Philosophy in Conversation with Theology

Building on what was said in my last post, I think hermeneutics provides us the key for understanding how philosophy and theology interact with one another.

There are two ways, I think, to try and do theology.  The first has often been termed "natural theology," and it goes about its work by attempting to argue from our experience of the world to a particular understanding of God.  The inherent problem, I think, for natural theology is that it will always be conducted from a particular point of view- it will always be subjective.  My critique of many of the classical arguments regarding Theism, for instance, has been that they assume too much- the cosmological argument, to take one example, assumes that since I cannot fathom an absolute infinite progression of past events, it cannot exist and there must be a first cause of everything.  Further, many presentations of that argument assume that we can draw certain conclusions about the "cause-without-a-cause": that it is a thinking, exceedingly powerful, being, for instance.  How we move from "a" to "b" in these instances will, I think, largely depend on the worldview from which we start assessing these arguments.  We interpret the information subjectively, in other words, based on our predisposition to believe one way or another.  My conclusion, at the end of the day, is that the most that "natural theology" can accomplish for us is to show that our beliefs are rational- they make sense, they are coherent with other parts of our experience.  We cannot make the further claim that they are "true" based on such arguments.

The other approach takes its starting point in revelation.  This approach takes on the image of the conversation we left off with last time.  Something or someone beyond us is saying something to us, is projecting an experience onto us, that we take in and "read" and then make part of our experience.  Revelation is an act of communication, not simply observation as in the case of "natural theology," and the process by which we receive and are affected by revelation is a hermeneutical process.  This means that how we walk away from such a revelatory encounter will be largely determined by our subjective perspective, by our point of view, by our presuppositions, etc.  Largely, it will be a result of these things, but not entirely.  Revelation starts beyond us and we encounter it.  How we "read" that encounter is I think constrained, at least in part, by the object itself.  It cannot be completely a product of our own minds because the object is not a product of our minds, it’s a medium of communication between one person and another.  Theology, on this approach then, is entirely dependent on the third axiom and everything we have said about it.

In more practical terms very briefly:

I think the problem of fundamentalism, whether it be on the right or on the left end of the political spectrum, is that it takes too much of the first approach to theology.  This often means reducing the "text" of revelation (whether it be in scripture, tradition, philosophy, or experience) to an artifact which we observe and thereby draw conclusions from.  As I have said above, whenever we do this we arrive at interpretations that are derived from the presuppositions we started with.  In any such case, what is lacking is a conversation.  This conversation does not require total objectivity in reading the "text"- total objectivity is a myth.  But it does require the recognition of the voice from beyond that is speaking to us through the medium of the "text."  We are resisting the urge to create God in our own image.  And while I will never have a fully objective view of God, in the same way that when I approach another human there will always be a hint of what I wish they were in my perception of them, by opening ourselves up to the idea that this conversation involves another person we open ourselves up to the idea that the conversation can change us.  Our ideas can be put to the test, we can have true dialogue about what we believe  and why that allows for constructive theology that is more than just a projection of our wishes onto God.

Philosophy in Conversation

One more shameless plug:  Just found out that a paper proposal I submitted to the Society of Biblical Literature has been accepted and I will be presenting it at the New England Regional Conference in Boston on April 29.  The paper is on the hermeneutics (branch of philosophy interested in how we interpret texts) of Augustine, who I am putting in dialogue with the founder of modern hermeneutics Friedrich Schleiermacher and a prominent example of post-modern hermeneutics, Yale's own Dale Martin.  This is only the second time I will have presented a paper at an academic conference, and though I am fascinated by hermeneutics I don't have nearly enough background to consider myself an expert.  So I'm a little nervous about this presentation, particularly the Q & A part, but also quite excited for it!

