Author: dopderbeck

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Eschatology Philosophical Theology

Eschatology, Molinism, Modal Laws, and the Multiverse

wmapA draft of a paper I’m working on:

Table of Contents

Introduction. 

Molinism and the Contemporary Molinist Theodicy of Eschatology.
The Objection to Molinism Based on the Ontology of Alternative Pasts. 
The Unexplored Relation of the Ontological Objection to Molinism and Problems in Modern Cosmology and the Philosophy of Science. 
Modal Arguments Concerning Laws of Nature. 
Multiverse Cosmologies and the Reality of Other Universes. 
The Connection With Molinism
Alternative Universes and the Doctrine of Creation

Introduction

This paper examines Molinism as a form of eschatological theodicy in light of modal arguments concerning “laws of nature,” modern multiverse cosmologies, and the Christian doctrine of creation.  First, the paper will introduce the concept of Molinism and explain how it relates to modern eschatological theodicies.  Next, the paper will discuss one of the major philosophical objections to Molinism, which is based on the ontology of alternative pasts.  The paper will then examine a question that has not yet been explored in the existing literature:  how this ontological objection to Molinism connects with similar discussions in cosmology and the philosophy of science about laws of nature and the possibility of a multiverse.  The paper will conclude with a discussion of how these ontological questions present problems in connection with the Christian doctrine of creation.  The paper’s central claim is that Molinism is finally inconsistent with the classical Christian doctrine of creation.

Molinism and the Contemporary Molinist Theodicy of Eschatology

Molinism is a view about divine providence and human freedom attributed to Luis de Molina (1535-1600 C.E.).[1]  In modern philosophical theology, it is often proposed as a mediating position between Calvinist-Jansenist determinism and open theism.[2]  The strong Calvinist-Jansenist determinist position asserts that God meticulously ordains all things that happen, including the salvation or reprobation of human beings. [3]  The open theist position asserts that God allows the decisions of free creatures to decide at least some future events, such that God chooses not to know or cannot know some future events.[4]  Molinism asserts that God foreknows all possible future events and providentially arranges actual events such that God’s good plans are realized in a way that accounts for the actual or possible choices of free creatures.[5]

In addition to serving as a general theory of the relation to divine providence and creaturely freedom, for some conservative evangelical apologists Molinism supplies an eschatological theodicy.[6]  These apologists deploy Molinism as a response to the justice of consigning people to Hell who have never heard the Gospel.[7]  They argue that for this set of persons God in his “middle knowledge” knows who would not accept the Gospel.  God is then not culpable for failing to arrange for such persons to hear the Gospel, because such persons would not have responded in faith even if they had heard.  Molinists often use the term “transworld damnation” to describe people who would not respond to the Gospel in faith in any potential world known by God.[8]

This does not mean that Molinists think anyone who never hears the Gospel necessarily is damned.  These apologists recognize that the Old Testament saints and children who die in infancy have never heard the Gospel, but allow for the salvation of such persons, and they also acknowledge that some people who in the light of general revelation throw themselves upon God’s mercy can be saved without explicitly knowing of Christ.[9]  Nevertheless, they assert that God’s middle knowledge of how a person would respond defeats arguments against the justice of the damnation of people who never hear the Gospel.[10]

The Objection to Molinism Based on the Ontology of Alternative Pasts

One substantial criticism that has been leveled against Molinism is based on the ontological question of past events and causality.[11]  Molinism asserts that there are potential past events that never occur in history because God providentially orders history in such a way that those events are never actualized.  This raises the question of the ontological status of these “alternative pasts.”  Critics of Molinism argue that the concept of alternative, unrealized pasts that cause changes in future events (by influencing God’s decisions about the ordering of history) makes no logical sense.  Molinists respond that their proposal retains its logical force because it does not entail actual alternative pasts but only potential events known to God.[12]

The Unexplored Relation of the Ontological Objection to Molinism and Problems in Modern Cosmology and the Philosophy of Science

There is almost no reference in the philosophical theology literature connecting Molinism to related debates in scientific cosmology and the philosophy of science about modal arguments concerning the laws of nature and the possibility of a multiverse.[13]  This is surprising because the underlying metaphysical question is precisely the same:  what is the nature of other counterfactual universes?  This underlying metaphysical question relates to the central theological locus of the doctrine of creation:  what does it mean to posit, as Christian theology does, an ontological distinction between God and creation?[14]  By examining the doctrines of Divine providence and eschatology apart from the doctrine of creation, the Molinist eschatological theodicy introduces a systemic distortion into Christian thought about the integrity and contingency of creation.  It is the same kind of distortion produced by multiverse arguments proposed by atheist philosophers to explain the apparent fine-tuning of our universe against cosmological arguments for the existence of God.[15]

Modal Arguments Concerning Laws of Nature

Natural science is often described as a discipline that confines its investigation to the operation of the laws of nature.[16]  While this is a fair as a rough operative description, the question of whether “laws of nature” exist and how human beings might identify them is subject to significant debate in the philosophy of science.[17]  Many philosophers approach this question by making modal arguments based on counterfactual universes that are different than our observable universe.[18]  This method raises questions about the metaphysical status of these plausible alternative universes and of our observable universe.[19]  Some philosophers question whether imagined counterfactual universes relate to contingent facts of the observable universe, particularly given the context- and time-sensitivity of causal statements and the questions of the transitivity of causation and the preemption of events in a causal chain.[20]

Multiverse Cosmologies and the Reality of Other Universes

Another version of this modal problem results from cosmological theories that entail a multiverse.  String theory, for example, is a leading alternative to the “standard model” of big bang cosmology.[21]  String theory posits a number – perhaps an infinity – of universes.  If string theory is true, it could be that each of the alternative universes imagined in modal arguments about laws of nature actually exist.  Moreover, if any multiverse theory is true, the apparent “fine tuning” of our universe for carbon-based life would prove unremarkable, since the dice has been rolled, so to speak, until all probabilities are realized – indeed, the dice may have been rolled an infinite number of times.

