Consciousness and the Proportionate Indeterminacy of Knowledge

One of the strange themes that you will run across amongst the New Atheists is a type of ana-Positivism or an inerascinable faith in the ability of empirical scientism to provide explanations for reality, especially over-against any type of "religious" thematic. I call it "ana-Positivism" not because it fundamentally differs from positions put forward by the Vienna Circle and their epigones (hence why it would be difficult to call it "neo-Positivism"), but simply because it appears to be an attempt (an incredibly myopic one, in my opinion) to re-positivize the sciences (hence the prefix ana) despite the hefty amount of evidence weighed against pure empiricism (linguistic theory, hermeneutical theory, Kuhn's "paradigm shift" theory etc...). For those unfamiliar with positivism it is, loosely put, the theory that all true knowledge must be able to be proved 1.) empirically or 2.) be true analytically (i.e. by definition: "all bachelors are unmarried men.") A later addition was that knowledge is acceptable that in theory will eventually meet one of these two criteria (e.g. we may not know exactly what a planet in another galaxy is made of, but in principle this could be provable by one of the two postulates in the future). This of course rules out any talk about God or metaphysics, which was one of its prime intentions.

I dont want to here go over the oft-repeated hermeneutical and philosophical objections to positivism (e.g. that it, as a theory, does not meet its own criteria), except one. The assumption seems to be that we are being given a more and more comprehensive view of reality based upon scientific or empirical description that is giving us the ability more and more to "explain" events. Now I dont want to contradict the truism that certainly scientific knowledge of the world is advancing, or that our technological expertise is increasing. What seems bizarre to me is the almost utopian (or even post-Hegelian) ideal that one day all "facts" about the universe could even be known. It seems to be a fundamentally undergirding ideal that there is a set quantity of information (even if this quantity is theoretically infinite) the "unknown" quantity of which is progressively shrinking as we continue our scientific investigations of the world. Even if this quest for scientific knowledge understands itself as an essentially endless quest (as there could be an infinite number of finite aggregates of knowledge to be known) nonetheless in theory this scientism presupposes that all aggregates composing this infinite are knowable via scientific inquiry. That is to say, even if in theory we will never comprehend the whole of the totality, it is nonetheless feasible that we will never run into an object that is not fundamentally comprehensible by scientific standards.

But this empiricism is of course based on the thoroughly un-empirical theory of materialism. In order for everything to be theoretically knowable in this matter, it must be able to be understood quantitatively, and hence be "material" of some sort. This is not a new critique of course. But what seems to me to be a fundamental aporia is that it seems to exclude a fundamental non-exhaustibility of the human. All acts of our scientific comprehension are, of course, acts done by humans. But in the very act of cognition of data there is a proportionate increase in the unknowable. What I mean is that our acts of comprehension themselves cannot be comprehended except by an additional act of comprehension. E.g. Me knowing "this apple is red," or "water is two hydrogen and one oxygen atom" is, tautologically, different from me knowing that I know the apple is red or the molecular makeup of water. But the immediate act of cognition is a datum that would be a necessary component to our "set" of all knowledge. This means (strangely parallel to Cantorian set-theory) that the knowledge of the set [x] which includes all currently known facticity does not include the act of cognition which knows of set [x]. But then ironically the set of all sets of knowledge is in principle unobtainable. I hesitate to use the word, but our consciousness, or our ability to cognize, remains a "transcendental" over against empirical quantification in this manner because it always reflectively exceeds the ability to categorize information.

Moreover the act of immediate cognition remains aloof from categorization because it can only be known by a second act of knowledge. As Sartre put it in the Transcendence of the Ego, critiquing Descartes' famous formulation "I think, therefore I am" that that the entity putatively referred to by the item of consciousness, be it the "I" in "I am conscious" or the red apple in "this apple is red" can only appear as an item within consciousness and is not an awareness of the consciousness itself. This same fact appears in William James' Principles of Psychology where the focus point of consciousness remains a mere postulate which cannot be verified introspectively. He says "Introspecting with maximum exigency, we discover no subject of experience at all but only a collection of objective phenomena at the level of the material self" which remains distinct from the act of cognition. As Robert Jenson puts it in the second volume of his Systematic Theology: "There is the transcendental unity of consciousness, necessarily posited but not describable as anything I can find in myself."

