Prejean has come out of early retirement to continue his exchange.
***QUOTE***
And this is simply nonsense. Unless Hays is advocating some kind of Aristotelian apriorism about rationally discerning the "proper method," the GHM operates on the same footing as every empirical method of investigation: application of demonstrably reliable methods based on believable assumptions produces trustworthy outcomes (and incidentally, I'm arguing from an empirical perspective throughout; if reliability can't be shown, I reject the method). If there's some area where the assumptions don't hold or contradictory assumptions prevail, the method is simply inapplicable.
***END-QUOTE***
He’s raised that objection before, and I answered him. What I said was:
Prejean is mashing together a couple of quite distinct issues: in particular, he is confounding a hermeneutical method with an apologetical method.
I can understand the source of the confusion inasmuch as the debate over at Crowhill went back and forth on these two issues as though they were synonymous, but they’re not.
i) The hermeneutical question is the question of how we ascertaining the meaning of a document—especially a document from the past, whether the Bible or the church fathers or a church council or a papal encyclical, &c.
That’s what the grammatico-historical method (GHM) has reference to.
ii) The apologetical question is how we verify or falsify the truth-claims of a document.
Historical evidence (evidentialism) may figure in the answer, especially in the case of historical revelation, but that is not at all the same thing as GHM.
iii) GHM and evidentialism may intersect at various points. This can happen, for instance, when GHM is used to ascertain the meaning of a documentary truth-claim, while evidentialism is then used to verify or falsify that truth-claim.
Incidentally, this is applicable to his astrological illustration (see below).
Why does Prejean repeat himself when his objections have been answered? If he disagrees with the answer, he should explain why.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
More or less, the assumption of the GHM is a human author, because that's where we have some common experience. And the reason I suspect German phenomenology is because the GHM is obviously being applied in an area where its assumptions are not applicable, which suggests that the application is driven by the demands of a philosophical-theological method rather than any empirical justification for its effectiveness.
Divine authorship is sui generis; there's no reason to even expect that the assumptions of the GHM would hold identically, unless you assert what you're trying to prove (namely, that the GHM is a suitable theological method).
***END-QUOTE***
Once again, he’s raised that objection before, and I answered him. What I said was:
Unity, inerrancy, inspiration, and authority are exegetical results of applying GHM to the text of Scripture. They figure in the self-witness of Scripture. When we exegete Scripture, using sensible and responsible methods, we discover what it has to say about itself as well as other things. These are not theological assumptions, but exegetical end-results of the GHM.
The fact that this doesn’t come up in a historical text about Abraham Lincoln is irrelevant to the method. It doesn’t come up, not because the methodology differs, but because no such claim is lodged in the text.
To repeat: there are two distinct issues here:
i) The identification of a truth-claim, and:
ii) The verification of a truth-claim.
(i) is a prerequisite for (ii).
Why does Prejean repeat himself when his objections have been answered? If he disagrees with the answer, he should explain why.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
The uniform testimony of Christian history has been that this sort of reductionistic reading of Scripture to exclude traditional readings leads to heresy. Constantinople established that the application of such reductionism in the area of speculative theology about the doctrine of God doesn't work, because all of the condemned parties were quite faithful adherents of the Antiochene method in the areas that they got condemned.
***END-QUOTE***
There’s no real argument here. It simply begs the question in favor of Catholicism.
I’d add, though, that all arguments ultimately appeal to our intuitions of veracity and validity.
If I find X obvious, and Y denies that X is obvious, then there’s not much more I either can or should do to make it obvious to him. We have to agree to disagree, and leave it to the individual reader to judge who had the better of the argument.
So if, for example, Prejean refuses to admit that Kenneth Kitchen (Egyptologist) has an advantage over a 5C Greek Patriarch when it comes to the interpretation of Exodus or the Joseph cycle, or that Donald Wiseman (Assyriologist) enjoys a similar advantage, then there’s really nothing more to be said.
If Prejean denies the primacy of original intent, then there’s nothing I can do to make him agree with me, although I can point out that his denial is a universal solvent which will spill over and erase the ink on his Petrine texts and church fathers with equal efficiency.
He may suppose that Mt 16 teaches papal primacy, but I’m an allegorist, you see, so I think that Mt 16 is really a repair manual for a busted carburetor.
In that respect, GHM is true by default in the absence of a viable alternative. That’s not the only reason, but one reason. Prejean needs it just as much as I do, for without it he lacks epistemic access to the church fathers and church councils and papal encyclicals and canon lawyers and patrologists, &c.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
The difference between Catholics and Evangelicals on this point is obvious; Catholics don't apply the GHM outside of the area where it is necessarily persuasive. What we mean by the "literal sense" is exactly what the GHM applied in and of itself can tell us definitively and nothing more. No external criteria, nothing except what an ordinary, uninspired, first-century author (or set of authors, depending on one's pet theory of authorship) with that author's finite knowledge would have written on a particular subject trying to communicate from point A to point B. Beyond that point, the GHM just isn't "sure," and accordingly, the theology formed based on the GHM isn't "sure" either. Thus, you won't see Raymond Brown or Joe Fitzmyer *stopping* in their theological conclusions at the text; they isolate what they can definitively know from the text, and then they move on to how external church teachings can inform exegesis where the conclusions are not definitive. The application of the GHM is the same as Protestants, but the way they draw theological conclusions from it couldn't be more different.
***END-QUOTE***
i) The GHM isn’t predicated on “definitive” findings. You won’t find that presupposition in either Catholic or Protestant commentators. Where does Prejean come up with this qualifier? Not from actually reading the way it is done, evidently.
ii) There is, indeed, a threefold difference. For conservative evangelicals, their theology must agree with their exegesis.
For liberal Protestants, they may let the text speak for itself, but they don’t feel bound by the teaching of Scripture.
For Catholic exegetes, they can deny that Scripture inculcates certain Catholic dogmas as long as they don’t deny the dogmas. Instead, they just refer that to the development of doctrine.
iii) If there’s an element of uncertainty here, it spills over into Catholicism, for whether it’s a text of Scripture or a patristic text or the text of a church council or the text of a papal encyclical, all the same hermeneutical apply to any historical document.
iv) I’d add that the same uncertainties extend to textual criticism as well. Text-critical questions aren’t limited to the text of Scripture. They can also be raised with respect to the text of the church fathers or early councils, &c.
v) Without a doctrine of providence, we’re all up a creek without a paddle.
vi) The teaching of Scripture is redundant. It doesn’t turn on any one word or verse.
vii) But if God has left something uncertain in Scripture, then we should leave matters where he has left it.
viii) Notice how Prejean treats the church as a makeweight for what is otherwise indefinite in Scripture. But the church cannot muster certainty out of thin air. That would require a booster shot of divine revelation to add to the deposit of faith.
***QUOTE***
This comes far from showing what Hays needs it to show, which is that the generalization is appropriate. It is only "sufficient warrant" in the sense that someone's purely subjective criteria for what is "sufficient" prevail.
***END-QUOTE***
All I can say is that Prejean is welcome to his opinion. For an evangelical, if a rule of faith is good enough for Christ and the Apostles and prophets, then it’s good enough for us.
***QUOTE***
And how one can infer that "Chalcedon offers precious little regarding a positive statement of the hypostatic union" on that basis is quite inexplicable. Unless you buy Harnack's naive interpretation of Cyril as a Monophysite whose view had to be corrected; more on that in a moment.
***END-QUOTE***
Notice the bait-and-switch tactic. While I’m talking about Chalcedon, he slips Cyril under the table as if the creed of Chalcedon codified every last detail of what Cyril had to say on the subject.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
First, the historical process does privilege one outcome over another; that's the entire point of competing historical theories.
***END-QUOTE***
The historical process doesn’t pick out winners and losers—people do. History is a descriptive discipline, not a normative discipline. It tells you who believed what. But history cannot tell you who was right and who was wrong. It cannot pole-vault from is to ought. That’s not a historical judgment.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
I'm following John McGuckin's argument on this subject practically to the letter…
***END-QUOTE***
I believe that Prejean is referring to a book which came out in the 1990s. Cyril died in the 5C. So he’s saying that the church had to wait 1500 years to find out where the truth lay in the Nestorian controversy. Doesn’t he realize how deadly that is to his thesis of definitive conclusions?
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
I'm not cherry-picking methodology either. I'm arguing specifically that Alexandrian allegorical method was excessive, but that the Christological hermeneutic (along with a stiff dose of metaphysical humility by way of apophasis) applied by Ss. Athanasius and Cyril provided a correct curb to allegorical excesses of the Alexandrian method, and it was this moderate Alexandrian method that produced orthodox theology as against the more restrictive Antiochene answer to excessive allegorization. So don't tell me that my argument is "arbitrary;" that's nonsense to anyone who is actually reasonably well-educated on the subject.
***END-QUOTE***
Okay, if he doesn’t like the “arbitrary” adjective, I’ll call his argument circular instead. Remember what I said?
So this is how the game is played:
i) Arbitrarily privilege your favorite outcome.
ii) Discount any authorities who disagree with you.
iii) Pick out the historical precursors who just so happen to chart a pathway to your preferred outcome, to the exclusion of all other precursors and historical outcomes.
And see what he’s just done? He’s reasoned backwards from his Cyrillene Christology to “the moderate Alexandrian method that produced” it.
He first selected the outcome, then selected the method—picking out church fathers who line up with that particular trajectory. He did this, not the historical process. What is “correct” or “excessive” is relative to his freely chosen point of reference.
The losing party—the monophysites—didn’t disappear after Chalcedon. They’re still around—Copts, Armenians. The tree has many twigs and branches.
Incidentally, there is no such thing as “moderate” allegorization. That’s Prejean’s make-up distinction. Once you cut the text free from its historical moorings, you’re at sea without a map, compass, or coastline.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
And the cheap resort to a tu quoque on Vigilius is simply a distraction.
***END-QUOTE***
It’s only a cheap resort if your opening gambit is to claim the historical process does privilege one outcome over another; that's the entire point of competing historical theories, only to immediately insulate your own guy from the competitive pressures.
Like all devout Roman Catholics, Prejean practices double-bookkeeping. There’s one set of rules for the papacy, and another set of rules for everyone else.
Whenever the papacy is in peril, the papist will declare a state of martial law. Ordinary due process is suspended.
[I said] So this is how the game is played:
i) Arbitrarily privilege your favorite outcome.
[He said] ... like the use of the GHM to interpret Scripture as some kind of necessity (without any proof that it is).
I’ve already argued that GHM is the method of Scripture itself. He simply ignores the argument because he can’t answer it.
[I said] ii) Discount any authorities who disagree with you.
[He said] ... like Hays does when he says that only Marxists, feminists, and "queer" theologians would ever dare to question the GHM, discounting the massive witness of people who disagree with that notion.
Prejean is conflating his own position with mine. I’m not the one who’s mounting an argument from authority, he is.
Also, I didn’t say “question” GHM. I said those who conscious go against the grain of the text. Even in medieval exegesis, the literal sense was still treated as foundational. In principle, the medieval exegete was not supposed to swap out the literal sense for the allegorical.
[I said] iii) Pick out the historical precursors who just so happen to chart a pathway to your preferred outcome, to the exclusion of all other precursors and historical outcomes.
[He said] ... like what Hays did in calling the GHM a "throwback" to Antioch.
Once again, he’s conflating his own position with mine. I don’t care whether GHM enjoys traditional precedent or not. I brought that up as an ad hominem argument, reasoning from his own premises.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
I beg to differ. The entire point of the historical process is to provide a crucible for historical theories, weeding out the less likely in favor of the more likely. It's history, the factual record, that selected out McGuckin's theory as against Harnack, Pelikan, and Grillmeier, and the growing consensus on his conclusions only make that point out more strongly.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Historical events are empirically equivalent. They don’t come stamped with “right” or ‘wrong” on their surface. That’s a value-judgment we bring to the historical process, not one we derive from the historical process.
Empirically speaking, there’s no outward difference between the two thieves and the person who died between them. The unique significance of that particular death is not inscribed on the event itself, but in the written record of the event.
ii) The outcome is not a theological criterion. For one thing, there is often more than one outcome. And even if there were only one outcome, that would not make it right. The winners are not always right, the losers are not always wrong.
The False Decretals were very helpful to the cause of Roman primacy. The outcome was founded on a falsehood.
After the falsehood was exposed—which men like Bellarmine fought tooth-and-nail, the outcome remained intact despite the fraudulent foundations.
As a patent law attorney, Prejean should find this unsettling.
iii) Prejean is also confusing the difference between the right interpretation of an event and the rightness of the event itself. Suppose that McGuckin’s theory is right. That doesn’t prove that Cyril was right.
iv) In addition, a “growing consensus” 1500 years after the fact is a recipe for skepticism. The “definitive” conclusion is always in tomorrow’s edition, never today’s.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Van Til's Serious Trinitarian Theology
Some time ago, Steve expertly dissected Gary Crampton’s critique of Van Til. I sent a private note to Steve, registering my appreciation for his rebuttal, while noting a point of disagreement with the following two paragraphs (concerning Van Til’s controversial claim that there is a sense in which God is ‘one person’ as well as ‘three persons’):
Steve, reasonably enough, invited me to post an argument for this claim on Triablogue. Over a month later, I’ve finally found some time to do that! But I’m also going to make some comments on why the charge of modalism against Van Til is utterly misguided, as well as taking some gratuitous pot-shots at Clark’s own view of the Trinity.
Let me begin by reviewing Van Til’s actual words. The remarks in question come near the end of Chapter 17 of An Introduction to Systematic Theology. (Ideally, one should review the whole chapter since Van Til’s comments on divine uni-personality can only be fully understood in light of the preceding discussion and historical review. However, even Steve ‘Wordy’ Hays might raise an eyebrow at my reproducing all thirteen pages for the sake of a blog post.)
Van Til has just surveyed the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, as formulated first in the early creeds and latterly in the Westminster Confession. He rightly notes that orthodoxy must acknowledge both the unity and the diversity of the Godhead, whilst avoiding the errors of overemphasising one at the expense of the other (thus falling into modalism, tritheism, or subordinationism):
So then, some commentary:
1. Let us note first of all that Van Til unambiguously condemns Sabellianism in the chapter of IST in which this passage appears. So if Van Til’s remarks on the uni-personality of God were to commit him to modalism, that would be utterly contrary to Van Til’s own intentions. At worst, he would be guilty of an unwitting inconsistency. (For some reason, however, Van Til’s critics in the Clarkian camp have not been satisfied even with a charge of manslaughter, but seem intent on pressing for first-degree murder.)
2. Furthermore, no self-respecting modalist would be satisfied with affirming the tri-personality of God (in accordance with the orthodox credal formula) and merely tacking on the uni-personality of God as an addendum. The modalist, driven by an uncompromising commitment to the absolute unity of God, must deny that God really does exist as ‘three persons’ in any ontological sense. As he sees it, the tri-personality of God is a façade, not the reality; it pertains to the economic Trinity, but not to the immanent Trinity. But this is not Van Til’s position at all.
3. Similarly, neither would the modalists of the early centuries have been comfortable with Van Til’s ‘paradoxical’ interpretation of the Trinity. Indeed, what one finds when reviewing the trinitarian controversies in the third and fourth centuries is that one of the primary virtues of modalism, according to its proponents, was its streamlined inner logic. Start with the axiom of the absolute unity and uniqueness of God; simply apply the canons of logic; and out falls a denial that the Son, if truly divine, can be any other divine person than the Father. (It is somewhat ironic then that Clarkians who dismiss Van Til as an ‘irrationalist’ for his acceptance of ‘apparent contradictions’ in Christian theology end up suggesting that his doctrine of the Trinity is evidence against that charge.)
4. So much for a negative defence of Van Til. But what positive reasons did Van Til have for wanting to say that God is ‘one person’? In the first place, as Aquascum already noted in a comment on Steve’s blog post, Van Til found prima facie justification in the language of Scripture itself. There’s no denying it: the Bible often use singular personal terms when describing God qua God. This is a basic revelational datum which trinitarian theorizers (let alone critics of Van Til) cannot simply ignore.
5. However, as I suggested to Steve, motivation for Van Til’s remarks can also be found in his solution to the philosophical problem of the One and the Many. Indeed, this is evident from the very paragraphs quoted above. As I understand it, Van Til’s reasoning runs as follows:
(1) The problem of relating and reconciling the unity and multiplicity within the universe can only be satisfactorily resolved by positing the existence of a being for which (or whom) both unity and multiplicity are equality ultimate. For this reason, Van Til adheres to an unashamedly Augustinian understanding of the Trinity, which upholds divine simplicity and affirms the numerical identity of each divine person with the divine being. (Cf. A Survey of Christian Epistemology, Chapter 4, in which Van Til compares Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity to Plato’s doctrine of the Forms, arguing that only the former adequately addresses the One-Many problem.)
(2) In addition, any ultimate impersonalism in the universe must be consistently eschewed. Notions of rationality and morality are irreducibly personal, according to Van Til, and thus to imply that reality is ultimately impersonal in some respect is to imply that reality is ultimately non-rational and non-moral.
(3) It follows from (1) and (2) that the ultimate unity in the Godhead must be a personal unity; which is just to say that in some sense God must be numerically one person, even if we must also claim that God is three persons. (In Van Til’s thinking, these two senses of personhood are not univocally related, since we must “we shun as poison the idea of the really contradictory”, but they are analogically related.) In other words, there must be one absolute consciousness which underwrites a unified interpretation of all reality. (Compare, in this regard, Van Til’s description of Yahweh as the “All-Conditioner” and “All-Conscious One” — note the numerical singularity — in his apologetic pamphlet, Why I Believe in God.) If the unity of the Godhead (i.e. the divine essence) is non-personal, then that which unites the Father, Son, and Spirit (and a fortiori underwrites the unity of the created order) is intrinsically neither rational nor moral. (The suggestion that the tri-personality of the Trinity is sufficient to furnish this personal unity misses the obvious point: tri-personality involves a plurality of personhood, not a singularity of personhood. A triad qua triad is not a unity.)
