Easter

We enjoyed celebrating Easter with the Kerrs this year. We started the day at a sunrise service, followed by breakfast, and then another service at 9:30am where we got to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. What a great way to start the celebration.

I always like to see what is growing in Dave and Gayle's backyard. This time I was taken by these beauties. I couldn't resist taking a few pictures under the arbor.

We had goat for Easter dinner. Dave had marinated it overnight, but he wasn't going to be home in time to start cooking it, so Joshua got to sear it on the barbecue then put it in the oven. It was supposed to cook for about two and a half hours.

 Imagine our surprise when Dave pulled the goat leg out of the oven after just an hour and it was already at 180! We prepared the rest of the food as quickly as possible and Joshua made a run to the store to grab some chicken to barbecue in case the goat was inedible.

This little cutie has been growing like crazy since we last saw her.

We sat down to enjoy a delicious dinner together and were pleased to discover that the goat turned out well. It was a little overdone, but we enjoyed it and would like to try it again. We have no idea why it cooked so quickly since we double checked everything and it was what the recipe said.

He is risen indeed!

Christianity and Enmity, part 1

"But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust."

There are two very different senses in which the injunction to "love your enemies" is commonly taken.

• 1. Love your enemies, for by loving them you may "heap burning coals upon their heads," as the saying goes: love is an effective weapon with which to attack them.

We flinch away from this interpretation, because it eliminates the "love" in loving one's enemies. After all, a "love" which is merely a tactical ploy in the attempt to injure another seems a sham, hardly worthy of the name. One gives a display of something like love in order to offend, inflict guilt, etc. Under this interpretation, "love your enemies" means "do not love your enemies," because it denies that you are to love.

• 2.a. Love your enemies, for by loving them you will come to realize that they were never in truth your enemies; we must recognize each other as fellow creatures beloved by God.
• 2.b. Love your enemies, for by loving them you may win them over and they will no longer be your enemies but reconciled to you through love.

But this interpretation, which may initially strike us as much more palatable, actually harbors a greater violence than the first. Here it is the "enemy" in loving one's enemies that is eliminated. This interpretation denies the obligation to love the enemy as an enemy. We do not love our enemies at all, for we love only on the condition that the object of our love is not an enemy. One might go so far as to think that a love which addresses only and precisely the one who is not an enemy is not a love at all, at least in the robust sense. After, even sinners and tax collectors, as they say, do that. Under this interpretation, "love your enemies" means "do not love your enemies," because it denies enmity to the object of love.

Christianity and the Poor, part 2

There are at least two ways to understand the dictum, "blessed are the poor."

The first is to understand it as a proclamation of the universal scope of beatitude. When composed by early Jewish polytheists, the Scriptures extol the God of Abraham over the other gods who, though no less real, are less powerful or beneficent; when composed by a conquering kingdom, the Scriptures speak of a God of war and conquest whose banner is victory and strength; when composed by a people in exile, the Scriptures speak of a God who will one day wield justice against oppressors, giving hope to the downtrodden; when composed by first century peasants living under imperial Rome, the Scriptures speak of a God who blessed the poor and weak. That is to say, God meets us where we currently are, bringing divine love into whatever the situation in which we find ourselves. "To the poor I say, 'yes, you also, even you, are blessed.'"

The second is to understand it as a preferential and exclusive manifestation of God's nature. The conquering Israelites were simply wrong, because God is not on the side of the strong, but of the weak (or, more subtly, the conquering Israelites were "really" weak in some hidden way). God despises those of strong, noble, and abundant life, or at least has little care for them. Rather, it is those who are beaten and downtrodden who have a monopoly on God's favor. "To the poor I say, 'though you seem on the losing end now, in the end you will be the only winners.'"

Despite its flaws, it is not difficult to see how the second interpretation prevails. To those who suffer long under oppressive condition, there is a pervasive feeling of impotence, of the inability to command and order one's life how one wishes, of powerlessness to throw off one's enemy. The words, "blessed are the poor," however, hold promise: the resentment of the oppressed finds a foothold, a weapon to wield against the foe. The one whose desire to seize control and turn the tables cannot find expression resorts to the threat of an eternal table-turning: "I suffer under you now, but God is on my side, not yours; you will suffer and I will be exalted for eternity." The beatitude of the poor, understood exclusively, becomes the last, ultimate, and sweetest revenge of the impotent.

