Protestants Aren't The Only Ones With Complicated Canonical Issues

Cameron Bertuzzi recently retweeted some comments from Josh Rasmussen on canonical issues and referred to how "this is a good [argument] for Catholicism". Keep in mind:

- The alleged ability of Catholicism to settle canonical issues in this context only addresses a portion of Catholicism's canon. That canon involves more than scripture. And Catholics continue to disagree with one another (and with non-Catholics) about what qualifies as tradition and what doesn't, which papal teachings are infallible, and so on. There's more agreement among Protestants about the canon of scripture than there is among Catholics about the canon of their rule of faith.

- Canons are complicated by their nature. That's not just true of scripture canons, but also of canons more broadly. People can dispute what documents were and weren't written by an ancient philosopher or a more recent individual, like Thomas Jefferson. If you broaden the canon to include all of the writings of a particular ancient school of philosophy or America's founding fathers in general, then the canonical issues will get even more complicated. How should the school of philosophy be defined? Who belongs to it and who doesn't? Who qualifies as one of America's founding fathers and who doesn't? Which documents attributed to George Washington were actually written by him? And so on. Since a canon of scripture in the Christian context involves multiple figures over a lengthy period of time (especially if you're including the Old Testament canon rather than limiting yourself to the New Testament), it involves the complexities that inherently go with a multi-author canon covering a longer rather than shorter timeframe. And there are other such factors that can make any given canon more or less complicated.

- Here's a series of posts I wrote about an Evangelical justification for the canon of scripture. We've written a lot more about the topic since then. You can find some archives of many of our relevant posts (not all of them) here and here. To summarize, the best explanation for what the relevant sources tell us about the apostles (e.g., Old Testament precedent, what Jesus said about the apostles, what the apostles said about themselves, what the other early Christian sources said about the apostles) is that they were communicating Divine revelation, including scripture. We have to make a probability judgment about whether a given document was part of that revelation, but the same is true of the alternatives (how probable it is that all of the sources supporting Jude's canonicity, for example, were wrong; the likelihood of Catholic arguments about the alleged authority of their denomination; whether it's probable that something that's claimed to be part of Catholic tradition actually is part of that tradition; etc.). It's not as though Protestants are the only ones who have a position to defend or the only ones relying on probability judgments about history. We have more evidence for the canonicity of 1 Corinthians than we have for the canonicity of Hebrews. But the evidence doesn't have to be equally good for every book, and a rejection of Hebrews has to be defended, just as an acceptance of it has to be. We've said a lot more about these and other canonical issues in the threads linked above. See my recent post here for a brief overview of how all of us (including atheists, for example) have to justify our own canons in many contexts in life and how those canonical issues are often complicated.

Craig and Rasmussen on divine aseity and abstract objects

Some might be interested in the following discussion between William Lane Craig and Josh Rasmussen on divine aseity and abstract objects. I haven't watched it yet, and I doubt I'd entirely agree with either Craig or Rasmussen on the topics at hand, but I post it because it might be a thought-provoking discussion on subjects important in philosophical theology.

When Heaven invades Hell

Philosopher and philosophical theologian Josh Rasmussen and his wife Rachel just published a novelistic defense of universalism. Josh is a far better philosopher than theologian. I'm going to quote and comment on some representative passages from the novel. 

So, perhaps some forgiveness for some souls will come after an age of separation.”

Moses replies sharply, “But what about the unforgivable sin, Adam?”

Moses points down at the scroll. “Look! Here it is written, ‘whoever blasphemes against

the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.’ The words are plain. Never means never. Are you going to tell me that never doesn’t mean never?”

Adam smiles. He asks, “Where does meaning come from, Moses? Does not your own experience create the meanings you associate with words?”

Adam then touches the text on the scroll and pulls his finger upward. Golden words appear above the scroll. The words are translated in your mind as follows:

‘Whoever may speak evil in regard to the Holy Spirit hath not forgiveness for an age, but is in danger of age-enduring judgment.’

Different people, depending on their experiences, will read the scroll according to different interpretations.

“So, what if the meaning in someone’s mind concerning what the scroll says is inconsistent with the meaning in someone else’s mind? Where will you find the truth then?”