In this sense we might say that the human remains fundamentally beyond total empirical quantification, and in humanity resides a fundamentally non-manipulable transcendence (in theory).

Rethinking Predestination Part One: "Relativist Ontology"

Perhaps one of the most famous perennial questions in Christianity is the relationship between "free will," and predestination. In an even more basic sense, we might say this is a question between the relationship of the world with God, though it is highly suspect, of course, if one starts with a general concept of the God-world relation and then tries to superimpose this, or simply translate it, into the much more specific relation of predestination (or election). Karl Rahner in his seminal book The Trinity wrote of the misguided nature of trying to derive a general ontology from the hypostatic union between Jesus and the Logos because we are not attempting to elaborate on a general ontological principle, but rather this specific instance which finds its specific logic in the particular hypostasis or person of the Son. Robert Jenson says in the second volume of his Systematic Theology much the same thing about a "sacramental ontology" and Zizioulas in Being as Communion again repeats this theme regarding his "eschatological ontology" of the sacraments and the church, which is not a general instance of "being," in general, but rather a fundamentally ecclesial existence.

With that disclaimer of not attempting to generalize a particular thing, or perhaps reify a general concept, I just wanted to present some thoughts about the relationship between "determinism" or "necessity," and our ability to choose. These arent meant to be definitive or perhaps even coherent (this is, after all, a blog, that most ephemeral and concatenous of mediums). Nonetheless these are a few things that I have thought about over the years as I have read Pannenberg in relation to his "ontology of the whole" and his "eschatological ontology." This is also intended to be part one in a series of various reflections on Predestination, including various other themes which I believe must be addressed more fully to appreciate Biblical "predestination" (e.g. a robust concept of God as Trinity, an eschatological or apocalyptic ontology to supplement what is being said in this post, an analysis of "causality," and other modes of interaction, an ontological concept of freedom along the lines of Augustine's libertas, freedom as inherently a communal rather than individual reality, etc...) Hopefully this series will come along so I can actually formulate my thoughts.

The biggest question that I have had in viewing discussions on predestination verse free will and the like, is the implicit "shift of reference," that occurs. What I mean by that is that the discussion attempts to proceed by, in one instance, viewing ontology from God's point of view (e.g. "If God foreknows/predestines that you are going to eat a sandwich tomorrow...") and simultaneously viewing from mans point of view ("...how are you free to choose eating said sandwich if God has already predetermined it..."). This attempt at a duality of viewpoints seems completely natural, because of course it is precisely the relationship between God and man which we are attempting to speak about, so why not use two reference points in this manner?

But I think the way that this duality of reference points is simultaneously used unfortunately glosses over, and predetermines (pun intended) the limits of the discussion. While there is a whole array of questions that need to be addressed in this complex issue, I am putting them aside for the moment to address what this change of reference does, and why we perhaps need to approach it differently.

To begin, in the example of me being predestined tomorrow to eat a sandwich, the simultaneity of viewpoints has made the future (me eating a sandwich) known to me (even if this is only a hypothetical example), which, obviously, I do not know otherwise. In other words I dont know if Im going to eat a sandwich tomorrow, even if that is indeed what God has predestined me to do. But this indeterminacy of my knowledge of the future is part of my current intuition that I am making an open ended choice to choose to eat or not eat a sandwich tomorrow. On occasion of course there may be instances where me eating a sandwich tomorrow is foreknown by me (because, e.g. Im out of money and groceries except sandwich stuff) but in general the indeterminacy of our knowledge of the future is of vital importance to, at the very least, an intuition that free choice is possible. When the duality of reference points is brought into the discussion, the future is implicitly presented as now known for the sake of laying out an illustration of the problem of free will and determinism. This means that I become reflectively aware of my own situation as being set out apart from my own ability (e.g. now I know, from God's view, that he has predetermined I am going to eat a sandwich).

