Theological Review (2): Seeking the Wrong Certainty

The Meaning of Protestant Theology, a book written by Professor Phillip Cary and published by Baker Academic in 2019, is recommended for anyone looking for a perspicacious and concise account of Protestant Christian theology.  Last month we wrote about Cary’s analysis of spiritual ascent and descent.  Now, we will inquire into the question, whether Christian theology has been looking for the wrong kind of certainty in recent centuries (p. 9).  Faith should be based on the certainty that God will be true to his word, not on a purported certainty of one’s own theological tradition; if for no other reason than that some academic theological traditions have arisen with no evident connection to building the assurance of faith.  One thinks of “historical Jesus” research that attempts to create a biography out of a thin ancient historical record that would be more appropriate for a noncommittal study of Homer and Troy.  Cary writes that “belief in the wrong kind of certainty has not only left Protestant theology particularly unprepared for new developments in biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century; it resulted in a stunning lack of charity in Luther’s own writing” (p. 209).

      Speaking of the “wrong kind of certainty” suggests that an equivocation is lurking.  If two or more kinds of certainty simply and always bore distinct names, then life would be much easier.  Certainty is demanded in mathematics; it is not clear that Christian faith demands the same state of mind.  In mathematical proofs, if the premises are understood, then the conclusion is seen, via mental vision, to be necessary without reference to persons.  In Christian doctrine, if God’s promises and message are understood, then the conclusion (salvation) is seen, via mental vision, to be reliable, based on God’s character.

      What type of certainty attaches to faith, and should a different word be substituted for “certainty”?  Around 400 C.E. an official Biblical canon was recognized, and it included the book of Hebrews, whose 11th chapter (ESV) begins with “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  The original Greek words for “assurance” and “conviction” are (transliterated as) “hypostasis” and “elenchos,” respectively; the translation seems appropriate, recalling that hypostasis refers to the assurance of abstract things and to the essence of concrete things.  For both assurance and conviction, it would seem that one is dealing with a probability sufficiently high for action or belief (a moral certainty) but not necessarily as high as for mathematical proof (absolute certainty).  Text and notes in a German translation (Schlachter 2000) link hypostasis to confidence, realization, and holding fast (Zuversicht, Verwicklichung, and Beharren), but not to certainty (Gewissheit).  There is a famous hymn titled “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine,” but nowhere has the writer of this blog encountered a hymn titled “Certain Inference, Jesus is Mine.”  Only long-standing habit and inertia lead one to say of faith that it must be certain rather than divinely assured.  If only a context-sensitive equivocation-alarm would sound whenever a Christian believer said “certain,” not stopping until the speaker substituted “divinely assured”; then much confusion could be avoided.

      Another wrong kind of certainty lurks in the interpretation of Christian texts: “Reformers like Luther and Calvin accepted a version of the traditional gradation of authorities, with Scripture alone as the source of certainty [assurance] and the church fathers as indispensable but not infallible guides to sound interpretation of Scripture” (p. 212).  “Protestant theologians were convinced that … the most up-to-date historical scholarship supported their interpretation of both Scripture and tradition” (p. 213).  However, nineteenth century historical-critical scholarship treated sacred Scripture like any other ancient document, produced unorthodox analyses, and reminded orthodox believers that all interpretations take place within some tradition.

      Wandering into a hostile interpretive environment for the sake of a wrong kind of probability also produces results hostile to traditional Christianity.  For example, Hume’s gambit posits that the probability that any miracle is true is less than the probability that some medieval monk corrupted the text and fabricated the miracle; that all of our beliefs are adopted by weighing probabilities; and hence, that all alleged miracles must be disbelieved de jure without the necessity of constructing a factual record.  Consistent with this approach, some commentators downplay Constantine’s apparent conversion to Christianity before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, not wishing to delve into the existence of fascinating commemorative coins that Constantine later struck, showing the Christian Chi-Rho sign on the Roman labarum.  However, Hume’s gambit fails, because the thesis that all of our beliefs are adopted by weighing probabilities is false: If we believe that there are other minds and that the sun will rise again tomorrow, then we do so on other grounds.