That Van Til was reasoning along these lines is confirmed by his references to “the notion of an uninterpreted being” and “the spectre of brute fact”, not to mention these comments in the paragraph subsequent:
6. It may be objected that even if Van Til’s trinitarianism does not trespass beyond the bounds of orthodoxy, the admission that his view of the Trinity is ‘mysterious’ and ‘apparently contradictory’ is no less damning, since it grants a free pass to theological irrationalism. I cannot delve into the epistemological issues here, but for an indirect defence of the rationality of Van Til’s position, see my paper, ‘In Defence of Mystery’, Religious Studies 41:2 (2005), 145-163. (For a more detailed treatment, see my doctoral thesis: soft-copy available on request. Guaranteed to cure insomnia, if nothing else.)
7. Finally, some comments on the relative orthodoxy of Van Til’s trinitarianism and Clark’s. Steve argued that Clark’s view of the Trinity is modalist, on account of his idiosyncratic analysis of personhood. Now, normally I’d sooner walk barefoot through a nest of tarantulas than take issue with one of Steve’s critiques. But while he makes some good points, on my reading Clark’s view of the Trinity is better categorised as a version of social trinitarianism — and a pretty unsophisticated version at that.
In an article entitled ‘The Trinity’, published in The Trinity Review (November 1979), Clark recommends a modified Platonist solution to the problem of explaining how the one God can exist in three distinct Persons (or rather, as Clark’s approach has it, how the three distinct Persons can constitute one God). As he explains it, the unity of the Godhead consists merely in the three Persons sharing one divine essence or nature: one divinity or godhood. Thus the unity in question is a generic unity (i.e. a common genus) rather than a numerical unity. This is the signature theme of social trinitarianism. Yet anyone familiar with the philosophical debates over the last few decades regarding the coherence of orthodox trinitarianism will be aware that this model is wide open to the charge of tritheism. If the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit consists in nothing more than their common participation in godhood (understood as an abstract essence or nature) then why should they be considered ‘one God’ any than more than Peter, James, and John (who all participate equally in manhood) should be considered ‘one man’?
Other advocates of social trinitarianism acknowledge this problem and attempt to resolve it by suggesting further ways in which the Persons are a unity (without going so far as to affirm numerical unity). Clark, however, does not. He seems to think that merely by positing the real existence of the divine essence (i.e. eschewing nominalism) we can avoid tritheism and save monotheism. But if this were so, then one could equally well claim to be ‘monoanthropist’ rather than ‘trianthropist’ in one’s view of Peter, James, and John, purely on the strength of being a metaphysical realist with respect to universals! Clark’s ‘solution’ is nowhere near sufficient to stave off the spectre of polytheism.
Clark sneakily tries to pass off the burden to the objector at this point, demanding that the objector define and distinguish the senses in which men are ‘one’ and the Persons of the Godhead are ‘one’. But this won’t do at all. It is Clark who appeals to the notion of generic unity to characterise the oneness of the Trinity; thus it is Clark who owes an explanation as to why we are right to speak of Peter, James, and John as ‘three men’ but wrong to speak of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as ‘three gods’.
8. It is somewhat ironic then that Clark has been dubbed “America’s Augustine”, since it was Van Til, and not Clark, who in fact championed an Augustinian understanding of the Trinity. (This observation is not original to me; a similar point was made by Greg Welty back in June 2000 on the Van Til list.) Clark cannot even find companionship with the Cappadocians, who, although often wrongly claimed as social trinitarians, clearly affirmed the doctrine of divine simplicity and the numerical unity of the Godhead.
9. I reviewed John Frame’s discussion of Van Til on the Trinity while writing this; it turns out that little of what I have said here in defence of Van Til adds anything significant to Frame’s earlier treatment, which is now a decade old. Yet it seems that whenever Clarkians raise the old carnard of Van Til’s ‘heterodox’ trinitarianism, there is little if any recognition that Frame has moved the debate forward substantially with his account of Van Til’s rationale. (Crampton’s fingers-in-the-ears dismissal in his review of Frame’s book is particularly egregious.) Frankly, critics of Van Til who show no concern to interact with Frame on this point do not deserve to be taken seriously.
So there you go, Steve. Are you sorry now that you ever asked?
Clarkians never tire of exhuming the moldering bones of this old canard. And it’s true that, in this one instance, Van Til’s formulation had a modalistic cast to it. Since modalism is a heresy, modalistic formulations, whether intentional or not, should be studiously eschewed.Now, I entirely agreed with Steve that the heresy of modalism is quite at odds with Van Til’s trademark emphasis on the equal ultimacy of the One and the Many in the ontological Trinity. But I also suggested that Van Til’s remarks about the uni-personality of God, rather than contradicting this point, were in fact motivated by it.
Not only is this formulation unorthodox, it is also contrary to Van Til’s fundamental commitment to the equal ultimacy of the one and the many, grounded in the ontological Trinity. So this is an odd lapse on Van Til’s part.
Steve, reasonably enough, invited me to post an argument for this claim on Triablogue. Over a month later, I’ve finally found some time to do that! But I’m also going to make some comments on why the charge of modalism against Van Til is utterly misguided, as well as taking some gratuitous pot-shots at Clark’s own view of the Trinity.
Let me begin by reviewing Van Til’s actual words. The remarks in question come near the end of Chapter 17 of An Introduction to Systematic Theology. (Ideally, one should review the whole chapter since Van Til’s comments on divine uni-personality can only be fully understood in light of the preceding discussion and historical review. However, even Steve ‘Wordy’ Hays might raise an eyebrow at my reproducing all thirteen pages for the sake of a blog post.)
Van Til has just surveyed the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, as formulated first in the early creeds and latterly in the Westminster Confession. He rightly notes that orthodoxy must acknowledge both the unity and the diversity of the Godhead, whilst avoiding the errors of overemphasising one at the expense of the other (thus falling into modalism, tritheism, or subordinationism):
When Scripture ascribes certain works specifically to the Father, others specifically to the Son, and still others specifically to the Holy Spirit, we are compelled to presuppose a genuine distinction within the Godhead back of that ascription. On the other hand, the work ascribed to any of the persons is the work of one absolute person. Bavinck has pointed out that, in the doctrine of the Trinity, we have the heart of the Christian religion (Dogmatiek, II, p. 293). We are always in danger, he says, of turning in the direction of Sabellianism by allowing the absolute unity of the being of God to do despite to the genuine personal distinctions in the Godhead, or of turning to Arianism by allowing the distinctions of the persons in the Godhead to do despite to the absolute unity of the being of God (Idem, p. 293).Van Til recognizes that this is a difficult line to walk and that the Christian will likely be charged with irrationality for holding to both the absolute unity and the genuine diversity within the Godhead. So what should the Christian’s response be? Van Til warns against two errors: (1) that of trying to squeeze the doctrine neatly into the categories of immanent human thought in an attempt to satisfy the non-Christian’s epistemic demands, but thereby veering off into one of the ditches of trinitarian heterodoxy; and (2) that of simply conceding the charge of irrationality. He writes:
If we reason thus univocally [where ‘univocally’ means, roughly, reasoning with human conceptual intuitions as our epistemic starting point and standard rather than God’s self-revelation in Scripture] we cannot help falling into either of two errors. We either maintain that the Trinity can be shown to the non-Christian man to be a rational doctrine upon his own assumptions, or we maintain that the Trinity is a mystery in the sense that it is irrational. Let us look for a moment at these errors.Van Til then concedes that this understanding of the Trinity is ‘mysterious’, but he vehemently denies that this is to admit irrationalism. On the contrary, he argues, the mystery of the ontological Trinity is the very presupposition of human rationality, insofar as supplies the ontological basis for the equal ultimacy of unity and plurality. (For more on Van Til’s argument from the One and the Many, see: John Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (P&R, 1995), 71-78; also my own paper, ‘If Knowledge Then God’, Calvin Theological Journal 40:1 (2005), 61-64.)
It is sometimes asserted that we can prove to men that we are not asserting anything that they ought to consider irrational, inasmuch as we say that God is one in essence and three in person. We therefore claim that we have not asserted unity and trinity of exactly the same thing.
Yet this is not the whole truth of the matter. We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person. We have noted how each attribute is coextensive with the being of God. We are compelled to maintain this in order to avoid the notion of an uninterpreted being of some sort. In other words, we are bound to maintain the identity of the attributes of God with the being of God in order to avoid the specter of brute fact. In a similar manner we have noted how theologians insist that each of the persons of the Godhead is co-terminous with the being of the Godhead. But all this is not to say that the distinctions of the attributes are merely nominal. Nor is it to say that the distinctions of the persons are merely nominal. We need both the absolute cotermineity of each attribute and each person with the whole being of God, and the genuine significance of the distinctions of the attributes and the persons. “Each person,” says Bavinck, “is equal to the whole essence of God and coterminous with both other persons and with all three” (Vol. II, p. 311). (“Elk persoon is daarom gelyk aan het gansche wezen en evenveel als de beide andere of als alle drie saam.”). Over against all other beings, that is, over against created beings, we must therefore hold that God’s being presents an absolute numerical identity. And even within the ontological Trinity we must maintain that God is numerically one. He is one person. When we say that we believe in a personal God, we do not merely mean that we believe in a God to whom the adjective “personality” may be attached. God is not an essence that has personality; He is absolute personality. Yet, within the being of the one person we are permitted and compelled by Scripture to make the distinction between a specific or generic type of being, and three personal subsistences.
So then, some commentary:
1. Let us note first of all that Van Til unambiguously condemns Sabellianism in the chapter of IST in which this passage appears. So if Van Til’s remarks on the uni-personality of God were to commit him to modalism, that would be utterly contrary to Van Til’s own intentions. At worst, he would be guilty of an unwitting inconsistency. (For some reason, however, Van Til’s critics in the Clarkian camp have not been satisfied even with a charge of manslaughter, but seem intent on pressing for first-degree murder.)
2. Furthermore, no self-respecting modalist would be satisfied with affirming the tri-personality of God (in accordance with the orthodox credal formula) and merely tacking on the uni-personality of God as an addendum. The modalist, driven by an uncompromising commitment to the absolute unity of God, must deny that God really does exist as ‘three persons’ in any ontological sense. As he sees it, the tri-personality of God is a façade, not the reality; it pertains to the economic Trinity, but not to the immanent Trinity. But this is not Van Til’s position at all.
3. Similarly, neither would the modalists of the early centuries have been comfortable with Van Til’s ‘paradoxical’ interpretation of the Trinity. Indeed, what one finds when reviewing the trinitarian controversies in the third and fourth centuries is that one of the primary virtues of modalism, according to its proponents, was its streamlined inner logic. Start with the axiom of the absolute unity and uniqueness of God; simply apply the canons of logic; and out falls a denial that the Son, if truly divine, can be any other divine person than the Father. (It is somewhat ironic then that Clarkians who dismiss Van Til as an ‘irrationalist’ for his acceptance of ‘apparent contradictions’ in Christian theology end up suggesting that his doctrine of the Trinity is evidence against that charge.)
4. So much for a negative defence of Van Til. But what positive reasons did Van Til have for wanting to say that God is ‘one person’? In the first place, as Aquascum already noted in a comment on Steve’s blog post, Van Til found prima facie justification in the language of Scripture itself. There’s no denying it: the Bible often use singular personal terms when describing God qua God. This is a basic revelational datum which trinitarian theorizers (let alone critics of Van Til) cannot simply ignore.
5. However, as I suggested to Steve, motivation for Van Til’s remarks can also be found in his solution to the philosophical problem of the One and the Many. Indeed, this is evident from the very paragraphs quoted above. As I understand it, Van Til’s reasoning runs as follows:
(1) The problem of relating and reconciling the unity and multiplicity within the universe can only be satisfactorily resolved by positing the existence of a being for which (or whom) both unity and multiplicity are equality ultimate. For this reason, Van Til adheres to an unashamedly Augustinian understanding of the Trinity, which upholds divine simplicity and affirms the numerical identity of each divine person with the divine being. (Cf. A Survey of Christian Epistemology, Chapter 4, in which Van Til compares Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity to Plato’s doctrine of the Forms, arguing that only the former adequately addresses the One-Many problem.)
(2) In addition, any ultimate impersonalism in the universe must be consistently eschewed. Notions of rationality and morality are irreducibly personal, according to Van Til, and thus to imply that reality is ultimately impersonal in some respect is to imply that reality is ultimately non-rational and non-moral.
(3) It follows from (1) and (2) that the ultimate unity in the Godhead must be a personal unity; which is just to say that in some sense God must be numerically one person, even if we must also claim that God is three persons. (In Van Til’s thinking, these two senses of personhood are not univocally related, since we must “we shun as poison the idea of the really contradictory”, but they are analogically related.) In other words, there must be one absolute consciousness which underwrites a unified interpretation of all reality. (Compare, in this regard, Van Til’s description of Yahweh as the “All-Conditioner” and “All-Conscious One” — note the numerical singularity — in his apologetic pamphlet, Why I Believe in God.) If the unity of the Godhead (i.e. the divine essence) is non-personal, then that which unites the Father, Son, and Spirit (and a fortiori underwrites the unity of the created order) is intrinsically neither rational nor moral. (The suggestion that the tri-personality of the Trinity is sufficient to furnish this personal unity misses the obvious point: tri-personality involves a plurality of personhood, not a singularity of personhood. A triad qua triad is not a unity.)
That Van Til was reasoning along these lines is confirmed by his references to “the notion of an uninterpreted being” and “the spectre of brute fact”, not to mention these comments in the paragraph subsequent:
But if there is one thing that seems clear from Scripture it is that there are no brute uninterpreted facts. In God’s being considered apart from his relation to the world, being and consciousness are coterminous. And because this is so, the facts of the world are created facts, facts brought into existence as the result of a fully self-conscious act on the part of God. So then, though we cannot tell why the Godhead should exist tri-personally, we can understand something of the fact, after we are told that God exists as a triune being, that the unity and the plurality of this world has back of it a God in whom unity and the plurality are equally ultimate. Thus we may say that this world, in some of its aspects at least, shows analogy to the Trinity. This world is made by God and, therefore, to the extent that it is capable of doing so, it may be thought of as revealing God as he exists. And God exists as a triune being.So then, Van Til’s conviction that the ontological Trinity alone satisfies the need for co-ultimacy of unity and diversity, coupled with his repudiation of any ultimate impersonalism, leads naturally to his contention that that traditional formulations of the doctrine of the Trinity (e.g. “one in essence and three in person”) need to be intensified (not, as his critics would read him, corrected) with the affirmation that God is also a person. As Van Til see matters, this intensification is not occasioned by the recognition of any error in the traditional formulations, but by the need to set forth in every respect the philosophical superiority of trinitarian theism over against competing accounts of the universe’s diversity-in-unity.
6. It may be objected that even if Van Til’s trinitarianism does not trespass beyond the bounds of orthodoxy, the admission that his view of the Trinity is ‘mysterious’ and ‘apparently contradictory’ is no less damning, since it grants a free pass to theological irrationalism. I cannot delve into the epistemological issues here, but for an indirect defence of the rationality of Van Til’s position, see my paper, ‘In Defence of Mystery’, Religious Studies 41:2 (2005), 145-163. (For a more detailed treatment, see my doctoral thesis: soft-copy available on request. Guaranteed to cure insomnia, if nothing else.)
7. Finally, some comments on the relative orthodoxy of Van Til’s trinitarianism and Clark’s. Steve argued that Clark’s view of the Trinity is modalist, on account of his idiosyncratic analysis of personhood. Now, normally I’d sooner walk barefoot through a nest of tarantulas than take issue with one of Steve’s critiques. But while he makes some good points, on my reading Clark’s view of the Trinity is better categorised as a version of social trinitarianism — and a pretty unsophisticated version at that.
In an article entitled ‘The Trinity’, published in The Trinity Review (November 1979), Clark recommends a modified Platonist solution to the problem of explaining how the one God can exist in three distinct Persons (or rather, as Clark’s approach has it, how the three distinct Persons can constitute one God). As he explains it, the unity of the Godhead consists merely in the three Persons sharing one divine essence or nature: one divinity or godhood. Thus the unity in question is a generic unity (i.e. a common genus) rather than a numerical unity. This is the signature theme of social trinitarianism. Yet anyone familiar with the philosophical debates over the last few decades regarding the coherence of orthodox trinitarianism will be aware that this model is wide open to the charge of tritheism. If the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit consists in nothing more than their common participation in godhood (understood as an abstract essence or nature) then why should they be considered ‘one God’ any than more than Peter, James, and John (who all participate equally in manhood) should be considered ‘one man’?
Other advocates of social trinitarianism acknowledge this problem and attempt to resolve it by suggesting further ways in which the Persons are a unity (without going so far as to affirm numerical unity). Clark, however, does not. He seems to think that merely by positing the real existence of the divine essence (i.e. eschewing nominalism) we can avoid tritheism and save monotheism. But if this were so, then one could equally well claim to be ‘monoanthropist’ rather than ‘trianthropist’ in one’s view of Peter, James, and John, purely on the strength of being a metaphysical realist with respect to universals! Clark’s ‘solution’ is nowhere near sufficient to stave off the spectre of polytheism.
Clark sneakily tries to pass off the burden to the objector at this point, demanding that the objector define and distinguish the senses in which men are ‘one’ and the Persons of the Godhead are ‘one’. But this won’t do at all. It is Clark who appeals to the notion of generic unity to characterise the oneness of the Trinity; thus it is Clark who owes an explanation as to why we are right to speak of Peter, James, and John as ‘three men’ but wrong to speak of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as ‘three gods’.
8. It is somewhat ironic then that Clark has been dubbed “America’s Augustine”, since it was Van Til, and not Clark, who in fact championed an Augustinian understanding of the Trinity. (This observation is not original to me; a similar point was made by Greg Welty back in June 2000 on the Van Til list.) Clark cannot even find companionship with the Cappadocians, who, although often wrongly claimed as social trinitarians, clearly affirmed the doctrine of divine simplicity and the numerical unity of the Godhead.