The Connection With Molinism

The philosophical connection between Molinism and the cosmological questions mentioned above is striking.  In each case, a problem of contingency is addressed by universalizing all the possibilities and thereby isolating or perhaps even eliminating the contingency.  The specific premises of each argument differ, but the underlying assumption that possible alternative universes provide meaningful explanations is common across each argument.  Consider the following form of each argument:[22]

Laws of Nature Multiverse Molinism
 

1.       X is a “law of nature” if and only if X obtains of necessity in some conceivable universe within a range of conceivable universes.
2.      X obtains of necessity in conceivable universe abc.
3.      Therefore, X is a “law of nature.”

 

  

1.      The apparently contingent facts about this universe are remarkable if and only if the set of existing universes is so small that the ex ante probability of those facts occurring is very small.
2.      The set of existing universes is very large (infinite).
3.      Therefore, the contingent facts about this universe are unremarkable.

  

1.       God’s decision to damn a person is just if and only if the person has libertarian freedom to accept or reject God’s offer of salvation.
2.      Person y who never heard the Gospel in this universe would have had an opportunity to hear the Gospel, and would have rejected the Gospel, in universe abc.
3.      Therefore, God’s decision to damn person y is just.

In each argument, premise 1 is a contingent fact that requires explanation.  Premise 2 is an explanation based on possible alternative universes.  Premise 3 is a conclusion that is valid only if the possibility of alternative universes offers explanatory power.

A significant difference across the three arguments is that the multiverse argument apparently depends on the actual reality of alternative universes, while the modal laws of nature and Molinist arguments putatively remain valid even if the alternative universes are merely theoretical.  My qualification regarding putative validity here, however, is crucial.  It is hard to see why the theoretical possibility that some contingency in this universe might not obtain in an alternative theoretical universe should matter to the classification of that contingency as a “law” in this real universe.  Likewise, it is hard to see why the theoretical possibility of someone hearing the Gospel in a non-existent universe makes any difference to the question of God’s justice in the actual universe.  In the real universe the judgments of justice depend on our actual choices, which can include the choice not to act when action is theoretically possible.[23]  I conclude, therefore, that both the modal laws of nature argument and Molinism make sense only if their theoretical alternative universes, like those in multiverse cosmologies, are somehow real.[24]

This requirement is not as extreme as it might sound.  The alternative universes posited by multiverse cosmologies, after all, are by definition not subject to direct empirical investigation.  “The universe,” by definition, is everything we can possibly know by observation.  String theory and other multiverse theories can only infer the existence of other universes through mathematical models – that is, theoretical abstractions – that require alternative universes to balance the equations.  The metaphysical question is the same:  is the mathematical model reality itself, or a description of reality itself, or is it just an internally coherent argument with no referent in an external reality?  Of course, this metaphysical question relates to an epistemological problem:  is any kind of correspondence theory of truth necessary and valid, or is coherence the best we can do?  All of these questions lead us to the doctrine of creation.

Alternative Universes and the Doctrine of Creation

There are of course numerous Christian theologies of creation, but this paper assumes the core of the doctrine involves at least the following key claims:  (1) there is an absolute ontological distinction between God and creation; (2) creation is a free act of God’s grace and therefore is not necessary; (3) creation possesses an inherent contingent rationality that derives from its origin as God’s free, gracious act; (4) creation has a purpose that includes the flourishing of created things to the glory of its loving creator-God.[25]  I will add to these core elements of the Christian doctrine of creation what I take as a central claim of Christian eschatology:  (5) the fulfillment of God’s purpose for creation is central to God’s plan for the eschatological future.[26]  Multiverse theologies and philosophies, including Molinism, challenge each of these central claims.

First, the multiverse erodes the ontological distinction between God and creation by transferring God’s classical perfections from God’s own transcendent being into the immanent frame of the multiverse.  With an infinity of possibilities (or at least the finite sum of all real possibilities) actually realized in the multiverse, every power that could have been exercised, everything that could be known, every judgment that could be made, occurs in some immanent domain.  The multiverse is God, and God is the multiverse. Similarly, the multiverse eliminates both the contingency and the accompanying contingent rationality of creation, because all probabilities are realized.  Finally, the multiverse elides any notion of an eschatological future, and indeed contradicts the Biblical concept of “history” as an unrepeatable sequence beginning at creation and culminating in the eschaton.  As Mary-Jane Rubenstein notes in her fascinating study of history of multiverse ideas from the ancient world through modernity, modern multiverse cosmology resonates deeply with ancient and contemporary cyclical, fatalistic views of history.[27]  God here seems more like the infinite faces of Vishnu revealed to Krishna in the Baghavad Gita:  “I am time, destroyer of worlds.”[28]  It is a picture with a kind of terrible beauty, but in the end God is an all-consuming destroyer, not a loving creator and redeemer.

