God and logic

Many people treat logic as a worldview-invariant criterion. A standard that transcends any worldview in particular. An umpire that adjudicates between one worldview and another.

In light of that, it’s striking to read some of Quine’s statements on the status of logic. After all, Quine was the most distinguished logician of his generation. Yet here are two of his statements on logical necessity:

The modal logic of necessity–necessary truth and necessary consequence–is an extravagant departure from extensionality.  Necessity itself can instead be clearly and usefully construed in one and another relativistic way.

 

I have not been sold on the notion of necessity, the distinction between necessity and contingency, which is what modal logic in its standard interpretation and primary motivation is about.

W. V. Quine, Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays (Harvard 2008), 191, 444.

Why does Quine say that? He doesn’t explicitly give his reason, but I assume it’s bound up with his naturalized epistemology. Indeed, the very same essay from which I took the former, he makes naturalistic evolution his point of departure.

On this view, logic is merely the grammar of human thought. Ideas bouncing around the brain. Logic is an emergent property. The laws of logic actually evolve.

But if logic is just a description of how the brain thinks, then logical truths are contingent truths rather than necessary truths. Logic is reducible to human psychology, or higher animals.

Of course, one might say that’s self-refuting. But it only seems that way to our little simian brains. If logic is just a notion in our noggins­–the firing of C-fibers or whatever–then when we intuit a logical contradiction, we’re just staring back at ourselves in the mirror of our minds–the way a cat is deluded by its own reflection. There’s nothing on the other side of the silver.

Necessary truths require some metaphysical underpinnings. Logic alone is not a sovereign god who can dispatch every claimant, for we must also take into account the ontology of logic. As Quine vividly illustrates, logic without firm foundations will sink back into the quicksands of psychologism.

Theology and logic enjoy a symbiotic relationship. If theology can’t do without logic, logic can’t do without theology.

Neo-Calvinists and Neo-Confessionalists

If there's a category called 'neo-Calvinist,' there's also a category called 'neo-Confessionalists.' The latter refer to themselves as Old Schoolers and decry "biblicism" and the idea that exegetical theology determines what we should confess, rather than doing exegetical theology through the lens of the Confession. The latter is said to be the only possible position since no one can do exegesis from a confessionless stance (except the original framers, one assumes). While it is fine to work within a set of commitments borne from exegetical spadework, there must also be a commitment to the standard, and this commitment trumps the former.

What is neo-Confessionalism, you ask? I find it to be the view of many calling themselves "Confessionalists" simpliciter. Perhaps you can get an intuitive feel for neo-Confessionalism by an example. I once asked an Old Schooler for an exegetical argument for his position. He said the exegesis was the Confession. He said he didn't need to exegete the passage, it had already been done. Now, it's a settled matter. Mind you, I didn't believe the Confession said what he thought it said, much less provided an "exegetical argument" for it. But I asked, what if the Bible contradicts the Confession. The response: It can't, for the Confession confesses what the Bible says. The Confession is to be believed not in so far as it is biblical, but because it is. But, I responded, doesn't the Confession admit it can err? Doesn't the Confession say that Scripture is the adjudicating standard? What does this mean if the Bible must be read and exegeted on the assumption that what it says, the Confession says, God says? Neo-Calvinists seem to have the view of the Confession that is the Confession's view of itself. This is often called bibliolatry or biblicism.

It is one of those ironies that neo-Calvinism is Old-School-Confessionalism and Old School Calvinism is neo-Confessionalism.

Logicality and Triadology

Unitarians typically reject the Trinity because they claim it’s illogical. However, one can turn this objection around. If God is a Trinity, then that’s a necessary truth. That’s as much a necessary truth as modus ponens.

The Trinity is not a contingent truth, but a necessary truth–just like other divine attributes. Take the unicity of God. If there is only one true God, that’s a necessary truth. There is one and the same God in every possible world. A truth of reason rather than a truth of fact.

But the same holds true for the Trinity. If the ontological Trinity is real, then that’s the case in every possible world.