      Cary provides insightful discussions of modernism and post-modernism in Chapter 9.  “To the post-modernist, modernity appears ironically as a tradition that cannot admit that it is a tradition, because it is ideologically opposed to all traditions” (p. 222).  Left-wing postmodernism maintains that all traditions are indeed irrational and inescapable.  Right-wing post-modernism maintains that some instances of rationality exist in some traditions, although none of those traditions is a pure expression of universal reason.  Cary concludes on page 224 that it is the critical Socratic spirit, rather than any foundation of certainty, that turns traditions of interpretation into vectors of rationality.

Exploring the Coastline of Religious Experience

In last month’s blog posting, we noted that modernity, including Kant’s philosophy, sees thinking for oneself as a rejection of all tradition, even though systematic thinking itself seems to be a tradition.  Post-modernity sees modernity as a tradition that is unaware of its own status as a tradition.  On this view, modernity is either a dead end, because it and all other traditions have been discredited; or else one tenable tradition, among others, that advances some philosophical insights.

      As an exponent of modernity, Kant saw the many, traditional, revealed religions as potential sources of superstition but also as overlapping a common domain, or natural religion of reason.  For Kant, this Vernunftreligion exists as an aid in motivating moral choices, fulfilling the Categorical Imperative, and forming part of the philosopher’s proper domain of pure reason.  In contrast, Schleiermacher saw religion as based on a feeling (immediate self-consciousness) of complete dependence on the infinite.  In this Gefühlsreligion, the self feels itself to be dependent on some romantic totality. Vernunftreligion has the problem of inferring religious experience from purely rational experience, which seems too narrow.  Gefühlsreligion has the problem of differentiating religious experience from aesthetic consciousness, which seems too broad.  In either case, if one starts looking for God in one’s experience, then one may end up identifying one’s experience with God. 

      Kant’s coastline analogy in the Critique of Pure Reason (A396) is meant to distinguish empirical appearances from “things in themselves” and to confine the voyage of reason to the continuous coastline of experience.  Even allowing for this necessity, it is not clear that observations of “a coastline of religious experience” are sufficient for navigating between the Scylla and Charybdis of Vernunftreligion and Gefühlsreligion.  The triangulation of one’s position relative to a coastline requires not only multiple observations of known points on that coastline; not only a compass, a map, a parallel ruler, and a pencil; but also the presupposition that one’s predecessors received a reliable inspiration to create this technique and its tools.  Beyond empirical observations, what is required for distilling religious experience into religious doctrine?

      George Lindbeck (The Nature of Religious Doctrine, 1984, pp. 16-18) provided a suitably “beyond-ist” theory of religious doctrine.  If religious doctrines are thought of as purely symbolic expressions of religious experience, then one is espousing an experiential-expressive theory of religion.  This theory presupposes that some “individual genius,” perhaps one’s own, is added to experience in order to produce religious expressions.  On the other hand, Lindbeck believed that religious doctrines could be thought of as authoritative linguistic rules.  These rules are added to religious culture (experience, discourse, attitudes, and practices) in order to permit or exclude certain faith propositions, thereby creating a cultural-linguistic theory of religion.  This theory presupposes that some “cultural genius” has produced the required linguistic rules without compromising traditional propositional truth criteria.

      The experiential-expressive theory of religion is ideal for interpreting individual quests for personal meaning, because the theory has a clear starting part (the “turn to the subject”), and a clear ending point (a set of personalized religious beliefs, symbols, or doctrines).  Lindbeck (pp. 22-23) saw these theories as having extended from a post-Reformation world, with its many denominations of Christianity, to a post-Christian world, with its “multiple suppliers” of principles for organizing one’s inner experiences.  For the experiential-expressivist, all internal experiences are equally incontrovertible traces of the Ultimate; hence, all expressed religious beliefs are equally valid.