As this interpretation becomes increasingly popular, however, it gradually infects others. For the poor, the doctrine satiates the frustrated desire for revenge and thus offers kind of comfort, but for those who strive for excellence and enjoy an abundance of life, the doctrine becomes outright poisonous. If divine beatitude rests upon the poor alone, then one must become impoverished, one must impoverish oneself.

The doctrine also perpetuates itself with a kind of self-feedback loop. Those who are misled into believing that Christianity demands sickliness and abasement and respond by rejecting Christianity rather than the richness of life are taken as proof that Christianity cannot be embraced by anyone but the poor.

Thus, the resentment of the sick triumphs over the healthy. If you are not among the impoverished, there exists a whole repertoire of techniques you can employ to enfeeble yourself. People will tell you grateful stories about how life was stripped from them, making them poor and finally, therefore, blessed by God. You will sing songs about how much you desire to be brought low and made miserable. You will begin to feel guilty for your strength.

To those who are healthy, this doctrine is pernicious, for it demands one face the impossible alternative of forsaking God and damning oneself or forsaking life and sickening oneself. To those who are poor, too, this doctrine is pernicious, for it replaces the hope of redemption with an affirmation of perpetual misery.

Ultimately, what begins as a proclamation of universality, that the love of God is so extravagant that it reaches even to those who are suffering and downtrodden, is transformed into its precise opposite: the love of God is so restricted that it extends only to the poor.

A Brief Update

It's official! Joshua accepted the offer made by University of Oregon to be part of their doctorate program starting in the fall. We are planning to move up to Oregon this summer.

He also went up to Turlock this week to defend his thesis, which went well. Now that that's over, he just has to do some touch up editing and a bunch of paperwork before graduation at the end of next month.

A Divine Analogy for Libertarian Will, part 2

Problem 2: (A)causal confusion

As we discussed in the last post, some libertarians argue that

• A volitional act need have no prior cause and
• A volitional act is not arbitrary ("random").

This conjunction appears impossible. However, we are told, its possibility is demonstrated by way of example:

• Divine willing has no prior cause but is not arbitrary.

I am not convinced. We can speak of three possible causal situations that might pertain to whatever exists:

1. Whatever exists may be caused to exist by another,
2. Whatever exists may be caused to exist by itself, or
3. Whatever exists may not be caused to exist.

It seems to me that the analogy to divine will rests upon a failure to distinguish between the latter two senses of what it means to be without prior cause. The former is proper only to God and cannot describe human willing. This leaves the latter, which cannot evade the charge of arbitrariness.

"Whatever exists may be caused to exist by another."

This is the standard sense in which we think of causality. The bulb lights because of the character of its filament and the introduction of electricity; electricity is introduced because of the conductivity of wires, the presence of a power plant, and the flipping of a light switch, the light switch is triggered because of the design of its motion sensor and the fact that a cat ran through the yard, etc.

Note that this process can be extended repeatedly -- the running of the cat, for example, is explained in part by its biological constitution, which is explained by its genetic makeup, which is explained by its evolutionary history, which is explained by the composition of the planet earth, which is explained by certain cosmological facts, etc., etc.

This causal situation is denied to God, who is not caused to be by something other than God. Libertarians, however, also deny this causal situation to the human will. If the libertarian theory is right, an act of human will must fall into one of the other two categories.

The first horn of the dilemma: "whatever exists may be caused to exist by itself."

This is the causal situation that is affirmed of the divine. God is not caused by another; rather, God is self-caused, the "self-moved mover." If our own willing is analogous to God's willing, it must be self-caused. This, however, is problematic.

1. The assertion that human beings are self-caused stands in direct contradiction to an extremely basic element of Christianity, namely, the idea that we are beings created by God. On this view, we are creatures, God is the Creator, and we are dependent upon God for our existence. God is the cause of all that is, including human beings. Of course, it could be that Christianity is wrong as such, or Christianity could be revised to deny the creator/creature relationship to God and humans. Nevertheless, this seems like a difficult position to hold.
2. That which is self-caused is necessary, rather than contingent, being. To be contingent is to have dependent existence, to account for one's existence in relation to another. That which is self-caused, however, has its existence accounted for only in itself; there is nothing external by which its existence or non-existence could be stipulated. To be self-caused, then, is to be necessary. It seems difficult, however, to think of myself as having a strictly necessary existence. I don't think that I have always existed, co-eternal with God. Likewise, it would seem that the specifics of my existence (the particular ways in which I exist, such as my dispositions and decisions) are also contingently determined in relation to external events, rather than necessary manifestations of a self-caused nature.
3. In that which is self-caused, essence entails existence. The existence of whatever is self-caused can only be accounted for by its essence or nature. But if the nature of a thing entails its existence, it is never not the case that this is so, and thus, again, it must exist necessarily. But as we said above, the concept that I exist necessarily is difficult to affirm.
4. That which is self-caused is probably not libertarian. To be self-caused is to follow the necessity of one's nature. For a libertarian, who views contingent causation as incompatible with his version of "freedom," the necessary causation following from the nature of a thing would likely not appear any more "free." If it is objectionable that my actions are determined directly and invariably by the enormous set of factors that have produced me, I imagine that it would be likewise objectionable if my actions are determined directly and invariably by my own nature. (Of course, I have a hard time understanding the libertarian concept of "freedom," which does not make sense to me, so I could be mistaken.)