You could only attack the Trinity on logical grounds if you beg the question by assuming in advance that logical truths are necessary truths, while the Trinity is not a necessary truth.

Flannagan v. Avalos

http://www.mandm.org.nz/2011/06/hector-avalos-and-careful-non-selective-citation-of-sources.html

Silent surrender

Hector Avalos and Matt Flannagan have been dueling over some criticisms that Flannagan leveled against Hector’s contribution to The Christian Delusion.

However, what’s striking, and easily forgotten in this exchange, is not what Avalos has said, but what he’s left unsaid. In addition to some factual criticisms, Flannagan also lodged a couple of logical criticisms:

Exegetical issues aside, much of Avalos’s moral arguments contains subtle fallacies. He argues Christians are committed to accepting the counter factual: If YHWH commands you to kill P then it is permissible to kill P. He then points out that if we replace the word YHWH with Allah, you get the conclusion it is permissible to kill Americans if Allah commands it. Avalos contends that this calls into question the “logic” of theistic ethics. It does not. Any sound argument will be analogous to an unsound argument if we replace a true premise with a false one.

 

Perhaps the most glaring problem with Avalos’s article is that after he argues The Torah is immoral and unjust he states that moral relativism is true. But how can a relativist consistently claim that the moral code of another culture is immoral?

http://www.mandm.org.nz/2011/06/the-christian-delusion-why-faith-fails-a-philosophia-christi-review-of-john-loftus-book.html

Thus far, from what I’ve read (unless I missed something), Avalos has passed that over in silence. So at this point it looks like Hector’s rejoinder are, in large part, an effort to deflect attention away from other damaging, and apparently unanswerable, criticisms that Flannagan made in reviewing Hector’s contribution. His telling silence is a form of intellectual surrender. 

"All the world old is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer"

Confirmation bias is a funny thing. What’s funny about confirmation bias is the way the accuser misuses the accusation. The accuser typically uses the accusation one-sidedly. It’s always the other party who suffers from confirmation bias. Shame on you for being so deluded! Why can't you be objective like me!

But a one-sided application of confirmation bias is, itself, a reflection of confirmation bias.

Take the OTF. The OTF is just a thinly-disguised exercise in confirmation bias. Loftus is sure that Christians suffer from confirmation bias, but whenever Loftus has to explain and defend the OTF, he betrays his own confirmation bias in the process.

To be oblivious to your own confirmation bias is the epitome of confirmation bias. Outsiders to the Outsider Test can instantly see that. The OTF is merely the unconscious expression of atheistic confirmation bias. But since the atheist is blinded by his own bias, he is blind to the biased nature of the OTF. He lacks the critical detachment to view the Outsider Test from the perspective of an outsider to the Outsider Test.  

Piscatory barricade

Almost all of the objections to the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) are red herrings placed in the road to sidetrack us from getting at the truth.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-is-outsiders-perspective.html

In that event, I wonder why the state patrol doesn’t strew the freeway with red herrings when it tries to set up a roadblock. On second thought, seems to me a driver could simply run over the red herrings and continue on his way. I mean, aren’t they pretty flat to begin with?

Or perhaps he had in mind stacking cans of red herrings. Would they be welded together to form a solid barrier?  

In my book, Why I Became an Atheist, I contrasted the insider’s perspective (IP) with the outsider’s perspective (OP), which can be explained like this: The insider believes in a particular religious sect. The outsider does not. The insider has faith. The outsider doubts. The insider makes extraordinary claims. The outsider makes no claims. The insider has a belief in search of data. The outsider looks at the data to determine the probability of a claim. The insider takes a leap of faith beyond the probabilities. The outsider doesn’t claim more than what the probabilities can show.

 

The IP represents a person who has faith. The OP represents a person who does not have faith. The IP represents faith-based reasoning. The OP represents science-based reasoning.

i) By his own admission, the OTF presupposes a hostile characterization of religion. That’s not a neutral, even-handed characterization. Rather, the OTF already prejudges religion.

And in so doing, it assumes what it needs to prove.

ii) Moreover, even in his own self-serving description, it’s not true that the outsider makes no claims. Loftus is making several substantive claims about religion to justify the OTF. 

The identity of identity

DALE SAID:

Steve, ah yes... I'm backpedaling... away from someone who is untutorable.

 

But because hope springs eternal: no, numerical identity doesn't come in kinds. It's the relation that of necessity everything bears to itself. So, it applies to the Trinity, divine persons - anything at all that exists.

Tuggy refuse to follow his own argument. He’s said the following:

i) There is only one kind of identity

ii) Identity is a reflexive relation

And I pointed out that a symmetrical relation is a reflexive relation too. Does he deny this?

Where does that leave him, given how he himself chose to define the issue?

i) If there’s only one kind of identity;

ii) If identity is a reflex relation;

iii) If a symmetrical relation is a reflex relation;

iv) Then a symmetrical relation entails numerical identity

Yet he alleges that when I use enantiomorphism (a type of symmetry) to model the Trinity, this doesn’t qualify.

So his only obvious fallback would be to concede that if there are different kinds of reflexive relations, then there’s more than one kind of identity.

I’m merely following his own argument to its logical conclusion.

Moreover, Tuggy habitually acts as though his own position on identity is indisputable, when, in fact, that’s demonstrably false. To take one example:

Mike Almeida | MARCH 16, 2006 4:34 PM

"The Son is not tripersonal. The Holy Ghost is not tripersonal. Now if two things differ in a property, then they cannot be identical. (This is the irreproachable principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals expressed in its contrapositive form.)"

 

I'm always a little suspicious of the application of LL [Leibniz' Law] in abstract metaphysical contexts. For instance, does a proper application of LL really show that a statue *could not* be identical to the bronze that composes it, since there are properties the bronze has that the statue does not? That kind of thing is often said, but why doesn't it just beg the question? Why isn't the reply, "no, the metal does not have the different properties you allege, however much it might seem to". Similarly, why isn't one perfectly good response in this metaphysical situation, "no, there is no distinct being, God, in addition to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. There's just one being"? In this case the alleged difference in properties is what is mistaken. Since they are one in being, each being (F,S, & HG) must be tripersonal.

http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2006/03/does-trinity-en.html#comment-22440

My point is not whether this is a solution to the “problem” of the Trinity. Rather, my immediate point is to draw attention to the way in which Tuggy knowingly oversimplifies the metaphysical intricacies, as well as glossing over the philosophical controversies, regarding the identity of identity (as it were).

"Tritheism"

DALE SAID:

Steve, what in your view is a "selv-ish" descriptor that the Bible applies to God?

Before we answer the question, let’s establish the framework.

a) Tuggy already thinks the Father is a divine self. So that’s a premise which he himself supplies.

b) In addition, this is how Tuggy has defined selfhood in response to me:

Sure you do - this is a rough, vague concept we all have. It is a thing which is conscious (yes, of self as well as other things), which can act for a reason (can choose, has a will), which is intelligent (has knowledge), and which can engage in friendship.

But it seems that he wants to deny the one God to literally be a self. If so, he goes hard against the Bible, throughout. God knows, acts, gets mad, makes and carries out plans, stands in an I-thou relationship to Jesus, as well as to disciples of Jesus. Further, I’m willing to bet that like just about all Christians, he interacts with God as a self to a self.

So that’s another premise which Tuggy himself supplies. Keep in mind that I’m responding to Tuggy on his own terms.

i) Let’s apply his own criterion of selfhood to a party other than the Father. Jesus makes the following statement in Revelation:

And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works (Rev 2:23).

Given Tuggy’s definition, that makes Jesus a self.

ii) But that’s not all this passage implies about Jesus.

a) To begin with, Jesus is casting himself in the role of the Final Judge. Yet that’s a paradigmatically divine prerogative. Because God is our Creator, we are ultimately answerable to God.

b) Moreover, this prerogative is grounded in the omniscience of Jesus. So we have a divine prerogative grounded in a divine attribute.