      Lindbeck’s Chapter 2 explores the extent to which the cultural-linguistic theory of religion finds support as the opposing thesis that religious doctrine plays a role in producing religious experience.  (Note that the cultural-linguistic theory only maintains that some knowledge of religious doctrine is logically prior to one’s assessment of his or her internal state, not that religious doctrine causes that internal state.)  On this account (pp. 33-41), religious doctrine is a cultural or linguistic framework (skill set) that helps shape one’s internal state (life and thought) instead of being only an expression of that internal state.  There are internal states (thoughts) that we cannot have unless we have an adequate language, consistent with Wittgenstein’s private language argument.  Becoming Christian involves learning Biblical stories and lessons well enough to facilitate the interpretation of one’s experience.  Hearing an external word helps shape experience and leads to faith. 

      Abandoning the notion that the exclusive source of religion is in prior experience is consistent with abandoning the notion that there is an inner experience of God common to all human beings and religions, but expressed differently (pp. 39-40).  On the cultural-linguistic theory, adherents of different religions have different experiences.  Lindbeck uses the example of Buddhist compassion, Christian love, and French-Revolutionary (quasi-religious) fraternité: These do not represent (express) a fundamental human awareness but are radically different ways of experiencing the cosmos.  On this view, religion is not something universal arising from the inmost depths of individuals, but is rather a class name for a set of diverse cultural-linguistic systems that help to shape the beliefs, attitudes, and sentiments of their adherents.  These cultural-linguistic systems help confine the voyage of reason to the continuous coastline of religious experience.

      (The next posting date for this blog is expected to be February 1, 2020.)

Kant, Sensus Communis, and Tradition

Common sense, or sensus communis, may refer to (1) a human individual’s “sixth sense” that organizes and unifies inputs from the five physical senses.  Common sense may also refer to (2) a widely distributed basic human awareness and ability to judge.  Descartes started his Discourse on Method with the observation that “Good sense is of all things the most equally distributed … The power of forming a good judgment and of distinguishing the true from the false, which is properly speaking what is called Good Sense or Reason, is by nature equal in all men.”  Finally, the sensus communis may refer to (3) the results of human judgments that exist in the form of viewpoints and values that are widespread within a particular linguistic or historical community.  For example, Herodotus spoke the common sense of his culture by memorializing the Greco-Persian Wars and ensuring that certain human achievements might neither be forgotten nor lose their glory.  Since viewpoints and values persist over a period of time and are inculcated into new generations while a community lasts, this third type of sensus communis may be said to form a tradition.  All three types of sensus communis play a role in creating the linguistic and intellectual environment required for philosophical analysis and synthesis.

      Did Kant think that humans possess any variety of sensus communis among their higher faculties?  If so, then is the Kantian sensus communis concerned with coordinating sensory input, as in (1); competence in judging, as in (2); or creation and evaluation of historical traditions, as in (3)?

      Regarding judgment: For Kant, sensible intuition serves as the basis for human thought about nature.  Objects given within consciousness (mental representations) arise from sensible matter (states of sense organs) and a priori sensible forms (space and time).  Only on a higher level of cognition does natural knowledge arise from the understanding (correct judgment) applied to sensible intuitions, mental representations, or given objects.  Regarding evaluation: Kant distinguishes between fulfilling hypothetical imperatives based on desire and obeying a Categorical Imperative based on a reverence for the moral law.  Thus, Kant believes that there are higher cognitive faculties related to understanding and moral evaluation that we could view as varieties of sensus communis.

      There is another Kantian higher faculty in which sensus communis plays a role: There exists an aesthetic faculty in which the imagination is applied to aesthetic intuitions (mental representations of a certain kind, i.e., aesthetic objects) in order to evaluate the subject’s feelings of pleasure or displeasure toward the aesthetic object.  The very first footnote in Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (the first half of his Critique of Judgment) defines taste as the faculty of judging the beautiful.  Subsequently, in ¶ 1 of § 40 of that work, Kant says that although we may speak of senses of truth, beauty, or justice, etc. when referring to one’s dexterity in rendering judgments; we know full well that these concepts have no empirical basis but rather spring from (what we read as) “higher faculties.”  [Kant seems in this paragraph carelessly to have lumped together all higher faculties into a single Erkentnisvermögen (faculty of cognition), which would contradict his overall thesis, stated in § 1, that the judgment of taste is not a judgment of cognition.  (Das Geschmacksurteil ist also kein Erkenntnisurteil.)] 

