A paper of mine entitled "Can Berkeley's God Raise the Same Body, Transformed?" has been accepted to the Society Christian Philosophers, Pacific Division Conference on "Mind, Body, and Free Will" at UC Riverside Oct. 30 - Nov. 1. The conference organizers plan to post papers online, and I will provide a link when they do. In the meantime, I've discussed some of the material in the paper here and here. My official abstract is as follows:
Orthodox Christianity affirms a bodily resurrection of the dead. That is, Christians believe that at some point in the eschatological future, possibly after a period of (conscious or unconscious) disembodied existence, we will once again live and animate our own bodies. However, our bodies will also undergo radical qualitative transformation. This creates a serious problem: how can a body persist across both temporal discontinuity and qualitative transformation? After discussing this problem as it appears in contemporary philosophical literature on the resurrection, I will argue that George Berkeley's immaterialist metaphysics is more successful than either physicalism or dualism in escaping objections to resurrection based on the problem of qualitative transformation. In order to accomplish this, I will first discuss Berkeley's views on the metaphysics of so-called 'ordinary' objects, including human bodies, and then apply this view to the resurrection of the dead, ultimately showing that, for Berkeley, the radical transformation of the body in the resurrection is no more problematic than the case of a straight oar appearing bent when one end is inserted in water.
Peter van Inwagen famously argued in his 1978 paper "The Possibility of Resurrection" that the only way God can bring a dead person back to life is to raise the very same body. However, if the body has decayed or been cremated, then it doesn't exist to be raised. Therefore, van Inwagen reasons, if Christianity is true, God must, at the moment of death (or immediately prior) surreptitiously remove the dead/dying body and spirit it away somewhere, replacing it with a simulacrum. Otherwise, there could be no afterlife. Unsurprisingly, this has met with some "incredulous stares." Here are a couple of good ones:
[T]he Christian materialist would surely do well to look for a better story than this. I once helped a friend with some of the more laborious steps in the process of taking a human corpse apart. Opening a human skull and finding a dead brain is sort of like opening the ground and finding a dinosaur skeleton. Of course it is in some sense possible that God takes our brains when we die and replaces them with stuff that looks for all the world like dead brains, just as it is possible that God created the world 6000 years ago and put dinosaur bones in the ground to test our faith in a slavishly literal reading of Genesis. But neither is particularly satisfying as a picture of how God actually does business. (Dean Zimmerman, "The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The 'Falling Elevator Model'", Faith and Philosophy 16 (1999): 194-212)
For the record, a footnote (which I have omitted above) explains that Zimmerman's friend "was not a mobster, but a student of anatomy." I'm glad that's been cleared up. Here's another:
Since van Inwagen's account has God involved in “body snatching,” family members actually bury or cremate illusions of loved ones and cannibals make virtual rather than real meals out of explorers, missionaries and anthropologists. This seems so bizarre that even the staunchest materialist, if he has any religious leanings, may be tempted to give dualism another hearing. (David B. Hershenov, "The Metaphysical Problem of Intermittent Existence and The Possibility of Resurrection," Faith and Philosophy 20 (2003): 24-36)
It should be noted that, as Zimmerman mentions elsewhere in his paper, that dualism won't necessarily save you, since there is good theological reason for believing that God raises the same body. What dualism does (supposedly) is allow God to raise the same person without having to raise the same body. Meanwhile, the Apostles' Creed affirms "the resurrection of the body" (Gr. sarx, Lat. 'carnis', both of which literally mean 'flesh'). Again, the Athanasian Creed says (v. 41) that "the dead shall rise again with their bodies" (emphasis added), implying that bodies rise. I am arguing from the creeds because I am being lazy right now and it is a little easier than arguing directly from Scripture, but I believe that a careful reading of 1 Corinthians 15 and other relevant passages yields the same result, so while "body snatching" is surely not the answer, substance dualism won't solve the problem either.
George Berkeley is well known for his critique of matter. By "matter" he means Locke's "material substratum." At the end of the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous he actually does acknowledge that one might use the word "matter" simply to mean "the stuff of the physical world" (that's not a direct quote) and he doesn't object to this, so he actually isn't opposed to the way the word was used in your physics or chemistry classes, but only to the way it was used in early modern metaphysics.
The critique of matter is tied up in the critique of abstract ideas, and so Berkeley devotes the Introduction to the Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge to criticizing abstraction. The alleged faculty of abstraction is one by which we, by considering concrete ideas, are supposed to be able to frame clear and distinct ideas which are nevertheless underspecified. In a well-known passage, quoted several times by Berkeley, Locke writes: "does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle ... for it must be neither oblique, nor rectangle, nor neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon; but all and none of these at once" (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 4.7.9). This, Berkeley thinks, is nonsense. This alleged "idea" is full of contradictions, and we can form no such thing. Matter, or material substratum, he supposes, is just such a false "idea," as his spokesman, Philonous, points out in the Three Dialogues:
HYLAS. ... when I look on sensible things in another view, considering them as so many modes and qualities, I find it necessary to suppose a material substratum, without which they cannot be conceived to exist.
PHILONOUS. Material substratum call you it? Pray, by which of your senses came you acquainted with that being?
HYLAS. It is not itself sensible; its modes and qualities only being perceived by the senses.
PHILONOUS. I presume then, it was by reflexion and reason you obtained the idea of it.
HYLAS. I do not pretend to any proper positive idea of it. However I conclude it exists, because qualities cannot be conceived to exist without a support.
PHILONOUS. It seems then you have only a relative notion of it, or that you conceive it not otherwise than by conceiving the relation it bears to sensible qualities.
HYLAS. Right.
PHILONOUS. Be pleased therefore to let me know wherein that relation consists.
... [Hylas tries and fails to explain] ...
PHILONOUS. Pray, let me know any sense, literal or not literal, that you understand it in. - How long must I wait for an answer, Hylas?
HYLAS. I declare I know not what to say, I once thought I understood well enough what was meant by matter's supporting accidents. But now the more I think on it, the less can I comprehend it; in short, I find that I know nothing of it.
PHILONOUS. It seems then you have no idea at all, neither relative nor positive of matter; you know neither what it is in itself, nor what relation it bears to accidents.
HYLAS. I acknowledge it.
PHILONOUS. And yet you asserted, that you could not conceive how qualities or accidents should really exist, without conceiving at the same time a material support of them.
HYLAS. I did.
PHILONOUS. That is to say, when you conceive the real existence of qualities, you do withal conceive something which you cannot conceive. (pp. 197-199)
But wait! Elsewhere, Berkeley develops a sophisticated theory of reference that is supposed to give significance to all sorts of words that don't correspond to ideas! Here are selections from Alciphron 7.2, 4-7 (Berkeley's spokesman is Euphranor):
ALCIPHRON. ... Words are signs: they do or should stand for ideas; which so far as they suggest they are significant. But words that suggest no ideas are insignificant. He who annexeth a clear idea to every word he makes use of speaks sense; but where such ideas are wanting, the speaker utters nonsense. In order therefore to know whether any man's speech be senseless and insignificant, we have nothing to do but lay aside the words, and consider the ideas suggested by them.
...
Grace is the main point in the Christian dispensation; nothing is oftener mentioned or more considered throughout the New Testament; wherein it is represented as somewhat of a very particular kind, distinct from anything revealed to the Jews, or known by the light of nature ... Hence Christianity is styled the covenant or dispensation of grace ... What is the clear and distinct idea marked by the word grace? I presume a man may know the bare meaning of this term, without going into the depth of all those learned inquiries. This surely is an easy matter, provided there is an idea annexed to such term. And if there is not, it can be neither the subject of a rational dispute, nor the object of real faith ... Grace taken in the vulgar sense, either for beauty or favour, I can easily understand. But when it denotes an active, vital, ruling principle, influencing and operating on the mind of man, distinct from every natural power of motive, I profess myself altogether unable to understand it, or frame any distinct idea of it; and therefore I cannot assent to any proposition concerning it, nor consequently have any faith about it: and it is a self-evident truth, that God obligeth no man to impossibilities...EUPHRANOR. ... Words, it is agreed, are signs: it may not therefore be amiss to examine the use of other signs, in order to know that of words. Counters, for instance, at a card-table are used, not for their own sake, but only as signs substituted for money, as words are for ideas. Say now, Alciphron, is it necessary every time these counters are used throughout the progress of a game, to frame an idea of the distinct sum or value that each represents?