And that’s a logical connection. God’s omniscience is one of the attributes that qualifies him to judge sinners. He can judge sinners because he enjoys exhaustive knowledge of what we think, say, and do.

That’s not something which could be delegated to a finite creaturely agent. Rather, we’re accountable to God because God is our Maker, and God is competent to judge us because God knows absolutely everything about us.

c) Furthermore, this is reinforced by the fact that Jesus is quoting Jer 17:10:

I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds (Jer 17:10).

In Jer 17:10, Yahweh is the speaker. Yet Jesus applies that statement directly to himself.

iii) Therefore, Jesus is not only a “self” (as Tuggy defines it), but a divine self. Divine in the same sense that Yahweh is divine, as Scripture demarcates the unique divinity of Yahweh.

iv) But if the Father is a divine self, and Jesus is a divine self, then according to Tuggy’s own premises, that yields (at least) two divine “selves.”

(I’m bracketing the Holy Spirit for now since it only takes one counterexample to sink Tuggy’s contention.)

Re: tritheism. In your view, Father, Son, and Spirit qualitatively differ from each other. Thus, in your view none is numerically identical to either of the others. Thus, they are three, in your view. Three what? Each, in your view, has the divine nature; that is to say, each is a deity, a god. Complain about the term "being" all you want; the charge sticks without it.

Two problems:

i) I’m framing my answer the same way Tuggy himself chose to frame the question. That conclusion follows from Tuggy’s own position. If I’m a polytheist, that makes two of us. We’re in the same boat. Indeed, I’m sitting in Tuggy’s boat for the sake of argument. 

ii) At the same time, Tuggy isn’t deriving his definition of polytheism from Scripture. Rather, Tuggy begins with his ersatz definition, which he imposes on the data.

However, the Bible erects a contrast between the true God and false gods. A statement like Rev 2:23 is inapplicable to false gods. False gods don’t search mind and heart, rendering to each man according to his deeds.

If the Father and the Son are two divine parties, that’s not polytheism as Scripture delineates polytheism.

I could use other examples to illustrate the same point.

Tuggy is, of course, at liberty to operate with his made-up definition of key terms, but I’m only concerned with Biblical theism, not fictional theism.

Like a mythmaker, Tuggy can always invent a make-believe world which he populates with his imaginary “God” and other fictitious characters. That’s not my own idea of how to do theology. And, ironically enough, Tuggy’s “God” would be just like the idols that Isaiah lampooned.

How God views bad church leaders

When I hear claims of “apostolic succession,” I often think of Old Testament Israel and God’s view of various kinds of successions of leadership. Just yesterday I came across this from Ezekiel 34:

The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.

“Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.

“For thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.

“As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet?

“Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad, I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the LORD; I have spoken.

God is not a respecter of “apostolic succession”. Christ alone is the Shepherd.

The Forbin Project

DIY LPG 330CI SAID:

Hi Steve,

Hi,

Your name sounds like the designation of an AI program. I feel like Garry Kasparov in a match-up with Deep Blue.

First, thanks for engaging with Tuggy on this, it feels like a great opportunity to see where a discussion between 2 such Christians (a unitarian philosopher and a trinitarian theologian), takes us.

Unitarians aren’t Christians.

As for me, I don’t claim to be a theologian. I’m not that distinguished. I’m just standing in the breach until the reinforcements arrive.

No one knows the Father but the Son

He brings up the Mandelbrot set. This is an abstract object. It doesn’t have parts, but rather members. Is he suggesting that the Trinity is a set, with members rather than parts? That it has infinite members? I don’t know.

i) Tuggy doesn’t seem to be trying very hard. My replies are pegged to his objections.

He suggested that on my view, the Trinity is “a complex whole, a compound Self who has three parts (the three divine selves), and these three parts are exactly alike one another.”