      Continuing in ¶ 1 of § 40, Kant holds that common sense, interpreted as common human understanding (gemeiner Menschenverstand), may refer to “mere healthy understanding” (bloβ gesunder Menschenverstand); which is the least we can expect from a creature purporting to be human and which - - so far from being a positive distinction - - is actually a vulgar quality.  Kant disdains Reid’s approach to common sense.

      In ¶ 2 of § 40, however, Kant finds that gemeiner Verstand also bears the meaning gemeinschaftlicher Verstand, i.e., that common sense may refer to “public sense.”  Common sense as public sense refers a perfectly disinterested subject’s (i.e., “one’s”) act of reflective judgment (Reflexion): One takes into account the a priori form of representation of all others in order to conform one’s judgment to that of the totality of human reason, thereby avoiding the illusion that private considerations might prejudice the judgment.  This is accomplished by comparing one’s judgment not only to others’ actual judgments but also to others’ merely possible judgments, abstracting away from one’s own limitations.  Kant admits that the operation of reflection appears rather too artificial to be common, but insists that abstracting away from mere charm and emotion is necessary when rendering a universal judgment.  Nevertheless, it strikes the present writer that common sense as public sense involves more than just (2), the ability to judge aesthetic objects; and includes (3), the traditional results of judgments in particular communities in particular epochs.

      In an aside in ¶ 3 of § 40 Kant states three “maxims of common sense”: First, think for yourself.  Second, think from the standpoint of everyone else.  Third, think consistently at all times.  This is Kant’s formula for implementing the Enlightenment, blasting superstition and tradition, and restricting common sense to option (2) of our analysis.

      Kant says in ¶ 4 of § 40 that taste is more justifiably designated as sensus communis or public sense than is “healthy understanding.”  Aesthetic, rather than intellectual, judgment is the effect that mere reflection (bloβe Reflexion) has upon the mind; and this effect is a feeling of pleasure or displeasure.  Taste might even be defined as the faculty of judging what makes our feeling regarding a given representation universally communicable without the use of concepts.  In a footnote, Kant identifies taste with a sensus communis aestheticus, whereas gemeiner Verstand corresponds to a sensus communis logicus.

      In ¶ 5 of § 40 Kant reformulated the idea of mere reflection as the interaction between free imagination and understanding apart from concepts, resulting in the communication of an aesthetic representation (i.e., in an aesthetic representation communicating itself) as an internal feeling of a purposive state of mind, not as a thought.

      Regarding the perfectly disinterested subject (the “one”) who is tasked with assessing common sense as public sense in the foregoing discussion: Are Kant and his readers trying to achieve a “view from nowhere,” consistent with the work of Thomas Nagel?  His view is that achieving objective reality is a great good, but that objective reality is incomplete.  Alternately, do we seek to approximate a “view from everywhere,” an estimated totality of human reason that may likewise be incomplete?  Or are we looking for a “view from somewhere,” a land of particular traditions?

      Kant embodied the Enlightenment tradition of thinking for oneself, which in turn derived from the Cartesian paradigm of retiring to a mountaintop with one’s reason and good sense (sensus communis) in order to establish all knowledge for oneself based on the cogito ergo sum.  Modernity, including Kant’s philosophy, sees thinking for oneself as a rejection of all tradition, even though systematic thinking seems itself to be a tradition.  In some of his lectures, Professor Phillip Cary has pointed out that post-modernity sees modernity as a tradition that is unaware of its own status as a tradition.  On this view, modernity is either a dead end, because it and all other traditions have been discredited; or else one tenable tradition, among others, that has something to contribute to analysis and narration.  Modernity seems to be a sensus communis of type (3) as defined in the first paragraph of this post.