But this is an unfair way to frame the question, in my mind. God, being infinite, is related ontologically to events differently than I am as a finite, particular being. God's "viewpoint," is of a whole, presented in totality (in this I am primarily following Pannenberg's concept of eternity). God's ontological relationship is to this whole as a complete entity In-Himself (either in the more traditional formulations of aseity as of David Bentley Hart, or of Jenson's eschatologically complete God). God, in other words, provides His own ontological possibility for Himself, either in essence or in the more left-wing Barthian approaches as an act of decision and election. The point being that God, as infinite, relates Himself to the entirety of history as the Eternal God He is. You and I, however, as finite, and particular beings, are ontologically constituted through time in the sense of actual evolution and alteration (rather than God's "becoming," in Jungel's sense of the term). We are constituted as historical situated individuals whose ontological horizon, as it were, is set off and constituted through various serial displays of relationships bound to the march of time and the particular local of our finite selves. What happens when the question is posed in terms of the duality of reference, then, is that our historical particularity and particular horizon of knowledge is suspended as we attempt to view ourselves from God's universality. The hypothetical scenario of me being predestined to eat a sandwich, as I said before, in order to become a heuristic via which we might approach the problem of predestination and free will must in its own constitution as a question go beyond whatever natural ability I have to be related to the otherwise not-yet of the future in order to present this future as in some sense controlled by God. I now know, in other words, that I am going to eat a sandwich tomorrow, and the conundrum then becomes how am I free in light of this apparently fixed event? In other words the duality of reference suspends my immediate contextual reference to the world via my own situation and location, and now in this conjecture I am related to myself and know myself only as mediated via the "viewpoint," of God. I see myself only as the person whom God has predestined to do such-and-such, and can only reflectively ask about myself and my own freedom mediated through this view of myself through Eternity's relatedness to time.

In this heuristic then, it appears that me eating a sandwich tomorrow is inevitable, even though as I said before from my own viewpoint I have no idea whats going on tomorrow. The problem then becomes a spectrum against which various solutions are posited in something of a zero-sum game, adding or subtracting freedom to either God or man as is necessary to posit an equilibrium. E.g. in order to avoid the deterministic implications of this dual viewpoint, we recant God's total control of the event because I am indeed free in a voluntaristic sense (as in Open Theism) or I am in possession of some type of libertarian freedom and God is totally predetermining and the two just co-exist in paradox and we shouldnt bother to explain it (paradoxical indeterminism), or I am free even though the event will happen because God foreknew all possible scenarios and knew exactly in which scenario I would freely choose to make a sandwich tomorrow (i.e. in Molinism or Middle-Knowledge propounded by modern theologians like William Craig) or the event is determined but I am still free because, lets be honest, I love sandwiches and Id make one anyway (generic Compatibalism). All of these various solutions presuppose the dual viewpoint theory. They all view man mediated via a perspective of God's eternal relation to time and hence necessarily have a view to how man is related to a future already actualized or going to be actualized whose not-yet-actualized-but-will-be-actualized-in-an-already-known-way reveal man to be involved in an already set grid of circumstances in which one has to locate freedom or unfreedom within the subject drowning in an ocean of the already actualized, and so their own particularity and viewpoint are suspended for the sake of the universal. (I have possibly even hopelessly confused myself at this point, so there are no hard feelings should no one continue to read).

So what then is a possible alternative? My proposal (as tentative as it is) proposes that one cannot forsake the situatedness and particularity of the individual, even in a theoretical way, to discuss predestination and free will. We might say that this is (despite whatever difficulties arise in attempting a general ontology from the particularity of Christ) an extended interpretation of Barth's view of Christ as the elected and Pannenberg's ontology of the whole. God does not relate to us as some "universal," or sublime, though the Holy Spirit pervades the world. Rather we relate to God via the Mediator, the High-Priest, that is Christ (and all the various "pre-appearances" e.g. Word, Wisdom, "The Name," the Angel of the Lord, etc...), and hence God relates to us not in a sublime roar of pure universal light, but descends to the particular, to relate to us as particular and situated human beings. Pannenberg writes: "God does not encounter the apostate creature with power and holiness. He is present with it at its own place and under the conditions of its own existence…This takes place through the eternal Son, who in consequence of his self-distinction from the Father takes the place of the creature and becomes man so as to overcome the assertion of the creature’s independence in the position of the creature itself, i.e. without violating its independence. We are thus to view the incarnation of the Son as the supreme expression of the omnipotence of God…" (Systematic Theology vol.1 p.421). That is to say, though it wont be developed in this post, God's relation to the world is not as an undifferentiated monad or principle, but is a Trinitarian relation which respects the particularity and historical nature of man. What then of the "necessity," or "contingency" of an event? How might this look different if we stayed at the level of the particular, at our viewpoint, as it were, as we relate to God via Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit?