I countered with the Mandelbrot set to point out that this erroneously defines a “complex” entity as a “compound” entity with a part/whole relation.

That would be true for a complex concrete object, viz. an object with spatial and/or temporal divisibles.

But assuming that God subsists outside of space and time, then even if God were a complex entity, that wouldn’t make him a compound entity, with a part/whole composition.

ii) Moreover, God is analogous to abstract objects in certain respects. Like abstract objects, God subsists outside of space and time. Like (some) abstract objects, the divine nature is imitable. Take the Medieval exemplarist tradition.

So abstract objects are, in fact, one way to model God. Like any theological model, that has limitations.

iii) Furthermore, as I mentioned at the time, the Mandelbrot set has the property of internal self-similarity. In that respect it’s like the Trinity. 

So it’s a counterexample to his statement.

Then, a digression about analogy. Of course, my point was: don’t you think God is literally a self? (Not: Is God analogous to a self?)

Perhaps he assumes that all terms that apply to God do so only analogically. I think that’s obviously false; we have terms that express concepts abstract to be satisfied by either God or a creature. e.g. “exists,” “conscious,” “similar to God.”

It’s odd for him to set “similar to God” in contrast to analogies. What’s similarity if not an analogy?

I conclude, then, that in his view there are three, not four conscious beings here, and three points of view. It’s just that each also can (and always does, I assume) adopt the viewpoint of both the others.

That’s one thing he got right.

Philosophical theology

I’d like to follow up on something I said to Tuggy. I mentioned that, to some degree, I was speculating about the Trinity. That’s because he’s raising questions that go beyond the range of revelation.

However, this doesn’t mean that Trinitarians must resort to speculation to salvage the Trinity. The witness of Scripture is sufficient to warrant the Trinity.

Moreover, both unitarians and Trinitarians engage in theological speculation. For instance, Trinitarian philosophers analogize from human psychology to God, but that’s hardly confined to Trinitarian philosophers.

When a unitarian philosopher tries to explicate the mental attributes which the Bible ascribes to God, he, too, will analogize from human psychology to fill in the picture as best he can. In what sense is God a "person"? 

Moreover, unitarianism (at least in principle), ranges along a continuum. At one end of the spectrum you could have a “classical” unitarian theist who subscribes to divine simplicity (in the Scholastic sense), aseity, omnipotence, impassibility, timeless eternality, and exhaustive foreknowledge. A unitarian version of Boethius or Thomas Aquinas.

At the other end you could have a unitarian neotheist. A unitarian version of William Hasker or Gregory Boyd.

Both ends of the unitarian spectrum will appeal to Scripture, both ends will extrapolate from human psychology. However, the “classical” unitarian theist will posit more discontinuity between man and God than the unitarian neotheist. He will make more allowance for anthropomorphic representations.

A unitarian theist will also argue from analogy. And his analogies will take various disanalogies into account. This is not unique to Trinitarian theology, or Trinitarian apologetics. 

The Pauline Shema

We know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” 5For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— 6yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist (1 Cor 8:4-6).

My fundamental disagreement with Tuggy has been a disagreement over theological method. Where do we start?

Take this text. It’s an allusion to the Shema (Deut 6:4). More than just an allusion. This is modeled on the Shema.

Only Paul has reformulated the Shema. In the Shema, “God” (Elohim) and “Lord” (Yahweh) are two different names for the same Deity.

However, Paul has rewritten the Shema to distribute the names between the Father and the Son. Rewritten the Shema to insert Jesus directly into the heart of the Shema. Rewritten the Shema to make Jesus the “Lord” (=Yahweh) of the Shema.

So he’s creating a direct synonymous parallel. Jesus is to Yahweh as Yahweh is to the Shema.

In the way he structures his statement, counterbalancing one against the other, as well as how he restructures the Shema, Paul is putting the Father and the Son on a par.

Now suppose you’re unitarian. Suppose you come to the NT with your unitarian assumptions, and you encounter this text. How should you respond?