ALCIPHRON. By no means: it is sufficient the players at first agree on their respective values, and at last substitute those values in their stead.
EUPHRANOR. And in casting up a sum, where the figures stand for pounds, shillings, and pence, do you think it necessary, throughout the whole progress of the operation, in each step to form ideas of pounds, shillings, and pence?
ALCIPHRON. I do not; it will suffice if in the conclusion those figures direct our actions with respect to things.
EUPHRANOR. From hence it seems to follow, that words may not be insignificant, although they should not, every time they are used, excite the ideas they signify in our minds; it being sufficient that we have it in our power to substitute things or ideas for their signs when there is occasion. It seems also to follow, that there may be another use of words besides that of marking and suggesting distinct ideas, to wit, the influencing our conduct and actions; which may be done either by forming rules for us to act by, or by raising certain passions, dispositions, and emotions in our minds. A discourse, therefore, that directs how to act or excites to the doing or forbearance of an action may, it seems, be useful and significant, although the words whereof it is composed should not bring each a distinct idea into our minds.
ALCIPHRON. It seems so.
EUPHRANOR. Pray tell me, Alciphron, is not an idea altogether inactive?
ALCIPHRON. It is.
EUPHRANOR. An agent therefore, an active mind, or spirit cannot be an idea, or like an idea. Whence it should seem to follow that those words which denote an active principle, soul, or spirit do not, in a strict and proper sense, stand for ideas. And yet they are not insignificant neither; since I understand what is signified by the term I, or myself, or know what it means, although it be no idea, nor like an idea, but that which thinks, and wills, and apprehends ideas, and operates about them. Certainly it must be allowed that we have some notion, that we understand or know what is meant by, the terms myself, will, memory, love, hate, and so forth; although to speak exactly, these words do not suggest so many distinct ideas.
ALCIPHRON. What would you infer from this?
EUPHRANOR. What hath been inferred already - that words may be significant, although they do not stand for ideas. The contrary whereof having been presumed seems to produce the doctrine of abstract ideas.
...
EUPHRANOR: ... But, to come to your own instance, let us examine what idea we can frame of force abstracted from body, motion, and outward sensible effects. For myself I do not find that I have or can have any such idea.
ALCIPHRON. Surely everyone knows what is meant by force.
EUPHRANOR. And yet I question whether everyone can form a distinct idea of force. Let me entreat you, Alciphron, be not amused by terms: lay aside the word force, and exclude very other thing from your thoughts, and then see what precise idea you have of force.
ALCIPHRON. Force is that in bodies which produces motion and other sensible effects.
EUPHRANOR. Is it then something distinct from those effects.
ALCIPHRON. It is.
EUPHRANOR. Be pleased now to exclude the consideration of its subject and effects, and contemplate force itself in its own precise idea.
ALCIPHRON. I profess I find it no such easy matter.
EUPHRANOR. Take your own advice, and shut your eyes to assist your meditation. Upon this, Alciphron, having closed his eyes and mused a few minutes, declared he could make nothing of it.
...
EUPHRANOR. But, notwithstanding all this, it is certain there are many speculations, reasoning, and disputes, refined subtleties and nice distinctions about this same force ... Upon the whole, therefore, may we not pronounce that - excluding body, time, space, motion, and all its sensible measures and effects - we shall find it as difficult to form an idea of force as of grace?
ALCIPHRON. I do not know what to think of it.EUPHRANOR. And yet, I presume, you allow there are very evident propositions and theorems relating to force, which contain useful truths ... And if, by considering this doctrine of force, men arrive at the knowledge of many inventions in mechanics, and are taught to frame engines, by means of which things difficult and otherwise impossible may be performed ; and if the same doctrine which is so beneficial here below serveth also as a key to the celestial motions; shall we deny that it is of use, either in practice or speculation, because we have no distinct idea of force? Or that which we admit with regard to force, upon what pretence can we deny concerning grace?
the algebraic mark, which denotes the root of a negative square, hath its use in logistic operations, although it be impossible to form an idea of any such quantity. And what is true of algebraic signs is also true of words or language, modern algebra being in fact a more short, apposite, and artificial sort of language, and it being possible to express by words at length, though less conveniently, all the steps of an algebraical process.
So how does the critique of matter proceed? You may have noticed in the passage from the Three Dialogues that Philonous is careful to distinguish between a "positive idea" and a "relative notion." Positive ideas are the "distinct ideas" of the Alciphron. These are limited to what we can perceive or imagine. Relative notions are concepts like the imaginary number i. We don't have a "distinct idea" of i, but we have a theorem: i2=-1. This establishes a relation (hence "relative") between i and a real number, and thus allows us to apply the rules of algebra to get back to real numbers, which we understand. Berkeley believes that we can do this with words like "grace" and "force," but Hylas fails to do even this with "matter." A relative notion of matter actually might be something like "that which has mass and takes of space," which is what we learned in physics and chemistry classes, but this, according to Berkeley, is meaningful only because it actually relates to our perceptions. Therefore, such a definition does no good to someone arguing for a materialist metaphysics.
My position on the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism is that the more moderate forms of each are both plausible and orthodox. Hyper-Calvinism can slide into the heresy of fatalism, or the denial that God loves all people; hyper-Arminianism slides, of course, into Pelagianism. It is only the moderate forms of each which are, I say, plausible and orthodox. These moderate forms, I hold, represent two different man-made philosophical and theological systems designed to uphold the same doctrines revealed in Scripture. I believe that when the disagreement actually reaches all the way down to Biblical hermeneutics, rather than staying in the realm of systematic theology, it is usually the case that someone has strayed into the "hyper" realm. We ought to be able to state what the Scripture says in a "topic-neutral" way because the Scripture does not reveal to us a theory of grace or of soteriology that reaches this level of detail. Now, the revealed doctrines I'm talking about are often considered to be specifically Calvinist doctrines. The reason for this, at least among the people I talk to, is that all of us find that the majority (though by no means all) of the Protestants we talk to fall into two categories: those who accept various forms of hyper-Arminianism implicitly and unreflectively, and those who accept Calvinism consciously and reflectively.
I believe in the compatibility of the Biblical doctrines of grace and election with a moderate Arminianism. I believe that this compatibility is most clearly seen in two verses: John 6:40 and Romans 8:29. Note that I am not claiming that the Bible teaches Arminianism. (Personally, I believe in the moderate Arminian theory I am outlining on grounds of philosophical considerations related to human freedom and personal responsibility.) What I am claiming is that these two verses (and others) teach a doctrine of election/grace/predestination that is compatible with a moderate Arminianism. In outlining what this moderate Arminianism would look like, I hope to offer Biblical considerations against (1) the view that only Calvinism can adequately account for the Biblical doctrines of grace, and (2) various hyper-Arminian views.
John 6:40 reads, "For this is the will of My Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." Christ says that this is the will of the Father. That is, the Father has made an effectual, sovereign pronouncement. This pronouncement relates to a specific group of people: "everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him." It also has a specific content: they "may have eternal life, and [Christ] will raise [them] up on the last day." There is no natural necessity or connection between seeing the Son and believing (trusting) in Him and having eternal life. Rather, the connection is forged entirely by the sovereign will of God. Those who trust the Son do not thereby work any part of their salvation or come to deserve eternal life. The work of salvation is entirely independent of the individual. In this way, we can, as Arminians, claim that everyone is free to accept or reject Christ, while nevertheless assenting to the Biblical doctrines of election ("You did not choose Me, but I chose you" - John 15:16) and grace (i.e. the view that we are undeserving of God's favor - which is, in fact, the meaning of the word 'grace' as it is used throughout the NT).
Similarly, Romans 8:29 reads, "For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers." This passage picks out a specific group of people who God has predestined to be conformed into the image of Christ: "those He foreknew." In order to make sense of this verse foreknowledge must be distinct from, and prior to, predestination. Moderate Calvinist and Arminian views can both do this, but more extreme ones cannot: hyper-Calvinism collapses foreknowledge into predestination, and hyper-Arminianism collapses predestination into foreknowledge. What we need to say in our moderate Arminian theory is that God foreknew something about these people - something they would choose freely - and predestined something entirely unrelated for those people on the basis of his foreknowledge. As in John, we may say that what God foreknew is that they would "see the Son and trust him." The verse itself says what they are predestined for: to be conformed into his image. There is no natural connection or necessity between trusting the Son and being conformed into his image, so by trusting him we do not accomplish our own sanctification. Those who trust the Son do not thereby become worthy to become like him, and therefore we still receive this as a gift of grace.