"Contingency" and "necessity" are themselves relative to the thought of some greater whole which we can only implicitly and vaguely understand from our own viewpoint. That an event was "necessary" can only be viewed when an event is complete. This means that necessity and contingency cannot be, strictly speaking, opposed to one another, because they have different aspectival reference points: contingency operates by speaking of possibilities that have not yet occured, while necessity speaks of things that have occured (even if they "have" only occured in the "future"). If the temporal passage of history, and the temporal relationships in which things stand, actually constitute their being, then the width of the temporal process cannot collapse into single "essential" points of reference to describe an object. I 'am' myself only in reference to the totality of history in which I stand, because any "portion" of my temporal life refers to other portions, and ultimately to the entirety of history in which I am embedded. This means that when I say "what I am" at any given point along that line, I am to a large extent anticipating the total outcome of myself in history. If, also, to speak of "necessity" or "contingency" in reference to an object, or an event, or a person, is in some sense to describe the "essence" of the thing, event, or person, this essence can only be described anticipating the finality and totality of a thing, unless the finality and totality of the thing is actually present (meaning the end of history as we know it). But if this is so, then to describe something as "necessary," in reference to its "whatness," can only take place definitively in retrospect of the totality. But this means that necessity is necessity only when the event/object/person has already occured and now could not occur otherwise because it is fixed in the past. Contingency on the other hand describes an event in its occurance-as-process. Contingency must always "turn-into" necessity because of the "present" always giving way to the fixity of the past. But in its "immediatness" the totality has not yet occured to an object/event/person, and so events that happen are not "necessary," in the sense of a fixity. Fixity only happens retrospectively, if we are to assume that God's creation is not primarly a "Cosmos" that only then "has" (accidentally!) a history, but is itself historical and eschatological. This is why the duality of reference, or change of reference, in the traditional formulations of the questions obfuscate the issue (in my opinion): when we view things from God's vantage point everything "has happened" or "is happening" to speak crudely, and hence everything to us mediated via this eternal (and singular!) viewpoint appears to unfold with the utmost necessity. I am destined to eat the sandwich tomorrow, by this measure, because quite frankly from this vantage point it has already happened.

This is not merely an epistemological principle either. I would argue that it is inherently an ontological reality. As finite beings, to speak somewhat crudely, we are what happens to us. We absorb, inflect, and invent based upon our finite appropriation of reality. The future, from our ontological "vantage point" of the present, has not yet happened. In this sense, even if from God's point of view the future might be "fixed,"-- to us it is ontologically open, because relative to the finite ontology of our being, it has not yet occurred. Moreover God does not encounter or deal with us simply via the totality, but in relation to the context of our existence, the Incarnation demonstrates that God creates space of encounter that "accommodates" to the presence of the other. The question of choice and freedom (to be sure, not the same thing) must not bypass this particularity in attempting to answer "how is man free/unfree." The relativity of our present ontological situation in regards to the not-yet of the future indicates a relative freedom viz a viz future events because their ontological fixity has not occured, and they "influence" us in only a proleptic or provisional way, indicating a vast horizon of the possible. From this viewpoint the "fixity" or determination of choice in the individual or community takes a different tone, so to speak (or at least, that was the intention).

Christ and the Many

"Only Christianity satisfactorily solves the problem of the One and the many, because Christ is the 'concrete universal.' Only in the Incarnation can an individual be universal and the universal be individual. 'Christ is neither one individual among others, since he is God and so not susceptible of comparison, nor is he the norm in the sense of a universal, since he is this individual.'[1] However, though Christ is not just one individual among others...he is also not the mere removal of an individual from the sphere of his fellow individuals. Christ is a human being; to raise him above human beings is to make Arius' mistake and thus to eliminate the possibility of our participation in Christ. Christ remains immersed in history; yet, because he is God, all historical norms are subordinated to Christ. Christ cannot be interpreted in terms of the universal norms of history, since he is unique, so there is no place for abstracting from particular cases or inessential accidents. There are no accidents in God, so Christianity can only display the normative content of history manifest in the irreducible particular fact of Jesus Christ. Christ is the concrete norm for all abstract norms The norm for history comes not from above it, from the absolute laws of universal reason, but from within it. Christ thus bridges Lessing's ditch between the absolute and the particularities of history."