Do you cross your arms and say to yourself, “Whatever Paul means, he can’t me that!” Do you begin with a preconceived notion of what it means for God to be “one,” then use that as a grid to filter out any interpretation that challenges your preconceive notion? Or do you take your notion of what it means for God to be “one” from the very text at hand? Is that something you bring to the text, or something you take from the text?

Just suppose, for a moment, that Paul really did want to teach the deity of Christ. As a unitarian, that confounds your expectations, but for the sake of argument, imagine if that’s what Paul wanted to say. Wouldn’t this be one way to do it? To take the Shema has his backdrop, then write Jesus into the Shema?

You may think Paul is unitarian, but if Paul wanted to affirm the deity of Christ, what should he say differently? Is there any formulation he could use that would change your mind?

What could the NT writers possibly say to show you that you were wrong about Jesus? Under what circumstances, if any, will you allow them to correct your preconception?

Or is your unitarian framework unfalsifiable? Nothing could ever count as evidence against your prejudgment.

In my exchanges with Tuggy, he has a topdown theological method in which he begins with his preconception of what it means for something to be “one” or be the “same,” and that preemptively eliminates any possible interpretation to the contrary.

He doesn’t start by asking how Paul or John or the author of Hebrews understands the unicity of God. Rather, he begins and ends with his preconception. That dictates the outcome before we even crack the Bible open.

He doesn’t listen to the text. Rather, he tells the text what it can and cannot say.

BTW, this isn’t, in the first instance, an issue of Biblical authority. Rather, when we study a text, any text, it’s incumbent on the reader to bracket his own beliefs in the sense that he lets the writer speak for himself, whether or not the reader happens to agree with the writer. For the reader is not the writer.

When I read Dante, I bracket my own beliefs in the sense that while I don’t share the same beliefs as Dante on many issues, I also don’t make my own beliefs interfere with the interpretive process. Indeed, it would be terribly egocentric of me to proceed in that fashion, as if my prior beliefs dictate what Dante could mean.

Of course, Christians are supposed to submit to the authority of Scripture, so that’s even more reason to let the writer speak for himself. 

Reactionaries

In light of John Loftus' latest effort to shore up the sagging fortunes of the OTF, I'm going to reproduce a recent statement by Larry Hurtado:

It’s simply the case that the overwhelming majority of scholars in biblical studies (including NT and Christian Origins) come to their studies in the context of their own personal involvement in Jewish or Christian faith.  Critical study, however, which rightfully means self-critical study requires scholars to try to avoid their own personal faith and commitments from influencing unduly their conclusions.  But it’s sometimes assumed that this is a concern solely for those who identify themselves with a religious tradition, and that those who don’t so identify themselves, or who no longer do so, are immune from what I’ve called “personal stakes”.

Indeed, occasionally scholars make much of their departure from religious faith, sometimes even making that a major subject in its own right (I mention no names, and ask any comments to avoid doing so too).  But surely a moment’s reflection should indicate that there is no really neutral ground, and that those in negative reaction against their own faith are in danger of being unduly influenced (skewed?) in their work as any apologist for a given religious stance.

Years ago I read one of the finest statements about a scholar that I’ve ever encountered.  In a letter of reference for a younger colleague, a more senior scholar said of him, “He is neither captive to his tradition nor in reaction against it.”  That would be a worthy stance for anyone to my mind.

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/scholarship-and-personal-stakes/

Identity and symmetry

DALE [TUGGY] SAID:

About identity, you ought to read some standard work on predicate logic. If you did this, you'd find that my def. is neither circular, nor vacuous, nor outdated, nor unclear. You're objections show that you are simply not clear on the concept.

= is a relation which necessarily whatever there is bears only to itself, and not to anything else. So it is a relation which must be reflexive.

By "identity" you mean qualitative similarity (not numerical identity), perhaps to a high degree. And maybe sameness in terms of structure specifically (hence, your talk of mapping).

This criticism is highly ironic. I’ve been using the concept of symmetry to model the Trinity. And that’s a natural association. After all, if God is a Trinity, then God has symmetrical properties, viz. equipollence, self-similarity.