      Adopting one possible post-modern perspective, religions could be seen as interacting historical traditions in the quest for meaning.  As an exponent of modernity, however, Kant saw traditional, revealed religions as potential sources of superstition.  In terms of Venn diagrams, one imagines Kant depicting revealed religions as overlapping circles on a plane representing the “religious universe of discourse.”  Kant seems to have implied that all “revealed-religion circles” overlap a common, smaller region representing a unique, natural religion of reason.  For Kant, this Vernunftreligion exists as an aid in motivating moral choices, fulfilling the Categorical Imperative, and forming part of the philosopher’s proper domain of pure reason. (This view is adapted from the Preface to the second edition of Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.)  Nevertheless, the possibility that modernity and its Vernunftreligion may themselves be Western traditions seems to loom over the Kantian project.

Plato (1): The Apology, Compared

The full title of this post is “Platonic Reflections (1): Comparison of Some Behavior in the Apology and at Disney World.”

      Late last year there were media reports of some individuals surreptitiously scattering human cremation ashes on the grounds of Disney World.  This scattering might be interpreted as nominally spiritual: Look at how the bereaved honor their dear departed!  On the other hand, one possible post-modern interpretation of this scattering is ironic and materialistic: Look at how those insulted by death escape a day’s worth of ennui by mocking traditions of burial or cremation!  In contrast, we may turn to the Platonic dialogs Apology, Crito, and Phaedo for a philosophical examination of death that is anything but ironic and materialistic.  These dialogs, occurring just before and after Socrates’ execution, include a passionate investigation of the possibility and implications of a separate existence for disembodied rational souls after death.  The idea of a separation of body and soul at death would later become common in Christian thought.  This blog post will review the Apology; a future post will summarize Crito and Phaedo.       

      Before an Athenian court in 399 B.C. Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon (representing poets, politicians, and orators, respectively) accused the 70 year-old Socrates of corrupting the youth of Athens and believing in self-invented gods rather than state-approved gods.  Socrates responded that their well-honed arguments sounded convincing; on the other hand, scarcely a word of what they said was true.   

      Socrates repeatedly complained about the short time allowed for his trial, because it was necessary for him first of all to defend himself against a widespread Athenian background belief that would prejudice jury deliberations.  This belief is that Socrates is a wise man who can make the weaker argument defeat the stronger.  Socrates maintains that he is said to be wise only because of a mysterious utterance of the god (oracle) at Delphi, who had supposedly once said that there is no one wiser than Socrates.  (Some historians say that the oracle spoke gibberish that had to be interpreted by the Delphic priests; hence, Socrates’ uncertainty.)  Socrates had set about many years ago, as a sort of religious duty, to find the true meaning of the Delphic oracle on that past occasion.  It should be straightforward, Socrates thought, to find people purporting to be wise and to question them with the aim of establishing his own ignorance and inferiority.  Those examined, however, neither stood up well under Socrates’ interrogation nor took kindly to his efforts; hence, there arose a widespread campaign of slander against him.  Such calumny is irrelevant to the charges brought by Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon.  Socrates’ “interrogation of experts” had only established that real wisdom is the property of God and that the oracle had really been saying that human wisdom has little or no value.

      Socrates then returns to the specific charges of corrupting youth and believing in non-approved gods.  Socrates argues (in the text indexed by Stephanus numbers 25c-26a) that if he were corrupting youth, then he would be harmed by their future corrupt behavior.  But no one chooses to be harmed.  Hence, he is either not corrupting youth or else is doing so unintentionally, in which case the proper remedy is private reproof, not public trial.  Socrates believes that only the background hostility previously mentioned could move a jury to convict him.

      Starting at 28b, Socrates asks rhetorically if he feels no compunction in having lived a life of examining others and building up animus against himself.  Socrates’ rhetorical response is that if he never abandoned his military posts, ordained by Athenian commanders; then he would certainly never abandon the post that God ordained for him, that of leading the philosophical life.  Socrates does not believe that God permits a better man, fulfilling a religious duty, to be harmed by a worse, such as Meletus et al.  If the Athenians put Socrates to death, then they will not likely be able to find another gadfly that would arouse them to self-examination and improvement.  Being now wound up in a mode of robust oratory, Socrates says things unlikely to appeal to an Athenian jury: “No man on earth who conscientiously opposes either you or any other organized democracy, and flatly prevents a great many wrongs [during public service] … can possibly escape with his life.”

