"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?"Scrooge recognizes that we speak of the future in two very different senses: there are the things that "may be," which are mere possibilities (e.g., it's possible that tomorrow I go to work as usual, that I get sick and stay home, or that I win the lottery), and there are are the things which "will be," which are bound to happen (e.g., whichever of those things is the one that will actually come about). Scrooge wonders to which ontological category these visions belong. But the ghost's purpose in giving this vision of the future is not to impart propositional knowledge regarding a future state of affairs, but to produce in Scrooge a certain existential change of course. What the ghost communicates does not concern the ontology of the future revealed; what the ghost communicates concerns the comportment of the present toward what is to come.
In this sense, the ghost cannot answer Scrooge's question in an authentic existential register. If the ghost says the future is fixed -- "Tiny Tim will die" -- then the knowledge of the future gives no impetus to change in the present. If, on the other hand, the vision is one of mere possibility -- "it is possible that Tiny Tim might die; anything can happen" -- then the knowledge of the future likewise gives no impetus to change in the present.
Thus, the ghost is simply silent.
The problem is that the existential relation to the future that is proper to the mode of discourse here at stake requires at the same time (a) an expectation of a determinate relation between present and future and (b) an expectation of an indeterminate relation between present and future. The "reforming vision of the future" thus has a peculiar sense: it is the future that will happen with respect to the current state of affairs, but it is the future that will not happen with respect to the state of affairs brought about by the vision (insofar as it is successful).
One could accuse such a reforming vision of being a lie: precisely by revealing the future as real, the prophet guarantees that the future will have no reality (again, insofar as it is successful). This, however, would be to miss the point. This type of discourse does not situate the reality of the future vision in its possibility of arrival (as we said, if the discourse is effective, such a future has no possibility of arrival). Rather, the reality of the future is to be found in the present: the vision depicts in eventuation what is in truth already present. Scrooge is already killing Tiny Tim and is already despised, if only in germinal form. The reforming vision of the future is not a prediction, but a mirror.
Through the prophet Jonah, God declared, "Yet forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed." The city repented and did penance, and "God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not."
We read this poorly if we read it under the mistaken assumption that the discourse of Nineveh's destruction operations as an ontological claim regarding the future. If God expresses a propositional truth about the future, and that proposition turns out to be false, then God must not be omniscient, or must have lied, or must have changed God's mind, etc. Some of the biblical authors, attempting to express what is happening, even resort to language that seems consistent with such conclusions (in certain places, for example, God is said to have "repented" of one course of action and taken another). But these exegetical problems stem from a category mistake. The declaration concerning what will come to pass is not uttered in the register of propositional truths concerning the ontological status of a state of affairs that is to come; rather, it is a "reforming vision of the future." That the destruction of Nineveh is coming expresses a truth about the present form of life of its citizenry and effects a transformation of their existential comportment. By disclosing the future entailed by the present, God makes that future impossible, because the very act of disclosure transforms the present, bringing about the state of affairs that was truly yet to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment