Mark wrote:

You seemed genuinely astounded by my unbelief  To answer your question though: What do these theologians have to do with me? I'm sure they did accept it, but that doesn't make it any more understandable to me.

 

I'm a little surprised, although my tone might have over-emphasized my astonishment. I’m surprised not so much because I necessarily find it hard for someone to reach your conclusions, but because I've never actually seen a case like you in the wild; I've considered it as a hypothetical position that someone might hold, but I never really expected to ever see anyone hold it.

My point about the theologians is that these guys can be taken as representative of their respective theological schools, which aggregately easily accounts for somewhere around 90-95% of all Christians. The upshot of this is that if tradition means anything to you at all, then you need to really take this seriously; you would have a much harder time grounding, say, the Canon of Scriptures in tradition than MPV.

Is it not also good evidence to make oneself take a moral self-evaluation? Would God have allowed this many brilliant and committed Christians to be deceived on such a basic point as this? Perhaps this is evidence enough for one to hold faith, and patiently await the proper raison d'etre for later?

Last edited by Timotheos (7/18/2015 5:57 pm)

DanielCC wrote:

Jason Grey wrote:

For example, my copy of the Summa Theologiae has written on it in big fat black Sharpie letters:  STRAW  
I think that's worth remembering every time one reads Thomas. 
 

On a tangent but an anti-philosophical friend once tried that bit on me. I responded by pointing out that my favourite proof in fact came about as a result of a mystical experience – he was not too happy about this. 

I am definitely not anti-philosophical.  But like many here I suspect, I think that human reason (like all that is best in us)  aims upwards to God, who can of course meet us more than halfway, through revelation and grace.  

Why would it surprise us in the least that a God whom we believe is Himself both the eternal Logos and Truth itself would guide a trust-seeking philosopher to an argument?  Haven't almost all the great Christian philosophers and thinkers prayed for assistance, support, and guidance in their thinking?  I'm not sure one can even distinguish praying and philosophizing in, say, The Confessions.  God may even have a sense of humor about this:  Anselm famously prayed a very long time for THE argument to answer the atheist -- and he got the Ontological Argument.  Question: is that in any way related to God's answers, much more directly, to questions by Moses and Job?

"Here we see as through a glass, darkly."  The human intellect is like a darkened mirror.  It is neither useless nor is it functioning optimally.  In addition to some darkness being INSIDE the faculty that is meant to reflect light, the mirror of the intellect must be aimed in the right direction.  A metanoia is required, a "complete turning of the mind around towards the light" so beautifilly described in Plato's Cave Image.  Plato says that intellect, the eye of the soul, can no more be turned around towards the light without the whole soul being turn towards virtue and the good, than the eye can look through the back of the skull, without the body which houses the eye turning around.  

This proposition, that only good people can know the good, and that bad people blind themselves intellectually as a result of ethical vices, is one my students find utterly unbelievable, for the most part.  It seems very unfair to them that they cannot act however they like without incurring self-inflicted damage.  

As Pascal said, "There is nothing more reasonable than reason's recognition that there are things above reason."  The solution is not to take a leap of faith over reason -- Nietzsche, with no knowledge of Kierkegaard, wrote of the "weariness that wants to reach the ulimate in one leap, in one fatal leap."  Pascal saw that the rationalism of Descartes was a severe truncation of reason -- although he didn't escape this himself.  

If I had to formulate one of the main problems that classical theists face today, it is that "reason" has been co-opted into rationalism (calculative rationality, ratio in the narrow sense, not logos is the wide sense), and is being laid claim to by the secularists in the form of scientism.  And scientism, or any ungrounded rationalism is, paradoxically, PROFOUNDLY IRRATIONAL, even absurdist, and ends up becoming an exercise more in power than in truth -- it "enframes" the world, as Heidegger would put, allow only certain things past its filter to count as "evidence" or "truth."  This is why atheists endless complain that "there is no evidence" for God.  They have in place a filter than prevents any possible evidence from counting for them, within their framework, as evidence.  If you press them on the point of the EVIDENCE that they have that ONLY their preferred kind of evidence (usually "scientific" or "physical") really counts as evidence, the position immediately collases.   The verification principle cannot be verified.  From what impression did Hume derived the idea that there are only impressions and ideas? "Scientific statements are the only ones that can express truth claims or knowledge" is not a scientific statement.

So here we are, caught between irrational scientism and irrational fideism.  Actually, scientism is a kind of irrational fideism, so we are caught between scientism and Christian fideism -- which raise a whole host of its own problems, such as the "privatization" of religious faith, belief, and praxis, made possible by the prior subjectivizing of faith as a kind of religious sentiment or "belief without evidence."  

Would many or most of you agree that clasical theism sees faith and reason as related in a complimentary (if not spousal) manner, whereas the situation we find today is an almost complete opposition or divorce ASSERTED to exist between them? That we are trying to sail between the Charybdis of fideism and the Sylla of scientism?