These same objections relating to the doctrine of creation apply to the Molinist eschatological theodicy.  The “free will” defense to the problem of eschatological evil depends entirely on the contingency and integrity of creation, and in particular on the free choices of human beings created with a unique capacity to accept or reject God’s love.  If the “choice” to reject God’s love is made by a version of myself in some alternative universe, then the possible range of choices available to the version of myself in this universe is determined rather than contingent on my actual history.  If God’s justice towards me is vindicated by God’s response to a version of myself in some alternative universe, then in the history of this universe I will not receive justice.  And if the eschatological future is the culmination of choices made by versions of myself and other agents acting in alternative universes, then this universe cannot reach its fulfilment as conceived of by Christian eschatology.  This universe would comprise a kind of accessory to events in other universes, with a history and eschatological culmination only remotely connected to what has happened in our time, here in this universe.  In the final analysis the notion of “transworld damnation” bears no relationship at all to the Biblical and traditional narrative of a gracious creator who acts to redeem and fulfill the creation He loves, and in particular to save the human beings who each bear magnificent value because they each are created uniquely in His image.  I conclude, therefore, that theological reflection about the problem of creaturely freedom and Divine foreknowledge, and about the availability of salvation to all persons given the relatively limited historical reach of the preaching and reception of the Gospel, should look for resources in concepts other than Molinism.[29]

As a concluding note, does my argument create a potential conflict between theology and science?  In response, I would suggest that multiverse cosmology is not well-established as a “natural science” because, by definition, it investigates things that are beyond the domain of empirical analysis.  Within the methodologies of the natural sciences, there may never be a way to know if a multiverse theory is true because empirical confirmation of alternative universes is closed to us.[30]  Nevertheless, according to my argument in this paper, some popular versions of multiverse cosmology would require significant modifications to the classical Christian doctrine of creation.  I would never suggest such modifications are impossible, and Christian theologians should continue to explore the possibilities on a theoretical basis.  But given the viable alternatives, solutions should be preferred which do not so radically distort the classical doctrine of creation.  The same is true concerning Molinism as an eschatological theodicy.

________________________________________

[1] For a general description of Molina and his life, see the entry “Luis de Molina” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, (New York:  Encyclopedia Press 1912), available at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10436a.htm.  For an English translation of Molina’s key work on this topic, see On Divine Foreknowledge:  Part IV of the Concordia, trans. Alfredo J. Freddoso (Ithica:  Cornell Univ. Press 2004).

[2] See, e.g., Alving Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1974); William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God:  The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Eugene:  Wipf & Stock 2000); David Paul Hunt, “Middle Knowledge:  The ‘Foreknowledge Defense,’” 28:1 The International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, 1-23 (August, 1990); Thomas P. Flint, “Molinism,” in Oxford Handbooks Online (Feb. 2015), available at http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935314.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935314-e-29?rskey=hS6tt9&result=1.

[3] For a summary of these three positions, see Thomas P. Flint, “Divine Providence,” in Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology (Oxford:  OUP 2011)(discussing “Thomism,” “Open Theism,” and “Molinism.”).  Molinism is only one of a number of possible mediating positions between determinism and open theism.  Another important set of views can be grouped under the label “Thomism.”  These “Thomist” views focus on the notion of “causality” itself and the differences between God’s “primary” causation and the “secondary” causation of creaturely freedom.  See ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] For a clear popular-level statement of this position, see William Lane Craig’s “Reasonable Faith” website, Q&A #23, available at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/middle-knowledge.

[7] Ibid.

[8] For a description of these views, see Flint, “Divine Providence,” supra Note 3; David P. Hunt, “Middle Knowledge and the Soteriological Problem of Evil,” Rel. Stud. 27:1, 3-26 (Mar. 1991).

[9] See Craig, supra Note 6.

[10] See ibid.

[11] See, William Hasker, “A New Anti-Molinist Argument,” Rel. Stud. 35:3, 291-297 (Sep. 1999); William Hasker, “Anti-Molinism Undefeated!,” Faith and Phil. 17:1, 126-131 (Jan. 2000); William Hasker, “Are Alternative Pasts Plausible?  A Reply to Thomas Flint,” Rel. Stud. 36:1, 103-105 (Mar. 2000); Hunt, supra Note 8.

[12] See articles by Hasker, supra Note 9 and responses by Flint in “Divine Providence,” supra Note 3.

[13] For one article that touches on the question, see Klaas J. Kraay, “Theism, Possible Worlds, and the Multiverse,” Philos. Stud. 147:355-368 (2010).

[14] For a general discussion of these aspects of the doctrine of creation, see Hans Schwarz, Creation (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2002); Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Creation and Humanity (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2015).

[15] For a good popular level presentation of this claim, see Tim Folger, “Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator:  The Multiverse Theory,” Discover (November 10, 2008), available at http://discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/10-sciences-alternative-to-an-intelligent-creator.

[16] See, e.g., The National Academies of Sciences, “Compatibility of Science and Religion,” available at http://www.nationalacademies.org/evolution/Compatibility.html (stating that “science is a way of knowing that differs from other ways in its dependence on empirical evidence and testable explanations. . . .  In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world.”).

[17] For a good overview, see John W. Carroll, “Laws of Nature,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Aug. 2, 2016), available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laws-of-nature/.

[18] See “Counterfactual Theories of Causation,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (February 10, 2014), available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/#Lew197CouAna.  For a good discussion of this thought experiment, see Ben Page, The Dispositionalist Deity:  How God Creates Laws and Why Theists Should Care, Zygon 50:1, 115 (March 2015).

[19] One of the leading proponents of this approach, David Lewis, defends modal realism, although most contemporary philosophers seek to employ this approach for explanatory purposes only.  See “Counterfactual Theories of Causation,” supra Note 18, § 2.1.

[20] See ibid, § 3.

[21] See Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics:  The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (Boston:  Mariner Books 2007).

[22] It should be noted that these are not the only possible forms of the relevant arguments.  The form given below for “Laws of Nature,” for example, is a necessitarian argument, but not all philosophers who use this kind of modal analysis are necessitarians.  Space prevents elaboration of additional forms of the relevant arguments.