9. I reviewed John Frame’s discussion of Van Til on the Trinity while writing this; it turns out that little of what I have said here in defence of Van Til adds anything significant to Frame’s earlier treatment, which is now a decade old. Yet it seems that whenever Clarkians raise the old carnard of Van Til’s ‘heterodox’ trinitarianism, there is little if any recognition that Frame has moved the debate forward substantially with his account of Van Til’s rationale. (Crampton’s fingers-in-the-ears dismissal in his review of Frame’s book is particularly egregious.) Frankly, critics of Van Til who show no concern to interact with Frame on this point do not deserve to be taken seriously.
So there you go, Steve. Are you sorry now that you ever asked?
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
The Anglicans have betrayed the Jews
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 19:45:46 -0400
From: David Virtue
Subject: As Eye See It: Anglicans have betrayed the Jews - by Irene Lancaster
Anglicans have betrayed the Jews
by Dr Irene Lancaster
THE CHIEF RABBI, Dr Jonathan Sacks, stated three years ago that:
"Anti-Semitism exists . . . whenever two contradictory factors appear in
combination: the belief that Jews are so powerful that they are
responsible for the evils of the world, and the knowledge that they are
so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity" (lecture to the
Inter-Parliamentary Committee against Anti-Semitism, 28 February 2002).
How prophetic these words have become. The Jewish community in Britain
is alarmed by the increasing anti-Semitism in the Anglican Church, much
of it based on ignorance. For instance, many people outside the Jewish
community really believe that Israel, a country the size of Wales, is,
as Dr Sacks said, "responsible for the evils of the world", while Jewish
people know only too well that, as 0.5 per cent of the population, "they
are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity".
To many British Jews, segments of the media, including the BBC, The
Guardian and The Independent, constantly misrepresent Israel. These
misrepresentations then affect other organisations.
First, there was the Association of University Teachers (AUT), which
called for a boycott of two Israeli universities. Now the Anglican
Consultative Council, in what the journalist Melanie Phillips has called
"the Church's AUT moment", said that it "welcomes" the Anglican Peace
and Justice Network's statement on Israel (News, 1 July; 5 August).
Jewish institutions and individuals have been discussing how they are
affected by media reporting. Last week, the Community Security Trust,
which advises and represents the Jewish community on security and
anti-Semitism, asked me to tell the Church Times that:
"It frequently appears that there are no limits to the hatred and bias
that can be expressed against Israel or Zionism. Anti-Semites take
comfort from this hatred, and regard it as a cue to attack Jews at
random here in Britain. Anti-Semitic incidents' levels since the year
2000 have been the worst recorded in decades. The rise in incidents is
appalling. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago."
The Board of Deputies described its concern at the fact that "In 2004,
there were 532 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, which was a 42 per cent
increase on the figures for 2003, which was a substantial increase on
the figures for 2002."
THE BBC apologised when the Scottish hymn-writer, the Revd Dr John Bell
of the Iona Community, "made two factual mistakes" about the Israeli
army on the Radio 4's Thought for the Day in February.
This was a wake-up call for the Jewish community, even though Christian
aid agencies and "peace groups" have for a long time appeared to us to
be attacking Israel, and ignoring attempts to hear other points of view.
Individual Jews have reported experiencing violent verbal attacks during
public pro-Palestinian meetings held in church buildings.
Joanne Green, a Jewish journalist, said: "Despite the BBC charter, I
can't think of any programmes that are critical of the Palestinians,
despite their kangaroo courts, public hangings, threats to journalists,
incitement to racial and religious hatred, corruption, and threats to
destroy Israel.
"Also, as an active member of the Council of Christians and Jews, I feel
betrayed by the Anglican Church. All those receptions at St James's
Palace and earnest tributes from church leaders regretting their
millennia-long persecution of the Jews don't mean anything any more.
When Jews need real recognition of the danger they are in, where is the
Church? Aligning themselves with those who want to wipe Israel from the
face of the earth, after it was they who were responsible for the
Holocaust. Forgive them, Lord, for they probably do know exactly what
they do. How dare the Church lecture Jews on morality."
Many people mention the Church's apparent silence in the face of the
growing attacks on the British Jewish community. For one seasoned
American journalist and Episcopalian cleric: "In Britain, there is a
degree of open anti-Semitism that would be unthinkable in the USA. The C
of E has been complicit in this, both by keeping silent, and by not
cracking down on its members who cross the line in their advocacy of the
Palestinian cause, and fall into Jew-baiting."
Canon Andrew White, CEO of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the
Middle East, agrees. "Is there a new anti-Semitism?" he asks. "For Jews,
disinvestment [in Israel] is not just anti-Zionism, but anti-Semitism.
Christians defend their position by saying they are against Israel, not
the Jews. Yet there is no call by the Christians to disinvest from
countries where Christians are persecuted, or banned. Israel is viewed
as the evil nation, that evil democratic nation - that just happens to
be the only homeland for the Jewish people in the world.
"Now that there is an acute awareness of the dangers of Islamic
fundamentalism, the Christian world needs to wake up to the fact that
more Jews have been killed by Christians than by Muslims. It is no
longer sufficient for the Church to blame Israel for its own
anti-Semitism. The replacement theology that laid the ground for nearly
two millennia of anti-Judaic polemic is on its way back. This time, it
is dressed up as concern for the Palestinians."
Benjamin, a 32-year-old Jew, who stayed at my house last Shabbat, en
route to an International Council of Christians and Jews convention,
said: "Christians are encouraged to love their enemies. We are no longer
the enemy, just irrelevant; no longer the enemy, just the object of hate
and vilification."
For, as the Holocaust author Raoul Hillberg has said: "There is a
straight line from 'You have no right to live among us as Jews' to 'You
have no right to live among us' to 'You have no right to live.'"
--This piece was original published in the Church Times, August 19th
2005. Dr Irene Lancaster is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Jewish
Studies at the University of Manchester, England and is the author of
works on Jewish history and the Bible, and an Orthodox Jew engaged in
interfaith work with the Anglican Church and others.
http://www.israpundit.com/archives/2005/08/anglicans_have.php
From: David Virtue
Subject: As Eye See It: Anglicans have betrayed the Jews - by Irene Lancaster
Anglicans have betrayed the Jews
by Dr Irene Lancaster
THE CHIEF RABBI, Dr Jonathan Sacks, stated three years ago that:
"Anti-Semitism exists . . . whenever two contradictory factors appear in
combination: the belief that Jews are so powerful that they are
responsible for the evils of the world, and the knowledge that they are
so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity" (lecture to the
Inter-Parliamentary Committee against Anti-Semitism, 28 February 2002).
How prophetic these words have become. The Jewish community in Britain
is alarmed by the increasing anti-Semitism in the Anglican Church, much
of it based on ignorance. For instance, many people outside the Jewish
community really believe that Israel, a country the size of Wales, is,
as Dr Sacks said, "responsible for the evils of the world", while Jewish
people know only too well that, as 0.5 per cent of the population, "they
are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity".
To many British Jews, segments of the media, including the BBC, The
Guardian and The Independent, constantly misrepresent Israel. These
misrepresentations then affect other organisations.
First, there was the Association of University Teachers (AUT), which
called for a boycott of two Israeli universities. Now the Anglican
Consultative Council, in what the journalist Melanie Phillips has called
"the Church's AUT moment", said that it "welcomes" the Anglican Peace
and Justice Network's statement on Israel (News, 1 July; 5 August).
Jewish institutions and individuals have been discussing how they are
affected by media reporting. Last week, the Community Security Trust,
which advises and represents the Jewish community on security and
anti-Semitism, asked me to tell the Church Times that:
"It frequently appears that there are no limits to the hatred and bias
that can be expressed against Israel or Zionism. Anti-Semites take
comfort from this hatred, and regard it as a cue to attack Jews at
random here in Britain. Anti-Semitic incidents' levels since the year
2000 have been the worst recorded in decades. The rise in incidents is
appalling. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago."
The Board of Deputies described its concern at the fact that "In 2004,
there were 532 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, which was a 42 per cent
increase on the figures for 2003, which was a substantial increase on
the figures for 2002."
THE BBC apologised when the Scottish hymn-writer, the Revd Dr John Bell
of the Iona Community, "made two factual mistakes" about the Israeli
army on the Radio 4's Thought for the Day in February.
This was a wake-up call for the Jewish community, even though Christian
aid agencies and "peace groups" have for a long time appeared to us to
be attacking Israel, and ignoring attempts to hear other points of view.
Individual Jews have reported experiencing violent verbal attacks during
public pro-Palestinian meetings held in church buildings.
Joanne Green, a Jewish journalist, said: "Despite the BBC charter, I
can't think of any programmes that are critical of the Palestinians,
despite their kangaroo courts, public hangings, threats to journalists,
incitement to racial and religious hatred, corruption, and threats to
destroy Israel.
"Also, as an active member of the Council of Christians and Jews, I feel
betrayed by the Anglican Church. All those receptions at St James's
Palace and earnest tributes from church leaders regretting their
millennia-long persecution of the Jews don't mean anything any more.
When Jews need real recognition of the danger they are in, where is the
Church? Aligning themselves with those who want to wipe Israel from the
face of the earth, after it was they who were responsible for the
Holocaust. Forgive them, Lord, for they probably do know exactly what
they do. How dare the Church lecture Jews on morality."
Many people mention the Church's apparent silence in the face of the
growing attacks on the British Jewish community. For one seasoned
American journalist and Episcopalian cleric: "In Britain, there is a
degree of open anti-Semitism that would be unthinkable in the USA. The C
of E has been complicit in this, both by keeping silent, and by not
cracking down on its members who cross the line in their advocacy of the
Palestinian cause, and fall into Jew-baiting."
Canon Andrew White, CEO of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the
Middle East, agrees. "Is there a new anti-Semitism?" he asks. "For Jews,
disinvestment [in Israel] is not just anti-Zionism, but anti-Semitism.
Christians defend their position by saying they are against Israel, not
the Jews. Yet there is no call by the Christians to disinvest from
countries where Christians are persecuted, or banned. Israel is viewed
as the evil nation, that evil democratic nation - that just happens to
be the only homeland for the Jewish people in the world.
"Now that there is an acute awareness of the dangers of Islamic
fundamentalism, the Christian world needs to wake up to the fact that
more Jews have been killed by Christians than by Muslims. It is no
longer sufficient for the Church to blame Israel for its own
anti-Semitism. The replacement theology that laid the ground for nearly
two millennia of anti-Judaic polemic is on its way back. This time, it
is dressed up as concern for the Palestinians."
Benjamin, a 32-year-old Jew, who stayed at my house last Shabbat, en
route to an International Council of Christians and Jews convention,
said: "Christians are encouraged to love their enemies. We are no longer
the enemy, just irrelevant; no longer the enemy, just the object of hate
and vilification."
For, as the Holocaust author Raoul Hillberg has said: "There is a
straight line from 'You have no right to live among us as Jews' to 'You
have no right to live among us' to 'You have no right to live.'"
--This piece was original published in the Church Times, August 19th
2005. Dr Irene Lancaster is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Jewish
Studies at the University of Manchester, England and is the author of
works on Jewish history and the Bible, and an Orthodox Jew engaged in
interfaith work with the Anglican Church and others.
http://www.israpundit.com/archives/2005/08/anglicans_have.php
The amateur ecumenist
Enloe is currently offering his customized version of sola Scriptura:
***QUOTE***
Admittedly, my previous post on this subject and this one as well have been partly motivated by apologetic concerns raised by some interactions I have had (or have seen others have) with Jonathan Prejean. Following such arguments as found in Sherrard's book The Greek East and the Latin West, Prejean argues that sola Scriptura is incompatible with Christianity because it ultimately reduces Christianity to the text of Scripture. Namely, only those things can be believed which can be "verified" by direct appeal to the Scriptures Alone, whose "plain" meaning is exactly equivalent, without remainder, to the original meaning as discerned by purely "scientific" criteria of hermeneutics.
This view of Scripture, though seemingly popular among Modern Protestants, begins over time to look like a kind of textual "positivism"--and positivism is surely no friend of the Christian religion. I think this criticism is insightful when directed against said Modern Protestant concept of sola Scriptura, but I do not think it disqualifies sola Scriptura conceived of in its properly Reformational sense. It is the burden of these hastily-constructed, probably too sketchily-argued posts, to explain why I don't think sola Scriptura is actually impacted by the type of argument found in Sherrard's book. In addition to the foundational matters I discussed in the last post on this subject, I will here attempt to interact with some of the concerns of Catholics regarding sola Scriptura as expressed in such official documents as Vatican II's Dei Verbum.
Christianity cannot be reduced to only those areas of experience which are accessible to, quantifiable by, and really controlled by, the intellect (reason).
In speaking of written and unwritten "aspects" of Christian doctrine I believe Sherrard has expressed an important point about the incarnated religion of Christianity--a point which even we as Protestants ought to be able to affirm without difficulty. That point is that the Christian religion is about far more than sentences, propositions, and texts. The Christian religion is about all of reality, and this fully includes embodied reality. By its very nature, then, the Christian Faith cannot be about only what we find in a text--not even in the Divine Text itself. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Incarnated reality simply cannot be reduced to marks on a piece of paper, regardless of what those marks mean in terms of sentences and propositions. Indeed, not even a complete collection of such sentences and propositions gleaned from the Divine Text would be a complete Christian faith, but only part of it. Why? Because there is embodied reality outside of the text, and what we get from the text is not truly complete unless we live it out.
Now what does this mean for sola Scriptura? Everything depends on how the phrase is construed. If, for instance, we wrongly take the "sola" to mean that no authority except Scripture can have any real say-so, and correspondingly we then seek an exegetical theory which claims to have zero input from "traditions" because it "only" deals with the text of Scripture, we immediately fall into the rationalistic philosophical trap of which Sherrard speaks. Because especially over the last 350 years or so (since the cultural triumph of the Enlightenment) the Protestant mind has adopted a truly excessive suspicion of "tradition", reading remarks such as Sherrard's above all too easily raises fears that the authority of Scripture is being somehow downplayed and mere human notions brought in to enslave. We might find ourselves deeply suspicious of Sherrard's category of "aspects" of Christian doctrine, and suspect that the qualities of Scripture such as its "sufficiency" and "clarity" are being denied in favor of "traditions of men".
(though the mere propositional statements would not exhaust the meaning since the meaning has to be lived out in the community of the faithful).
To think of Scripture--and our process of understanding it--in such
a manner is to think like an idolator precisely because it reduces Scripture to something fully immanent, which we can control with our Reason.
How does such "controlling" of Scripture happen in the Enlightenment Protestant scheme? Like this. In the Modern world, when immanent Reason faces a problem it creates a technology (that is, a techne) to solve it. In terms of the Modern problem with finding "certainty" of interpretation the technology which has been created is "scientific" hermeneutics.
From Descartes's "clear an distinct ideas" to Paley's Divine Watchmaker to Hodge's Common Sense Realism, well-meaning Christians surrendered the field of battle to rationalism, and the result was, as history shows us, the general reduction of faith to whatever Reason could be said to approve.
That criterion being the autonomy of Reason, immanent systematization became the goal of Protestant theology as well as of all other fragmented areas of study (known as "subjects"). Biblical hermeneutics thus became one more "science" proceeding by its own autonomous rules and cut off from external sources of information and clarification--such as the category of "tradition" and its transmitter, the embodied life of faith… On this Enlightenment concept of knowledge and truth, "sola" Scriptura became the theory that "only" Scripture has any say-so, and Scripture's say-so (in the sense of its presumed eidos) is discovered via hermeneutics, a form of technology (techne) that leads us to correct Rational thinking (episteme).
We thus deny all hermeneutical attempts to rip Scripture (and its interpretation) out of its natural context--the ongoing, organic, messy life of the community of the faithful--and place it "above" all other things in the sense that nothing else can have any significant input because we heed "only" (sola) Scripture. Every attempt to interpret Scripture already involves philosophical and linguistic assumptions which, contrary to a naive Scripture "only" view of "sola" Scriptura do not arise from the text of Scripture itself--assumptions which we often do not see precisely for the reason that when we look out a window we usually do not see the window itself, but only that which we are looking at through the window. The trouble with blindspots is precisely that you can't see what is going on in them without the aid of something that is outside of them.
This is a tough subject to navigate under the best of circumstances, but certainly it is even tougher in a climate where both sides are merely repeating 500 year old developed polemics against each other and confusing this with actually listening to each other and dealing with what is being said within a very different framework.
That is, it has been confined to the purely Rational interpretation of black squiggles on the pages of a book--which, although it certainly is the Divine Book and to be reverenced above all other books, was never intended to (and indeed cannot) express the totality of divine revelation and the apostolic religion which is built upon it.
Christologically-speaking, because the Church is the Body of Christ, participating in His divine life, and because Christ is not just fully man but fully God as well (indeed, He is the image of the Father), the Body of Christ is not reducible to the merely historical--or the merely textual. Christianity is surely a "historical religion," but this does not mean that it is reducible to historical factors and expressions, since Christ Himself is not so reducible.
This implies that from the Christian or any other genuinely religious point of view, there can be no common measure between the Truth, in its absolute and eternal nature, and its formal expression in terms accessible to the human intelligence. The Truth is, a priori, independent of, and superior to, its expression in human terms, the latter being as nothing when compared with it. And this is so even in the case of such a supreme expression of the Truth on the human plane as its historical incarnation in the life of Christ: if the eternal Logos, in the Incarnation, 'became flesh', this assumed human nature does not absorb or exhaust the divine nature, and represents, vis-a-vis this latter, a limitation, in the sense that it gives a finite form to what is infinite and, from the point of view of the human intelligence, formless. What applies in the case of such a supreme manifestation of the Truth as the Incarnation applies necessarily to a greater degree to any other expression it may take on the human plane, and especially to formulas made in conceptual and logically coherent terms. The Truth itself is beyond any such formulations, and to seek for it in the latter is to confuse what belongs to a relative, and imperfect, order with what is absolute and universal--is, in fact, to fall into the kind of idolatry of which the Christians accuse the pagans, namely, that which arises from worshipping creation rather than the Creator. (Sherrard, 51)
Notice again the idea that people have to be "capable of receiving" a Truth which is presented to them, which, as developed in the first post, means that they have to reside within the community of faith, the life of which affects them in ways that actually make them able to understand spiritual things in a manner that those cut off from the life cannot. This instantly eliminates all notions of "Truth" as merely intellectual…It in effect reduces Truth to immanence, and thus by destroying transcendence destroys basic orthodox Christianity itself.