Different people, depending on their experiences, will read the scroll according to different interpretations.

“So, what if the meaning in someone’s mind concerning what the scroll says is inconsistent with the meaning in someone else’s mind? Where will you find the truth then?”

Adam shares his reasoning with Moses:

“Our experiences unlock our understanding of the Lord’s revelation. To have sight, we must have the Lord’s light. Where we do not have light, we do not have sight.

“Let me tell you, Moses, what I see most clearly. By the Lord’s light inside my heart, I see that love creates boundaries of protection. Joshua and Rachel Rasmussen, When Heaven Invades Hell (Great Legacy Books 2020), chap 5, 72-74.

i) This gets into complicated debates over the locus of meaning. Is meaning located in the text or the reader? In one sense, a text must have a recognizable meaning to the reader. So the reader brings something to the text. But there must be something in the text to recognize. So that's something the text brings to the reader. As a rule, authors write to be understood. They draw upon a cultural preunderstanding which the author and the target audience share in common. So even though there's a sense in which the reader must complete the process of communication, the reader is expected to interpret the text in a certain way. To recognize what the text means is not to determine what it means. Authors write with an ideal reader (the implied reader) in mind. 

ii) In folk theology, the Holy Spirit gives Christians the correct interoperation of Scripture. Josh seems to be making a similar claim. But the Bible doesn't promise that, and interpretive diversity among Christians belies that. Some unbelievers have a more accurate understanding of Scripture than many believers. For instance, a critical Bible commentator.

“We suffer by the sight of this beast’s suffering. But would our suffering end if this beast were no longer in our sight? It would not. We would still suffer, knowing that this beast is suffering somewhere separated from our presence. Even if the suffering of this beast were blocked from our sight—and removed from our memory—that would still not eliminate all suffering in heaven.

“Remember, the Lord also suffers as the beast suffers. Can the Lord, the Ruler of Heaven and Earth, choose not to see or even remember the suffering of this dark soul? It is written, ‘If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.’ Where could we possibly send a soul to escape the Lord’s sight? I tell you, the suffering of even one soul, even the darkest of souls, will be felt by the Lord.

“Children of the Most High, I present to you a mystery: how can heaven be fully heaven while there remains the pain of seeing someone in hell?”

The quiet whisper of the Lord replies, “My heart is large enough for all the cosmos to fit inside.” The Lion’s gaze then returns to the dark orb and the suffering beast.

The desire for the suffering in heaven to end builds. As it builds in size and power, something strange happens...Suddenly, a violent shock wave erupts from the singularity...Everyone watches in shock.

Lucifer is no longer in his cage of torment. The beast is now free, chap 8 (104).

“When I brought Lucifer, who was the Dark One, into heaven, I protected him inside an orb... chap. 10 (125).

The Lion walks close to the pitiful creature who is rolled up in a ball on the ground. Instead of towering over the creature, the Lion kneels on the ground beside him. Tears stream from the Lion’s glossy eyes, down his cheeks, and onto His mane. Emotions of love pour out of the Lion’s chest in the form of gentle waves. The waves flow from the Lion’s chest to the dark creature beside him...The multitude joins the Lion in expressing love toward the beast. Waves of love roll out of every being, chap 9 (105-6).

The Lion turns to Lucifer and speaks: “This first insight is about you, my beloved angel.

Lucifer, you have a great power to affect my emotions. I traveled through the caverns of darkness to reach you. But when I stood in your presence, you felt something inside of me. Do you remember what you felt? You said you sensed fear in me. You were right, Lucifer. I was afraid.