--William Cavanaugh Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's Publishing Company, 2008) pp.76-77

[1] Cavanaugh is quoting from Hans Urs von Balthasar "Characteristics of Christianity," in Explorations in Theology vol. I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989) p.170.

Love and semantics

It is no secret to say that love is one of the premiere themes of human life. In all of its manifold--and variously interpreted--forms, it is everywhere. In fact love really appears to be the quintessential harmonic of movies, books, television, indeed reality. It is in everything, tangible and intangible. This is not to deny pain and suffering. In fact a majority of pain and suffering, I would argue, stem from various manifestations (and perversions) of love. As Augustine says of the city of God and the earthly city, they are both driven by loves, the heavenly city of God is ordered by a love of God, and the other, earthly city, by a love of the self. It is perhaps hopelessly obvious to say that love, whatever it may be, is complicated and has as many shades and stories as there are people to tell of it.

But this isnt meant to be a post on Love in general. What has always struck me (perhaps in my most egocentric and selfish moments) is something of a distaste to any concept of "universal," or "unconditional," love. This of course seems bizarre. Who in their right mind would deny the goodness of unconditional love, of, say, a mother for her child, or God for His people? Without belaboring the point, my aversion to it rests in interpretations which present unconditional love like this: there is a universal thing, called love, and I, along with everyone else, happen to fall under this blanketing condition. But can we really distinguish this form of love from total indifference to the particular?

I dont want this post to get too technical (it is really an off-the-cuff sort of thing) but let me just give an example. If you had a friend who has left long ago and moved away, and they write to you and a group of your friends "I miss you all," and then, one by one, say they miss each of you, how are we to interpret this? Which statement interprets which? Does the long lost friend miss you because they miss your whole group? If this is the case, this interpretation would appear congruent with many discussions on unconditional love (which I believe to be a fundamental misunderstanding of love). "We are all equal in the eyes of God," is the mantra so trenchantly recycled (at least to my ears in my church). But the meaning of this is never unpacked, and one is left with the impression that this commentary on gradation is in reality also a commentary on difference and identity. Namely the equality of love is based on an indifference of the content of the love. "There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female," is here taken quite literally. This type of interpretation is repugnant to me. And I am not using hyperbole here for emphasis, it is repulsive and a wholly unloving way to look at it. If it is indeed the case that you are missed (or loved) as you are part of a group that is missed or loved, or there is a general universal feeling of love or missing that then extends generally to each particular in an aggregate, then your particularity is destroyed. You are not loved or missed in this sense, because your own particular stands now as only an empty cipher that is equally replaceable by any member in the group, and vice-versa: any member in the group's particularity is a cipher that could equally be replaced by you.

I was watching an episode of the TV series Heroes the other day, and one of the characters, Peter, mentions to his mother that her other son, Nathan, will always unconditionally love her. And she said something quite remarkable (at least I thought): "Well thats the problem, isnt it, unconditional love isnt really love at all." We might say that absolute or unconditional love, understood in this sense as a universal category that is then extended to particulars, destroys in the very act of love. Because I, for example, am a particular, conditioned agent, so my identity is wrapped up in a very specific network of interactions. If a love directed toward me is unconditional in this sense, my particularity as conditioned is overlooked and so, to extend this logic, I cannot be loved as myself. I would only be loved in the identical sense that everything (or everyone) else is loved by this universal, unconditional love.

In a pretty hilarious interview, Slavoj Zizek speaks of the inherent violence of love in order to link it up to the particular thing that is loved. "Isnt love precisely a type of cosmic imbalance? I was always disgusted with this notion of 'I love the whole world.' or universal love. I dont like the world. I am between I dont like the world...basically.. I hate the world or I am indifferent towards it. But the whole of reality, its stupid, I dont care about it. Love, for me, is an extremely violent act. Love is not I love you all, love means I pick out something, it is this structure of imbalance...I say I love you more than anything else. In this quite formal sense love is evil."

While I completely disagree with the link of violence and love, Zizek's point is well taken: love is not a universal act, it is a very particular act. I love you and I want you to love me for myself. Love in each instance is an act of election, so to speak. We might say, to hearken back to our earlier example, when the long lost friend says "I miss/love you all," and then says to each one "I miss/love you" the only true way to interpret this and maintain any semblance of love, is to say "I love you all," is "I love each of you for yourselves," so that the "universal" feeling presides precisely in the finite and particular identities within the group. There is no sublimation or mactation of the particular into a universal. Nor is this merely a semantic game. If I am not loved for myself, then precisely by definition I am not loved. This is the ultimate idiocy of many narratives of religious tolerance, or postmodern discourses of the absolute Other. If every other is Absolutely Other, then they are devoid of content, and hence are unloveable. A complete religious toleration or devotion to all religions, precisely destroys the particularity of any given religion upon the alter of the universal.