It is merely a plea for situating hermeneutics within something beyond the text which hermeneutics seeks to interpret--namely, the community of faith which cannot itself be reduced to the text. It is also a plea for not reducing hermeneutics to a Modernistic "science", an episteme or technological method whose goal is, like all technologies, to subdue that upon which it operates, to quantify it, package it, explain it without residue, and thus indeed, to control it.
Because Scripture is the Divine Text, speaking to the community which God Himself has called out of the world and which He Himself is daily redemptively working within both to transform it and use it to transform the world, it is not susceptible to this type of Rational control--and if we attempt to so control it we make ourselves idolators.
Again, it is not hermeneutics per se that is the problem, nor is it inherently problematic to attempt via hermeneutics to find the original meaning of the text. What is problematic is taking the additional step of reducing Truth and Meaning to ONLY what is found in the text by means of some such methodology like "the assured results of critical scholarship"
http://www.societaschristiana.com/archives/000464.html#more
***END-QUOTE***
i) Notice the overweening conceit of a man with no institutional standing--whether academic or ecclesiastical—supposing that he’s going to broker a deal between Catholicism and Evangelicalism.
ii) This mini-series is yet another illustration of how very suggestible and impressionable Enloe is. He believes the last thing he reads, and rushes into print to announce to the world that he has discovered long lost key to unlocking the Catholic/Evangelical impasse.
He reads on the fly, thinks on the fly, writes on the fly with these half-read, half-baked, half-digested reaction-pieces. Instant analysis takes the place of measured reflection.
iii) We are, of course, treated to the deep-dyed, bald-faced lies about how the Svendsens of the world do exegesis. Was Enloe always a pathological liar? Or was it somewhere along the line that he chose to cultivate this studied, culpable ignorance and appetite for confabulation?
Turning from generalities to specifics:
iv) There is his pantheistic notion of the Incarnation, whereby the uniquely particular and unrepeatable event of the God-man is universalized into a general framework, based on Enloe’s sloppy, overly literal extrapolation from the church as the body of Christ.
v) There is the equally sloppy inference that if Christianity is not reducible to propositional revelation, then that somehow invalidates the grammatico-historical method.
Such an inference fails to draw an elementary distinction between subjective and objective faith—between believers and belief, on the one hand, and the object of faith or belief-system on the other. We truly live out our faith only to the extent that we are true to the meaning of the sacred text.
Meaning is propositional. The meaning is there whether or not we pattern our lives accordingly. If we are faithless, that does nothing to negate the meaning of the text.
vi) Meaning is, indeed, immanent. God has made his meaning immanent in his act of self-revelation. He has made his meaning immanent in the process of inspiring verbal propositions.
God is the one who has formulated his truth, articulated his truth, verbalized his truth. This is not something we have done, but something God has done.
Yes, there is a larger truth outside of Scripture. God is omniscient. But you cannot find that larger truth outside of Scripture. For that larger truth is no part of revealed truth.
This isn’t our attempt to exert control over God, but a way in which God exerts control over his church. To seek the meaning of Scripture is to resign our pretensions of personal autonomy and submit to the autonomy of God.
Hermeneutics is not an autonomous discipline, cut off from external sources of information. To the contrary, the grammatico-historical method adapts its method to the subject-matter. What a sentence means is whatever the author meant it to mean at the time he wrote it. That is simply a truism of communication.
The natural context of Scripture is not the “ongoing” audience, but the original audience. And the way to apply Scripture to the church is to analogize from the original situation to our own situation.
vii) Truth is, indeed, merely intellectual. Enloe is confounding truth and faith. Belief is more than truth, and faith is more than belief, but truth is a purely intellectual property, a property of proposition, of true beliefs—Enloe’s pious nonsense notwithstanding.
viii) How many commentators claim absolute certainty for their every interpretation? This is Enloe’s imaginary straw-man argument—like a twitchy, jerky street person who swears at invisible adversaries and swats away nonexistent flies.
ix) What’s so bad about Paley’s watchmaker argument? Is there something inherently wrong with the teleological argument?
x) The reason we’re locked into a 500-year-old polemic is that Rome locked herself into a particular posture with the Tridentine anathemas. “Listening” assumes an open-ended dialogue of give-and-take. But Rome is unable to take back her words without resigning her pretensions to a divine teaching office. So there is no “give.”
xi) 1 Cor 2:13-14 doesn’t mean that you must be in the church to understand the Bible. In this passage, Paul speaks of the Spirit, not of the church. Regeneration is the prerequisite.
Moreover, Paul’s point is not that the unregenerate are incapable of understanding the Bible. Rather, as he explains, they find it foolish.
We have a number of examples, in the Book of Acts, of Paul preaching to a hostile audience. Why were they hostile? Because they didn’t understand? Or because they did understand, but didn’t like what they were hearing?
xii) Since idolatry is, itself, a biblical category, it can never be rightly applied, in self-referential fashion, to Scripture itself. Where in Scripture is the listener ever admonished to take the word of God less seriously? Are we not to revere the word of God?
It’s a sorry and telling evidence of Enloe’s theological degeneracy that he is now resorting to the old Bible-hating slogans of a paper pope and bibliolatry.
***QUOTE***
Admittedly, my previous post on this subject and this one as well have been partly motivated by apologetic concerns raised by some interactions I have had (or have seen others have) with Jonathan Prejean. Following such arguments as found in Sherrard's book The Greek East and the Latin West, Prejean argues that sola Scriptura is incompatible with Christianity because it ultimately reduces Christianity to the text of Scripture. Namely, only those things can be believed which can be "verified" by direct appeal to the Scriptures Alone, whose "plain" meaning is exactly equivalent, without remainder, to the original meaning as discerned by purely "scientific" criteria of hermeneutics.
This view of Scripture, though seemingly popular among Modern Protestants, begins over time to look like a kind of textual "positivism"--and positivism is surely no friend of the Christian religion. I think this criticism is insightful when directed against said Modern Protestant concept of sola Scriptura, but I do not think it disqualifies sola Scriptura conceived of in its properly Reformational sense. It is the burden of these hastily-constructed, probably too sketchily-argued posts, to explain why I don't think sola Scriptura is actually impacted by the type of argument found in Sherrard's book. In addition to the foundational matters I discussed in the last post on this subject, I will here attempt to interact with some of the concerns of Catholics regarding sola Scriptura as expressed in such official documents as Vatican II's Dei Verbum.
Christianity cannot be reduced to only those areas of experience which are accessible to, quantifiable by, and really controlled by, the intellect (reason).
In speaking of written and unwritten "aspects" of Christian doctrine I believe Sherrard has expressed an important point about the incarnated religion of Christianity--a point which even we as Protestants ought to be able to affirm without difficulty. That point is that the Christian religion is about far more than sentences, propositions, and texts. The Christian religion is about all of reality, and this fully includes embodied reality. By its very nature, then, the Christian Faith cannot be about only what we find in a text--not even in the Divine Text itself. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Incarnated reality simply cannot be reduced to marks on a piece of paper, regardless of what those marks mean in terms of sentences and propositions. Indeed, not even a complete collection of such sentences and propositions gleaned from the Divine Text would be a complete Christian faith, but only part of it. Why? Because there is embodied reality outside of the text, and what we get from the text is not truly complete unless we live it out.
Now what does this mean for sola Scriptura? Everything depends on how the phrase is construed. If, for instance, we wrongly take the "sola" to mean that no authority except Scripture can have any real say-so, and correspondingly we then seek an exegetical theory which claims to have zero input from "traditions" because it "only" deals with the text of Scripture, we immediately fall into the rationalistic philosophical trap of which Sherrard speaks. Because especially over the last 350 years or so (since the cultural triumph of the Enlightenment) the Protestant mind has adopted a truly excessive suspicion of "tradition", reading remarks such as Sherrard's above all too easily raises fears that the authority of Scripture is being somehow downplayed and mere human notions brought in to enslave. We might find ourselves deeply suspicious of Sherrard's category of "aspects" of Christian doctrine, and suspect that the qualities of Scripture such as its "sufficiency" and "clarity" are being denied in favor of "traditions of men".
(though the mere propositional statements would not exhaust the meaning since the meaning has to be lived out in the community of the faithful).
To think of Scripture--and our process of understanding it--in such
a manner is to think like an idolator precisely because it reduces Scripture to something fully immanent, which we can control with our Reason.
How does such "controlling" of Scripture happen in the Enlightenment Protestant scheme? Like this. In the Modern world, when immanent Reason faces a problem it creates a technology (that is, a techne) to solve it. In terms of the Modern problem with finding "certainty" of interpretation the technology which has been created is "scientific" hermeneutics.
From Descartes's "clear an distinct ideas" to Paley's Divine Watchmaker to Hodge's Common Sense Realism, well-meaning Christians surrendered the field of battle to rationalism, and the result was, as history shows us, the general reduction of faith to whatever Reason could be said to approve.
That criterion being the autonomy of Reason, immanent systematization became the goal of Protestant theology as well as of all other fragmented areas of study (known as "subjects"). Biblical hermeneutics thus became one more "science" proceeding by its own autonomous rules and cut off from external sources of information and clarification--such as the category of "tradition" and its transmitter, the embodied life of faith… On this Enlightenment concept of knowledge and truth, "sola" Scriptura became the theory that "only" Scripture has any say-so, and Scripture's say-so (in the sense of its presumed eidos) is discovered via hermeneutics, a form of technology (techne) that leads us to correct Rational thinking (episteme).
We thus deny all hermeneutical attempts to rip Scripture (and its interpretation) out of its natural context--the ongoing, organic, messy life of the community of the faithful--and place it "above" all other things in the sense that nothing else can have any significant input because we heed "only" (sola) Scripture. Every attempt to interpret Scripture already involves philosophical and linguistic assumptions which, contrary to a naive Scripture "only" view of "sola" Scriptura do not arise from the text of Scripture itself--assumptions which we often do not see precisely for the reason that when we look out a window we usually do not see the window itself, but only that which we are looking at through the window. The trouble with blindspots is precisely that you can't see what is going on in them without the aid of something that is outside of them.
This is a tough subject to navigate under the best of circumstances, but certainly it is even tougher in a climate where both sides are merely repeating 500 year old developed polemics against each other and confusing this with actually listening to each other and dealing with what is being said within a very different framework.
That is, it has been confined to the purely Rational interpretation of black squiggles on the pages of a book--which, although it certainly is the Divine Book and to be reverenced above all other books, was never intended to (and indeed cannot) express the totality of divine revelation and the apostolic religion which is built upon it.
Christologically-speaking, because the Church is the Body of Christ, participating in His divine life, and because Christ is not just fully man but fully God as well (indeed, He is the image of the Father), the Body of Christ is not reducible to the merely historical--or the merely textual. Christianity is surely a "historical religion," but this does not mean that it is reducible to historical factors and expressions, since Christ Himself is not so reducible.
This implies that from the Christian or any other genuinely religious point of view, there can be no common measure between the Truth, in its absolute and eternal nature, and its formal expression in terms accessible to the human intelligence. The Truth is, a priori, independent of, and superior to, its expression in human terms, the latter being as nothing when compared with it. And this is so even in the case of such a supreme expression of the Truth on the human plane as its historical incarnation in the life of Christ: if the eternal Logos, in the Incarnation, 'became flesh', this assumed human nature does not absorb or exhaust the divine nature, and represents, vis-a-vis this latter, a limitation, in the sense that it gives a finite form to what is infinite and, from the point of view of the human intelligence, formless. What applies in the case of such a supreme manifestation of the Truth as the Incarnation applies necessarily to a greater degree to any other expression it may take on the human plane, and especially to formulas made in conceptual and logically coherent terms. The Truth itself is beyond any such formulations, and to seek for it in the latter is to confuse what belongs to a relative, and imperfect, order with what is absolute and universal--is, in fact, to fall into the kind of idolatry of which the Christians accuse the pagans, namely, that which arises from worshipping creation rather than the Creator. (Sherrard, 51)
Notice again the idea that people have to be "capable of receiving" a Truth which is presented to them, which, as developed in the first post, means that they have to reside within the community of faith, the life of which affects them in ways that actually make them able to understand spiritual things in a manner that those cut off from the life cannot. This instantly eliminates all notions of "Truth" as merely intellectual…It in effect reduces Truth to immanence, and thus by destroying transcendence destroys basic orthodox Christianity itself.
It is merely a plea for situating hermeneutics within something beyond the text which hermeneutics seeks to interpret--namely, the community of faith which cannot itself be reduced to the text. It is also a plea for not reducing hermeneutics to a Modernistic "science", an episteme or technological method whose goal is, like all technologies, to subdue that upon which it operates, to quantify it, package it, explain it without residue, and thus indeed, to control it.
Because Scripture is the Divine Text, speaking to the community which God Himself has called out of the world and which He Himself is daily redemptively working within both to transform it and use it to transform the world, it is not susceptible to this type of Rational control--and if we attempt to so control it we make ourselves idolators.
Again, it is not hermeneutics per se that is the problem, nor is it inherently problematic to attempt via hermeneutics to find the original meaning of the text. What is problematic is taking the additional step of reducing Truth and Meaning to ONLY what is found in the text by means of some such methodology like "the assured results of critical scholarship"
http://www.societaschristiana.com/archives/000464.html#more
***END-QUOTE***
i) Notice the overweening conceit of a man with no institutional standing--whether academic or ecclesiastical—supposing that he’s going to broker a deal between Catholicism and Evangelicalism.
ii) This mini-series is yet another illustration of how very suggestible and impressionable Enloe is. He believes the last thing he reads, and rushes into print to announce to the world that he has discovered long lost key to unlocking the Catholic/Evangelical impasse.
He reads on the fly, thinks on the fly, writes on the fly with these half-read, half-baked, half-digested reaction-pieces. Instant analysis takes the place of measured reflection.
iii) We are, of course, treated to the deep-dyed, bald-faced lies about how the Svendsens of the world do exegesis. Was Enloe always a pathological liar? Or was it somewhere along the line that he chose to cultivate this studied, culpable ignorance and appetite for confabulation?
Turning from generalities to specifics:
iv) There is his pantheistic notion of the Incarnation, whereby the uniquely particular and unrepeatable event of the God-man is universalized into a general framework, based on Enloe’s sloppy, overly literal extrapolation from the church as the body of Christ.
v) There is the equally sloppy inference that if Christianity is not reducible to propositional revelation, then that somehow invalidates the grammatico-historical method.
Such an inference fails to draw an elementary distinction between subjective and objective faith—between believers and belief, on the one hand, and the object of faith or belief-system on the other. We truly live out our faith only to the extent that we are true to the meaning of the sacred text.
Meaning is propositional. The meaning is there whether or not we pattern our lives accordingly. If we are faithless, that does nothing to negate the meaning of the text.
vi) Meaning is, indeed, immanent. God has made his meaning immanent in his act of self-revelation. He has made his meaning immanent in the process of inspiring verbal propositions.
God is the one who has formulated his truth, articulated his truth, verbalized his truth. This is not something we have done, but something God has done.
Yes, there is a larger truth outside of Scripture. God is omniscient. But you cannot find that larger truth outside of Scripture. For that larger truth is no part of revealed truth.
This isn’t our attempt to exert control over God, but a way in which God exerts control over his church. To seek the meaning of Scripture is to resign our pretensions of personal autonomy and submit to the autonomy of God.
Hermeneutics is not an autonomous discipline, cut off from external sources of information. To the contrary, the grammatico-historical method adapts its method to the subject-matter. What a sentence means is whatever the author meant it to mean at the time he wrote it. That is simply a truism of communication.
The natural context of Scripture is not the “ongoing” audience, but the original audience. And the way to apply Scripture to the church is to analogize from the original situation to our own situation.
vii) Truth is, indeed, merely intellectual. Enloe is confounding truth and faith. Belief is more than truth, and faith is more than belief, but truth is a purely intellectual property, a property of proposition, of true beliefs—Enloe’s pious nonsense notwithstanding.
viii) How many commentators claim absolute certainty for their every interpretation? This is Enloe’s imaginary straw-man argument—like a twitchy, jerky street person who swears at invisible adversaries and swats away nonexistent flies.
ix) What’s so bad about Paley’s watchmaker argument? Is there something inherently wrong with the teleological argument?
x) The reason we’re locked into a 500-year-old polemic is that Rome locked herself into a particular posture with the Tridentine anathemas. “Listening” assumes an open-ended dialogue of give-and-take. But Rome is unable to take back her words without resigning her pretensions to a divine teaching office. So there is no “give.”
xi) 1 Cor 2:13-14 doesn’t mean that you must be in the church to understand the Bible. In this passage, Paul speaks of the Spirit, not of the church. Regeneration is the prerequisite.
Moreover, Paul’s point is not that the unregenerate are incapable of understanding the Bible. Rather, as he explains, they find it foolish.
We have a number of examples, in the Book of Acts, of Paul preaching to a hostile audience. Why were they hostile? Because they didn’t understand? Or because they did understand, but didn’t like what they were hearing?
xii) Since idolatry is, itself, a biblical category, it can never be rightly applied, in self-referential fashion, to Scripture itself. Where in Scripture is the listener ever admonished to take the word of God less seriously? Are we not to revere the word of God?
It’s a sorry and telling evidence of Enloe’s theological degeneracy that he is now resorting to the old Bible-hating slogans of a paper pope and bibliolatry.