The core Biblical doctrine that moderate Calvinists and moderate Arminians agree on is this: God, in his sovereignty, has freely chosen, on the basis of his foreknowledge, to save a group of people, the elect, who are unable to contribute anything to their own salvation and are totally undeserving of salvation. The disagreement is over what God foreknew. Our moderate Arminian theory claims that God foreknew decisions which were made freely by the individual members of the group, but which neither contribute to salvation nor render the individual worthy of salvation. The Calvinist denies that the free decisions of humans enter into the equation at any point.
An objection to this view is that human beings are incapable of simply "choosing" to trust the Son:
... both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin, as it is written:
There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
together they have become useless;
there is no one who does good,
there is not even one. (Romans 3:9-12)
John Wesley deals with this problem with his doctrine of prevenient grace. This doctrine asserts that God intervenes in our lives by his grace in order to enable us to choose him before we ever begin to seek him. But prevenient grace, unlike the grace of God in the Calvinist conception, is not irresistible. An Arminian Molinist can (but need not) still believe in infallible grace, by holding that God only extends prevenient grace to those he knows will accept it, and denies it to those he knows will never accept it so that it is possible to resist prevenient grace, but this never in fact happens. There are, however, reasons for rejecting this view. The principle one is that God seems to feel the need for what political theorists call public justification. That is, although God already knows the our guilt or innocence, he nevertheless plans to hold a public judgment in order to show us his reasons and his justice (Joel 3, Revelation 20:11-15). So it seems that God might want to go through the motions of offering grace even to those he knows will reject it. The alternative is to hold that every person, at at least one moment in his or her life, is elevated by God's prevenient grace out of his or her bondage to sin to just such a degree as to be able to freely chose to trust, or not to trust, in Christ. Some Calvinists will no doubt object that it is impossible that a person who is free in this way should reject Christ after seeing him. This gets into difficult questions of free wills naturally choosing the good and of akrasia, i.e. weakness of the will. The latter is a big problem, especially for the Augustinian/Platonist account of the will that (I think) most Calvinists hold. Nevertheless, I think it should be evident by the time we get to this objection that I have achieved what I set out to achieve: we are well beyond Biblical hermeneutics and deep into the realm of philosophy, guided not by revelation, but by human reason.
Tim Troutman (formerly known as "The God Fearin' Fiddler") of The God Fearin' Forum has responded to my latest discussion of Eucharistic theology and Aristotle. Perhaps I have not been very clear. Whatever the case, Tim persistently misunderstands both my claim and my argument for it. I am going to try to make what I am claiming very clear here:
The doctrine of transubstantiation, as expounded by Trent, is rendered incoherent by any system of metaphysics sufficiently different from Aristotle's.
Now that I've cleared that up (I hope), let me further explicate my claim and argue for it again. In case you've forgotten, here is my claim:
The doctrine of transubstantiation, as expounded by Trent, is rendered incoherent by any system of metaphysics sufficiently different from Aristotle's.
The God Fearin' Fiddler has a post up on the historical significance of transubstantiation which has led to some interesting discussions. The principle problem with this post and the discussion that follows it, however, is that no one seems to understand the difference between transubstantiation and the Real Presence. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on this either, but I do think I know enough to clear up some historical and metaphysical confusion. I am going to use two principal sources - session 13 of the Council of Trent, and the relevant article from the Catholic Encyclopedia - to explain the historical development and specific content of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and then attempt to show two things: (1) no such doctrine is affirmed by Ambrose in the passage the Fiddler likes to quote in this connection, and (2) it would be very difficult for Christians with strong Platonist leanings, such as Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, and most early Christian theologians, to even make sense of this doctrine, which renders it highly unlikely that they implicitly accepted it, or that they would have accepted it had it been explained to them.
Let us begin with an outline of the history. From the beginning, Christians used the words Christ himself used in describing the Eucharist. Christ himself said "this is my body" and "this is my blood." This is in essentially all of the records of the words of institution, including 1 Corinthians 11:23-29, the passage most churches read before serving the Eucharist. Christ also speaks this way in John 6, which is one of the most important texts on the theology of the Eucharist.
Now, all Christians, including even Zwingli, have used and still use this language in describing the Eucharist, so it is important to note that if Zwinglian or similar interpretations will work for the text of the New Testament, they will also work for most writers who merely adopt the New Testament's language and don't attempt to describe it in any more detail. Zwingli specifically argued for a symbolic interpretation by pointing out all the places in Scripture where "is" is used to mean "signifies." There appears to be a more or less uncontestable example of this even in the words of institution themselves, as they are recorded in Luke. Jesus says "this cup is the new covenant" (Luke 22:20, emphasis added), but the cup clearly isn't actually the new covenant (how could it be?). Rather, it is the sign and seal of the new covenant. I don't think that either Catholic and Orthodox believers, who like to interpret the words of institution literally, or fundamentalists, who like to interpret everything but the words of institution literally, would want to say that the cup literally is the new covenant.
I am not an expert on patristics (though I am working on it), but I suspect that most of the fathers, especially the earlier ones, simply used the same language as Christ and didn't provide or attempt to provide much further analysis. The question at issue here doesn't hinge on whether we affirm these words to be true. All Christians agree on that. We all agree that these words express some important truth; we don't agree about what truth they express. (Actually, there is some agreement, but there is a lot of disagreement about the details.)
That said, a case can probably be made that many of the fathers explicitly affirmed the doctrine of the Real Presence (certainly at least a few of them did), and that no writings survive from an otherwise orthodox writer in the early period of Christianity who denies this doctrine. The doctrine of the Real Presence is simply the claim that these words are to be interpreted literally: the bread is the body of Christ and the wine is the blood of Christ. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, any attempt at further analysis meets with suspicion. However, as we shall see, the Roman Catholic Church has not only given a metaphysical theory of this doctrine, but has elevated that theory to the status of dogma (that is, all members of the Church are in principle required to assent to it).
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article, transubstantiation properly so-called (at least the details of the theory) is a uniquely Western doctrine. The word was first used by Hildebert of Tours around 1079. Note that this is contemporary with Anselm, the first of the Scholastics, but before the wide availability of the words of the Arab Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes) and through him the works of Aristotle in the West. This will become significant later.
Of course, the history of the word is not a history of the doctrine. I have already outlined the doctrine of the Real Presence (it really is that simple). The Catholic Encyclopedia states that "the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation sets up a mighty bulwark around the dogma of the Real Presence and constitutes in itself a distinct doctrinal article, which is not involved in that of the Real Presence, though the doctrine of the Real Presence is necessarily contained in that of Transubstantiation." So when did this distinct doctrine develop? Before or after the use of the word? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find an answer to that question, and I don't know enough about Anselm and friends to know whether the philosophical commitments of the 11th and 12th century Western Christian philosophers and theologians left room for full transubstantiation. However, the Catholic Encyclopedia informs us that the word first entered Catholic dogmatic definitions at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, but the text of that council says only "[Christ's] body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed [Lat. transsubstantiatio] by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us." Here we do have the word "form" (presumably Latin "forma") which is often a synonym of "species", a Scholastic/Aritotelian technical term used in later discussions of the doctrine. Nevertheless, since outside the technical jargon of scholasticism, "forma" just means "shape" and "species" just means "appearance," in order to show that the Fourth Lateran Council actually affirms transubstantiation as we know it today, rather than just using the word, it would have to be shown that the word already had the present day meaning. On the other hand, the word itself would seem to have some Aristotelian baggage (I promise I'm about to explain all of this - I apologize if anyone has to read this long post twice due to my poor organization): the bread and wine are not trans-formed - they retain their original form. Rather they are trans-substanced. The form remains the same, but the substance changes. This is the essence (that's another loaded term in Aristotle/Aquinas talk) of the doctrine. So it is probably affirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council.
At any rate, it is quite clear in the Council of Trent in 1563. Here are some excerpts from the thirteenth session (translated by Philip Schaff):
Chapter I ... after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ ... is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things ...Chapter IV On Transubstantiation. And because that Christ, our Redeemer, declared that which he offered under the species of bread to be truly his own body, therefore has it ever been a firm belief in the Church of God, and this holy Synod doth now declare it anew, that by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood; which conversion is, by the holy Catholic Church, suitably and properly called transubstantiation.
The Canons anathematize anyone who disagrees with this (Canon II even anathematizes anyone who doesn't want to call it transubstantiation!), but don't really add anything.
Here is the metaphysical background: Aristotle was a proponent of what is called a "hylomorphic" metaphysics. That is, he affirmed that material objects were made up of "matter" (Gr. hylas) and "form" (Gr. morphos). There is a lot more complexity than this, but this is the basic idea. This is related to his distinction between "substance" or "essence" (Gr. ousia) and "accident" (I don't know the Greek word for this). The matter of an object is the stuff it's made out of, and it's form is its shape or organization. For the Scholastics, the Latin "species" seems to have been related to Aristotle's "form" but been more closely related to our cognition (the Catholic Encyclopedia article on this didn't make that much sense to me). Objects also have an essence, which is that in virtue of which it is the thing it is, and various accidents, or properties that could change without the object being destroyed. Often, the essence of an object is thought to be a collection of essential properties; thus I might be essentially human.
For the Scholastic/Aristotelian, the doctrine of transubstantiation is kind of weird, but no weirder than the Incarnation of the Trinity, and, more importantly, it is coherent. It is to be explained as follows: the substances or essences of the bread and wine are fully replaced by the substances or essences of the body and blood of Christ (I'm not sure if the matter is also replaced), but there is no change to the accidents, or to the form/species. Thus it still appears to be bread and wine, but it actually is the body and blood of Christ, since essence is what determines identity. Technically, the bread and wine are not changed into the body and blood, but replaced with the body and blood, since you can't change the essence of a thing and still have that same thing. Let me note that, while I'm not an expert on Aristotle, I suspect he would find it preposterous to claim that the essence of a material object could be replaced with another essence (and thus the material object be replaced with a different object) before our eyes without any perceptible difference in the matter before us.
Now we are going to examine Ambrose, and then the philosophical commitments of Augustine and his fellow Christian Platonists.
The Fiddler quotes Ambrose as saying:
Perhaps you will say, "I see something else, how is it that you assert that I receive the Body of Christ?" And this is the point which remains for us to prove. And what evidence shall we make use of? Let us prove that this is not what nature made, but what the blessing consecrated, and the power of blessing is greater than that of nature, because by blessing nature itself is changed.... [Ambrose discusses miracles performed by the prophets] ...
We observe, then, that grace has more power than nature, and yet so far we have only spoken of the grace of a prophet's blessing. But if the blessing of man had such power as to change nature, what are we to say of that divine consecration where the very words of the Lord and Saviour operate? For that sacrament which you receive is made what it is by the word of Christ. But if the word of Elijah had such power as to bring down fire from heaven, shall not the word of Christ have power to change the nature of the elements? You read concerning the making of the whole world: "He spoke and they were made, He commanded and they were created." Shall not the word of Christ, which was able to make out of nothing that which was not, be able to change things which already are into what they were not? For it is not less to give a new nature to things than to change them.
But why make use of arguments? Let us use the examples He gives, and by the example of the Incarnation prove the truth of the mystery. Did the course of nature proceed as usual when the Lord Jesus was born of Mary? If we look to the usual course, a woman ordinarily conceives after connection with a man. And this body which we make is that which was born of the Virgin. Why do you seek the order of nature in the Body of Christ, seeing that the Lord Jesus Himself was born of a Virgin, not according to nature? It is the true Flesh of Christ which crucified and buried, this is then truly the Sacrament of His Body.
The Lord Jesus Himself proclaims: "This is My Body." Before the blessing of the heavenly words another nature is spoken of, after the consecration the Body is signified. He Himself speaks of His Blood. Before the consecration it has another name,after it is called Blood. And you say, Amen, that is, It is true. Let the heart within confess what the mouth utters, let the soul feel what the voice speaks.
In order to show that Amborse accepts transubstantiation, we have to show that he explains the words "this is my body" by the claim that the form and accidents of the bread remain, but its essence has been replaced by the essence of the body of Christ. Do you see that in the above quotation? I don't see any such thing. Ambrose certainly affirms the Real Presence: he says that if God can become human flesh, certainly he can become bread. He says that we shouldn't be surprised if Christ's body doesn't follow the ordinary course of nature, since God often performs miracles in Scripture, and since even Christ's human birth did not follow the ordinary course of nature. But I see nothing here about form and matter, or about substance and accident, or about species. And I'm not just looking for the words, I'm looking for the content. All Ambrose says is "this may look like bread, but it's actually the body of Christ, and God certainly has the power to make what looks, feels, and tastes like bread into the body of Christ." That is the doctrine of the Real Presence.
The last thing I want to cover is the issue of the Platonist leanings of many of the early fathers, notably the Alexandrians and Augustine. I shouldn't have to take pains to show this, because the Catholic Encyclopedia says, "even Augustine was deprived of a clear conception of Transubstantiation, so long as he was held in the bonds of Platonism." Nevertheless, I will at least try to explain it.
Platonism holds that material objects are what they are in virtue of their "participation" (more literally: "having a share") in a transcendant, changeless, immaterial "form" (not morphos, but eidos or idea, which Aristotle also uses, but in a somewhat different meaning than morphos, I think). You and I are both human because we participate in the form of Human, or, as Plato often says Humanity Itself. The bread is bread because of its relationship to Bread Itself. Things are, of course, generally participants in multiple forms, and everything is a participant in Goodness Itself to a greater or lesser degree because Plato holds to a privation theory of evil (which is where Augustine got it), so anything that had no goodness at all would not exist. Christian Platonists generally want to avoid the idea that the forms are co-eternal with and independent of God, so they say that they exist in God's understanding.
A Platonist does not have a concept of an essence as an Aristotelian does. Furthermore, Plato himself, and I believe most Platonists following him, generally cashes out "participation" in terms of "being patterned after." It is very difficult to see how the bread could change from being patterned after bread to being patterned after the body of Christ without any perceptible change. In what would the patterning consist? How does this object resemble a human body, and how Christ's body in particular? Now, there must be some way of getting this to work, because Father Nicolas Malebranche was a very intelligent Platonist Catholic priest in the 17th/18th century, after the Council of Trent, and he must have come up with something, but I don't know what he said.
At any rate, it is highly unlikely that any Christian Platonist held to anything like transubstantiation prior to Malebranche, and a great many of the early fathers, including, as I have said, the Alexandrian school and Augustine, were Platonists.
The situation is even worse for idealists such as myself (or 18th century Anglican Bishop George Berkeley). We don't believe that there is any such thing as the essence or substance or matter of the bread. All that exists, according to idealism, is what the Scholastics would call the "species." Transubstantiation is thus puzzling for the Aristotelian, more puzzling for the Platonist, and completely incoherent for the idealist. I should also note that most contemporary philosophers don't believe in any of these three theories, but transubstantiation is probably also incoherent for them, since material objects don't have undetectible essences (though they may have essential properties).
Now, a Christian idealist does have to come up with some explanation for the bodily resurrection and be able to say that the body that is raised is in some sense the same body although it is radically transformed in terms of its phenomenal properties. Whatever solution one comes up with for this problem could probably also be used to make sense of the doctrine of the Real Presence. However, this view cannot possibly look anything like transubstantiation, for the reasons discussed above.
My paper "The Semantics of Sense Perception in Berkeley" is now available on my writings page. An earlier version of this paper served as my undergraduate honors thesis, and a somewhat reduced version of it has been accepted for publication by Religious Studies. I haven't heard anything about what issue it will appear in.
This paper discusses Berkeley's theory that our sense perceptions (especially visual perceptions) form a language by which God communicates with us, and asks how we are to interpret this language. In particular, it argues, against Walter Creery and Kenneth Winkler, that Berkeley's language must have what Winkler calls "vertical signification" - that is, ideas must be able to signify non-ideas - or Berkeley will be stuck in solipsism. (Winkler denies "vertical signification" on p. 21 of Berkeley: An Interpretation; Creery denies that the Berkeley's language has any "referential function" at all on p. 219 of "Berkeley's Argument for a Divine Visual Language," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 3 (1972). See my paper, endnote 8.) The paper goes on to discuss a number of ways in which the difficulties in the semantics of this language mirror difficulties in the semantics of human language, and briefly discusses the interpretation of a few specific perceptions.