“You, my dear angel, didn’t understand my fear or your power. You had the power to make me tremble. I trembled at the thought of losing you...“All beings are connected. Every being affects me...“My love for Lucifer was so great that I would do anything to restore him to wholeness. If I could suffer the torments of hell a million times over in his place, I would do it... chap 10 (123-4).

i) Freewill theism ranges along a continuum. The view of God expressed in these passages represents what happens when that's taken to a logical extreme. Creatures wield power over God. He's an emotional hostage to our uncontrollable actions. Because he's afraid of losing us, we can pull his strings. It's like parent and child trading places. 

ii) In the acknowledgments, the authors thank Jerry Walls (among others) for his "inspiration and valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this book". That's a window into his own position. He recently published Does God Love Everyone?: The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism. For Jerry, the worst possible thing you can believe is to deny that God loves everybody. But the universalism in the novel represents the consistent alternative. Everyone including Satan will be saved. 

iii) Then there's the feminist angle, where Josh and Rachel make Eve a heavenly counselor, font of spiritual insight and wisdom.

iv) I wonder if part of the problem is due to the pernicious influence of C. S. Lewis. My immediate point isn't to bash Lewis, but the use people make of  him. For instance, it's striking how many professing Christians get their eschatology from The Great Divorce. The popularity of Lewis fosters a mentality in which many professing Christians begin with fiction as their source of theology. An inspirational fictional story. 

Sorting out presuppositionalism

The silly contest between Josh Rasmussen and SyeTenB demonstrates, once again, the need to do some sorting:

Regarding the YouTube interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkcs-31PqFg&feature=youtu.be

There are at least three different things flying under the banner of "presuppositionalism"

1. There's the position of SyeTenB. He's a hack with a rabid internet following among a clique of pop Calvinist groupies.

2. That's not to be confused with academic versions of presuppositionalism. For instance:

Greg Welty, “The Conceptualist Argument,” in Colin Ruloff (ed.), Contemporary Arguments in Natural Theology (Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming).

https://www.proginosko.com/docs/The_Lord_of_Non-Contradiction.pdf

https://blog.epsociety.org/2013/09/responses-to-argument-for-god-from-logic.html

3. From another angle is the presuppositionalism of Vern Poythress. For instance:

https://frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ChancePoythress.pdf

4. There are roughly two competing schools of thought that call themselves presuppositionalists:

i) One derives from Cornelius Van Til. Second-generation Van Tilians include John Frame, the late Greg Bahnsen, and Vern Poythress. We might classify James Anderson as a third-generation Van Tilian. 

However, he's been exposed to some other influences, like Plantinga and modal metaphysics.

Theistic conceptual realism belongs to a family of transcendental arguments. It's interesting how that's evolved. Kant's argument is more epistemological, in part because he doesn't have a robust theology to ground it. Kant might even be a closet atheist. And he's skeptical regarding our knowledge of the external world. So he can't say much of anything to back it up in terms of bedrock ontology. 

Although Van Til's version is partly epistemological, he tries to ground it in the metaphysics of Reformed theism.

Greg Welty and James Anderson have done a lot to embed the epistemological side of the argument in modal metaphysics. I think it's a transcendental argument with an epistemological side, but they've done more to model and detail the necessary metaphysical conditions that make it possible. 

ii) The other derives from the late Gordon Clark. Clark as an anti-empiricist. 

Clark's followers make second-order knowledge necessary for first-order knowledge. You don't know anything unless you know how you know it. They make the justification of knowledge a necessary ingredient in knowledge itself. Here are two examples:

http://unapologetica.blogspot.com/2019/11/gordon-clark-and-necessity-of.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/03/more-scripturalist-mumbo-jumbo.html

It's important to keep these two schools of thought separate, even though they both use the same designation. When you're accused of not understanding presuppositionalism, part of the problem is that there are competing schools of thought as well as different exponents with varying views.

I don't think Josh is under any obligation to understand SyeTenB's positionbecause  there's not much there there. 

How Reason Leads to God's Existence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjAVIyEIsMc

"God made the integers; all else is the work of man"

A short exchange I had with a philosophical theologian:

Josh 

Maybe "The Advancement Theory". That captures this idea of the mathematical landscape advancing in God's mind, and then also the advancement of the world, along lines without end.

Hays  

I don't see how that's supposed to work. Don't mathematical truths involve interlocking systems of entailment relations? If so, all the elements must be in place for the mathematical truth, object, or structure (however we wish to put it) to obtain. Mathematical truths can't be waiting for the coin to drop. Rather, they must exist as a unit or not at all.

Josh 

Some perhaps. But there may be basic structures that provide a foundation for iterations.