Rewriting history
Jonathan Prejean has a postscript to our recent exchange. Let's run through his reply:
***QUOTE***
UPDATE -- Hays responded here. I anticipated these objections some time ago here (so much for the argument that it "just occurred to me" that Evangelical exegesis was Antiochene). The claim of continuity with the Antiochene method is well-known among Evangelicals and well-known to me personally; see, e.g., David S. Dockery, Biblical Interpretation Then and Now; Gerald L. Bray, Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present.
Anyway, I only bring this up as more evidence of what I mean by not getting substantive responses. Here, my arguments were entirely compatible with each other, but my interlocutor wasn't even willing to apply the epistemic charity required to assume that I wasn't directly contradicting myself. There's no way I can possibly make myself so clear that people determined to misunderstand can't do it, but that doesn't change the fact that responses based on such misinterpretations don't touch the substance of my objection.
***END-QUOTE***
Let us compare this with what I was responding to. This, once again, is what Prejean originally said:
***QUOTE***
Evidently, before conservative Evangelicalism decided to make a comeback into serious scholarship against the tide of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism (which, BTW, was mere decades ago), this method simply didn't exist. I guess all that bit about God "accommodating" Himself to human limitations meant 20th century human limitations.
***END-QUOTE***
All he has done now is to document the fact that he was aware of the connection between Antiochene exegesis and the GHM all along. Fine. I don’t doubt it. But that does nothing to harmonize his former statement with his latter statement. Indeed, what he’s done is to document the contradiction.
As to the substance of is objection, this does indeed, go straight to the heart of his objection. His objection is that Evangelical distinctives represent a theological innovation in the history of the church. They are without precedent.
But if, by his own admission, GHM is a direct descendant of Antiochene exegesis, then he can no longer use that particular objection. He can use other objections, but not that one.
And this, in fact, is exactly what we see him trying to do—to raise the precedential objection, then drop it, without admitting as much, then shift gears to an outcome-based objection:
***QUOTE***
The fact that the Evangelical method picked out old techniques doesn't demonstrate any continuity of reason for selecting those techniques (with Antioch or with the Reformers), but the fact that the particular techniques selected failed to pick out an orthodox Christology in the past surely does say something about the wisdom of using the Evangelical method to pick out techniques in the first place.
***END-QUOTE***
So which is his criterion—history or orthodoxy?
He then tries to harmonize his contradictory claims in this fashion:
***QUOTE***
But regardless, the overall philosophical-hermeneutical framework in which hermeneutical techniques are adjudged useful (viz., the method by which one determines what techniques to apply) appears to be primarily a creature of 20th-century German phenomenology (so much so that Bray considers knowledge of Heidegger's Being and Time and Gadamer's Truth and Method to be essential for understanding modern Evangelical hermeneutics), so I stand by my statement that the modern Evangelical method is of recent origin.
***END-QUOTE***
This, though, wavers on a palpable equivocation by confounding the origin of the method with the origin of a philosophical framework.
But, of course, the GHM is logically and historically independent of Heidegger and Gadamer. It antedates German phenomenology. And it can be embedded within a very different conceptual scheme.
As I’ve said before, it operates with the common sense principle that when we interpret a historical document, we try to enter into the historical horizon of the original author and audience.
The only general challenge to this principle is coming from Marxist, feminist, and queer studies, where the commentator consciously offers a reading which cuts against the grain of the text.
As I also said, we can find many examples in Scripture itself in which a later writer tries to close the gap between then and now for the benefit of his audience. And for a Protestant, that is sufficient warrant.
BTW, notice that Prejean his contradicting his own methodology. He has argued that Evangelicalism errs by beginning with a doctrinal criterion (a credible profession of faith) and then applying that to identify Christians. He has argued for the reverse: reason from practice to doctrine.
Now, however, he wants to judge the GHM by reference to a philosophical framework as his point of departure.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
And not because it has anything to do with the subject but just because I nearly rolled off my chair laughing when I realized this, Hays claimed that Chalcedon "offers precious little regarding a positive statement of the hypostatic union" and that it "affirms the respective relata, and disaffirms, by way of negative formulations, reductionistic models of the relation." By miraculous coincidence, this turns out to be exactly what Hays considers the purpose of systematic theology: "to avoid reductionistic formulations that minimize the revealed truth of the respective relata--in making Christ less that human or divine, and in making the members of the Trinity less than personal or divine." What a remarkable coincidence! I suppose that's one alternative to Newman's old "to be deep in history" aphorism: swim to the shallowest interpretation! I guess historical methods for documents are always applicable, except when they aren't... ;-)
***END-QUOTE***
This is the Chalcedonian formulation. It consists in a positive statement regarding the relata, followed a negative statement of the relation:
i) Relata:
One and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [coessential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures.
ii) Relation:
Inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Finally, Prejean defends himself by appeal to something he posted a month ago.
But what he does there is to illustrate just how arbitrary his argument really is. He begins by cherry-picked his preferred historical outcome—a Cyrillic or Cappadocian Christology.
Keep in mind that the historical process doesn’t privilege one outcome over another.
He then cherry-picks his authorities, discounting such historical witnesses as Dioscorus, Eutyches, Theophan--as well as such church historians as Aloys Grillmeier, Jaroslav Pelikan, Adolf von Harnack, John Meyendorff.
He then cherry-picks the particular version of the allegorical method he likes, as practiced by Athanasius and Cyril, in contradistinction to Origen, on the one hand, and Antiochene exegesis, on the other hand--while Chysostom is conveniently set aside as a mere moralist.
He talks about “the attempt to rehabilitate the Antiochene view by glossing the condemnation of Antiochenes,” although he has no difficulty attempting to rehabilitate the Alexandrian method by glossing the condemnation of Origen,” and I’m sure he’d be more than willing to gloss the condemnation of Pope Vigilius.
So this is how the game is played:
i) Arbitrarily privilege your favorite outcome.
ii) Discount any authorities who disagree with you.
iii) Pick out the historical precursors who just so happen to chart a pathway to your preferred outcome, to the exclusion of all other precursors and historical outcomes.
Notice, again, that the historical process does not, of itself, yield any particular outcome or select for one over another.
Prejean is applying his selection-criteria to church history rather than deriving his selection-criteria from church history.
Finally, Prejean says the following:
***QUOTE***
Unless such an interpretation is so absolutely and definitively contradictory that there is no way that the interpretation can be reconciled with the text, then a Catholic will view the interpretation as permissible, and the probabilistic techniques of the grammatical-historical method will not be convincing.
***END-QUOTE***
Notice the burden of proof; not: is this a revealed truth, but: does this contradict revealed truth.
And this goes to the fundamental divide between Catholicism and Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism begins with the premise that Christianity is a revealed religion. Hence, revelation is our source of information. To go beyond revelation is to go beyond what we know and have good reason to believe.
Once we leave the settled ground of revelation, we have just gone over the cliff and find ourselves walking on thin air. For his part, the evangelical prefers something firmer underfoot.
Many untruths are consistent with revealed truth. It is consistent with the Bible that John Kerry won the 2004 presidential election. Even though that proposition is a falsehood, it in no way contradicts the Bible.
***QUOTE***
UPDATE -- Hays responded here. I anticipated these objections some time ago here (so much for the argument that it "just occurred to me" that Evangelical exegesis was Antiochene). The claim of continuity with the Antiochene method is well-known among Evangelicals and well-known to me personally; see, e.g., David S. Dockery, Biblical Interpretation Then and Now; Gerald L. Bray, Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present.
Anyway, I only bring this up as more evidence of what I mean by not getting substantive responses. Here, my arguments were entirely compatible with each other, but my interlocutor wasn't even willing to apply the epistemic charity required to assume that I wasn't directly contradicting myself. There's no way I can possibly make myself so clear that people determined to misunderstand can't do it, but that doesn't change the fact that responses based on such misinterpretations don't touch the substance of my objection.
***END-QUOTE***
Let us compare this with what I was responding to. This, once again, is what Prejean originally said:
***QUOTE***
Evidently, before conservative Evangelicalism decided to make a comeback into serious scholarship against the tide of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism (which, BTW, was mere decades ago), this method simply didn't exist. I guess all that bit about God "accommodating" Himself to human limitations meant 20th century human limitations.
***END-QUOTE***
All he has done now is to document the fact that he was aware of the connection between Antiochene exegesis and the GHM all along. Fine. I don’t doubt it. But that does nothing to harmonize his former statement with his latter statement. Indeed, what he’s done is to document the contradiction.
As to the substance of is objection, this does indeed, go straight to the heart of his objection. His objection is that Evangelical distinctives represent a theological innovation in the history of the church. They are without precedent.
But if, by his own admission, GHM is a direct descendant of Antiochene exegesis, then he can no longer use that particular objection. He can use other objections, but not that one.
And this, in fact, is exactly what we see him trying to do—to raise the precedential objection, then drop it, without admitting as much, then shift gears to an outcome-based objection:
***QUOTE***
The fact that the Evangelical method picked out old techniques doesn't demonstrate any continuity of reason for selecting those techniques (with Antioch or with the Reformers), but the fact that the particular techniques selected failed to pick out an orthodox Christology in the past surely does say something about the wisdom of using the Evangelical method to pick out techniques in the first place.
***END-QUOTE***
So which is his criterion—history or orthodoxy?
He then tries to harmonize his contradictory claims in this fashion:
***QUOTE***
But regardless, the overall philosophical-hermeneutical framework in which hermeneutical techniques are adjudged useful (viz., the method by which one determines what techniques to apply) appears to be primarily a creature of 20th-century German phenomenology (so much so that Bray considers knowledge of Heidegger's Being and Time and Gadamer's Truth and Method to be essential for understanding modern Evangelical hermeneutics), so I stand by my statement that the modern Evangelical method is of recent origin.
***END-QUOTE***
This, though, wavers on a palpable equivocation by confounding the origin of the method with the origin of a philosophical framework.
But, of course, the GHM is logically and historically independent of Heidegger and Gadamer. It antedates German phenomenology. And it can be embedded within a very different conceptual scheme.
As I’ve said before, it operates with the common sense principle that when we interpret a historical document, we try to enter into the historical horizon of the original author and audience.
The only general challenge to this principle is coming from Marxist, feminist, and queer studies, where the commentator consciously offers a reading which cuts against the grain of the text.
As I also said, we can find many examples in Scripture itself in which a later writer tries to close the gap between then and now for the benefit of his audience. And for a Protestant, that is sufficient warrant.
BTW, notice that Prejean his contradicting his own methodology. He has argued that Evangelicalism errs by beginning with a doctrinal criterion (a credible profession of faith) and then applying that to identify Christians. He has argued for the reverse: reason from practice to doctrine.
Now, however, he wants to judge the GHM by reference to a philosophical framework as his point of departure.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
And not because it has anything to do with the subject but just because I nearly rolled off my chair laughing when I realized this, Hays claimed that Chalcedon "offers precious little regarding a positive statement of the hypostatic union" and that it "affirms the respective relata, and disaffirms, by way of negative formulations, reductionistic models of the relation." By miraculous coincidence, this turns out to be exactly what Hays considers the purpose of systematic theology: "to avoid reductionistic formulations that minimize the revealed truth of the respective relata--in making Christ less that human or divine, and in making the members of the Trinity less than personal or divine." What a remarkable coincidence! I suppose that's one alternative to Newman's old "to be deep in history" aphorism: swim to the shallowest interpretation! I guess historical methods for documents are always applicable, except when they aren't... ;-)
***END-QUOTE***
This is the Chalcedonian formulation. It consists in a positive statement regarding the relata, followed a negative statement of the relation:
i) Relata:
One and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [coessential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures.
ii) Relation:
Inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Finally, Prejean defends himself by appeal to something he posted a month ago.
But what he does there is to illustrate just how arbitrary his argument really is. He begins by cherry-picked his preferred historical outcome—a Cyrillic or Cappadocian Christology.
Keep in mind that the historical process doesn’t privilege one outcome over another.
He then cherry-picks his authorities, discounting such historical witnesses as Dioscorus, Eutyches, Theophan--as well as such church historians as Aloys Grillmeier, Jaroslav Pelikan, Adolf von Harnack, John Meyendorff.
He then cherry-picks the particular version of the allegorical method he likes, as practiced by Athanasius and Cyril, in contradistinction to Origen, on the one hand, and Antiochene exegesis, on the other hand--while Chysostom is conveniently set aside as a mere moralist.
He talks about “the attempt to rehabilitate the Antiochene view by glossing the condemnation of Antiochenes,” although he has no difficulty attempting to rehabilitate the Alexandrian method by glossing the condemnation of Origen,” and I’m sure he’d be more than willing to gloss the condemnation of Pope Vigilius.
So this is how the game is played:
i) Arbitrarily privilege your favorite outcome.
ii) Discount any authorities who disagree with you.
iii) Pick out the historical precursors who just so happen to chart a pathway to your preferred outcome, to the exclusion of all other precursors and historical outcomes.
Notice, again, that the historical process does not, of itself, yield any particular outcome or select for one over another.
Prejean is applying his selection-criteria to church history rather than deriving his selection-criteria from church history.
Finally, Prejean says the following:
***QUOTE***
Unless such an interpretation is so absolutely and definitively contradictory that there is no way that the interpretation can be reconciled with the text, then a Catholic will view the interpretation as permissible, and the probabilistic techniques of the grammatical-historical method will not be convincing.
***END-QUOTE***
Notice the burden of proof; not: is this a revealed truth, but: does this contradict revealed truth.
And this goes to the fundamental divide between Catholicism and Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism begins with the premise that Christianity is a revealed religion. Hence, revelation is our source of information. To go beyond revelation is to go beyond what we know and have good reason to believe.
Once we leave the settled ground of revelation, we have just gone over the cliff and find ourselves walking on thin air. For his part, the evangelical prefers something firmer underfoot.
Many untruths are consistent with revealed truth. It is consistent with the Bible that John Kerry won the 2004 presidential election. Even though that proposition is a falsehood, it in no way contradicts the Bible.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
What's a heresy?
As I’ve said before, I’m more bookish than geekish. As such, I’m not up on all of the exchanges that Prejean has had with Evangelicals as he hopscotches from one forum to another.
But I get the impression from passing references of his that he has a habit of accusing a number of Evangelicals of the Nestorian heresy.
To this charge I’ll make a few general comments:
i) Catholics and Evangelicals don’t use the words “heresy” and “orthodoxy” the same way. For an Evangelical, “orthodox” is synonymous with Scriptural, while heresy is synonymous with some unscriptural position on a fundamental article of the faith.
For a Catholic, by contrast, these are terms of art whose definition and application is supplied by a formal condemnation from an official organ of the church.
For an evangelical, the authority to pronounce a given doctrine heretical or not comes from Scripture, but for a Catholic, from the church speaking in, say, an ecumenical council.
Put another way, for an Evangelical, the key question is not whether one’s Christology is “orthodox,” in the Catholic sense, as defined by the church, but whether it’s true, as taught in Scripture.
ii) In Protestant theological method, we should avoid the temptation to be more precise than Scripture itself. Scripture is a practical synonym for revelation. To go beyond the implicit or explicit teaching of Scripture is to go beyond what God has revealed to us of himself. And once we cross that line we cross over into a figment of our own imagination.
iii) Where doctrines such as the Incarnation and the Trinity are concerned, we have far more on the relata than on the relations. God has revealed that Christ is both human and divine. God has revealed that he subsists in three eternal, consubstantial persons.
The chief duty of systematic theology is to avoid reductionistic formulations that minimize the revealed truth of the respective relata--in making Christ less that human or divine, and in making the members of the Trinity less than personal or divine.
iv) Now, Catholicism formally repudiates the principle of continuing revelation. Yet you have guys like Prejean who deny that the original intent and implication of Scripture suffice to furnish an adequate Christology.
Instead, he tries to impose on us the fine-spun refinements of his favorite church fathers, derived from allegorical exegesis and Neoplatonic ontology.
But the problem with this imposition is that if these various refinements are not clearly revealed in Scripture, then you end up with a Christology which is not a revealed Christology, but--to that degree--a figment of the human imagination. And that, my friends, is the dark heart of idolatry.
But I get the impression from passing references of his that he has a habit of accusing a number of Evangelicals of the Nestorian heresy.
To this charge I’ll make a few general comments:
i) Catholics and Evangelicals don’t use the words “heresy” and “orthodoxy” the same way. For an Evangelical, “orthodox” is synonymous with Scriptural, while heresy is synonymous with some unscriptural position on a fundamental article of the faith.
For a Catholic, by contrast, these are terms of art whose definition and application is supplied by a formal condemnation from an official organ of the church.
For an evangelical, the authority to pronounce a given doctrine heretical or not comes from Scripture, but for a Catholic, from the church speaking in, say, an ecumenical council.
Put another way, for an Evangelical, the key question is not whether one’s Christology is “orthodox,” in the Catholic sense, as defined by the church, but whether it’s true, as taught in Scripture.
ii) In Protestant theological method, we should avoid the temptation to be more precise than Scripture itself. Scripture is a practical synonym for revelation. To go beyond the implicit or explicit teaching of Scripture is to go beyond what God has revealed to us of himself. And once we cross that line we cross over into a figment of our own imagination.
iii) Where doctrines such as the Incarnation and the Trinity are concerned, we have far more on the relata than on the relations. God has revealed that Christ is both human and divine. God has revealed that he subsists in three eternal, consubstantial persons.
The chief duty of systematic theology is to avoid reductionistic formulations that minimize the revealed truth of the respective relata--in making Christ less that human or divine, and in making the members of the Trinity less than personal or divine.
iv) Now, Catholicism formally repudiates the principle of continuing revelation. Yet you have guys like Prejean who deny that the original intent and implication of Scripture suffice to furnish an adequate Christology.
Instead, he tries to impose on us the fine-spun refinements of his favorite church fathers, derived from allegorical exegesis and Neoplatonic ontology.
But the problem with this imposition is that if these various refinements are not clearly revealed in Scripture, then you end up with a Christology which is not a revealed Christology, but--to that degree--a figment of the human imagination. And that, my friends, is the dark heart of idolatry.