I have also reorganized my writings page to give a feel for which papers I regard as finished and/or good and which I am currently still working on, rather than just organizing them chronologically or lumping them all together. Go check it out.
A collection of writings have come down to us under the name "Dionysius the Aereopagite" (after Acts 17:34) which effectively form the foundation of the tradition of Christian mysticism. Most scholars today believe the writer lived in Syria, c. 500 AD. The general consensus is that he couldn't have written earlier than this because he seems to have been influenced by 5th century Neo-Platonists. All this by way of background; I don't have any particular opinion as to when the writer lived or by whom he was influenced.
The principle work of "Dionysius" is only a few pages long and is called "On Mystical Theology." His surviving book-length works are The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, The Celestial Hierarchy, and The Divine Names. I read "On Mystical Theology" recently, first in the original Greek (available online), and then in the English translation included in Bernard McGinn's The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism. The work begins with a discussion of the divine darkness beyond understanding, i.e. of mystical, non-discursive knowledge of God. Predictably, this section is virtually incomprehensible (the English translation doesn't help that much, and if it followed the text more closely it would help even less). What is interesting to me, however, is the discussion of the different types of theologies - that is, of the types of "God-talk" that are possible while preserving God's status as beyond knowledge and intellect. This passage is interesting in and of itself, and when I read the Greek it was the part I felt I understood, so I was even more puzzled when I read the translation and found that the things I thought I understood weren't there! I'm going to first give the very beginning of the treatise in my translation and McGinn's for flavor (I should note that McGinn's translation is an adaptation of an anonymous one published in 1923), and then translations of a large chunk of chapter 3 to see if we can figure out what is going on.
| McGinn | Pearce |
|---|---|
| 1.1 Trinity beyond all essence, all divinity, all goodness! Guide of Christians to divine wisdom, direct our path to the ultimate summit of your mystical lore, most incomprehensible, most luminous, and most exalted, where the pure, absolute, and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty. | 1.1 Trinity beyond existence and beyond divinity and beyond goodness, guide of Christians to godly wisdom, direct us on [the way] of mystical discourses beyond ignorance and beyond assertions and at the highest peak; inside [of it] the pure, the uncorrupted, the unturning mysteries of theology according to that which is beyond light have been unveiled, a darkness of silent mystical secrets, in the darkest [place], that which is beyond appearance, beyond luminescence, and in the entirely impalpable and the unseen thing of the splendor beyond name, beyond filling the sightless mind. |
The first thing you will notice is, of course, that the McGinn translation is rather more polished. Mine is more literal. (Well, actually, the first thing you might notice, is that I was serious about this being incomprehensible.) I had originally wanted to follow "Dionysius" literally and user the prefix "hyper-" where I have used the word "beyond," since he has the prefix huper in the Greek, but I couldn't get that to make sense in English. At any rate, keep in mind that this whole section is about hyper-this and hyper-that; later I will try to explain why that is and draw an interesting conclusion from it.
"Dionysius" goes on, as I have said, for a page or two in this fashion, before getting to chapter 3 which is, as I have said, what I'm interested in:
| McGinn | Pearce |
|---|---|
| 3 In the Theological Outlines [a lost work] we have set forth the principle affirmative expressions concerning God, and have shown in what sense God's holy nature is one, and in what sense three; what is within it which is called Paternity, what Filiation, and what is signified by the name Spirit; how from the uncreated and indivisible good, the blessed and perfect rays of its goodness proceed, and yet abide immutably, one both within their origin and within themselves and each other, co-eternal with the act by which they spring from it; how the super-essential Jesus enters an essential state in which the truth of human nature meets it; and other matters made known by the oracles [i.e. scripture] were expounded in the same place.
Again, in the treatise on Divine Names, we have considered the meaning, as concerning God, of the titles of Good, of Being, of Life, of Wisdom, of Power, and of such other names as are applied to him [Divine Names, chpaters 4-8]. Further, in the Symbolic Theology [another lost work] we have considered what are the metaphorical titles drawn from the world of sense and applied to the nature of God; what is meant by the material and intellectual images we form of him, or the functions and instruments of activity attributed to him; what are the places where he dwells and the raiment in which he is adorned; what is meant by God's anger, grief, and indignation, or the divine inebriation; what is meant by God's oaths and threats, by his slumber and waking; and all sacred and symbolical representations. And it will be observed how far more copious and diffused are the last terms than the first, for the Theological Outlines and the discussion of the divine names are necessarily more brief than the Symbolic Theology. (Brackets McGinn's) | 3 Therefore, in the Theological Hypotyposes we praised the most dominant things of the cataphatic theology: how the divine and good nature is called 'simple' [i.e. 'one']; how [it is called] 'triune;' what [nature] is called 'paternal' and what 'filial;' what the theology of the Spirit wants to clarify; how the lights in the heart of the [nature] of goodness grow out of the immaterial and indivisible good, and [yet], subsisting in it and in themselves and in one another, remain alone without growth moving about; how Jesus, [though] beyond existence, took on existence with the truly human growths; and however many other things concerning the discourses have been made clear in the Theological Hypotyposes, were praised. But in On The Divine Names, how [the divine nature] is called 'good,' how [it is called] 'being,' how [it is called] 'life,' and 'wisdom,' and 'power,' and however many other things of the understanding are divine names, [were praised]. ['divine names' = Gr. 'theonyms' – what a nifty word!] And in the Symbolic Theology, certain metaphorical names [Gr. 'metonyms' – another nifty word] for the divine nature from sensible things, certain divine shapes, certain divine outlines and parts and tools, certain divine places and worlds, certain desires, certain sufferings and wraths, certain drunkennesses and carousings, certain oaths and imprecations, certain sleeps and certain wakings and however many other forms are holy falsehoods of symbolic God-patterns.
And I think you have seen how very many more words the last things take up than the first things: for also it was necessary that the Theological Hypotyposes and the exposition [lit. 'unfolding'] of the divine names should be a shorter discourse than the Symbolic Theology. The general view given by thought [must] account for [lit. 'set up'] as much as is denied of the opposite: just as even now when we were entering the darkness beyond thought we did not find a short discourse but, [rather, it was] entirely non-discursive and without understanding. |
Now, I think that what I am about to say is compatible with the McGinn translation, so I'm not too worried about my interpretation being out to lunch, but I sure wouldn't have thought of this if I hadn't also read the Greek, and I didn't understand it very well, so I'm waiting to be corrected in terms of my interpretation of "Dionysius," but I'm nevertheless going to tell you what I think, if for no other reason than that it is independently interesting, regardless of historical accuracy.
Traditionally, especially in Eastern Christianity, theology is divided in apophatic and cataphatic forms. Apophatic theology says what God is not (he is infinite, atemporal, unlimited, immaterial, etc.), and cataphatic theology says what God is (he is good, loving, powerful, three, one, etc.). Now, it seems to me that Dionysius uses these terms rather differently (well, he actually doesn't, in this work, use the word apophatikos, but he uses some cognates). That is, traditionally the words are interpreted with the etymologies "affirming away from" and "affirming toward," whence saying what something is not vs. saying what it is. But there is reason in this passage to suppose that what Dionysius really means is not "affirming away from" but "away from affirming," and, similarly, "toward affirming" - that is, he means discursive and non-discursive knowledge of God. In my translation I consistently used "discourse" and its cognates for logos and its cognates, and transliterated the word "cataphatic" (and also "hypotyposis," but I'm coming to that).
This, then, is the first distinction in theology: the mystical theology in which we know the unknowable and speak the ineffable in the cloud of brilliant darkness beyond light, existence, understanding, and language (note that if this made too much sense, it would mean that I had actually succeeded in giving a discursive account of what can, according to "Dionysius," be known only non-discursively, and so his theory would be false, so you shouldn't get too upset if you didn't understand it), and the discursive theology of the understanding. In God's true nature he is understood to be beyond the understanding, and so only accessible to this non-discursive knowledge-beyond-knowing, insofar as he is accessible at all. We cannot speak literally of God. (The debate on whether we can speak literally of God continues to this day, with the majority of traditional monotheists on the side of "Dionysius" to date.)