This is why the Incarnation has always been so beautiful to me. While we must also avoid the pitfalls of individualism, tat God became a particular man at a particular point in history, and set off a series of concrete and particular relations, means that God's love for the world in sending His Son reinterprets how we understand unconditional love. This unconditional love is not a destruction of our particularity, but precisely its highest affirmation. I am loved. You are loved. And while both of these loves are God's love, but this love is as differentiated as are our particular relationships to Christ through the Spirit as we are gathered into the Church, the proleptic appearance of the eschatological kingdom of God.

Does Classical Theism Exist?

Last year I read a recent book by John Cooper entitled Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers. It was a very good book as far as that goes, jam-packed with information. It was well written, well researched, and for the most part was charitable to those he disagreed with (though I have to admit his interpretation of Pannenberg chafed me at several points) and overall, despite his summaries often being very brief, I learned quite a bit. However one of the interesting questions that came into my mind while reading this, in light of the fact that Cooper wants to defend "Classical theism," is the question "Does Classical Theism actually exist?" He cites in his defense a traditional gamut of thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas, Anselm to Calvin. But there is in Coopers book a curious lack of Eastern Orthodox thinkers, or even many representatives from the eastern Greek tradition (except insofar as they represent what Cooper sees as deviations from classical theism, like pseudo-Dionysius or Nicolai Berdyaev). No Cappadocians. No Athanasius, John of Damascus, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, no modern day thinkers like Zizioulas, Hart, Afanasiev, Bulgakov, Lossky, Ware, etc... This leads me to wonder that if we are, as Christians, to affirm something along the lines of "Classical Theism," if this is itself a sufficiently "Christian," category, as it really--via the categories employed--seems to me to point to a particularly Western pathology. In fact many Easterners who have become aware of these categories whole-heartedly affirm their affinity to the category "panentheist," without blinking an eye, and move on from there.

Of course Eastern thinkers like the Cappadocians would want to affirm God's immutability et al...But Cooper for example wants to deny any ontological participation on the part of creation "in" God (e.g pp.339ff):

Nicholas of Cusa, Hegel, Hartshorne, Pannenberg, Clayton, and others allege a philosophical proof for their theology--the argument from Infinity. Because God is absolutely infinite, nothing can be completely other or outside him. For, if anything were, then God would be limited by it, that is, finite, that is not-infinite, which is impossible by definition. Therefore all finite reality and relative infinity (mathematical, spatial, temporal, etc.) must be within the absolutlely infinite God, which entails panentheism.

Let us concede that the argument from infinity is sound in a formal sense...this argument does not prove panentheism however, if only because classical theism also affirms the conclusion but interprets it differently Panentheists construe infinity in terms of ontological "in-ness." But classical theists explain it just as well in terms of God's voluntary immanence: All relative infinity and finite existence are immanent in the knowledge and power of God as possibilities he can choose to actualize. If he chooses to actualize them, then they are actually immanent to his omnipotent, onmiscient, concrrent presence, but they are not in him ontologically (p.339)

A few pages later Cooper notes (as he does also at the beginning of the book) that he supports "Reformed Christian classical theism." (p.342). Before I briefly critique this it should be noted that Cooper "affirms fellowship with many Christian theologians who...profess or imply panentheism or other kinds of relational...theology." (Ibid). Cooper is not here pulling (as way too many do) the "heretic," or "non-Christian," card against non-classical Theists. This is a welcome reprieve from the polemics and vitriol that are so often strewn about.

Nonetheless here are a few observations of why I'm not totally convinced about Cooper's overview and critique, which involves several questions that I think would be interesting to address in a follow-up volume or perhaps a complementary study:

1.) As I said before the near total lack of interaction with Eastern Christian sources creates something of a massive lacuna that hangs like a question mark over Cooper's otherwise interesting work. In what sense is the label "classical theism," helpful if it only has the ability to comprehend under itself various thinkers from the Latin west onward (and only then loosely, as thinkers who follow this generality differ from one another, often very greatly)?

