barbeque we had last night.”
But Niebuhr said nothing about lynching, little about segregation, and once turned down King’s request to sign a petition calling on the president to protect black children integrating Southern schools, Cone said.
For Cone, this is a crucial omission because, he argues, "Niebuhr’s decision not to speak out against lynching encouraged other white theologians and ministers to follow suit" due to Niebuhr's prominance and status.
While I'm somewhat dubious of that last claim (I suspect many white pastors would have come up with plenty of reasons not to speak out irrespective of what Niebuhr did), the central point is no doubt right. Niebuhr was willing to go out on a limb for the things that mattered most to him -- In favor of economic justice, for defending England against Germany, against the Soviet Union -- but he stayed very close to the center when it came to race.
He certainly spoke out on behalf of racial equality, sometimes forcefully, but he took no risks for it, Cone argues. And any honest attempt to grapple with Niebuhr's legacy needs to take account of this reality. Even admirers of Niebuhr need to recognize where he fell short, and ask how he could have or should have done things differently.
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