Hays

Let's put it another way, do you agree that mathematical truths are paradigm-cases of necessary truths? If so, mathematical truths can't become true. Mathematical truths can't evolve. Of course, if one's a naturalist, then one may try to reduce math to human psychology, in which case it does evolve. But that's bad theology.

Josh

A very good question. I'm toying with the idea that only basic mathematical truths are necessary (in the strongest sense).

Hays 

So you agree with Leopold Kronecker that "God made the integers; all else is the work of man".

How reason leads to God

http://joshualrasmussen.com/secret_files/interview.pdf

Josh Rasmussen may be the most gifted up-and-coming philosophical theologian. In my experience, he's a better philosopher than theologian. I'm not sure that he has an evangelical center. But some of his stuff can be incorporated into a Christian apologetic. There's a presuppositional quality to his work.

Is there no evidence for God's existence?

Recently, there was a dialogue between Christian philosopher Josh Rasmussen and atheist Tom Jump:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8LfwMqFImc

It's a long slog. For the philosophically-inclined. It illustrates the ultimately presuppositional nature of debate between naturalism and Christian theism:

1. Jump often defaults to a kind of linguistic positivism (a la Carnap, Quine, protocol sentences) in which logic and reason are reducible to language and linguistic tokens.

2. It's ironic how Jump dismisses Josh's position as ad hoc while, in the same breath, he demotes value, mind, and logic to emergent properties or projections. It doesn't occur to him that his own position is ad hoc because it forces him to relegate things like value, mind, and logic to the realm of secondary effects or imaginary things we project onto the world. 

3. He defines simplicity, or a parsimonious explanation, as a finite thing causing another finite thing. He thinks inferring God is a more complicated explanation because God is more complex. He fails to appreciate how God can be a unifying principle. 

To take a comparison, consider the explanatory power of abstract objects like the Mandelbrot set. Even thought it's infinitely internally complex, yet just one abstract object (Mandelbrot set) can ground an indefinite number of finite simulations of the Mandelbrot set. That's simpler than an atomistic explanation where every simulation of the Mandelbrot set is caused by another concrete particular (whatever that would be). It's more economical to explain how one complex thing grounds many individual instances rather than requiring a separate explanation for each and every particular. 

4. On a related note, he fails to distinguish between a one-to-one explanation and a one-to-many explanation. The indefinite multiplication of one-to-one explanations is far more cumbersome and inefficient than a one-to-many explanation. If one thing can be the ultimate source of many things, even if the source is complex, that's a more elegant explanation than individual things causing other individual things at infinitum. 

5. In the same vein, he defines simplicity as the least thing required to account for the result ("most simple…exactly what is required"). But that's very nearsighted. Take artistic creativity. Take da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi (or Handel's Messiah). Not doubt a painting requires a painter at least as complex as the painting. But the Adoration of the Magi is just a sample of da Vinci's creative abilities. It's not a one-to-one match where that's all da Vinci is capable of doing. Da Vinci had a lot more in reserve. In general, a creator is greater than what he creates. He can't be less that what he creates. He must have enough imagination and skill to do it. But a creator brings more to the task than the task requires. That's typically the case even for human agents. 

6. To take another example: suppose a guy plays roulette once a month at the local casino. Nothing flashy, yet he consistently performs just a little better than the odds. As a result, he wins more often than he loses. Coincidentally, he makes enough each time to cover his monthly living expenses. 

By Jump's criterion, the gambler got lucky. We assess each dice throw in isolation, since that's the simplest explanation, if by simple we mean "exactly what is required" to explain each throw of the dice. 

The other explanation is that he has a subtle way of cheating. Although there's no direct evidence of cheating, the fact that he consistently beats the odds, albeit by a small margin, is indirect evidence. We're not restricting ourselves to "exactly what is required" to explain each individual throw of the dice, but how to explain the overall pattern. 

Answering life's biggest questions

"Answering Life’s Biggest Questions with Dr. Josh Rasmussen [The Pat Flynn Show]"

The Bridge of Reason

The Epistle of Dude reviews The Bridge of Reason: Ten Steps to See God by Joshua Rasmussen.