For all of these reasons, it would be difficult to affirm that the human will is self-caused.

The second horn of the dilemma: "whatever exists may not be caused to exist."

This, it is important to note, is not affirmed of the divine. In traditional Christianity, God does not just pop into being one day with no cause; rather, as we said above, God is self-caused. But if the libertarian denies that human decisions are caused by another, and if we are not eager to accept that they are self-caused, then we are left with the concept that they are without cause. Again, this is problematic.

1. First, it is not clear what it would mean for something to be without any cause at all. We know of nothing, whether created or uncreated, that simply has no cause (potentially excepting, as we are considering, libertarian will). Such a thing would not be necessary (self-caused), but neither would it even be contingent (caused by another). The existence of such a thing would not depend upon anything. We could not ask, "why does it exist," or even, "why did it come into existence now, rather than another time," for such questions only apply to things for which an account can be given. It cannot be understood why this thing exists rather than something else, for there is simply no reason. It is not even "magical," for magic has a structure and a magician. Such issues could be proliferated indefinitely; ultimately, the point is that I am not sure that the idea of something existing without any cause is even intelligible.
2. The fundamental theistic question, "why is there something, rather than nothing," is eliminated by the notion that things can simply come into being with no cause at all. It is difficult to see how Christian theology could proceed in light of such a doctrine. This does not make the proposal automatically wrong, of course, but it makes it a difficult one to swallow.
3. That which is uncaused is uncreated, which is problematic in the ways outlined above.
4. If something is uncaused, then it is arbitrary in the strictest sense. It cannot be occasioned by anything. If my decision is uncaused, for example, there can be no reason for it to have occurred now, rather than during the Stone Age, or at the dawn of the universe. Likewise, there can be no reason for it to be this decision rather than some other one. It cannot depend upon anything at all; it cannot be informed by anything about the situation in which it occurs; it is strictly and entirely arbitrary.
5. Finally, if something is uncaused, it cannot in any sense be "mine," for it neither comes from me, nor depends upon me, nor adheres within me. It comes not only from outside me, but from outside the entire created universe, even outside of God.

Thus, it seems equally difficult to affirm that the human will simply has no cause at all.

Conclusion

A person could try to wriggle out of the dilemma by saying, "my decision does have its cause in another, namely me; it is just that there is nothing prior to me that can account for it." But this is to simply push the problem back a step, not to eliminate it, for the same question must be asked of "you": do "you," understood as the-thing-making-this-decision, have your cause in another? This seems to be what the libertarian denies in suggesting that there is no causal account of a decision beyond "me." If the answer is positive, then we are not libertarians and there is no difficulty, for decisions, like everything else that we encounter in this world, have their causes, which have prior causes, stretching back indefinitely. If the answer is indeed negative, though, then we are once again caught between the two horns of the dilemma.

Thus, one who rejects that our decisions are ultimately caused by another is therefore faced with a difficult choice, both alternatives of which seem unacceptable: either they are self-caused, and therefore necessary, or they are without cause, and therefore not even contingent.

The way out of the dilemma, of course, is to deny the libertarian position and affirm the more typical view of human will that sees it as participating in the created order of which it is a part.

A Divine Analogy for Libertarian Will, part 1

In my ongoing discussion with Isaac, he wrote:

I don't think of my volition as needing a prior cause. I think of myself as the originator of my willing. This does not mean that it was random in any way in the same sense that God's willing something prior to creation free of antecedents was random or any willing He does now post creation with antecedent events is determined.