[23] The Molinist cannot object here that God’s justice is inscrutably different than human concepts of justice.  That is a standard Calvinist argument, but the Molinist has already committed himself to defending God’s actions under ordinary conceptions of justice.

[24] As noted in Footnote 19, David Lewis makes a similar claim about counterfactual universes.  The qualification “somehow” in relation to “real” here should be carefully noted.  As Lewis himself has suggested, the basic claim that other worlds are “real” does not purport to solve any broader problems in metaphysics or epistemology about what “real” means.  David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford:  Blackwell 1986), ix.

[25] See Schwarz, Creation; Karkkainen, Creation and Humanity; David Fergusson, Creation (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2014).

[26] For a general discussion of this theme in Christian eschatology, see Hans Schwarz, Eschatology (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2000); N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope:  Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York:  HarperOne 2008).

[27] Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Worlds Without End:  The Many Lives of the Multiverse (New York:  Columbia Univ. Press 2014).

[28] Baghavad Gita 11:32, available at http://www.bhagavad-gita.org/Gita/verse-11-30.html.

[29] There are ample resources for such reflection, I believe, in some varieties of what contemporary philosophical theology classes under “Thomism,” and in historical and contemporary theologies of death and of Christ’s descent into Hell.  See, e.g., David Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (South Bend:  Univ. of Notre Dame Press 1993); Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?,” (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press 2014).  Velli Matti Kärkkäinen offers an interesting proposal on the question of freedom and providence that he calls a “Molinist-Pneumatological Solution,” which seems to coincide with some contemporary versions of Thomism (such as David Burrell’s).  See Velli Matti Kärkkäinen, Creation and Humanity (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2015), 365-368.  The affirmative case for those approaches, however, is beyond the scope of this paper.

[30] For a popular level discussion of some of these issues, see Sarah Scoles, “Can Physicists Ever Prove the Multiverse is Real?” Smithsonian.com, April 19, 2016, available at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-physicists-ever-prove-multiverse-real-180958813/.  Further, there are weaker versions of “multiverse” theories that are really theories about other “dimensions.” Theories about multi-dimensionality are not so problematic to Christian theology, which already recognizes that reality has a “spiritual” dimension.

Categories
Theological Ethics

Theological Ethics Class 9: On Birth and Death

Categories
Music

Autumn Falling

This is a little ambient composition I did on the “Una Corda,” a virtual instrument by NI.

Categories
Political Theology Public Theology

Three Qualities Political Leadership: Acting, Performing, Speaking

djt_headshot_v2_400x400Like many others, I’ve been reflecting on the theological and pastoral significance of Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency.  And, like many others, I’ve been troubled by the support Trump garnered from some evangelicals.  As a law professor and theological ethics professor, I feel I need to risk a few public thoughts about political leadership, so here they are:

  1. Character Matters.  Character matters because a leader’s character will inform his or her substantive policy decisions, particularly on hard, contested, urgent issues.  Character also matters because a leader in high office serves a symbolic role that sets a baseline for conduct in every sphere of the commonwealth.  A person invested with the authority of political office bears a heave responsibility to act wisely, with gravity and restraint.

  2. Symbols Matter.  Human beings are a symbolic species.  It is part of our created nature to respond to symbols that identify authority and power.  This is no less the case for an elected President than it is for a hereditary King.  A person entrusted with stewardship of powerful symbols — whether they are clerical vestments, a royal scepter, judicial robes, or the Oval Office — bears a heavy responsibility to perform wisely, with gravity and restraint.

  3.  Words Matter.  Words are among the most powerful human symbols.  Language signifies both specific concepts and broader attitudes, and invokes transcendent realities of thought and truth.  Through his or her words, a political leader represents these transcendent realities to the commonwealth and in a mystical but real sense represents the commonwealth before these transcendent realities.  A person entrusted with the responsibility to speak to and for the commonwealth bears a heavy responsibility to speak wisely, with gravity and restraint.

There is nothing novel about these convictions.  They are present, I think, in the great tradition of political theology running through the Torah, the Old Testament histories and prophets, the New Testament’s reworking of the Hebrew scriptures, and in great Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas.  Until recently, I think they were widely acknowledged by most serious Christians on the right, left, and in between.

In recent American history, when Bill Clinton defiled the Oval Office by exploiting a female intern, even engaging in illicit sexual conduct literally at the President’s desk, most Christians agreed that it mattered.  When he lied to the public about the affair, it mattered.  When his defenders dismissed this conduct as a meaningless “sex lie,” it mattered.  Many of us, myself included, were outraged by this dishonest, facile defense.  I thought Bill Clinton was generally a good President on policy questions, particularly on economic issues, but such conduct cannot pass unchecked.  Whether or not this conduct merited impeachment and removal from office, it rightly provoked grave concern and approbation.

Many conservative Christians have now abandoned proper concerns about character, symbols and words because they think Trump is “pro life” and “small government,” in contrast to the deficiencies, real and perceived, of President Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.  There are many reasons to doubt Trump’s commitments to these policy positions, and many reasons to question the strange brew of restorationism and libertarianism that characterizes much of the religious right.  Even granting those concerns, however, it is wrong, unprincipled, and dangerous to surrender the historic Christian conviction that earthly political leaders play a central role in mediating truth to and for the commonwealth through actions, performance and speech.  We must now hold President Elect Trump to account in this role.

(Image Source = @realDonaldTrump Twitter profile).

Categories
Theological Ethics

Lectures on Friendship, Marriage, Sex, Same Sex Relationships

Here are lectures I put together recently on friendship, marriage, sex, and same-sex relationships for the Christian Theological Ethics class I’m teaching.  I hope they present a balanced and thoughtful overview of these subjects.

Categories
Education

My Teaching Philosophy

aquinasThis is something I put together recently.