This is where things get really interesting. Although we cannot speak literally of God, nevertheless not all ways of speaking of God are equivalent. This seems intuitively true: it is very different to say that God is good or loving than to say that God is our Father, or that Christ is the Bridegroom of the Church, or - in an even more extreme example - that "a mighty fortress is our God." But, if we deny that we can speak literally of God, then what is the distinction here? "Dionysius" actually gives an analysis of this, having written books on each of the three divisions.
The first division is that of the "Hypotyposes." This word usually means outlines or some such, and so McGinn has translated it as such, but I'm not sure that's what it means in "Dionysius," exactly, because I think there's reason to suppose that "Dionysius" is playing on the etymology. A tupos is a pattern, imprint, outline, or some such, and hupo is the opposite of "Dionysius'" favorite prefix, hyper. God, he says, is hyper-existent, hyper-good, and so forth. What then are existence and goodness? They are hypo-types of God! That is, God is, strictly speaking, beyond existence and goodness, but existence and goodness don't misdescribe God as the "holy falsehoods of symbolic God-patterns" strictly speaking do; rather, they fall short of describing him, which is, after all, what hupo means.
The next category is that of the divine names. I'm not totally certain what the difference between the divine names and the hypotyposes is supposed to be, so let's simply assume that they are items that fall on the boundary of the hypotyposes and the symbolic theology. Goodness and existence are actually among the examples of this category, so "Dionysius" must not think that they are strictly hypotyposes, the way threeness, oneness, Fatherhood, Sonhood, Spirithood, the "lights of goodness" (whatever that means), and Christ's humanity are, but I chose them above because they are among the examples of hyper-attributes in chapter 1.
The final category is the symbolic theology, which contains the truly metaphorical. These are cases where we describe God in terms of sensible things (but apparently Fatherhood and Sonhood are not sensible?), and succeed in saying something true about him by this means.
This, at any rate, is what I got out of it. I encourage all you Bible translation bloggers to try your hand at interpreting/translating "Dionysius" to stretch your Greek muscles a little more and to tell me if you come to the same conclusions (and critique my translation!). I'd also appreciate any comments on this account as either (1) an interpretation of Dionysius, or (2) an actual assertion about our knowledge of God from anyone who has anything to say about such things.
Last night, I had a brief friendly debate with some Calvinists, which has me thinking about theological method. Briefly, I approach the issue of Calvinism and Arminianism from the perspective primarily of philosophy rather than revealed theology. That is, I argue that libertarian free will, which is incompatible with most (but, surprisingly, not all) versions of Calvinism, but is central to Arminianism, is a philosophically attractive thesis on grounds of, for instance, human moral responsibility, the problem of evil, and the phenomenology of choice. (I don't claim that Calvinists can't provide accounts of these things, I simply claim that Arminians are able to provide better accounts. I also acknowledge that Calvinists might have better accounts of other things.) As an Evangelical, I have to justify this approach, and I generally justify it by arguing that the answer is simply not, or at least not clearly, revealed to us; that the Scriptural arguments pro and con balance, or at least nearly balance. Because I don't believe the answer is revealed to us, and also because of the nature of the question, I don't think this issue is that important, as theological claims go (but it is still a theological claim, and therefore matters). As a result, when it comes up in theological contexts my approach is generally to argue for a claim that I do think is important: the claim that this is not a matter of dogma, i.e. that churches ought not to enforce uniformity of belief on this issue among their members or even among their leadership. I've been trying to think through my reasons for this, and I've realized that they have a lot to do with theological method, so in this post I am going to develop an account of an idealized theological method (still very much a work in progress - objections or suggestions are extremely welcome!), then briefly attempt to identify where in this method Calvinism and Arminianism enter the picture, and suggest that their position ought to disqualify them from being considered dogma. (Wayne Leman's five part series on what the Bible "explicitly" teaches about headship and submission, discusses what it means for the Bible to explicitly teach something and so has also helped to get me thinking about this subject.)
I have wrestled on this blog with questions about Scripture and tradition, and have usually been short on answers. In the context of the present discussion, I am going to venture an answer to the question of how the two relate to one another: tradition, I claim, enters the picture in that the method described below is to be applied primarily by the Church rather than the individual. In saying it is applied by the Church, I mean to include the entire Church, from the beginning to the present. Because the process is iterative and further stages build on past stages, awareness of Christian tradition will be critical if an individual's efforts are to contribute to the total process. (It should be noted that this is not a general answer to the question of the relationship between Scripture and tradition because, as those who have read my Why Believe the Bible? series are aware, I think that the Church and its traditions have something to do with how we know that the Bible should be central to our theological method.) It is a good intellectual exercise, I think, for an individual to start, as it were, from scratch in theology, but we ought not to base our doctrine or our lives on the conclusions that we have drawn from scratch without awareness of the total process being done by the Church.
Although tradition thus has an important place in theology, I suspect that the nature of the method is such that anyone who believes that this is the correct method for the Church to apply agrees with what the Reformers meant by sola scriptura (but I am not an expert on Reformation theology). Also, it is critical to realize that the individual and, especially, the Church is to be guided by the Holy Spirit throughout the process.
Here, then, are the steps in my proposed theological method:
Step 1 is harder than it sounds. For one thing, language and culture come in here. (Fortunately, the Church started the process when the cultural and linguistic context of at least the New Testament was familiar.) For another, we have to be careful not to take things out of context. However, I'm pretty confident that even an individual acting alone could read through the Bible, especially the epistles which are the most explicitly theological portions, and take the general points (without getting bogged down in details) and have enough to go on to get started, and a significant enough percentage of this would be correct that the process would be able to self-correct in later iterations.
In step 2 our primary concern is to form general theories, resolve apparent contradictions, and interpret at a slightly deeper level. In step 3, we wish to know if there are any further points to which we are rationally comitted by accepting the theological points we have earlier discovered. At either of these steps, we may decide that what we previously thought was clear is no longer so clear. Finally, we return to Scripture and begin again by looking at those portions which were previously unclear to us to see if further learning has made them any clearer. From here, we iterate through the process again. Further iterations may lead to modify our previous conclusions, and this is ok.
This is a process that the Church is to undertake communally. We might try (but there are a lot of fuzzy concepts here) to say that someone is within the bounds of historical orthodoxy if and only if he or she shares the general views of the community to a great enough degree to be able to participate meaningfully in the process.
Now, the claim of a belief to be dogma should, it seems, be judged on two closely related issues: first, how early in the process is it discovered, and, second, how confident is the Church about it. These are closely related, because the Church is, in general, most confident about things that can be drawn immediately out of Scripture or derived with very little interpretation and which have not been subject to credible challenges in later iterations. (A third issue, which I will ignore here, is the degree of practical importance attached to the doctrine; if a doctrine has a lot of practical importance in terms of ethics or religious practice churches may be forced to take a position on it.)
As an example, doctrines like "all humans are sinners" (Romans 3:23, etc.) or "those who trust Jesus are not condemned for their sin" (John 3:18, etc.) come from step 1. On the first iteration of step 2, we might get doctrines like the trinity, a basic concept of propitiation (subject to refinement in future cycles), and such things. Then we'll go back and read confusing passages in light of these discoveries.
Now, my claim is that Calvinism and Arminianism are late-comers in this process; an ideal reasoner might get one or the other on the third iteration of steps 2 and 3. One point in support of this is simply that basic exegesis and preaching is rarely directly effected by one's views on this issues; they come in at the level of systematic theology (steps 2 and 3), and even then they are relatively advanced subjects in systematic theology. Another point is that they are late-comers historically. Now, it is important to note that the discussion is not without precedent in Church history, but before Arminius challenged Calvin's views on the subject, the debate was not carried on the way it is today, and it wasn't nearly as focal. Thus, even though some of the issues were around earlier, the actual debate is relatively recent. However, this could have at least two other explanations (and there exist debates having each of these explanations): the first is that prior to that time it was simply assumed that everyone held one view rather than the other, and the second is that some outside circumstance cause the debate to come to prominence. The first I find implausible (though if it were the case, it wouldn't go well for the Calvinists, as their position is an extreme one in the total context of Church history). The second is possible, since the discussion is partially a reaction against perceived Pelagianism in the Roman Catholic church. In short, between the antecedent debates and the outside circumstances, the recentness argument is a relatively minor consideration.