 

Last edited by Jason Grey (7/18/2015 9:25 pm)

Jason Grey wrote:

I am definitely not anti-philosophical.  But like many here I suspect, I think that human reason (like all that is best in us)  aims upwards to God, who can of course meet us more than halfway, through revelation and grace. 

Never said you were Jason. My post was more of a whimsical aside on the relationship between mystical experience and philosophical proofs.

Jason Grey wrote:

Why would it surprise us in the least that a God whom we believe is Himself both the eternal Logos and Truth itself would guide a trust-seeking philosopher to an argument?  Haven't almost all the great Christian philosophers and thinkers prayed for assistance, support, and guidance in their thinking?  I'm not sure one can even distinguish praying and philosophizing in, say, The Confessions.  God may even have a sense of humor about this:  Anselm famously prayed a very long time for THE argument to answer the atheist -- and he got the Ontological Argument.  Question: is that in any way related to God's answers, much more directly, to questions by Moses and Job? 

Well in as much as certain persons may receive divine inspiration in the course of their philosophising certainly. That doesn't actually effect the final product i.e. the propositions they set down though. Likewise with Augustine we can certainly attempt to provide a phenomenological elucidation of religious experience (much of The Confessions is a indeed  drawn out prayer but at the same time it’s a phenomenological reflection on the nature of time, memory and the act of praying itself).

Jason Grey wrote:

As Pascal said, "There is nothing more reasonable than reason's recognition that there are things above reason."  The solution is not to take a leap of faith over reason -- Nietzsche, with no knowledge of Kierkegaard, wrote of the "weariness that wants to reach the ulimate in one leap, in one fatal leap."  Pascal saw that the rationalism of Descartes was a severe truncation of reason -- although he didn't escape this himself.

I'm not sure what you mean by Rationalism here. If you mean the Cartesian way of doubt then I agree but so would most philosophers who aren't hard-line Foundationalists (also the subjecting the laws of logic to doubt being incoherent but of course that’s widely accepted too). Though he wasn't a complete fideist I'm suspicious of Pascal – that style of rhetoric turns the intellectual soul from being the mirror of God to being a broken nothing indeed of help from something fundamentally beyond and incomprehensible to its own order. The theophantic nature of reality vanishes and some incoherent phantasm called the ‘natural world’ appears against God.

Jason Grey wrote:

If I had to formulate one of the main problems that classical theists face today, it is that "reason" has been co-opted into rationalism (calculative rationality, ratio in the narrow sense, not logos is the wide sense), and is being laid claim to by the secularists in the form of scientism.  And scientism, or any ungrounded rationalism is, paradoxically, PROFOUNDLY IRRATIONAL, even absurdist, and ends up becoming an exercise more in power than in truth -- it "enframes" the world, as Heidegger would put, allow only certain things past its filter to count as "evidence" or "truth."

Here, you've touched on precisely what concerns me with the above: scientism or Logical Positivism are not paradoxically irrational they're just irrational full-stop, the result of intellectual and social fads – one needs no mystical experience to establish this: even Bertram Russell spent decades trying to point it out. Sometimes I think modern philosophers would benefit from a good dose of Cartesian-Phenomenological history-culture bracketing to cut through some of these prejudices.

I agree that there is a possible over emphasis on dialectical reasoning as opposed to given experience of the Divine – Hegel would be a prime example of this – but I think that’s relatively uncommon these days.

Jason Grey wrote:

Would many or most of you agree that clasical theism sees faith and reason as related in a complimentary (if not spousal) manner, whereas the situation we find today is an almost complete opposition or divorce ASSERTED to exist between them? That we are trying to sail between the Charybdis of fideism and the Sylla of scientism?

I would agree that they ought to exist in such a complementary manner. With doctrines such as Transubstantiation or the Trinity the Christian philosopher can show that they are not contradictory even if their existence cannot be deduced from reasoned premises.

DanielCC wrote:

I agree that there is a possible over emphasis on dialectical reasoning as opposed to given experience of the Divine – Hegel would be a prime example of this – but I think that’s relatively uncommon these days.

You and Jason and I disagree about Hegel on this particular matter, but that would take a long time to show. He and I have been in disagreement about it for about 3 years.

I considered starting and/or moving this aside to a new thread on νόησις, but I think it would be best that Jason start and frame the thread on his own. 

Last edited by iwpoe (7/19/2015 9:22 am)

Let me take a go at the question of transubstantiation.   

The bread and wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist are said to BE the body and blood of Christ.  Now, they show no outward sign of change -- that is, they seem outwardly to the senses to still BE bread and wine.  If one were to hide a consecrated loaf amidst loaves of unconsecrated bread or set a chalice of consecrated wine amidst several other chalices of unconsecrated wine, the ones that are consecrated, and therefore ARE the body and blood of Christ, would seemingly be undetectable as such.

This leads to the fairly reasonable question:  if we know what a thing IS only by its manifest powers and properties, and the consecrated bread and wine still retain their powers and poperties as bread and wine, how can they BE the body and blood of Christ also?