I believe the best teachers empower their students to think critically within the framework of an interpretive and practicing tradition.  By “think critically” I mean the capacity to understand and evaluate arguments and to formulate one’s own views about an issue.  By “an interpretive and practicing tradition” I mean to suggest that any kind of meaningful discourse is embedded in a human context that arises from particular historical circumstances and that may apply in various concrete ways to contemporary circumstances.

As a law professor and professor of theological ethics, it is not enough for me to teach “black letter” rules.  Students need to understand the reasons for a black letter rule so they can evaluate whether the arguments for or against the rule are sound.  But it is not enough for students merely to know how to be “critical.”  Even the notion of the “soundness” of an argument suggests that the argument refers to some source beyond its bare internal logic.

Any argument about law or policy is relatively “sound” or “unsound” only in relation to some ideal of human society and flourishing.   This is why critical thinking must occur in relation to an “interpretive and practicing tradition.”  Students need to learn to think critically about ethics, law and policy so that they are prepared to extend, refine and improve the tradition, in particular as they apply those rules within the concrete circumstances of their “practice.”

This emphasis on application “in practice” means that I try to demonstrate how high-level theories lead to concrete principles and rules that get worked out in individual cases.  In this regard it is useful to employ case law, case studies, historical examples, hypothetical scenarios, and “flipped classroom” exercises that help students experience what happens to theories, rules and principles “on the ground.”  A classroom is a “community of practice” in which learners are always being formed as whole people.

At the same time, the possibility that the “tradition” as a whole can be improved suggests some external ideals to which even the tradition itself is subject.  While all human circumstances are historically contingent and therefore in some sense unique, I believe there is an objective reality that gives authentic shape to our contingent concepts of ethics and the “good.”  Therefore, I believe the best teachers ultimately point their students towards reflection on what is universally good, true, just, and right, even if such ideals can be hard for any human being or human community to understand or apply.  Perhaps the best and most lasting lesson any teacher leaves his or her students, to paraphrase Aquinas and Aristotle, is a sense of commitment to the pursuit of a good that is beyond one’s self.

 

Categories
Comparative Religion Ezekiel

Ezekiel’s Theophany and the Bhagavad Gita

ezekielI’ve been reading the book of Ezekiel along with Robert Jenson’s excellent commentary.  The text of Ezekiel opens with the prophet’s vision of God, a theophany.  Ezekiel describes “a great cloud with fire flashing forth continually and a bright light around it, and in its midst something like glowing metal in the midst of the fire,” strange beasts with four wings and four faces, a series of sparkling wheels, an expanse above the creatures’ stretched out wings, and a throne occupied by a fiery human form.  (Ezekiel 1:1-26.)

vishnuOn a long drive this weekend, I listened to an audiobook of the Bhagavad Gita, and I was struck by the resonances between the theophany granted by Krishna / Vishnu to Arjuna in Chapter 11 of the Gita and the theophany given to Ezekiel.  The text says “Arjuna saw in that universal form unlimited mouths, unlimited eyes, unlimited wonderful visions.”  (BG 11:10-11.)  Vishnu “spread throughout the sky and the planets and all space between” and Arjuna saw him “devouring all people in [his] flaming mouths and covering the universe with [his] immeasurable rays.”  When Arjuna asks about Vishnu’s purpose, Vishnu replies, in the quote made famous in the modern west by Oppenheimer, “Time [or Death] I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people.”  (BG 11:32.)

mesoIt is obvious that Ezekiel draws its theophanic imagery from Assyrian and Babylonian symbolism, including figures such as this one that I photographed in the Ancient Near Eastern Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I’m not sure if the author of the Gita was influenced at all by Ancient Near Eastern sources.  No one is sure who wrote the Gita, and scholars date it from 400 BCE to 200 CE, so its influences are unclear, but there certainly was commerce between the Indus and Euphrates valleys from ancient times.

Beyond any direct paralells, I think Ezekiel’s and Arjuna’s visions share a common sense of the ineffability of the Divine, particularly as the transcendent vision of the Divine breaks into history.  For the Gita, the devouring mouths of Vishna represent how “time” consumes all human plans, dreams, ideals and hopes.  Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, quoted a translation that rendered Vishna’s self-naming as “Death,” but my understanding is that the better translation is “Time.”  At first I thought this could be significant.  The Hindu cosmogeny involves endless cycles of death and rebirth, while the Hebrew comogeny, as taken up by Christianity, involves a creation, fall, and final redemption.

But that is perhaps too pat a comparison.  In the Hindu cosmogeny reflected in the Gita, “Time” judges the pretensions of history by its infinite cycles in which all histories end and new histories begin.  For Ezekiel’s vision, God judges history, particularly Israel’s history, by calling the pretensions of humanity to account before the inescapable fiery wheel of God’s presence.  When parts of Ezekiel’s vision are taken up in the New Testament book of Revelation, Jesus is revealed as the true principle of “Time”:  “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty'” (Rev. 1:8) and “’It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end'” (Rev. 21:6) and “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13).  

Both the Gita and the theophanies of Ezekiel and Revelation suggest that “Death” and “Time” are inseparable, but that both are swallowed by eternity.   The real differences, though subtle, reside in how these texts understand incarnation and resurrection.  In the Gita, Vishnu is incarnate in Krishna for the purpose of a revelation to Arjuna about the eternal cycles of reincarnation.  In Ezekiel, God is not literally incarnate but is made present to Israel in the person of the prophet Ezekiel, who pronounces a judgment on Israel’s history.  In Revelation, the incarnate Son surpasses Death and Time through a resurrection that is final and complete.

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Angels Image Source:  Wikimedia Commons.