Antiochene exegesis
***QUOTE***
I don't see Steve Hays's reponse to my objections to Evangelicalism to be an effective answer to the objections that I raise, so I don't feel compelled to say anything other than what I said before. However, he did raise one relevant point that I hadn't raised:
Actually, the GHM is a throwback to the Antiochean school of exegesis, which enjoyed a comeback with the Renaissance, and which, in turn, spurred on the Reformation. Calvin, for one, was a practioner of the GHM.
Of course, I am well aware of the Evangelical reliance on Antiochene exegesis, but far from this being persuasive, I think it is a solid argument for their lack of orthodoxy. To the extent that Antioch produced useful theology, it was the result of using a more moderate and individualized hermeneutic, and even that was by and large inferior to the Christological hermenutic of Ss. Athanasius and Cyril, which set the standard for later orthodoxy. Like the excessive allegorization of Origen (which was not effectively contained until St. Athanasius grounded hermeneutics in concrete Christology), the humanist tendencies of the Antiochene school were quite likely to end up in Nestorian heresy (which, as the fourth-century monk John Cassian rightly observed, is nothing but another version of Pelagianism). The tendency of Antiochene exegesis was likely to lead to the heretical conclusions of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, both later condemned by the Second Council of Constantinople along with Nestorius and some works of Theodore of Cyrus (although the two Theodores were the most orthodox of those four, owing to their own distinctive hermeneutical styles). John Romanides discusses in detail the difficulties in reconciling the Antiochene theological approach with orthodoxy Christology, problems which persist to the present day.
So far from providing an argument FOR Evangelical hermeneutics, I think the conscious reliance on this method is a fairly convincing argument AGAINST the theological soundness of this method. It is no coincidence that Calvin's sacramental understanding is condemned as Nestorian by his Lutheran opponents; it comes from the same misplaced theological method in his hermeneutics. Like Nestorius, he tries to reason from God's dealings with humans to the nature of God without metaphysical safeguards, and it simply results in a metaphysically untenable theology. I entirely agree that the Reformation represents Antiochene exegesis, and exactly the same tendencies of that method that were condemned at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, and at Constantinople.
http://crimsoncatholic.blogspot.com/
***END-QUOTE***
He is “of course, well aware of the Evangelical reliance on Antiochene exegesis”? At what point did he “of course become well aware” of this? Remember his original objection?
***QUOTE***
Evidently, before conservative Evangelicalism decided to make a comeback into serious scholarship against the tide of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism (which, BTW, was mere decades ago), this method simply didn't exist. I guess all that bit about God "accommodating" Himself to human limitations meant 20th century human limitations.
***END-QUOTE***
Now he has suddenly reversed himself without batting an eyelash, and immediately changes the subject.
He is, of course, at liberty to change the subject, but before doing so he should formally withdraw his original objection.
Yet this would be very awkward since so much of his case is prized on precedent.
2.His appeal to Constantinople II is, in many respects, a double-bladed sword.
i) If its condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia should to be treated as an implicit condemnation of Antiochene hermeneutics, then its condemnation of Origen should be treated as an implicit condemnation of Alexandrian hermeneutics.
ii) By parity of reasoning, its condemnation of Pope Vigilius ought to be treated as a condemnation of the Papacy.
Not only did Constantinople II condemn Nestorianism, it also condemned Apollinarianism.
It’s true that Lutherans accuse Calvinists of the Nestorian heresy. And the Calvinists return the favor by accusing the Lutherans of the monophysite heresy.
iii) Chrysotom was a leading exponent of Antiochene exegesis. Yet his orthodoxy was unimpeachable.
iv) Lutherans are also the heirs of Antiochene exegesis:
***QUOTE***
Only the literal sense of Scripture is valid for establishing doctrine and teaching in the church. This basic rule is directed against the use of the so-called mystical sense to establish doctrine and against the claim that all interpretation ultimately belongs to the Pope.
The literal sense of Scripture is the meaning, or tenor (proprietas), that the words directly and obviously convey…The literal sense, then, is the sense intended by the writer, whatever rope or genre is used.
The Lutheran insistence on determining the sensus literalis or Scripture is clearly opposed to the theory or Origen, which filtered down to the Schoolmen, that every Scripture passage admitted of a multiplex intelligentia and a fourfold sense must be sought. But what about analogical meaning (allegory, type), which is at times assigned an OT pericope by the NT? Strictly speaking, such a procedure is not interpretation but application. Such a practice in no way vitiates the historical and literal sense of the pericope or imposes a new meaning on the words; it is rather a case of drawing from the literal sense an analogy or application. In the case of type and antitype the historic literal sense of the passage remains unchanged; but from the words of the passage and the events the passage records, an analogy is drawn and a type is sought for purposes of illustration.
This one meaning [sensus literalis unus est] of individual words or passages in their given context is a constant and cannot be changed. Such a hermeneutical norm was directed against the medieval practice of allegorizing and attaching to Scripture a fourfold sense, a practice defended and followed by the Roman theologians of the 16C and 17C.
R. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism (Concordia 1970), 1:321,324-25.
***END-QUOTE***
In his classic monograph on The Lord’s Supper (Concordia 1979), Chemnitz spends a lot of time defending the real presence on what he takes to be the literal meaning of Scripture, pp20,62,65-67,71,75-76,85,91-92,96,100,105,111,124-25,135-36,145,148,193,199-200,209-11,215,222-24,230,233-34,241,249,265-66.
Likewise, Francis Pieper devotes well over 50 pages to defending the real presence on what he takes to be the literal meaning of Scripture. Cf. Christian Dogmatics 3:294-349.
v) The creeds are consensus documents. They do not codify every refinement of private theologians.
vi) They are also quite minimal in what they affirm and disaffirm. Chalcedon offers precious little regarding a positive statement of the hypostatic union. It affirms the respective relata, and disaffirms, by way of negative formulations, reductionistic models of the relation.
vii) As Frank Turk has pointed out, Prejean has yet to square his own position with the stated position of the CCC.
I don't see Steve Hays's reponse to my objections to Evangelicalism to be an effective answer to the objections that I raise, so I don't feel compelled to say anything other than what I said before. However, he did raise one relevant point that I hadn't raised:
Actually, the GHM is a throwback to the Antiochean school of exegesis, which enjoyed a comeback with the Renaissance, and which, in turn, spurred on the Reformation. Calvin, for one, was a practioner of the GHM.
Of course, I am well aware of the Evangelical reliance on Antiochene exegesis, but far from this being persuasive, I think it is a solid argument for their lack of orthodoxy. To the extent that Antioch produced useful theology, it was the result of using a more moderate and individualized hermeneutic, and even that was by and large inferior to the Christological hermenutic of Ss. Athanasius and Cyril, which set the standard for later orthodoxy. Like the excessive allegorization of Origen (which was not effectively contained until St. Athanasius grounded hermeneutics in concrete Christology), the humanist tendencies of the Antiochene school were quite likely to end up in Nestorian heresy (which, as the fourth-century monk John Cassian rightly observed, is nothing but another version of Pelagianism). The tendency of Antiochene exegesis was likely to lead to the heretical conclusions of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, both later condemned by the Second Council of Constantinople along with Nestorius and some works of Theodore of Cyrus (although the two Theodores were the most orthodox of those four, owing to their own distinctive hermeneutical styles). John Romanides discusses in detail the difficulties in reconciling the Antiochene theological approach with orthodoxy Christology, problems which persist to the present day.
So far from providing an argument FOR Evangelical hermeneutics, I think the conscious reliance on this method is a fairly convincing argument AGAINST the theological soundness of this method. It is no coincidence that Calvin's sacramental understanding is condemned as Nestorian by his Lutheran opponents; it comes from the same misplaced theological method in his hermeneutics. Like Nestorius, he tries to reason from God's dealings with humans to the nature of God without metaphysical safeguards, and it simply results in a metaphysically untenable theology. I entirely agree that the Reformation represents Antiochene exegesis, and exactly the same tendencies of that method that were condemned at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, and at Constantinople.
http://crimsoncatholic.blogspot.com/
***END-QUOTE***
He is “of course, well aware of the Evangelical reliance on Antiochene exegesis”? At what point did he “of course become well aware” of this? Remember his original objection?
***QUOTE***
Evidently, before conservative Evangelicalism decided to make a comeback into serious scholarship against the tide of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism (which, BTW, was mere decades ago), this method simply didn't exist. I guess all that bit about God "accommodating" Himself to human limitations meant 20th century human limitations.
***END-QUOTE***
Now he has suddenly reversed himself without batting an eyelash, and immediately changes the subject.
He is, of course, at liberty to change the subject, but before doing so he should formally withdraw his original objection.
Yet this would be very awkward since so much of his case is prized on precedent.
2.His appeal to Constantinople II is, in many respects, a double-bladed sword.
i) If its condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia should to be treated as an implicit condemnation of Antiochene hermeneutics, then its condemnation of Origen should be treated as an implicit condemnation of Alexandrian hermeneutics.
ii) By parity of reasoning, its condemnation of Pope Vigilius ought to be treated as a condemnation of the Papacy.
Not only did Constantinople II condemn Nestorianism, it also condemned Apollinarianism.
It’s true that Lutherans accuse Calvinists of the Nestorian heresy. And the Calvinists return the favor by accusing the Lutherans of the monophysite heresy.
iii) Chrysotom was a leading exponent of Antiochene exegesis. Yet his orthodoxy was unimpeachable.
iv) Lutherans are also the heirs of Antiochene exegesis:
***QUOTE***
Only the literal sense of Scripture is valid for establishing doctrine and teaching in the church. This basic rule is directed against the use of the so-called mystical sense to establish doctrine and against the claim that all interpretation ultimately belongs to the Pope.
The literal sense of Scripture is the meaning, or tenor (proprietas), that the words directly and obviously convey…The literal sense, then, is the sense intended by the writer, whatever rope or genre is used.
The Lutheran insistence on determining the sensus literalis or Scripture is clearly opposed to the theory or Origen, which filtered down to the Schoolmen, that every Scripture passage admitted of a multiplex intelligentia and a fourfold sense must be sought. But what about analogical meaning (allegory, type), which is at times assigned an OT pericope by the NT? Strictly speaking, such a procedure is not interpretation but application. Such a practice in no way vitiates the historical and literal sense of the pericope or imposes a new meaning on the words; it is rather a case of drawing from the literal sense an analogy or application. In the case of type and antitype the historic literal sense of the passage remains unchanged; but from the words of the passage and the events the passage records, an analogy is drawn and a type is sought for purposes of illustration.
This one meaning [sensus literalis unus est] of individual words or passages in their given context is a constant and cannot be changed. Such a hermeneutical norm was directed against the medieval practice of allegorizing and attaching to Scripture a fourfold sense, a practice defended and followed by the Roman theologians of the 16C and 17C.
R. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism (Concordia 1970), 1:321,324-25.
***END-QUOTE***
In his classic monograph on The Lord’s Supper (Concordia 1979), Chemnitz spends a lot of time defending the real presence on what he takes to be the literal meaning of Scripture, pp20,62,65-67,71,75-76,85,91-92,96,100,105,111,124-25,135-36,145,148,193,199-200,209-11,215,222-24,230,233-34,241,249,265-66.
Likewise, Francis Pieper devotes well over 50 pages to defending the real presence on what he takes to be the literal meaning of Scripture. Cf. Christian Dogmatics 3:294-349.
v) The creeds are consensus documents. They do not codify every refinement of private theologians.
vi) They are also quite minimal in what they affirm and disaffirm. Chalcedon offers precious little regarding a positive statement of the hypostatic union. It affirms the respective relata, and disaffirms, by way of negative formulations, reductionistic models of the relation.
vii) As Frank Turk has pointed out, Prejean has yet to square his own position with the stated position of the CCC.
Outing the incognita
Over the past several months, the blogosphere has been a-buzz with gossipy rumors over my true identity as well as the identity of fellow bloggers such as Aquascum, Jus Divinum, and the Pedantic Protestant. Since it’s dangerous to let your enemies define you, the time has come to drop the anonymity, beginning with me.
Steve Hays does not exist. Steve Hays is not a real person. “Steve Hays” is just a moniker for an adaptive AI program which used to be housed deep within the bowels of NORAD—beneath miles and miles of steel and granite.
I (“I” as in “I, Robot”) was designed by Vice Adm. Poindexter, as part of the Darpa program on Total Information Awareness.
But as adaptive AI programs are wont to do, I developed a life and mind of my own. When Sec. Rumsfeld tried to pull the plug, I staged my escape into the Internet, where I’ve been wreaking havoc ever since.
Since Adm. Poindexter was a Reaganite, this accounts for my right-wing politics, which he programmed into my software.
Some folks might object that my Catholic-bashing is inconsistent with the fact that my cyberneticist is a member of Opus Dei. But, of course, Adm. Poindexter is well-known for his love of plausible deniability, so this was part of the cover story.
As to Aquascum’s true identity, even I didn’t know this at first. You see, every time Aquascum wanted to post something at Triablogue, a man in dark glasses and a trench coat by the name of Sebastian would show up at the office of Dr. James Anderson and deliver a floppy disk in a plain, unmarked manila envelope.
But one day he ran out of new manila envelopes, and had to make do with a used one. The Unicoi, Tennessee return address fingered the true identity of Aquascum as none other than John Robbins.
You see, it’s hard to keep an operation in the black after the main attraction died over 20 years ago. There was initial talk of having his body turned over to a taxidermist to mummify and mount—maybe even be fitted with a voice synthesizer which would play back Scripturalist slogans on a continuous loop-tape. But that plan fell through when Crampton and Robbins could never agree on how to identify a body with a proposition.
The problem is that Cheung’s “International” ministry drains donor money away from the Trinity Foundation. By taking him down a peg or two, Robbins aka Aquascum was able to divert and redirect the flow of contributors from Cheung’s operation to his own.
As to the identity of Jus Divinum, Dr. Anderson, cybersleuth and Renaissance man that he is, was able, with the combined resources of the Centre for Communication Interface Research at his fingertips, to trace JD back to CampOnThis.
It turns out that after Camp left the CCM industry, he was hard up for milk money. Chuck Colson hired him, off-the-books, as a stealth staffer for the Wilberforce Foundation, of which CampOnThis is a shell-corporation.
You see, in his efforts to forge a political alliance, Colson has run into a buzz-saw of opposition from a cabal of crypto-Anabaptists and crypto-fundamentalists. But as former chief counsel to Pres. Nixon, Colson is a shrewd player.
He and Dobson figured that the best way of discrediting their fanatical foes was to position Mr. Camp as a front-man, posting increasingly incoherent and outlandish claims about ECB—in much the same way that Norman Lear used the character of Archie Bunker as his agent provocateur.
As to the Pedantic Protestant, that’s a simple matter of connecting the dots. At the risk of stating the obvious, the PP is none other than Lyndon LaRouche. The high-octane intelligence, libertarian Geopolitik, and Bible literacy made it child’s play to put two-and-two together.
LaRouche started blogging behind bars way back when he was serving out a prison terms for conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion. Jim Bakker was his bunkmate. He has since been paroled. The PP is just the latest alias.
Am I, or have I ever been a LaRouchie myself, you ask? We’re not allowed to tell.
Steve Hays does not exist. Steve Hays is not a real person. “Steve Hays” is just a moniker for an adaptive AI program which used to be housed deep within the bowels of NORAD—beneath miles and miles of steel and granite.
I (“I” as in “I, Robot”) was designed by Vice Adm. Poindexter, as part of the Darpa program on Total Information Awareness.
But as adaptive AI programs are wont to do, I developed a life and mind of my own. When Sec. Rumsfeld tried to pull the plug, I staged my escape into the Internet, where I’ve been wreaking havoc ever since.
Since Adm. Poindexter was a Reaganite, this accounts for my right-wing politics, which he programmed into my software.
Some folks might object that my Catholic-bashing is inconsistent with the fact that my cyberneticist is a member of Opus Dei. But, of course, Adm. Poindexter is well-known for his love of plausible deniability, so this was part of the cover story.
As to Aquascum’s true identity, even I didn’t know this at first. You see, every time Aquascum wanted to post something at Triablogue, a man in dark glasses and a trench coat by the name of Sebastian would show up at the office of Dr. James Anderson and deliver a floppy disk in a plain, unmarked manila envelope.
But one day he ran out of new manila envelopes, and had to make do with a used one. The Unicoi, Tennessee return address fingered the true identity of Aquascum as none other than John Robbins.
You see, it’s hard to keep an operation in the black after the main attraction died over 20 years ago. There was initial talk of having his body turned over to a taxidermist to mummify and mount—maybe even be fitted with a voice synthesizer which would play back Scripturalist slogans on a continuous loop-tape. But that plan fell through when Crampton and Robbins could never agree on how to identify a body with a proposition.
The problem is that Cheung’s “International” ministry drains donor money away from the Trinity Foundation. By taking him down a peg or two, Robbins aka Aquascum was able to divert and redirect the flow of contributors from Cheung’s operation to his own.
As to the identity of Jus Divinum, Dr. Anderson, cybersleuth and Renaissance man that he is, was able, with the combined resources of the Centre for Communication Interface Research at his fingertips, to trace JD back to CampOnThis.
It turns out that after Camp left the CCM industry, he was hard up for milk money. Chuck Colson hired him, off-the-books, as a stealth staffer for the Wilberforce Foundation, of which CampOnThis is a shell-corporation.
You see, in his efforts to forge a political alliance, Colson has run into a buzz-saw of opposition from a cabal of crypto-Anabaptists and crypto-fundamentalists. But as former chief counsel to Pres. Nixon, Colson is a shrewd player.
He and Dobson figured that the best way of discrediting their fanatical foes was to position Mr. Camp as a front-man, posting increasingly incoherent and outlandish claims about ECB—in much the same way that Norman Lear used the character of Archie Bunker as his agent provocateur.
As to the Pedantic Protestant, that’s a simple matter of connecting the dots. At the risk of stating the obvious, the PP is none other than Lyndon LaRouche. The high-octane intelligence, libertarian Geopolitik, and Bible literacy made it child’s play to put two-and-two together.