The typical Protestant answer is: "They can't be two things at once and aren't.  They are not really the body and blood of Christ, but only symbols of Christ's body and blood." 

The typical Orthodox answer is: "They are the body and blood of Christ, and we don't know how this is possible.  It is a mystery.  Or better, a Mystery (the Greek for "sacrament" is μυστήριον)."

The typical Catholic answer is that some light can be shed on the sarcament by the docrine of transubstantiation, namely, that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in their substance (being, ousia), while remaining unchanged in their accidents or properties.  

In Aristotelian metaphysics, substance/ousia has two chief meanings: the primary meaning is an individuated relatively independent existing being (to on) and the secondary meaning is form or essence or nature (to ti ēn einai).  So, for example, a cat is a substance.  It is a discrete, definable being that we can point to as a distinct act of existence conjoined with a nature or form or whatness (in this case the form "cat") which makes it, in existing, be something (a cat) and not something else (a dog).  

So far so good.  Let me quote Joseph Owens (one of the 20th century's great scholars of Aristotle), from his An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (which, by the way, is excellent, but it is far from elementary):

"When matter loses one substantial form and acquires another, it becomes the material principle of a new thing.  The first thing perishes, the second comes into being.  Since the form is the cause of being, each existential act lasts only as long as the form that determines and limits it."

When a cat dies, for example, it no longer posseses the form of CAT (although as a ex-cat, it may retain the shape and material configuration of a cat for a time, until it decays).  

The problem then, seems to be that the substance of the bread and wine is not so much changed as added to.  While staying what it is, it becomes something else, the body and blood of Christ, also. 

At least, this will be so unless we deny that consecrated bread IS bread and consecrated wine IS wine.  We can make that move, but it puts us in the curious position of saying that something has all the properties of X whereby we define and identify X as X (e.g. bread as bread), but notwithstanding, it really IS NOT bread.  The trouble with this move is that it not only appears to be ad hoc, but it appears to disconnect what things really or essentially are from their properties, which seems to be an egregious violation of common sense and reason.  Imagine me trying to pay my $100 debt with a $1 bill, while claiming that, yes, although it does have ALL the properties of a $1 bill, it is really, in substance, a $100 bill, and thus should be accepted as such.  Or that that cat over there, which has all the properties by which we identify an X as "a cat" is in fact not a cat, but a dog, despite having none of the properties of a dog.  

This seems to render definition and identification of any being impossible, if one is allowed to say "Yes, I concede it has all the properties of an X, but it is really a Y," since we have no direct access to the substance of being besides its natural properties.

I do not know for certain what Aristotle would have thought of the claim that substance and properties are so related that a thing's substance could change with no change in its accidents whatever, but I suspect he would have found this an absurd claim.  

So, some questions: 

1. Is the consecrated bread still bread, and the wine still wine?  If not, we seem to endanger our ability to identify any being at all.  If so, it seems that the substance of the bread and wine are changed by some kind of addition to their being; i.e. the bread is both bread AND the body of Christ, the wine is both wine AND the blood of Christ.  

2. If it is an addition, does the bread now have two natures?  Bread and the body of Christ?  Or three natures, since Christ has two? Bread and human being and God? 

3. If we did my experiment of hiding a consecrated loaf of bread amongst unconsecrated loaves of bread, would it be undetectable as such? That is, are we saying that the bread and wine, although really changed, and indeed changed essentially, are changed such that the change is absolutely undectable by human powers?  

The traditional teaching of the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine does not stand or fall with the doctrine of transubstantiation, which as I recall dates from around the 12th century.  Whether it is the proper metaphysical account of what happens in the Eucharist or not, or at least throws some light on it, Christians managed to participate in the divine mystery for a good thousand years without knowing this or needing to know it.  

At first glance, as a Christian philosopher who is entirely convinced of the truth of the real presence and highly sympathetic to Aristotelian metaphysics, I admit I have trouble seeing what light the doctrine throws on the mystery of the Eucharist.  It seems to me prima facie to solve no problem, while at the same time raising a number of severe metaphysical problems by de-coupling substance and properties in a radical way, which seems to at least point to a denial that we can really know natures or essences.  I am not really sure how to block the move "Yes, that being has all the properties of a cat, but it is really, substantially, a dog, despite having no dog properties" other than to declare this move absurd, a misunderstanding of the relation of substance and properties -- but the doctrine of transubstantiation seems to authorize just this absurd move.  

To me, the doctrine seems to add no understanding while at the same time creating (possibly insoluable) metaphysical difficulties and has a prima facie appearance of being ad hoc.  So it seems, again prima facie, like a good candidate for a use of (the often misused) Ockham's Razor.  Perhaps others can shed more light on the doctrine, on what it actually explains, if anything.  I admit I find it very opaque, as having no more explanitory power than "we don't know", giving the appearance of being ad hoc, and the source of a myriad of unnecessary metaphysical complications.