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Origen Science and Religion

Origen on Adam: Conclusion

800px-origen-768x911This the final post in my series on Origen and Adam.

Adam and the Rule of Faith

In my first post in this series, I suggested that Origen could help us work through some of the philosophical, theological, and scientific problems associated with traditional Christian theological anthropology’s emphasis on “Adam.”  In a prior post I discussed the philosophical claim.  My second claim about how to read the Biblical creation stories relates closely to the Christological emphasis in my discussion of the first claim.

Origen read all of scripture through the lens of a Rule of Faith centered on Christ.  This is particularly evident in Origen’s treatment of the texts from the creation narratives that we examined above.  In applying this method, Origen correctly relativized the “historical” dimension of the text’s literal sense without denying “historicity” altogether.  Origen suggested that interpreters should examine the text carefully to determine if it contains “impossible” elements that we can conclude are not literally historical.  With the knowledge the modern natural sciences has provided us concerning the natural history of the cosmos and human evolution, together with what we have learned from Biblical scholarship about the construction of these texts, we can continue to make such judgments, which can help us better understand what God intends to communicate to us in and through the text.

Matter Still Matters, But So Does the Ideal

My third claim about the natural sciences also relates to the first two claims.  On the one hand, Origen acknowledges the necessity and reality of “matter.”  If we wish to engage fruitfully with the natural sciences, we must do the same.  That is, we must adopt some form of metaphysical “realism.”[1]  The material world we inhabit is real and it possesses an inherent rationality, stability and order that allows us to investigate its operations and causes and to draw conclusions with reasonable degrees of confidence about subjects such as the evolution of the cosmos and of the creatures of the Earth, including humans.  Yet, contrary to the actual or at least methodological posture of the modern natural sciences, Origen understood that “matter” is a created thing and therefore is not all there is.

In many respects, ironically (and contrary to the claims of some naïve modern Christian apologetics about the Big Bang and creation ex nihilo) the modern natural sciences are agnostic about the eternity of matter.  While mainstream “big bang” cosmology does assert that our universe has a beginning, it also posits a singularity beyond which the concept of “time” is meaningless.[2]  In some respects this is similar to Christian ideas about God’s relationship to time and creation, but the singularity “before” the Big Bang is not a personal being, or any kind of being at all.  The result is that “matter” is all there is, and all there ever “was.” Although there is no Aristotelian unmoved mover causing its eternal motions, there is simply nothing “before” matter, or at least nothing that can be known. Other increasingly popular modern cosmologies entail multiverses and repeat “big bangs” that echo Greek opponents of Aristotle who thought matter and the universe were destroyed and recreated in endlessly recurring cycles. [3]  In contrast, the Christian doctrine of creation, as understood by Origen, insists that matter has a transcendent source in God.  Thus, while this ontology is metaphysically realist, it also draws on idealism, to insist that what is in a sense most real is the transcendent, that is, God.

Indeed, the relationship between the ideal and the actual, or the one and the many, concerning human nature, helps us understand why there could have been an “Adam” of history was neither a perfect superman nor the literal biological progenitor of all anatomically modern humans.  The ideal of Adam preexisted the historical first Adam in the Logos, the person of the Son.  In the incarnate Son, Christ, we see the actualization of the ideal Adam.  Looking back from Christ, we see how the first Adam – whoever that representative person may have been in the flow of human biological evolution and early human history – was broken and flawed and therefore how humanity apart from Christ is broken and flawed.  Looking forward from Christ, we see how humanity can be, is becoming, and will one day be healed.

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[1] For a good discussion of the issues here, see Alister McGrath, A Scientific Theology, Vol. 2:  Reality (London:  Bloomsbury T&T Clark 2007).

[2] See “Foundations of Big Bang Cosmology,” NASA, Universe 101, available at http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_concepts.html.  This excellent summary provided by NASA notes that “[i]It is beyond the realm of the Big Bang Model to say what gave rise to the Big Bang. There are a number of speculative theories about this topic, but none of them make realistically testable predictions as of yet.”

[3] See Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Worlds Without End:  The Many Lives of the Multiverse (New York: Columbia Univ. Press 2014).

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Series Bibliography

Acts of the Second Council of Constantinople.

Aquinas, Thomas On Kingship, Book 1, trans. Gerald B. Phelan and I.T. Eschmann (Toronto:  The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 1949).

Aristotle, On the Heavens, trans. J.L. Stocks (Oxford:  Clarendon Press 1927), Books I and II.

Balaguer, Mark, “Platonism in Metaphysics“, in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition).

Bammel, Caroline P. Hammond, “Adam in Origen,’ in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy:  Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, 62-93 (Cambridge:  CUP 1989).

Behr, John, The Mystery of Christ:  Life in Death (Crestwood:  St. Valdimir’s Seminary Press 2006), 90.

Bouteneff, Peter Beginnings:  Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives (Grand Rapids:  Baker Academic 2008).

— “Christ and Salvation,” in Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokrotoff, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (Cambridge:  CUP 2008), 94; Timothy

Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene:  40th Anniversary Edition (Oxford:  OUP 2016)

Genetic Jewish Disease Consortium Website, available at http://www.jewishgeneticdiseases.org/jewish-genetic-diseases/.

Graziano, Michael S., God, Soul, Mind, Brain:  A Neuroscientist’s Reflections on the Spirit World (Freedonia:  Leapfrog Press 2010).

Greek text file of Origen from Migne

Jones, Steve, Martin, Robert and Pilbeam, David, eds., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (Cambridge:  CUP 1996)

Karkainnen, Veli Matti, Creation and Humanity:  A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, Vol. 3 (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2015).

Kelsey, David, Eccentric Existence:  A Theological Anthropology, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox 2009)

McFadyen, Alistair, Bound to Sin:  Abuse, Holocaust and the Doctrine of Sin (Cambridge:  CUP 2000).