Hermeneutics is, I think, ultimately where philosophy goes.  It is, as it were, the meta-philosophy.  Given my three axioms, at the end of the day while I think philosophy provides us with certain "basic beliefs" that we need to make sense of the world at all- beliefs like the world exists, other people exist, etc.- I ultimately think that philosophy tells us very little with any certainty.  My subjective understanding of the world is, at the end of the day, something about which I cannot have objective verification.  I cannot ever really know that most of the things I believe are true.  I can make the claim that these beliefs I hold work in a coherent way with one another- that my view of the world makes sense of everything about the world that I have experienced.  But that is not to say that I "know" these things are true.  The objectivity required for real "knowledge" is something I can simply never achieve.  This seemingly bleak, nearly skeptical picture that I have painted I have tried to temper by the idea of communication.  This idea is, I think, essential to philosophy.  As we communicate, as we enter into dialogue with one another, the ideas that we have may be challenged or supported.  Our sensibilities may be honored, or we may find ourselves offended by what others have to say to us.  All of this is part of entering into a conversation, be it spoken or in writing or perhaps in the form of art.  Hermeneutics attempts to describe how this conversation works, to provide us with a philosophy of the dialogue on which philosophy is built.

Here is where the third axiom becomes especially important, I think.  In a previous post I noted that embedded in this axiom seems to be the assumption that other people exist because for communication to happen we need more than one person.  What that also implies, I think, is that the other person is really saying something.  In post-modern hermeneutics there is a tendency to relegate meaning entirely to the realm of the "reader."  The reader creates meaning, the author or speaker and the "text" have no agency whatsoever.  I think the most simple refutation of this is the phenomenon of reading a text with which you disagree or which you find offensive.  Perhaps we can find some deep Freudian reason why I might create a reading at which I myself am offended, but I think the more straightforward notion is to say that the text, or the author, or perhaps both, really are communicating with me as the reader.  Communication is not me in a vacuum imagining what others might say, it is me listening to what someone else actually has said.

The danger to saying this is that we might slip too far in the opposite direction and endlessly ponder what exactly the other person meant.  I'm not sure that is helpful, either.  I have mentioned before that I am a bit of a musician.  As a musician, I occasionally write music (though not nearly as often as I would like).  My experience when writing a song has generally been that while the song originates with something in my experience, be it an event or an emotion or whatever, it usually takes on a life of its own in the process of being written such that at the end of the day I can say simultaneously that I deeply identify with my own music, but also that none of the songs I have written are actually about me or anyone that I know.  They have become their own entity.  I imagine that this is how many artists feel, whatever their medium.  I think this is also how much of our communication works.  The text and the author really are saying something.  But that something may not be clear, even to them.  So when we interpret a text, we interpret it based on how it affects us.  To a certain extent, that process is guided by who we are- it is part of our subjective experience.  But I also think it is the case that this process is the result of something from beyond us projecting into our experience, in a sense generating an experience for us from which we draw some meaning.

Where this leaves us, I think, is a picture of a conversation.  As I approach others with my own ideas, I have the experience of learning about theirs.  Our ways of thinking, our philosophies, enter into a conversation with one another.  From that conversation we draw some sort of meaning.  That meaning may change us in some way, impacting our own way of thinking, molding our philosophy as our experience and understanding of the world grows wider and wider.  But it may also change and impact the other person, shaping their philosophy as they too grow in their understanding.

The Rob Bell Controversy

I have weighed in on the discussion surrounding Rob Bell's new book Love Wins in a couple of venues.  However, I think a good friend of mine, Ryan Junkin, has provided a much better and clearer commentary on the controversy.  I highly recommend checking out his blog post:

http://ryanjunkin.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/rob-bell-and-intellectual-theological-progress/

I think particularly helpful is how he ends the post: "one never knows Scripture so well and so certainly that he can confidently dismiss dissenters without engaging them, stubbornly relying on traditionally-formulated answers.  To do so is to spit in the face of the hurting, questioning world to which Scripture sends us."

For the Evangelical community I think this is an essential reminder, and a reminder which people like Rob Bell have adamantly pushed on a community which often prefers easy, compact answers to very difficult questions.