      Continuing at 36a, Socrates says that he is not surprised by the jury’s vote to convict him, but only by its closeness: A change of only thirty votes would have resulted in acquittal.  He doubts that Meletus’ argument convinced even 20% of the jury.  (Assuming equal, non-overlapping, 20% contributions from all three accusers, one might speculate that the approximate vote was 180 to convict and 120 to acquit.)  Facing the death penalty, Socrates is permitted to argue for an alternative punishment.  Socrates maintains that, since he spends his time persuading individual Athenians to focus on mental and moral wellbeing rather than practical advantages, the “sentence” should really be his full maintenance at state expense.  To accept fines and penalties that would preserve life but prevent him from pursuing philosophy would be disobedience to his divine calling.  In Socrates’ opinion, “life without this sort of examination is not worth living. 

      In his final address to the jury, beginning at 40a, Socrates says that he suspects that the death sentence just imposed is a blessing, i.e., that it would be a mistake to suppose that death is an evil.  As represented in the Apology, death is either annihilation (dreamless sleep) or “a migration of the soul from this place to another,” where one could meet the heroes of the past, beyond the travails and malfeasance of so-called human justice.  Socrates would find it especially edifying to meet others who had suffered unjust deaths, such as Palamedes (betrayed by Odysseus) and Ajax the Great (denied his just reward of Achilles’ armor).  Socrates concludes that nothing can harm a good man in life or death, and that his fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods.

      One notes that Plato presupposes the ancient Greek background belief that each living thing has a soul (psyche) of some appropriate grade.  In particular, humans have rational souls.  Plato also presupposes that the human soul’s “migration” (Apology, 40c) is sufficient to convey a complete person to the “other place,” where he or she can have experiences and interact with some divinities and other deceased humans (40e-41c).  Plato does not address, here, whether this interaction would be limited due to the absence of some souls from the “other world” due to “reincarnation duty.”  In other words the Apology, and all the other Platonic dialogs as well, are only analyzable within the ancient Greek intellectual tradition.

Based on the Apology, one infers that Socrates would have viewed the post-modern irony and detachment of human ash scattering at Disney World as inconsistent with, if not wholly repugnant to, the great seriousness with which he regarded his own divine calling, the tradition of rational inquiry.

Post-Truths and Populism

     The following text comments on the Wall Street Journal articles by Dr. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and William A. Galston on March 17, 2018.  This review seeks to explore whether “post-truth” ideology is to traditional assertion as contemporary populism is to liberal democracy.

     Goldstein argues that “post-truth” refers to “something radically screwy” in contemporary politics.  Disagreement between democrats and oligarchs goes back to Athenian times, but modern pseudo-assertions of post-truths are not endorsements of propositions but declarations of ideological loyalty.  This re-purposing of propositions confuses political discourse, because people tend to lose track of what kind of assertion they are dealing with as an argument progresses, or as an emotional encounter degenerates.  It seems that some political factions find it expedient to develop a series of quasi-Gnostic emanations: A purported relativity of truth leads to “post-modernism,” which leads in turn to “post-truth” declarations of tribal loyalties.  No matter what faction originates this scheme, all parties to political disputes can advance systems of “post-truths,” endangering political debate.  Thus, in Galston’s context, both the populists (e.g., Trump or Brexit supporters) who represent an ignored subpopulation, as well as the transnational elites who govern technocratic power structures do not engage in real dialog and solve real problems.  This leads to a more precarious existence for liberal democracy itself.  This instability is a truly novel development in politics, ultimately based on a pernicious language game.  Post-truths are untethered from traditional assertions.  Contemporary populism is disconnected from traditional liberal democracy.  Appeasing the purveyors of extravagant speech means losing site of the philosophical coastline of experience that Kant prescribed for the voyage of reason.  Appeasement is as problematic now as it was in the twentieth century; only the “post-truth” spin is new.