McFarland, Ian, “The Fall and Sin,” in John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (Oxford:  OUP 2007)

McGrath, Alister, A Scientific Theology, Vol. 2:  Reality (London:  Bloomsbury T&T Clark 2007).

Migne, Jaques-Paul, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca (Parise:  Imprimerie Catholique  1857), Vol. 11.

NASA, “Foundations of Big Bang Cosmology,” Universe 101.

O’Donovan, Oliver, Finding and Seeking:  Ethics as Theology:  Volume 2 (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2014).

— Self, World and Time:  Volume 1:  Ethics as Theology:  An Introduction (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2013).

— with O’Donovan, Joan Lockwood, eds., From Irenaeus to Grotius:  A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 1999).

Origen, Contra Celsus, trans. Frederick Crombie (Buffalo:  Christian Literature Publishing 1884).

—  On First Principles, trans. G.W. Butterworth (Notre Dame:  Ave Maria Press 2013).

—  “Homilies on Genesis and Exodus,” in The Fathers of the Church, A New Translation, Vol. 71, trans. Ronald E. Heine (Washington, D.C.:  The Catholic University of America Press (1982).

Philo, On the Eternity of the World, in The Works of Philo, trans. Charles Duke Yonge (London: H.G. Bohn 1854-1890).

Pope Benedict XVI, Great Christian Thinkers:  From the Early Church Through the Middle Ages (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press 2011).

Press, Gerald A., “Plato” and Lloyd P. Gerson, “Plotinus and Neo-Platonism” in Richard H. Popkin, ed., The Columbia History of Western Philosophy (New York:  Columbia Univ. Press 1999).

Rubenstein, Mary-Jane, Worlds Without End:  The Many Lives of the Multiverse (New York: Columbia Univ. Press 2014).

Runia, David T., Philo and the Church Fathers:  A Collection of Papers, Chapter Six (New York:  E.J. Brill 1995).

Sandel, Michael J., Justice:  What’s the Right Thing to Do (New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2010).

The Mayo Clinic, “Sickle Cell Anemia,” Causes.

Trigg Wilson, Joseph, Origen (London:  Routledge 2002).

United Nations, Consolidated United Nations Security Council Sanctions List.

Venema, Denis, BioLogos Forum, “Letters to the Duchess.”

von Balthasar, Hans Urs, Origen:  Spirit and Fire, trans. Robert J. Daly, S.J. (Washington D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press 1984)

Ware, Timothy, The Orthodox Church (New York:  Penguin Books 1997)

Wolfson, Harry A., “Patristic Arguments Against the Eternity of the World,” Harvard Theological Review 59:4 (Oct. 1966).

 

Categories
Lectures Theological Ethics

The Web of Theological Ethics

A video clip from one of my lectures on theological ethics.

Categories
Early Christianity Origen Science and Religion

Origen on Adam, Part 4: A Postmodern Christian Platonism?

800px-origen-768x911This is the fourth post in my series about Origen and “Adam.”

A Postmodern Christian Platonism?

In the Introduction to this series I noted the philosophical, critical, and scientific problems with an “Augustinian” view of Adam, the Fall and original sin.  Origen’s approach to the problem can help us navigate through these treacherous shoals.  Philosophically, the ontological idealism suggested by Origen’s selective use of Greek thought can help us articulate how the universal of “human nature” is to some extent corrupted by the sin of the “one man,” Adam.  In response to modern historical criticism, Origen’s hermeneutic centered on the Rule of Faith can help us understand how Paul, and the later Patristic tradition, “read backward” into the Hebrew Scriptures and saw the sign both of universal human depravity and universal human redemption in the “one man,” Adam.  And, scientifically, Origen’s affirmation of “matter” as the created temporal substrate of higher levels of reality located ultimately in the Divine Ideas can help us affirm the scientific evidence concerning development of the human body and genome from our hominid ancestors while refusing the reductionism entailed by modern materialism.

Before unpacking these three claims, it is important to note that there is no suggestion here of a return to the actual details of Origen’s Platonic-Christian synthesis.  The Tradition was right to reject the Gnostic speculations of later Origenism concerning the preexistence of souls, the diversification of souls into humans, angels, demons, and other beings, and the necessary apokatastasis in which all souls return to their original source (different, it should be noted, from the hopeful notion of apokatastasis generally), whether or not Origen actually held those views firmly himself.  The Biblical narrative of creation, fall, and redemption is vastly different from the neo-Platonic and Gnostic ideas that were at issue in the fourth century debates over Origin’s legacy.  Nevertheless, Origen correctly saw that the Biblical texts that outline this grand narrative extend outward from themselves, out from the gritty history in which they are grounded, and point toward transcendent truths, without losing their grounding in the literal sense, precisely because they are both human and divine texts.  The same is true, Origen saw, in human nature:  what makes us “human” is the donation of matter-with-Logos by the eternal wisdom of the transcendent God, that the fall is a turn away from this transcendent Logos and a dissolution into mere matter, and that our redemption entails our return to participate in God’s transcendent life and to receive his Logos again.