I also very highly recommend that everyone watch the video promoting this book, which can be found on Amazon's page here.  I wonder how many of the comments made in response to Rob Bell have been made based on hearsay without having actually seen the video (which is the best we can do right now since the book isn't actually out yet).

A Few Shameless Plugs

Promoting a couple of very good friends of mine from college:

Justin Cross and I were at Southeastern together.  He is a fantastic musician, have seen him play at several shows in Birmingham.  Just recently he put out an album titled "Listening to Ghosts."  I highly recommend it!

Justin has also just put out a live album recorded at one of my favorite places in Birmingham, the UCF House.  Check out the live album here:

UCF (University Christian Fellowship) is a college ministry that I did a lot with, and their main building, essentially a student center/lounge that also doubled as a concert venue, was basically my home while I lived in Birmingham.  UCF is also the link to the second shameless plug.  The Director of UCF, Andy Byers, who is an awesome, excellent pastor, just wrote a book, which you can check out below!

The final bit of this string of shameless plugs is about an upcoming talk I will be giving at First Church of Christ in Clinton, CT.  I will be discussing the differences among Bible translations and translation philosophies on April 13 at 7:30.

A Critique of Compatibalism

Part of an ongoing conversation I am involved with on a friends blog got into the philosophy of free-will (can I ever escape this topic??) and I was asked to offer my thoughts on compatibalism.  Given that these thoughts are a little off-topic for that discussion I decided to post them here rather than there to avoid too many rabbit trails.

So here very briefly ("very" is a relative word in my vocabulary, be ye warned) is my critique of compatibalism:

Compatibalism purports to make the following two statements "compatible" with one another:

1. Determinism is true.
2. We have free will.

Truth be known, they have already lost me at statement one.  But we'll leave my more general critiques of determinism aside for now and talk about how compatibalists attempt to relate these two statements.  The claim is that so long as my "will" or "desires" correspond with the determined actions in which I take part, then I can still say that I am "free," at least in the way that really matters, which is the way that makes me morally responsible for what I do.

So what the compatibalist is doing, then, is proposing a division between our "will/desires" and our "actions."  Then they are arguing that so long as these two planes correspond with one another- so long as the "will/desires" side of the equation equals (or gives approval to or lines up with) the "actions" side then I am free in the sense of being morally responsible for my actions (because I at least condone my own actions even if I couldn't have chosen any other course of action).

I am going to offer two critiques here.  The first has to do with the relationship of the "will/desires" side of the equation to the "actions" side.  The second has to do with the origin of the "will/desires" side.

First, how do these two sides relate?  It seems like we have three options.  The first and the most commonsensical option is that the will causes our actions.  The second would be the opposite of that- that our actions have the epiphenomenal effect of causing our will- in other words, our "will" is really just a perception that is caused by our actions, but it doesn't exist independently of those actions.  The third option is that the two don't actually have any sort of causal relationship, they exist parallel to one another without interacting with one another.

For the claim of compatibalism to be distinct from that of strict determinism, it seems like the relationship between the "will/desires" side and the "actions" side of the equation is going to have to be such that they are not causally interconnected.  Basically the claim that correspondence between these two sides of the equation makes free will and determinism compatible is, I want to argue, compromised by any causal interrelatedness of the two.

To see this, lets start with epiphenomenalism.  If our will is actually the result of our actions then while the two will always coincide, this is not because the will is freely condoning our actions.  In this case, the will is every bit as determined as our actions are because of the causal relationship between the two.  In other words, while the two will always coincide on this scenario, that is at best a trivial observation and has no bearing on our "freedom" because the will is itself dependent on our actions and thus must coincide with them (is itself determined to coincide with them).  Something similar happens in the case of the will causing our actions.  In that scenario, we again have a causal dependence of one plane on the other.  If we want to maintain that our actions are determined then this interdependence will lead us to say that the will is likewise subject to determinism.  In both of these scenarios we end up with a will that is subject to the same determinations as we are positing for our actions.  While this certainly implies that our two planes will always line up with one another, it seems very difficult to say what value this has for making determinism compatible with free will.  In fact, in both of these scenarios we end up with strict determinism.  Compatibalists want to say something more than this- strict determinism is not enough, the will needs to be independent of our actions so that it can freely condone them and make us responsible for these actions.  If there is any causal relationship between the two planes, this independence is not possible.