But Tuggy says that’s inadequate because identity is a reflexive relation.

Well, what does he think a symmetry is, exactly? Symmetries are reflexive. That’s a defining feature of symmetries.

So if the Trinity is the type of symmetry (indeed, the exemplar), or relevantly analogous to a symmetry, then that coincides with Tuggy’s defining criterion of numerical identity.

If you explicate numerical identity in terms of reflexivity, then a symmetry meets the condition.

Perhaps he’d object to the comparison on other grounds, but since that’s been his central objection all along, it’s hard to see where he can go from here–except to backpeddle furiously. 

Morality: religious & secular

http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPMRAS&Volume=0&Issue=0&TOC=TRUE

Blessed Quaternity?

Dale Tuggy has posted another reply to my previous response(s).

Because he says this nature is shared, I’m going to infer that it is a universal – something capable of being had by multiple subjects.

That’s equivocal. That framework generally involves an abstract/concrete, property/property-instance distinction, in which a particular is a specific finite exemplification or approximation of an abstract property.

But the members of the Trinity subsist on the same ontological level as the divine nature or attributes. Outside of time and space.

Moreover, the individual members of the Trinity don’t finitely exemplify or merely approximate the divine nature.

If we use that framework (i.e. nature as a universal), that’s subject to major caveats.

Rather, I’m trying to figure out what the relation is, in your view, between God/The Trinity and those three Persons. If it isn’t whole-parts, help me out!

Take the Mandelbrot set. That’s a symmetry. Internally self-similar. Is the Mandelbrot set a ‘compound’ or composite entity?

That’s an odd way of characterize an abstract object. True, there’s a sense in which the Mandelbrot set is a “complex” object. Infinite iterations. An actual infinite. 

Yet it’s not a complex object in the same sense that a Swiss watch is a complex object. If a Swiss watch and the Mandelbrot set are both “compounds,” then we’ve stretched the meaning of composition to such a degree that it seems either fatally equivocal or uselessly indiscriminate.

Sure you do - this is a rough, vague concept we all have. It is a thing which is conscious (yes, of self as well as other things), which can act for a reason (can choose, has a will), which is intelligent (has knowledge), and which can engage in friendship. If you speak to something, and think it may understand, even speak back, you think it is a self. Thus, I submit that you think God is a self, as I assume you speak to him. You sort of say that any divine person will be only analogous to a human self. Well, sure. But we have a more abstract concept of a self (which doesn’t imply being a human, or even being created, or having a body) which we should both agree is satisfied by, e.g. the Father.

Since the issue of analogy often crops up in theology, now might be a good time to do a little sidebar on the issue. There’s nothing exceptional about God-talk in this regard. It’s not unique to a doctrine of divine incomprehensibility.

Whenever we compare two (or more) things, we’re moving into the realm of analogy. If I compare two Welsh Corgis, that’s an analogy. They are much alike, but the very fact that I’m comparing them, the very fact that there are two of them to compare, means they are unlike as well as like.

In one respect, two male Welsh Corgis are more alike than a male and female Welsh Corgis. On the other hand, a male and female might be more temperamentally alike than two male Welsh Corgis.

When I compare a four-legged dog to a four-legged chair, that’s analogous. Which is more analogous–a four-legged dog and a four-legged chair, or a three-legged dog and a four-legged chair? (Say the dog lost a leg in a traffic accident.)

Which is more analogous, a Welsh Corgi and a Russian Wolfhound, or a real Welsh Corgi and a wax statue of a Welsh Corgi?

On the face of it, a sundial and a digital watch are quite dissimilar, yet they are functionally identical. Which are more alike, a sundial and a digital watch, or two digital watches–of which one is broken?

I’m just making the preemptive point that it wouldn’t be special pleading for a Trinitarian to note the inherent limitations of any theological analogy.