Anthropology, Christology, and Justice

In more contemporary terms, Origen rightly concluded that theological anthropology is really Christology.  Indeed, the link between the theology of creation, anthropology, and Christology is particularly evident in Origen’s first Homily on Genesis.[1]  There Origen linked the “in the beginning” of Genesis 1:1 with the “in the beginning” of John 1 and suggests that “[s]cripture is not speaking here of any temporal beginning, but it says that the heaven and the earth and all things which were made were made ‘in the beginning,” that is, in the Savior.”[2]  Concerning the “image of God” in humanity, he asked rhetorically, “what other image of God is there according to the likeness of whose image man is made, except our Savior who is ‘the firstborn of every creature’ . . . .”[3]

The link between anthropology and Christology helps mediate the philosophical tensions within the doctrine of Adam’s fall and original sin.  Western theology after Augustine and prior to modernity generally drew on juridical and political categories to explain why it is just for God to hold all of humanity to account for Adam’s sin.  At a time when political authority was understood to inhere in the absolute rule of Kings, it made sense to suggest that the King directs the commonweal, for good or ill.[4]  For Western people today who reside in Constitutionally ordered nation states, this kind of analogy does not resonate so deeply.  Nevertheless, we still recognize the justice of some kinds of collective political responsibility even if a sanction produces injustice in individual cases.  For example, if the leader of a modern nation-state engages in acts of genocide, we might expect the United Nations to enact sanctions and perhaps to authorize military intervention, and most people likely would think such action in general is just, even though we know some innocent civilians will be negatively impacted.[5]  But even if we can understand the broader justice of upholding the international rule of law and stopping a genocidal leader, we usually do not think justice has truly been served in the individual circumstance of a civilian who loses his livelihood or life as a result of the sanctions.  The individual innocent civilian did not deserve this fate, even if it was unavoidable to stop the genocide.[6]

At the same time, in our globalized, post-modern context, we have once again become more sensitive to the things that bind us together as human beings beyond juridical categories.  As the Rio Olympics recently reminded us, we can speak of a universal “human spirit” that brings people together in a celebration of excellence that exceeds political, tribal and racial boundaries.  And as terrible events like the mass shooting in Orlando likewise recently reminded us, we can experience depths of grief and loss together that exceed even our hottest culture war issues.  Notwithstanding the claims of “new atheist” leaders like Richard Dawkins and Michael Graziano, who claim (ultimately, in contradiction with each other) that we are nothing but genes or brain chemicals, most people know there is something transcendent and universal about human nature.[7]

Classical Christian theology, including Origen’s theology, reading from the Biblical concepts of the “image of God” and of the universal efficacy of Christ’s death and resurrection, understood this universal to reside ultimately in God’s own “mind.”  Of course, classical Christian theology also emphasized God’s simplicity, so that the use of a term like “mind” here was analogical.  The point is that the source of human nature transcends materiality and indeed that materiality itself derives from this transcendent source.  This is why Christian anthropology ultimately is Christology:  only in Christ, the incarnate Son, do we really see the meaning of “Adam.”  As Orthodox theologian and Patristic scholar John Behr reminds us, “[t]heologically speaking, creation and its history begins with the Passion of the Christ and from this ‘once for all’ work looks backwards and forwards to see everything in this light, making everything new.”[8]

This approach can help us see that the implications of Adam’s sin for universal human nature are not so much about juridical categories of “justice” as they are about ontology.  If Adam’s sin distorts the relationship between the particulars of human experience and the universal ideal form of human nature, and if we each take some of that distortion as derived from Adam, it is easier to see why Adam’s sin impacts us all.  We could even use here an Augustinian-sounding analogy from modern genetics, though we must be careful to emphasize that the “transmission” of original sin is not “biological.”  The human genetic code must conform to certain forms, certain sequences of amino acids, if it is to produce a properly functioning human being.  If the form is disrupted through a mutation, such as a missing or changed amino acid, a disease can result, and that disrupted form can be passed down through generations and affect an entire community of people.  Such is the case, for example, with sickle cell anemia among some people of African ancestry or with “Fragile X Syndrome” and other genetic conditions among people of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.[9]  In a roughly analogical way, Adam’s original disruption of human participation in the Divine life distorts the “moral field” of the human life in which we all subsequently find ourselves as the community of humanity.[10]  And Christ, the second Adam, repairs that field and reunites human nature with God.

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[1] See The Fathers of the Church, A New Translation, Vol. 71, Origen:  Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. Ronald E. Heine (Washington, D.C.:  The Catholic University of America Press (1982), 47-71.

[2] Ibid., 47

[3] Ibid., 65.

[4] See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, Book 1, trans. Gerald B. Phelan and I.T. Eschmann (Toronto:  The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 1949), available at http://dhspriory.org/thomas/DeRegno.htm. This statement is admittedly a significant oversimplification of long and complex historical trajectories in both the Christian East and West about the relative authority of Emperors, Princes, and Popes.  See generally Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, eds., From Irenaeus to Grotius:  A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 1999).

[5] For a list of current U.N. sanctions, see Consolidated United Nations Security Council Sanctions List, available at https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/un-sc-consolidated-list.

[6] For a general discussion of contemporary notions of justice, see Michael J. Sandel, Justice:  What’s the Right Thing to Do (New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2010).

[7] See, e.g., Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene:  40th Anniversary Edition (Oxford:  OUP 2016); Michael S. Graziano, God, Soul, Mind, Brain:  A Neuroscientist’s Reflections on the Spirit World (Freedonia:  Leapfrog Press 2010).

[8] Cf. John Behr, The Mystery of Christ:  Life in Death (Crestwood:  St. Valdimir’s Seminary Press 2006), 90.

[9] See The Mayo Clinic, “Sickle Cell Anemia,” Causes, available at http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sickle-cell-anemia/basics/definition/con-20019348; Genetic Jewish Disease Consortium Website, available at http://www.jewishgeneticdiseases.org/jewish-genetic-diseases/.

[10] For a compelling use of the “moral field” metaphor, see Oliver O’Donovan, Self, World and Time:  Volume 1:  Ethics as Theology:  An Introduction (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2013) and Finding and Seeking:  Ethics as Theology:  Volume 2 (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2014).