In a well known article, Alvin Plantinga expresses a similar thought:

The first point to note is that on the Christian scheme of things, God is the premier person, the first and chief exemplar of personhood. God, furthermore, has created man in his own image; we men and women are image bearers of God, and the properties most important for an understanding of our personhood are properties we share with him. [...] God does and has done many things: he has created the world; he sustains it in being; he communicates with his children. But it is extraordinarily hard to see how these truths can be analyzed in terms of causal relations among events. What events could possibly cause God's creating the world or his undertaking to create the world? God himself institutes or establishes the causal laws that do in fact hold; how, then, can we see all the events constituted by his actions as related to causal laws to earlier events? How could it be that propositions ascribing actions to him are to be explained in terms of event causation?

In brief, the argument claims that both we and God are persons, and on this basis it is possible to construct an analogy between God's will, which is not determined by an external cause, and our own.

I think there are a number of problems with this view. In this post, I would like to tackle the attempt to draw an analogue based on the concept of a divine "person." Two caveats are in order. First, it is only Plantinga that makes appeal to personhood, not Isaac. Second, it is not clear that the argument really requires the concept; perhaps it is possible to draw a direct analogy between the human and divine will in the absence of an analogy of persons. Nevertheless, the conceptual deployment of personhood indicates a basic theological mistake that seems worth addressing.


Problem 1: Confusion concerning "person"

The divine analogy for libertarian will fundamentally misunderstands what is meant by the theological term "person" with respect to God. The Scriptures themselves do not christen God "person," which is instead a term of technical theological vocabulary that translates the Greek hypostasis. The hypostasis ("person") refers to that which underlies the accidents (a beach ball, for example, might be repainted from red to blue or pop and deflate, but beneath the accidents -- in this case, color and shape -- it nevertheless remains a beach ball). It is furthermore distinguished from ousia ("nature," "substance") as an individuation of the latter (what I take to the beach, for example, is not just "beach ball as such" or "the nature of beach ball" but rather this beach ball). That I am a hypostasis expresses subsistence beneath accidents (I am still Joshua with and without a beard) and individuation of essence (I am "Joshua," not "man"). In fact, in the order of creation nature only exists in hypostasis.

As James Chastek points out, it is initially hard to see what work the term hypostasis could do with respect to God. The concept is required because of the difference between nature and a concrete particular. In God, however, there is no such difference:

In God, however, the nature itself existed.  This was necessary in order to account for the sort of God that both Hellenic philosophy and Judaic revelation spoke of: God, as creator, was responsible for the existence of every sort of thing that was itself indifferent to existence, and so it would involve contradiction to make his nature indifferent to existence. Thus divinity as divinity, and not merely as a divine self, exists. There thus seems no reason to introduce a divine hypostasis over and beyond this.

On the contrary, to speak of God as a hypostasis seems incorrect, insomuch as it implies a distinction between essence and existence or between substance and accident, both of which are fundamentally denied of God. One cannot simply say something like, "God is a person because God is rationally benevolent and exists," for the claim that such a being is necessarily a person (hypostasis) is precisely what is denied in affirming that the divine nature exists.

The term "person" (hypostasis), however, emerged as valuable in the early attempts to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity. If "human nature" really existed, we would have to ask how each of us were at once seven billion persons and yet substantially one being. Thus, the division between ousia and hypostasis offered the Church Fathers a conceptual clue for articulating how God could be at the same time one substance and three distinct relations. Thus, the traditional formulation of the trinitarian faith became "three hypostases in one ousia."

Note that the term "person" is in this way being used in an extremely equivocal sense. God is not a "person" in the sense that we are persons, for all the reasons outlined above. As St. Thomas says:

Since everything that is perfect must be attributed to God, forasmuch as His essence contains every perfection, this name "person" is fittingly applied to God; not, however, as it is applied to creatures, but in a more excellent way. [...] It is one thing to ask the meaning of this word "person" in general; and another to ask the meaning of "person" as applied to God. [...] In human nature it signifies this flesh, these bones, and this soul, which are the individuating principles of a man. [...] Now distinction in God is only by relation of origin, as stated above, while relation in God is not as an accident in a subject, but is the divine essence itself; and so it is subsistent, for the divine essence subsists. Therefore, as the Godhead is God so the divine paternity is God the Father, Who is a divine person. Therefore a divine person signifies a relation as subsisting. And this is to signify relation by way of substance, and such a relation is a hypostasis subsisting in the divine nature, although in truth that which subsists in the divine nature is the divine nature itself.

To speak of God as "person," in other words, is to adopt the concept of hypostasis as an attempt to think the difficulty of the Trinity, which requires something like a non-accidental distinction of relation within a unity of substance.

Thus, the term "person" can name the human and divine only in an equivocal sense.