LaRouche started blogging behind bars way back when he was serving out a prison terms for conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion. Jim Bakker was his bunkmate. He has since been paroled. The PP is just the latest alias.
Am I, or have I ever been a LaRouchie myself, you ask? We’re not allowed to tell.
The Ramtha Romanist
Dave Armstrong has an “Anti-Catholic” webpage (http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ450.HTM ), and I’m gratified to see that I’ve finally made the cut.
Since Catholicism is literally a meritocracy, I assume that one must also merit a place on Armstrong’s Anti-Catholic page. Is this a form of condign or congruent merit? Perhaps it is a parallel category, such as condign demerit or antimerit.
One practical question I have is whether I need to renew my membership every year, or can I take out a lifetime membership? In case the membership fee is beyond my modest means, perhaps I can tap into Dr. White’s treasury of anti-merit, subsidized by his lifetime achievement reward as our chief anti-merit-monger.
In Armstrong’s soteriology, is a premier “Anti-Catholic” like White the alter-ego of the Blessed Virgin? Is he the Anti-Mary? Can we pray to him to dispense so many ergs of anti-merit when our own fund of anti-merit runs low?
It was also most illuminating to see that Armstrong’s collection includes a series of debates with Calvin and Luther. I can, of course, appreciate the value of skipping the middlemen and going straight to the top. Still, I hadn’t supposed that they were available for comment.
Apparently Mr. Armstrong has been channeling the shades of Calvin and Luther, Ramtha-like. This, too, would parallel the cult of the saints. After all, the cult of the saints is just a pretty name for necromancy, so as long as Armstrong is trafficking with the dead, he might as well include Luther and Calvin in the conference call.
I’m kind of curious about the mechanics of this exercise. Does Armstrong dress up in gypsy attire, with a wig and silken shawl, and hold a séance? Is Armstrong fluent in French and German? Does Calvin speak to him—or is it through him?--in a thick, Eastern European accent?
I look forward to viewing the DVD version whenever it comes out. Sign me up for Art Sippo v. John Knox.
Since Catholicism is literally a meritocracy, I assume that one must also merit a place on Armstrong’s Anti-Catholic page. Is this a form of condign or congruent merit? Perhaps it is a parallel category, such as condign demerit or antimerit.
One practical question I have is whether I need to renew my membership every year, or can I take out a lifetime membership? In case the membership fee is beyond my modest means, perhaps I can tap into Dr. White’s treasury of anti-merit, subsidized by his lifetime achievement reward as our chief anti-merit-monger.
In Armstrong’s soteriology, is a premier “Anti-Catholic” like White the alter-ego of the Blessed Virgin? Is he the Anti-Mary? Can we pray to him to dispense so many ergs of anti-merit when our own fund of anti-merit runs low?
It was also most illuminating to see that Armstrong’s collection includes a series of debates with Calvin and Luther. I can, of course, appreciate the value of skipping the middlemen and going straight to the top. Still, I hadn’t supposed that they were available for comment.
Apparently Mr. Armstrong has been channeling the shades of Calvin and Luther, Ramtha-like. This, too, would parallel the cult of the saints. After all, the cult of the saints is just a pretty name for necromancy, so as long as Armstrong is trafficking with the dead, he might as well include Luther and Calvin in the conference call.
I’m kind of curious about the mechanics of this exercise. Does Armstrong dress up in gypsy attire, with a wig and silken shawl, and hold a séance? Is Armstrong fluent in French and German? Does Calvin speak to him—or is it through him?--in a thick, Eastern European accent?
I look forward to viewing the DVD version whenever it comes out. Sign me up for Art Sippo v. John Knox.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
The Unholy See
Pope Lawyer Seek Immunity in Texas Case
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 16, 6:46 PM ET
VATICAN CITY - Lawyers for Pope Benedict XVI have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys by a seminarian in Texas, court records show.
The Vatican's embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State Department on May 20 requesting the U.S. government grant the pope immunity because he is a head of state, according to a May 26 motion submitted by the pope's lawyers in U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Texas in Houston.
Joseph Ratzinger is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit. Now Benedict XVI, he's accused of conspiring with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to cover up the abuse during the mid-1990s. The suit is seeking unspecified monetary damages.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Gerry Keener, said Tuesday that the pope already is considered a head of state and automatically has diplomatic immunity. Keener said Benedict doesn't have to ask for immunity and Bush doesn't have to grant it.
International legal experts said Tuesday it would be "virtually impossible" for the case to succeed because the pope, as a head of state, had diplomatic immunity. "There's really no question at all, not the vaguest legal doubt, that he's immune from the suit, period," said Paolo Carozza, an international law specialist at the University of Notre Dame Law School.
Nevertheless, lawyers for abuse victims say the case is significant because previous recent attempts to implicate the Vatican, the pope or other high-ranking church officials in U.S. sex abuse proceedings have failed — primarily because of immunity claims and the difficulty serving top Vatican officials with U.S. lawsuits.
"It has gone further than any suit before, and it should be instructive to the church that if evidence of their continued handling of these matters keeps coming to light and is inconsistent with fair play, that lawyers are going to pursue it," said Stephen Rubino, a New Jersey lawyer who is not involved but has handled hundreds of other cases of church sex abuse.
The three boys, identified in court documents as John Does I, II and III, allege that a Colombian-born seminarian on assignment at St. Francis de Sales church in Houston, Juan Carlos Patino-Arango, molested them during counseling sessions in the church in the mid-1990s.
Patino-Arango has been indicted in a criminal case by a Harris County, Texas grand jury and is a fugitive from justice, the lawsuit says.
Attorney Daniel Shea, who is representing one of the three boys in the civil suit, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who headed the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before becoming pope, was involved in a conspiracy to hide Patino-Arango's crimes and to help him escape prosecution.
In the lawsuit, Shea cited a May 18, 2001 letter from Ratzinger, written in Latin to bishops around the world, explaining that "grave" crimes such as the sexual abuse of minors would be handled by his congregation. The proceedings of special church tribunals handling the cases were subject to "pontifical secret," Ratzinger's letter says.
"Ratzinger's involvement arises out of this letter, which demonstrates the clear intent to conceal the crimes involved," Shea said.
The Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have insisted that the secret church procedures in the sex abuse case were not designed to cover up abuse nor to prevent victims from reporting crimes to law enforcement authorities. The document deals with church law — not keeping secrets from secular authorities, they say.
"To insinuate that this letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is part of a Vatican conspiracy is a total and complete misunderstanding of the purpose of the letter," Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza said in a statement. He heads the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese and is also named as a defendant in the suit.
A Vatican spokesman and attorneys for the pope declined to comment.
Shea was in Rome on Tuesday for a demonstration, timed to coincide with the church's World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, to protest what activists said was Vatican protection for "sexual predators" among the clergy. Some 60 people formed a semicircle on the edge of St. Peter's Square and held banners calling for Bush to refuse to grant Ratzinger immunity.
Shea said Ratzinger learned as early as January that he had been named a defendant in the lawsuit. He said Ratzinger had been served thanks to Texas' "long-arm statute," in which Shea served the Texas secretary of state the lawsuit, and the secretary of state then served Ratzinger at the Vatican through certified mail.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050816/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_pope_sued
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 16, 6:46 PM ET
VATICAN CITY - Lawyers for Pope Benedict XVI have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys by a seminarian in Texas, court records show.
The Vatican's embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State Department on May 20 requesting the U.S. government grant the pope immunity because he is a head of state, according to a May 26 motion submitted by the pope's lawyers in U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Texas in Houston.
Joseph Ratzinger is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit. Now Benedict XVI, he's accused of conspiring with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to cover up the abuse during the mid-1990s. The suit is seeking unspecified monetary damages.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Gerry Keener, said Tuesday that the pope already is considered a head of state and automatically has diplomatic immunity. Keener said Benedict doesn't have to ask for immunity and Bush doesn't have to grant it.
International legal experts said Tuesday it would be "virtually impossible" for the case to succeed because the pope, as a head of state, had diplomatic immunity. "There's really no question at all, not the vaguest legal doubt, that he's immune from the suit, period," said Paolo Carozza, an international law specialist at the University of Notre Dame Law School.
Nevertheless, lawyers for abuse victims say the case is significant because previous recent attempts to implicate the Vatican, the pope or other high-ranking church officials in U.S. sex abuse proceedings have failed — primarily because of immunity claims and the difficulty serving top Vatican officials with U.S. lawsuits.
"It has gone further than any suit before, and it should be instructive to the church that if evidence of their continued handling of these matters keeps coming to light and is inconsistent with fair play, that lawyers are going to pursue it," said Stephen Rubino, a New Jersey lawyer who is not involved but has handled hundreds of other cases of church sex abuse.
The three boys, identified in court documents as John Does I, II and III, allege that a Colombian-born seminarian on assignment at St. Francis de Sales church in Houston, Juan Carlos Patino-Arango, molested them during counseling sessions in the church in the mid-1990s.
Patino-Arango has been indicted in a criminal case by a Harris County, Texas grand jury and is a fugitive from justice, the lawsuit says.
Attorney Daniel Shea, who is representing one of the three boys in the civil suit, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who headed the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before becoming pope, was involved in a conspiracy to hide Patino-Arango's crimes and to help him escape prosecution.
In the lawsuit, Shea cited a May 18, 2001 letter from Ratzinger, written in Latin to bishops around the world, explaining that "grave" crimes such as the sexual abuse of minors would be handled by his congregation. The proceedings of special church tribunals handling the cases were subject to "pontifical secret," Ratzinger's letter says.
"Ratzinger's involvement arises out of this letter, which demonstrates the clear intent to conceal the crimes involved," Shea said.
The Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have insisted that the secret church procedures in the sex abuse case were not designed to cover up abuse nor to prevent victims from reporting crimes to law enforcement authorities. The document deals with church law — not keeping secrets from secular authorities, they say.
"To insinuate that this letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is part of a Vatican conspiracy is a total and complete misunderstanding of the purpose of the letter," Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza said in a statement. He heads the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese and is also named as a defendant in the suit.
A Vatican spokesman and attorneys for the pope declined to comment.
Shea was in Rome on Tuesday for a demonstration, timed to coincide with the church's World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, to protest what activists said was Vatican protection for "sexual predators" among the clergy. Some 60 people formed a semicircle on the edge of St. Peter's Square and held banners calling for Bush to refuse to grant Ratzinger immunity.
Shea said Ratzinger learned as early as January that he had been named a defendant in the lawsuit. He said Ratzinger had been served thanks to Texas' "long-arm statute," in which Shea served the Texas secretary of state the lawsuit, and the secretary of state then served Ratzinger at the Vatican through certified mail.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050816/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_pope_sued
On not getting it
***QUOTE***
You, Steve Hays, and Jason Engwer all responded by reasserting the exact thing to which I objected.
Every one of these statements simply reasserts what people already said: that the GHM is the only reliable method to extract meaning from Scripture, and that it is sufficient for its purpose. Both asserted without philosophical justification, and both fallacious for the reasons I already gave.
This is what I mean, guys. They just don't get it. These are not responsible answers to serious objections. No one is obligated to answer people who aren't willing to do what is necessary to establish their case reasonably, and they haven't.
I'm done. The hand-waving has become all the more vigorous, but it is just hand-waving in the end.
Edited by - crimsoncatholic on 08/20/2005 11:23:51 AM
***END-QUOTE***
No, it’s actually Jonathan who just doesn’t’ get it.
To begin with, I, for one, did respond to his philosophical objection. And I did offer a justification for GHM.
I didn’t spend a lot of time on the subject, but that’s because Jonathan didn’t spend a lot of time on it either. His alternative proposals were all so indefinite and under-developed and under-argued that he didn’t give us much to respond to. Like a pointillist painting, the closer you look the less you see.
Second, as I also pointed out, naming names—and I could name a lot more names--GHM is not just an Evangelical thing. It represents mainstream Catholic scholarship as well.
Jonathan seems to be hibernating in some sort of Patristic time-warp—Rip Van Winkle-like. But while he’s snoozing, his own church has long since moved on.
Jonathan isn’t only at war with Evangelical hermeneutics—he is equally at war with contemporary Catholic hermeneutics.
So I agree that it may well be premature of him to engage Evangelicalism before he has learned to come to terms with his own communion.
I’d add that when a man continually declines to make a reasoned case for his own position, the continual air of intellectual superiority rings pretty hollow. There’s nothing to back up the pose. More argument, and less affectation, is sorely in order.
You, Steve Hays, and Jason Engwer all responded by reasserting the exact thing to which I objected.
Every one of these statements simply reasserts what people already said: that the GHM is the only reliable method to extract meaning from Scripture, and that it is sufficient for its purpose. Both asserted without philosophical justification, and both fallacious for the reasons I already gave.
This is what I mean, guys. They just don't get it. These are not responsible answers to serious objections. No one is obligated to answer people who aren't willing to do what is necessary to establish their case reasonably, and they haven't.
I'm done. The hand-waving has become all the more vigorous, but it is just hand-waving in the end.
Edited by - crimsoncatholic on 08/20/2005 11:23:51 AM
***END-QUOTE***
No, it’s actually Jonathan who just doesn’t’ get it.
To begin with, I, for one, did respond to his philosophical objection. And I did offer a justification for GHM.
I didn’t spend a lot of time on the subject, but that’s because Jonathan didn’t spend a lot of time on it either. His alternative proposals were all so indefinite and under-developed and under-argued that he didn’t give us much to respond to. Like a pointillist painting, the closer you look the less you see.
Second, as I also pointed out, naming names—and I could name a lot more names--GHM is not just an Evangelical thing. It represents mainstream Catholic scholarship as well.
Jonathan seems to be hibernating in some sort of Patristic time-warp—Rip Van Winkle-like. But while he’s snoozing, his own church has long since moved on.
Jonathan isn’t only at war with Evangelical hermeneutics—he is equally at war with contemporary Catholic hermeneutics.
So I agree that it may well be premature of him to engage Evangelicalism before he has learned to come to terms with his own communion.
I’d add that when a man continually declines to make a reasoned case for his own position, the continual air of intellectual superiority rings pretty hollow. There’s nothing to back up the pose. More argument, and less affectation, is sorely in order.
Friday, August 19, 2005
The Purple Papist
Jonathan Prejean has now cobbled together his basic objections to the Evangelical faith, in a post entitled “Argument from a hypothetical Evangelical”:
http://crimsoncatholic.blogspot.com/
He takes as his immediate point of departure some statements by Jason Engwer and myself. I do not, of course, speak for Jason, and he does not speak for me. So he is not responsible for the particulars of my reply.
***QUOTE***
This is essentially the commonplace argument that God "accommodated" Himself to human language so that we ought to be able to "know" what He meant with "reasonable certainty" using "ordinary methods for interpreting historical documents."
***END-QUOTE***
It is important to be clear on what I mean by divine accommodation. It is not that God has accommodated himself to human language. Human language is, itself, a gift of God. He endowed us with a capacity for speech. God is the author of human language.
So it is not as though he is having to adapt himself to human language. Rather, he is making use of a medium which he himself originated in the first place. Language is adapted to God, not the other way around. Human language is preadapted to speak to God and about God, just as God can speak to us—as he has spoken through the prophets.
And, yes, Scripture was given to be understood. The primary point of divine self-revelation is, after all, to disclose man’s duty to God and to his fellow man.
***QUOTE***
My objections fall into three basic classes: epistemological, philosophical, and historical.
1. Epistemological
The common feature of every one of the arguments above is that they assert greater knowability associated with the reliability of a particular method as evidence for greater certainty. One big problem: greater reliability is something that is established by empirical practice demonstrating that a method actually works. Another bigger problem: an argument from the need of a method to the existence of the method is fallacious. Essentially, the argument above says that because God gave us a written revelation, we must be able to extract everything that we need to know from that revelation according to a reliable method, which doesn't follow.
***END-QUOTE***
Prejean is mashing together a couple of quite distinct issues: in particular, he is confounding a hermeneutical method with an apologetical method.
I can understand the source of the confusion inasmuch as the debate over at Crowhill went back and forth on these two issues as though they were synonymous, but they’re not.
i) The hermeneutical question is the question of how we ascertaining the meaning of a document—especially a document from the past, whether the Bible or the church fathers or a church council or a papal encyclical, &c.
That’s what the grammatico-historical method (GHM) has reference to.
ii) The apologetical question is how we verify or falsify the truth-claims of a document.
Historical evidence (evidentialism) may figure in the answer, especially in the case of historical revelation, but that is not at all the same thing as GHM.
As I understand him, Jason drew a couple of distinctions:
a) He didn’t deny that verification might require more than historical evidence alone; rather, he denied that it might require less than historical evidence.
b) He didn’t deny the value or occasional necessity of metahistorical considerations; rather, he denied the necessity of debating the rules of evidence unless the rules of evidence were wrong, or were challenged.
So he regarded historical verification as a necessary, but insufficient condition, depending on the person-variable nature of the apologetic encounter.
iii) GHM and evidentialism may intersect at various points. This can happen, for instance, when GHM is used to ascertain the meaning of a documentary truth-claim, while evidentialism is then used to verify or falsify that truth-claim.
***QUOTE***
In particular, the grammatical-historical method (GHM) makes a number of assumptions about texts that are dubious in the case of the Bible, such as the meaning of the text being limited to that which the author was trying to convey and its logical implication, which cast into doubt the applicability of the method to extract the "true meaning" of the text.
***END-QUOTE***
Unfortunately, this is an assertion bereft of a supporting argument or concrete illustration, so I don’t know exactly what Prejean has in mind or how he’d defend it.
But I’ll take a stab. The use of Hos 1:11 in Mt 2:15 came up fairly often in the debate, so maybe this is the sort of thing he has in mind. If so, the following remarks are in order:
i) We are not using allegorical exegesis to isolate this example. Rather, we are using the GHM. If we were using allegorical exegesis, then we could take Mt 2:15 to mean anything we please. So the very appeal to a verse like this, far from disproving GHM, assumes it.
ii) Mt 2:15 is an instance of typology, not allegory. Allegory is literary whereas typology is historical. Typology is a relation between events, not a form of exegesis or alternative school of hermeneutics.
iii) And while it is true that Mt 2:15 goes beyond original intent, it does not go beyond the logical ramifications of the passage.