This leaves us with the option that our will and our actions have no interaction with one another.  Thus, the "action" side of the equation could be determined and the "will/desires" side free and the two coincide with one another in a way that makes free-will and determinism compatible.  The problem with this scenario is that for our will and our actions to line up we are going to have to believe in a tremendous chain of cosmic coincidences, which strikes me as wildly unlikely.  Perhaps the compatibalist wants to bite that bullet, but I think there are probably simpler explanations in either the strict determinist or free-will camps than to claim that every free will that has ever existed has somehow magically lined up with every determined chain of actions performed by the bodies those free-wills were attached to.

Second, where does the "will" originate?  Here it seems we have two basic options: that the will is either "internal" to us, meaning it is in some sense generated by us, or that the will originates from some source "external" to us.  This question is more or less independent from the previous one- we could imagine a will that originated in either of these ways relating to our actions in any of the above considered ways (with the possible exception of matching an externally generated will with the epiphenomenal interaction scheme above), but when we ask this question in the context of  compatibalism we will discover some considerations that result in a bit of a dilemma.

Lets consider the "external" origin option first.  If we choose this option, I contend that we have to give up the notion of freedom altogether.  If our actions are determined and our "will" is imposed upon us from an outside source, then while our will may "condone" our actions, this is meaningless in so far as establishing our responsibility for these actions goes.  So if this is the angle we take, then the compatibalist goal of harmonizing free will and determinism has failed because we have entirely eliminated free will.

The "internal" option- where we ourselves generate our own will- poses its own challenges for compatibalism.  First, there is going to be a serious question of how this could happen and what it would look like without the first statement- that determinism is true- being undermined.  Second, this is going to connect back into the first critique: how can a will that we have ourselves generated (assuming this can be done and determinism still be true) interact with our (determined) actions?  My thought, for what its worth, is that the only way for the compatibalist to consistently do this is going to be very similar to the conclusion of the above argument- the will must come into existence on a metaphysical plane that has no interaction with the tangible (and determined) world, it must develop entirely on that plane, and experience the tangible world as a passive observer on that plain that coincidentally has condoned everything that it observes.  Any other solution, I think, is going to collapse back into a strict determinism.

Let me try and summarize all this and perhaps conclude with one succinct critique.  The often heard slogan of compatibalism, that we are free so long as we do what we desire/will, is not very helpful in my opinion.  This is because on any of the systems we have touched on here- either strict determinism, libertarian freedom, or compatibalism we could be said to do what we desire/will.  People act in accordance with their will (unless we want to postulate some sort of voo-doo principle of action).  What I have tried to demonstrate here is that without the compatibalist also arguing that the will must be independent of our determined actions then there is nothing separating their theory from that of a strict determinist.  The problem is that to make that kind of independence work we end up creating a metaphysical gap within people- we create what is known as an "interaction problem" where it is impossible for  one part of the person to interact with the other.  In this case, the result is what I think is the rather absurd conclusion that for compatibalism to work we have to believe in a cosmic chain of coincidences between what we will and what we actually do.  Here would be a good place to note this: I don't think Theism helps the compatibalist on this issue.  This is part of the point of the second objection- if God makes the coincidences work then this is either because God has imposed our will on us (thus eliminating freedom and collapsing back into strict determinism) or because God has planned history around our free will (the middle-knowledge hypothesis, which I also have some suspicions about but also think is the only version of compatibalism that works), a conclusion most compatibalists would want to adamantly deny.