I think I basically got his view right: there are four divine selves: God (The Trinity), the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

I think Tuggy is now insinuating that the Trinity devolves into the Quaternity. But that’s equivocal. The Trinity would not be a “self” in the same sense that the constituent members are “selves.” The Trinity is not a fourth person, over and above the three persons. Rather, each person is conscious of what the other two are conscious of. Not just that each person is conscious of the other two persons, but conscious of their consciousness.

This is confirmed by what he says after noting that in his view, each Person of the Trinity has a first-person point of view…This “corporate viewpoint” must have an owner, a subject, and that can only be the Trinity – that complex self.

No. The “owner” of the “corporate viewpoint” is each member of the Trinity. That’s because each person not only has his own first-person viewpoint, but is also privy to the viewpoint of the other two.

Sorry, but I think this is confused. If I think, as an American, that football beats the crap out of soccer, that’s just another first-person point of view. It is just that the explanation for my having it, we’re assuming, is that I’m an American. The analogy would rather be this: just as each American has a first person perspective, so does America. So in his view, if e.g. the Son has a viewpoint as member of the Trinity, that just means that some subjective state of his is caused or explained by his relations to the Father and Spirit. This would be a three-self view of the Trinity, not a four-self view, which I think Steve holds to. But I’m sticking with the four-self interpretation, which is what I take it he thinks, or usually thinks.

This ignores the fact that I was using an a fortiori argument. Suppose Americans were telepathic. In that event, you’d have their collective consciousness as well as individual consciousness (or self-consciousness).

Yet that wouldn’t be something over and above the individual minds which constitute it. Rather, each mind would have access to every other mind. A bottom-up model, not a top-down model. There wouldn’t be a logically prior super-mind in which all sub-minds participate.

And that’s in the case of discrete, self-contained entities (i.e. human beings), in contrast to the Father, Son, and Spirit.

He emphasizes that this is theological speculation, which it surely is. But I was asking what this Trinity theory is, which makes such great sense out of the Bible, better sense than any rival theory. I take it that this is it. If he wants to clarify further the relation between Trinity and the members of it, I’m all ears.

i) Theological speculation is inevitable whenever we ask questions that revelation doesn’t answer. The only way to avoid theological speculation is to refrain from asking certain questions.

Theological speculation isn’t distinctive to Trinitarian theorizing. A unitarian philosophical theologian will also speculate on the meaning of certain attributes like omnipotence, omnipotence, and eternality. He will speculate on how to correlate the attributes. He will speculate on who is the real “God,” in contrast to divine projections or emanations or agents or whatever.

You have open questions in theology. That’s because answers to questions give rise to new questions. Because revelation answers some questions, wherever revelation ceases to speak, that will raise further questions.

ii) I’m not using a “theory” of the Trinity as a hermeneutical lens. Rather, a theory of the Trinity is the next step as we move from exegetical theology to systematic theology or philosophical theology.

iii) Scripture reveals that:

a) In some sense there is only one God.

b) The Father, Son, and Spirit are each divine (i.e. possessing the divine attributes).

c) The Father, Son, and Spirit are not interchangeable. 

That’s not speculation. That’s the revealed data.

iv) For instance, I say “in some sense” there is only one God, not to be evasive, but because Scripture doesn’t rigorously define the unicity of God. Rather, it uses the historic example of paganism as a foil. 

As such, the Bible leaves a certain amount of elbowroom for more than one possible formulation. At the same time, any alternate formulation must integrate the totality of the revealed data.

A theory can go beyond the evidence as long as it doesn’t contradict the available evidence. But by the same token, a theory that goes beyond the evidence is underdetermined by the evidence, and so we’re not going to wax dogmatic about the conjectural details, viz., philosophical extrapolations or interpolations.

I’m speaking as a Protestant. Obviously there are theological traditions which do wax dogmatic about extrabiblical details.

To evoke Quine’s celebrated web of belief, some threads are more important than others. You can snip various threads, yet the essential structure will remain intact. However, some threads anchor the web to branches. Snip one of those lines and the entire web collapses in on itself.