Fulfillment doesn’t add to the meaning of the original. What it adds is the outcome, and the circumstances surrounding the outcome. But that is historical, not semantical.
***QUOTE***
Conversely, the application of the method to Scripture imports all sorts of factors extraneous to the GHM, such as the supposed "inspiration" of Scripture (not a factor that I've seen discussed in my historical texts about Abraham Lincoln, for example), "authority" of speakers, interpretation of texts in light of the writing of other authors (effectively treating Scripture as a single "book"), Scriptural inerrancy (whether factual, moral, or theological), etc., etc.
***END-QUOTE***
Unity, inerrancy, inspiration, and authority are exegetical results of applying GHM to the text of Scripture. They figure in the self-witness of Scripture. When we exegete Scripture, using sensible and responsible methods, we discover what it has to say about itself as well as other things. These are not theological assumptions, but exegetical end-results of the GHM.
The fact that this doesn’t come up in a historical text about Abraham Lincoln is irrelevant to the method. It doesn’t come up, not because the methodology differs, but because no such claim is lodged in the text.
To repeat: there are two distinct issues here:
i) The identification of a truth-claim, and:
ii) The verification of a truth-claim.
(i) is a prerequisite for (ii).
It’s odd that Prejean is so hostile to the GHM. This isn’t just a Protestant thing anymore. It’s pretty mainstream stuff in Catholic scholarship as well, viz., Brown, Fitzmyer, Johnson, Lagrange, McKane, Meier, Murphy, Vawter, &c. Same applies to contemporary Jewish scholarship, viz., Cassuto, Levine, Milgrom, Sarna,
What’s his problem, anyway? Is he just not up on contemporary Bible scholarship? Or does he view it as a threat to Catholic theological method?
***QUOTE***
2. Philosophical
This could actually go on for days in terms of particulars, but for the moment, I'll stick with the philosophical question of proper theological method. First, I think that the notion of God "accommodating" Himself in Scripture is incoherent in the way that it is asserted. If one accepts any sort of notion of God's transcendence (not even the correct apophatic method, but any method at all), it is de fide that God's infinity cannot be comprehended by finite human reasoning. But in the practice of Evangelical interpretation, terms are interpreted as if they could be applied univocally to God, with any incoherence being chalked up to "tension."
***END-QUOTE***
i) Pure apophaticism is incoherent. You can’t know what something is not unless you have a standard of comparison. Knowing what is supplies the frame of reference.
ii) From a Protestant standpoint, “proper theological method” takes its cue from the revelatory event itself. What does God say about himself in Scripture? What can we learn about exegetical theology from the intertextual example of the inspired authors themselves as they comment on one another?
Prejean is plucking out of thin air a wholly ersatz definition of divine transcendence rather than taking his cue from God’s actual self-revelation.
We Evangelicals reapply to God the terms that he has chosen to apply to himself. We have revealed warrant for doing so. By the same token, we have revealed warrant for making every necessary adjustment as we distinguish between divine and human attributes.
No one is supposing that human reason can exhaust the infinitude of God. But there’s a difference between infinite knowledge and knowledge of the infinite.
One could spend a lot more time on this, but because Prejean is so terribly vague, there’s no point marshalling specific answers to nonexistent particulars. One would need a much more precise idea of what he has in mind.
I happen to agree with him that a lot of the talk about points of tension is a cop-out. And he would be hard-pressed to find the same tensions in my own theology.
By contrast, there are plenty of tensions in Catholic theology, beginning with the perennial effort to square the circle of merit and grace.
***QUOTE***
Second, the philosophical premises used to justify the GHM particularly in the Scriptural context strike me as entirely unbelievable.
***END-QUOTE***
I’m happy to agree with his awful examples, but I don’t see that the GHM needs a heavy-duty philosophical justification.
It’s based on the common sense principle that God revealed himself in a different time and place, language and culture than our own.
And we also have Scriptural warrant for GHM. The Bible is quite sensitive to cultural and historical distance. When, for example, Moses is writing about conditions which no longer obtain, he throws in an editorial comment (e.g., Gen 13:10).
Mark explains Aramaic terms. NT writers quote for the LXX for the benefit of Gentiles and Hellenistic Jews. The whole transition from a Hebrew OT to a Greek NT is an exercise in recontextualizing the message. And there are many other examples in the NT of adapting Jewish expectations to a Gentile audience.
When a Bible scholar, using the GHN, tries to bridge the distance between past and present, he is simply emulating the practice of the canonical writers as they endeavor to bring the reader up to speed.
***QUOTE***
In both cases, one's certainty is rooted in the ontological presence of God in objectively perceptible manifestations, so that you can go where the Sacraments are.
***END-QUOTE***
This assumes what it needs to prove regarding the real presence and baptismal regeneration. It also substitutes philosophical verbiage for anything resembling an actual philosophical argument. Rubber checks pay no debts.
***QUOTE***
Evidently, before conservative Evangelicalism decided to make a comeback into serious scholarship against the tide of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism (which, BTW, was mere decades ago), this method simply didn't exist. I guess all that bit about God "accommodating" Himself to human limitations meant 20th century human limitations.
***END-QUOTE***
Actually, the GHM is a throwback to the Antiochean school of exegesis, which enjoyed a comeback with the Renaissance, and which, in turn, spurred on the Reformation. Calvin, for one, was a practioner of the GHM.
Archeology has done a lot to beef up the method, but the method has been around since day one.
***QUOTE***
St. Augustine screws up on baptismal regeneration because of the noetic effects of sin, OK. 99% of every Christian of whom we have records?
***END-QUOTE***
Whoever said we have to attribute his misinterpretation to the noetic effects of sin? Not me! It’s simply bad exegesis, that’s all. And given the institutional church, errors quickly become institutionalized.
As to the numbers game, we’ve been over this ground before. Only the educated classes could even read. And only the well-to-do had any books to read. There was no Bible for most folks to misinterpret.
***QUOTE***
Yes, we can quibble here and there, but if I am going to give even my ordinary level of deference to historical scholarship, this is a no-brainer. If there were Christians out there who denied baptismal regeneration, the apostolic succession, and the consecrated bread and wine as the metaphysically real Body and Blood of Christ (entitled to adoration), I don't know where the heck they were; I can't honestly read the historical record and think that they even existed, much less played any substantial or continuous role in Christian history.
***END-QUOTE***
Once again, we’ve been there—done that.
You might as well argue that Stalinism was true because the dissidents were few. The Inquisition, imperial pogroms, and the like, served as a fairly effective enforcement mechanism for keeping most folks in lock-step.
In is no accident that the expansion of doctrinal diversity coincides with the contraction of the church’s temporal authority. The potential for widespread dissent was always there just beneath the surface.
This last-ditch appeal to the vox populi merely exposes the fact that Prejean can offer no direct and exegetically sustainable argument from the only source that counts—which is divine revelation. If apostolic succession, baptismal regeneration, and the real presence were clearly revealed, then there’d be no need for this pitifully circular appeal: we should believe it cuz others believe it. Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists would be more than happy to help themselves to Prejean’s faux-populism.
http://crimsoncatholic.blogspot.com/
He takes as his immediate point of departure some statements by Jason Engwer and myself. I do not, of course, speak for Jason, and he does not speak for me. So he is not responsible for the particulars of my reply.
***QUOTE***
This is essentially the commonplace argument that God "accommodated" Himself to human language so that we ought to be able to "know" what He meant with "reasonable certainty" using "ordinary methods for interpreting historical documents."
***END-QUOTE***
It is important to be clear on what I mean by divine accommodation. It is not that God has accommodated himself to human language. Human language is, itself, a gift of God. He endowed us with a capacity for speech. God is the author of human language.
So it is not as though he is having to adapt himself to human language. Rather, he is making use of a medium which he himself originated in the first place. Language is adapted to God, not the other way around. Human language is preadapted to speak to God and about God, just as God can speak to us—as he has spoken through the prophets.
And, yes, Scripture was given to be understood. The primary point of divine self-revelation is, after all, to disclose man’s duty to God and to his fellow man.
***QUOTE***
My objections fall into three basic classes: epistemological, philosophical, and historical.
1. Epistemological
The common feature of every one of the arguments above is that they assert greater knowability associated with the reliability of a particular method as evidence for greater certainty. One big problem: greater reliability is something that is established by empirical practice demonstrating that a method actually works. Another bigger problem: an argument from the need of a method to the existence of the method is fallacious. Essentially, the argument above says that because God gave us a written revelation, we must be able to extract everything that we need to know from that revelation according to a reliable method, which doesn't follow.
***END-QUOTE***
Prejean is mashing together a couple of quite distinct issues: in particular, he is confounding a hermeneutical method with an apologetical method.
I can understand the source of the confusion inasmuch as the debate over at Crowhill went back and forth on these two issues as though they were synonymous, but they’re not.
i) The hermeneutical question is the question of how we ascertaining the meaning of a document—especially a document from the past, whether the Bible or the church fathers or a church council or a papal encyclical, &c.
That’s what the grammatico-historical method (GHM) has reference to.
ii) The apologetical question is how we verify or falsify the truth-claims of a document.
Historical evidence (evidentialism) may figure in the answer, especially in the case of historical revelation, but that is not at all the same thing as GHM.
As I understand him, Jason drew a couple of distinctions:
a) He didn’t deny that verification might require more than historical evidence alone; rather, he denied that it might require less than historical evidence.
b) He didn’t deny the value or occasional necessity of metahistorical considerations; rather, he denied the necessity of debating the rules of evidence unless the rules of evidence were wrong, or were challenged.
So he regarded historical verification as a necessary, but insufficient condition, depending on the person-variable nature of the apologetic encounter.
iii) GHM and evidentialism may intersect at various points. This can happen, for instance, when GHM is used to ascertain the meaning of a documentary truth-claim, while evidentialism is then used to verify or falsify that truth-claim.
***QUOTE***
In particular, the grammatical-historical method (GHM) makes a number of assumptions about texts that are dubious in the case of the Bible, such as the meaning of the text being limited to that which the author was trying to convey and its logical implication, which cast into doubt the applicability of the method to extract the "true meaning" of the text.
***END-QUOTE***
Unfortunately, this is an assertion bereft of a supporting argument or concrete illustration, so I don’t know exactly what Prejean has in mind or how he’d defend it.
But I’ll take a stab. The use of Hos 1:11 in Mt 2:15 came up fairly often in the debate, so maybe this is the sort of thing he has in mind. If so, the following remarks are in order:
i) We are not using allegorical exegesis to isolate this example. Rather, we are using the GHM. If we were using allegorical exegesis, then we could take Mt 2:15 to mean anything we please. So the very appeal to a verse like this, far from disproving GHM, assumes it.
ii) Mt 2:15 is an instance of typology, not allegory. Allegory is literary whereas typology is historical. Typology is a relation between events, not a form of exegesis or alternative school of hermeneutics.
iii) And while it is true that Mt 2:15 goes beyond original intent, it does not go beyond the logical ramifications of the passage.
Fulfillment doesn’t add to the meaning of the original. What it adds is the outcome, and the circumstances surrounding the outcome. But that is historical, not semantical.
***QUOTE***
Conversely, the application of the method to Scripture imports all sorts of factors extraneous to the GHM, such as the supposed "inspiration" of Scripture (not a factor that I've seen discussed in my historical texts about Abraham Lincoln, for example), "authority" of speakers, interpretation of texts in light of the writing of other authors (effectively treating Scripture as a single "book"), Scriptural inerrancy (whether factual, moral, or theological), etc., etc.
***END-QUOTE***
Unity, inerrancy, inspiration, and authority are exegetical results of applying GHM to the text of Scripture. They figure in the self-witness of Scripture. When we exegete Scripture, using sensible and responsible methods, we discover what it has to say about itself as well as other things. These are not theological assumptions, but exegetical end-results of the GHM.
The fact that this doesn’t come up in a historical text about Abraham Lincoln is irrelevant to the method. It doesn’t come up, not because the methodology differs, but because no such claim is lodged in the text.
To repeat: there are two distinct issues here:
i) The identification of a truth-claim, and:
ii) The verification of a truth-claim.
(i) is a prerequisite for (ii).
It’s odd that Prejean is so hostile to the GHM. This isn’t just a Protestant thing anymore. It’s pretty mainstream stuff in Catholic scholarship as well, viz., Brown, Fitzmyer, Johnson, Lagrange, McKane, Meier, Murphy, Vawter, &c. Same applies to contemporary Jewish scholarship, viz., Cassuto, Levine, Milgrom, Sarna,
What’s his problem, anyway? Is he just not up on contemporary Bible scholarship? Or does he view it as a threat to Catholic theological method?
***QUOTE***
2. Philosophical
This could actually go on for days in terms of particulars, but for the moment, I'll stick with the philosophical question of proper theological method. First, I think that the notion of God "accommodating" Himself in Scripture is incoherent in the way that it is asserted. If one accepts any sort of notion of God's transcendence (not even the correct apophatic method, but any method at all), it is de fide that God's infinity cannot be comprehended by finite human reasoning. But in the practice of Evangelical interpretation, terms are interpreted as if they could be applied univocally to God, with any incoherence being chalked up to "tension."
***END-QUOTE***
i) Pure apophaticism is incoherent. You can’t know what something is not unless you have a standard of comparison. Knowing what is supplies the frame of reference.
ii) From a Protestant standpoint, “proper theological method” takes its cue from the revelatory event itself. What does God say about himself in Scripture? What can we learn about exegetical theology from the intertextual example of the inspired authors themselves as they comment on one another?
Prejean is plucking out of thin air a wholly ersatz definition of divine transcendence rather than taking his cue from God’s actual self-revelation.
We Evangelicals reapply to God the terms that he has chosen to apply to himself. We have revealed warrant for doing so. By the same token, we have revealed warrant for making every necessary adjustment as we distinguish between divine and human attributes.
No one is supposing that human reason can exhaust the infinitude of God. But there’s a difference between infinite knowledge and knowledge of the infinite.
One could spend a lot more time on this, but because Prejean is so terribly vague, there’s no point marshalling specific answers to nonexistent particulars. One would need a much more precise idea of what he has in mind.
I happen to agree with him that a lot of the talk about points of tension is a cop-out. And he would be hard-pressed to find the same tensions in my own theology.
By contrast, there are plenty of tensions in Catholic theology, beginning with the perennial effort to square the circle of merit and grace.
***QUOTE***
Second, the philosophical premises used to justify the GHM particularly in the Scriptural context strike me as entirely unbelievable.
***END-QUOTE***
I’m happy to agree with his awful examples, but I don’t see that the GHM needs a heavy-duty philosophical justification.
It’s based on the common sense principle that God revealed himself in a different time and place, language and culture than our own.
And we also have Scriptural warrant for GHM. The Bible is quite sensitive to cultural and historical distance. When, for example, Moses is writing about conditions which no longer obtain, he throws in an editorial comment (e.g., Gen 13:10).
Mark explains Aramaic terms. NT writers quote for the LXX for the benefit of Gentiles and Hellenistic Jews. The whole transition from a Hebrew OT to a Greek NT is an exercise in recontextualizing the message. And there are many other examples in the NT of adapting Jewish expectations to a Gentile audience.
When a Bible scholar, using the GHN, tries to bridge the distance between past and present, he is simply emulating the practice of the canonical writers as they endeavor to bring the reader up to speed.
***QUOTE***
In both cases, one's certainty is rooted in the ontological presence of God in objectively perceptible manifestations, so that you can go where the Sacraments are.
***END-QUOTE***
This assumes what it needs to prove regarding the real presence and baptismal regeneration. It also substitutes philosophical verbiage for anything resembling an actual philosophical argument. Rubber checks pay no debts.
***QUOTE***
Evidently, before conservative Evangelicalism decided to make a comeback into serious scholarship against the tide of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism (which, BTW, was mere decades ago), this method simply didn't exist. I guess all that bit about God "accommodating" Himself to human limitations meant 20th century human limitations.
***END-QUOTE***
Actually, the GHM is a throwback to the Antiochean school of exegesis, which enjoyed a comeback with the Renaissance, and which, in turn, spurred on the Reformation. Calvin, for one, was a practioner of the GHM.
Archeology has done a lot to beef up the method, but the method has been around since day one.
***QUOTE***
St. Augustine screws up on baptismal regeneration because of the noetic effects of sin, OK. 99% of every Christian of whom we have records?
***END-QUOTE***
Whoever said we have to attribute his misinterpretation to the noetic effects of sin? Not me! It’s simply bad exegesis, that’s all. And given the institutional church, errors quickly become institutionalized.
As to the numbers game, we’ve been over this ground before. Only the educated classes could even read. And only the well-to-do had any books to read. There was no Bible for most folks to misinterpret.
***QUOTE***
Yes, we can quibble here and there, but if I am going to give even my ordinary level of deference to historical scholarship, this is a no-brainer. If there were Christians out there who denied baptismal regeneration, the apostolic succession, and the consecrated bread and wine as the metaphysically real Body and Blood of Christ (entitled to adoration), I don't know where the heck they were; I can't honestly read the historical record and think that they even existed, much less played any substantial or continuous role in Christian history.
***END-QUOTE***
Once again, we’ve been there—done that.
You might as well argue that Stalinism was true because the dissidents were few. The Inquisition, imperial pogroms, and the like, served as a fairly effective enforcement mechanism for keeping most folks in lock-step.
In is no accident that the expansion of doctrinal diversity coincides with the contraction of the church’s temporal authority. The potential for widespread dissent was always there just beneath the surface.
This last-ditch appeal to the vox populi merely exposes the fact that Prejean can offer no direct and exegetically sustainable argument from the only source that counts—which is divine revelation. If apostolic succession, baptismal regeneration, and the real presence were clearly revealed, then there’d be no need for this pitifully circular appeal: we should believe it cuz others believe it. Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists would be more than happy to help themselves to Prejean’s faux-populism.
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