I do think, however, that, on balance, this discussion shows some reason to suppose that the issue of Calvinism or Arminianism is not a good candidate for the status of dogma.
Here it is, finally! Almost exactly 13 months after the last post, I am finally continuing my series. For those of you who have forgotten (probably most of you), in May of 2006 I outlined a proposed series providing an argument for belief in the Bible. I'm going to give a fairly detailed recap here because it has been so long since my last post. In Part 1: Plan of Attack I outlined the argument I intended to give. The basic claim of the argument is that historical investigation renders the idea that the canon of Scripture as we have it is divinely inspired a live option, and personal experience in the life of an individual can provide the kind of confirmation that will lead one to reasonably believe in inspiration. I have added to the plan of attack two proposed appendices: the first will deal with the question of what to believe about the Bible, and the second will deal with which Bible to believe in (i.e. with determining the canon). Because they will be dealt with later, I will skirt these issues as much as possible in the current post, though they will have to be addressed in some degree.
In Part 2: The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth we assumed that a super-human conscious entity had created the world and wanted to live in community with other minds (we didn't assume the Christian God as such, but decided to call him God for convenience). We argued that, if such a being exists, he may well be trying to get our attention, and may perhaps choose to use human language to speak to us. Such a revelation would be validated by a 'signature,' which would be something easy for God but difficult or impossible to counterfeit. We argued that the historical evidence points to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as such an event, and therefore concluded that his life and teachings constituted such a revelation. (The whole argument, but this part especially, is indebted to Richard Swinburne and his book Revelation.)
In Part 3: Jesus' Witness to the Hebrew Bible we argued that certain New Testament texts (especially the synoptic gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians) could, without assuming inerrancy or inspiration, be treated as reliable historical sources about the life and teachings of Jesus and that these sources tell us that Jesus regarded the Hebrew Bible as a divine revelation to mankind. As a result, the Hebrew Bible is included by reference in God's revelation to mankind in the life and teachings of Jesus.
This post will assume all these things. If you find any of these claims questionable (and I hope some people who find these claims questionable are reading!) you are encouraged to go back and read the previous post and comment on it. For now, however, we've got the Hebrew Bible, and we've got the life and teachings of Jesus as far as we can determine them from the historical sources as a revelation of God (now that we've got the Hebrew Bible he can, without qualification, be called God) to mankind. The next step is the witness of the Church. What do I mean by this?
Our sources (which, recall, are primarily the synoptic gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians) are indisputably clear about one thing: Jesus had twelve particularly close followers, and he ultimately named these men as his "apostles." The Greek word apostolos means "emissary" or "ambassador." Now these guys were sent out, it is pretty clear, to continue Jesus' work of proclaiming the good news and so forth after he left. Furthermore, it is also pretty clear that they were to get others to join them in this task, and this was to continue until Jesus returned (for all of this, see Matthew 28:18-20; it's also stated in many other places). This group or organization or whatever it might be, is called the Church, and Jesus himself - whose teachings are the revelation of God to mankind - taught that this group was the divinely authorized and enabled proclaimer of God's revelation to mankind in himself. It is by the witness of the Church that we know a great many things about God, including the canon of Scripture and its status as divine revelation.
My fellow Protestants are getting nervous at this point, but never fear! My Protestant credentials are, on this issue, impeccable: the Westminster Confession is on my side. The beginng of 1.5 reads, "We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture." Some will be quick to point to 1.4 which says, "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God." This, however, is a different issue. This says (and, incidentally, Catholic and Orthodox believers generally agree) that the testimony of the Church does not efficaciously make Scripture Scripture. Rather, as 1.5 says, the testimony of the Church "moves" and "induces" us to believe that Scripture is Scripture (but it would be the Word of God whether we were moved to believe that it was or not). I hope to discuss some other parts of WCF chapter 1 in part 5 and appendix B.
Now, we don't yet know much about this Church, but we know that its first members were Jesus' twelve apostles, and we know that it was out telling the world about God's revelation as soon as Jesus ascended, and it's still at it today, and will be until Jesus returns. I recently listed four aspects of ecclesiology (theory of the Church): somatic, apostolic, evangelistic, and eucharistic. Jeremy pointed out a fourth aspect that I can't believe I initially missed: ecclesiastic ecclesiology! That is, the Church is also the assembly of the called, and, as such, one can say that it is most fully the Church when it is assembled.
Be that as it may, all of these accounts are developed with a lot of assumptions already on the table, and at this point in our argument we don't have many assumptions available to us (comparatively speaking). We do, however, know that the Church proclaims the revelation, and the book of Acts tells us a lot about what the Church was like. One passage stands out to me:
And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers. Then fear came over everyone, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and had everything in common. So they sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as anyone had need. And every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple complex, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to them those who were being saved. (2:42-47)
Suppose we begin our inquiry with the apostles themselves, then look to people like Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Papias, and Ignatius whom the apostles recognized as members of the same Church as themselves, and then look to the next generation, and the next, and the next, until the present day. In other words, suppose we assume (1) that being recognized as a member of the Church by a known member of the Church is a sufficient condition for Church membership, and (2) that the "is a member of the same church as" relation is transitive. This could, but need not, take the form of the doctrine of apostolic succession as understood by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, in which we work with the process of ordination of bishops. If we could do this, then we would know where the Church was today and we could just go ask about the Scripture (of course, there are some ways the Church could conceivably be such that even once we identified it, it wouldn't be that easy to find out what it's official proclamations were - for instance, what if the Anglican Communion came out on top? or, what would be even more confusing, what if it was the American Baptist Church? - but leave that aside for now). This, however, will not work.
The first problem is that, in general, organizational membership is (1) vague and (2) not transitive. Consider Thomas Jefferson and Hillary Clinton. Are they members of the same political party? Personally, I think not. But Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party is unproblematically historically continuous with the modern Democratic Party. Furthermore, no point of discontinuity can be identified at which the Democratic-Republican Party ceased and was replaced by the Democratic Party. Surely the name change is irrelevant here. But Thomas Jefferson and Hillary Clinton are nevertheless not members of the same political party. Why? Because something more than historical continuity is required for the persistence of political parties through time. This requirement includes at least some kind of continuity of platform. There comes a point when the platform is so different that, totally regardless of history, it just can't be the same party, and this is the case with the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson as opposed to the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton. Vagueness enters, because there is no point, no single person or event, that can be singled out as the point where it was no longer the party of Thomas Jefferson. Non-transitivity enters here too: for any person in the Demcratic Party, we can, in principle, come up with a chain of recognition as members of the same party leading back to Thomas Jefferson.
As a political party can't survive a complete change of platform, so the Church could not survive a complete change of mission. Furthermore, a less than complete change could cast doubt on the persistence of the Church, and any change in doctrine will necessarily be a change in mission, since the Church's mission is the preaching of that doctrine. There are other essential characteristics that the Church, or a political party, would not persist through a change in, but these are certainly among the essential characteristics.
Now, suppose a group of people in the Democratic Party today discovered (to their shock!) that the principles of the Democratic Party were not the principles of its founder (or, rather, the founder of its predecessor, the Democratic-Republican Party), and decided to break away into another group, the Jeffersonian Democrats, which would embrace his principles. (I use this example because I have heard friends of mine suggest this very thing - though I suppose they probably weren't shocked by their discovery.) They claim to be the real modern Democratic-Republican Party since, on the one hand, they have historical continuity (through the Democratic Party), and, on the other hand, they have continuity of platform with Thomas Jefferson. However, the Democratic Party leadership doesn't recognize them and this leadership has been passed on through generations according to by-laws. The by-laws weren't around in the time of Jefferson, but they were around in times when he would certainly have recognized the party as still his own, and since they were instituted they were changed only according to their own rules. These grant the leaders legitimacy, but if a party can't survive through too great a change in platform, and the leaders preside over a party whose change in platform was too great, then they don't preside over the party of Thomas Jefferson. Of course, the Jeffersonian Democrats also have a problem, that their historical continuity goes through a party that is not identical with the original, but at least they are an eligible candidate, since they have the original platform (or, at least, continuity with it).
Now, there was one group of Christians, the Reformers, who believed they were in the position of the modern Jeffersonian Democrats in our example. My point is not that they were right (though I think they were, more or less), but that the underlying ideas about the persistence of organizations through time are credible, so that this possibility must be examined. That is, the very nature of the Church, as far as we know it at this point in our argument, is not such as to render their claim absurd.
Furthermore, the history of the Church is much more complicated than the history of the Democratic Party (of course, there is a lot I don't know about the history of the Democratic Party, so perhaps it is more complicated than I think it is). We have a lot of splintering all over the place starting pretty early, and all sorts of rival groups claiming to be the Church. Furthermore, the identity of the Church is complicated by another factor: its spiritual nature. We have all kinds of strange statements in the New Testament like "you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5). The deeply spiritual nature of the Church might be thought to cast doubt on the degree to which its continuity is of the same sort as the continuity of a purely human organization. After all, if the Church is a spiritual entity, mightn't it spring up on earth just wherever it pleases? Mightn't it just suddenly spring up at Azusa Street in 1906 or in Toronto in 1994? Well, I suppose so. That is, if the Church is supposed to be simply that group of people that Jesus has commissioned to continue his mission of announcing the divine revelation (which is all we've argued it is so far), then we can't really prove that it needs historical continuity and doesn't just spontaneously spring up wherever Jesus happens to commission people to preach the revelation. So, if we are to remain suitably general and not beg the question, we are going to have to, in looking for the modern Church, focus on the essential characteristics of the Church rather than on history. (This is not intended to assume that just any group that has these characteristics - or, in particular, the one characteristic already mentioned: announcing the revelation - is the Church, but only that, for all we know at this point in our argument, any of those groups might be.) Nevertheless, we can learn from the diachronic approach. The argument I've given only shows that the further away from the apostles we get, the more uncertain things become. We can, however, safely consider the first few generations of the Church and ask what it proclaimed.
To begin with, we can say that, like Jesus, the first few generations of the Church regarded the Hebrew Bible as the inspired Word of God. Furthermore, they don't seem to take the traditional Jewish view which I worried in part 3 that Jesus may have taken. We can see this in Acts 4:24-25, where Peter and John are recorded introducing a quotation with the phrase, "Master, You are the One who made the heaven, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them. You said..." The quotation which follows is from Psalm 2, part of the Ketuvim.
The most important person the original apostles recognize as a member of the Church is Paul (Galatians 2:9). Mark (Acts 12), Luke (Colossians 4:14), and James the brother of Jesus (Acts 12:17, 15:13-21; James the apostle, the brother of John had already died, in 12:2) are also recognized. This will get us most of the New Testament as the most important writings of the early Church. In terms of authorship by either an apostle or one of these people recognized by the apostles, and historical evidence of this authorship, we've now got all four gospels, Acts, the ten Pauline epistles (excluding the pastorals), James, 1 Peter, and 1 John. That's 18 out of 27 in the canon agreed upon by the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches. We are missing due to disputed authorship 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation and due to authorship by someone not well attested as a Church member we are missing Jude.
Note something very important here: we have not established that the Church proclaims these books as inspired accounts of the revelation. Rather, we have established that these books are all written by people who were very clearly members of the Church. Now, the next thing we should say is that it is obvious that these books were treated as authoritative from a very early date. We can pretty safely say that these essentially undisputed books constitute at least the Church's proclamation of the revelation. That's enough to say that if any of these books says something about the revelation of God to mankind in Christ, the fact that it's written there is good reason to believe it, and this might reasonably be called "believing in the Bible." But it isn't enough to say that the books are inspired and absolutely inerrant.
So, what do these books say that is relevant to our question? Well, we don't have 2 Timothy 3:16 yet, because 2 Timothy's authorship is disputed (I know all my fellow believers were just dying to use that one - sorry!), nor do we have 2 Peter 1:20-21, which is also of disputed authorship. There is also 1 Timothy 5:18, where Paul says "the Scripture says," and then quotes Luke 10:7, and 2 Peter 3:15-16, where Peter speaks of Paul's letters and "the other Scriptures." However, if these weren't written by Paul and Peter - and we haven't established that they are - then they don't do us any good, so we're going to have to move on to the next generation. (Of course, if your historical investigations led you to believe that 1 Timothy and 2 Peter were genuine - as many scholars do, in fact, think - then you would already be most of the way to the end of the argument.)
Moving on to the second century already complicates things because by that time we already have the fairly well-attested view that the Septuagint (which includes the Deuterocanon) is the Old Testament, as opposed to the Hebrew Bible. We even have some people, including Justin Martyr, claiming that the Hebrew text has been corrupted and the Septuagint is the only reliable version. However, I will, as I said, be skirting this issue as much as possible for the present.
Writing in the mid-second century, Justin Martyr gives us a window into an early Christian worship service, which is quite relevant to the place of the New Testament:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. (First Apology chapter 67)
By the end of the second century, we have a number of writers (e.g., Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of John) who are not far removed from the apostles who use the New Testament in their theological writings in much the same way they use the Old Testament, and treat them as absolutely authoritative in all theological disputes (see Bruce, The Canon, chapts. 13 and 14). What is relevant here is that by the second century the Church, in proclaiming the revelation, relied on the Bible - both the Old and New Testaments - as its principle source; it proclaims authoritatively, citing the Scripture as its authoritative source.
The synchronic approach, as has been said, involves examining the claims of various present-day groups claiming the be the Church. It is limited primarily in that there are so many claimants we cannot possibly examine them all. However, we have a bit of luck here: there is substantial agreement among nearly all of them, especially if we ignore for now, as we have resolved to do, disputes among the claimants about certain specific books, and only examine the broad general claim. (There are still disputed books, besides just the duetero-canon - the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, for instance, has a number of additional books; it is also worth considering how one should think about the Book of Mormon in this sort of discussion, seeing as the LDS church is also a claimant here.) All of the major Christian groups agree that Scripture is inspired, and that it includes both the Old and New Testaments. This means that, regardless of precisely what the Church is and how it is manifested in history just at present, we can know that it has indeed proclaimed that the Scriptures are inspired by God, and that we should believe what they say.
I want to note, in closing, the relationship I think this has to how actual converts to Christianity have come to believe in the Bible. I am of the opinion that many of the problems in philosophy (consider, for instance, the refutation of solipsism) are problems of attempting to formalize rational inferences which we draw on an almost instinctive level (solipsism strikes me as a case where our inference is almost indisputably rational, and yet philosophy has had enormous difficulty trying to formalize the inference to prove that it's rational). This, I think, is the case here. Most people who believe in the Bible have, I think, come to believe in it in much the same way: someone told them that they ought to believe in the Bible, for some reason they took that claim seriously and, upon looking closely at it for themselves, some sort of experience they had in connection with the Bible led them to accept the claim originally presented to them regarding its inspiration. Parts two through four have been an attempt to make more explicit some of the lines of reasoning that might lead someone to take a claim like that seriously. I don't think that most people have done these sorts of historical explorations. Rather, I think they have probably simply been told about the Bible by people who have some kind of credibility in spiritual matters due to intelligence, or insight, or, more likely, the kinds of lives they lead. (This, of course, applies to taking Christianity seriously in general, and not just the claim of the inspiration of Scripture.) I hold that this line of reasoning is rational, but I'm skeptical about it getting you much farther than taking the claim seriously. Actually believing it will likely require some personal experience, and that will be the subject of part 5, which I hope to write less than 13 months from now!
Before I left last week, I sent in to Religious Studies the final draft of my paper "The Semantics of Sense Perception in Berkeley," which they have accepted for publication. The paper discusses the meaning of the "universal language of the Author of Nature" Berkeley argues for in the Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision and elsewhere. Essentially, the question I try to begin to answer is "if sense perception is a language by which God speaks to us, then what is he saying?" (I say "begin" because I have not developed a detailed semantic theory, but only offered some considerations with regard to what kind of content the perceptual language must have and how its semantics resembles the semantics of human languages.) The paper had to be cut down from about 13,000 words to just under 10,000 to meet Religious Studies' length limit and these journals sometimes take rather a long time to publish, so I intend to get the long version nicely fromatted and PDF'd to post here sometime soon. I want to get a link up to my first paper first so they're in order, but The Dualist still hasn't come out. If they delay much longer I'll just post my own version.