2.) Following the first question, in what sense does "Classical theism," as Cooper represents it, completely rule out theosis? Cooper wants to affirm God's true infinity while nonetheless simply affirming a Voluntarist reading of God as the only philosophically sound option (i.e. God is everywhere as He wills this). Cooper, in the paragraph quoted above, is a little sneaky (though not in an intentionally underhanded way) because he wants to say that those who want to affirm an actual ontological participation in God must reduce the "otherness," of creation. These thinkers, like Pannenberg or Nicholas of Cusa, say, at least on Cooper's reading "nothing can be completely other or outside Him," because He is truly infinite. But notice what Cooper has done here: he says that an ontological participation of creation "in" God must mean that nothing can be "completely other," than God, which is why Cooper finds classical theism to be more coherent as it allows the true otherness of Creation.

While I do not think this is the time or place to argue against this specifically, and while there are some who would find this summary of Cooper to be a fair precîse of their position, many other so-called Panentheists would deny that ontological participation occludes a total otherness of creation (or would, at the very least, be uncomfortable with the terms as Cooper has let them stand). In many cases it is the exact opposite: this ontological participation is the only way true otherness can be affirmed. Pannenberg for example does indeed talk about an ontological participation of creation in God, especially regarding man's "openness" to the world, or David Hart speaks about the endless traversal and epektasis or "stretching-out" as we constantly become more like God. But for both of these thinkers our increasing similarity is simultaneous to an increasing otherness between creation and God. Both of these thinkers do not invoke an abstractly "true infinite" to be posited of God, but see God's infinity as precisely a Trinitarian (and so internally and eternally differentiated) infinity. Moreover I am curious how Cooper's take would rule out the soteriological motifs of Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Maximus the Confessor, et al. While obviously Cooper would want to affirm Jesus is both God and man, the type of ontological intermingling or perichoresis (a term first applied by pseudo-Cyril to indicate conceptually the mixture without confusion or tertium quid of the two natures of Christ) seems to be ruled out or at least mitigated by his theology.

3.) Despite Cooper's generally excellent analysis of Panentheism through the ages, he unfortunately (given the nature of his work) does not also have the space to go over and elaborate the other side: the history and evolution of "Classical theism." Quite frankly I am not convinced that Reformed theism can be seen unequivocally as representing the tradition of theistic theology throughout the ages, especially in relation to the East, but also to the West. Despite the fact that Calvin makes a superhuman effort to continually refer to Augustine in his Institutes for example, Calvin does not have a complete corner on the Augustinian tradition, so to speak. Nor indeed is the "Augustinian," tradition as univocally agreed as that epithet would have us believe. One can think of even early Medieval theologians like Abelard who saw various aporiai in the Augustinian tradition and collated them in his Sic et Non exhorting his students to use their reason and decide between the various interpretations. Nor can the more Aristotelian Thomistic tradition simply be lumped together with the Augustinian (whatever the deficiencies of Etienne Gilson's love affair with Aquinas, we can surely still maintain as he did that there is, at the very least, many differences between Thomas and Augustine). At what point do we have to say that "Classical theism," is too rigid or reductionistic to be helpful? As my History of Theology professor joked with me about this issue "Classical theism might be so classical we cant find it anywhere." While neither he nor I necessarily came to any conclusions regarding classical theism (it is, after all, a huge question) I definitely think that work needs to be done, by Cooper or others, to show a continuity strong enough to be worthy of the label. And this research doesn't just need to be done by proponents of so-called "Classical," theism. I have become (startlingly) aware of the reductionistic and often absurd caricatures that occur regarding Classical theism by those who wish to "move beyond," it, in any of its multifarious forms of Process theology, Open theism, Moltmann's Trinitarian panentheism, or what have you. It seems often contemporary theology is rebelling only against a straw man, and so whatever the coherence of their new options, the supposed incoherence of "Classical" theism (often meaning Hellenized, neo-Platonized, Aristotelianized, or what have you, but whatever it is it is not "the Living God of the Bible" or so the story goes) remains suspect.

What do others think? I certainly do not have the breadth or depth of learning to judge the aptitude of the term, simply a suspicion that the terms as they stand are not as helpful as they could be. I would love input!

On the difference between the literal and literalism

This to many may seem to be a small concern, and it probably is. But it has been a constant source of frustration to me in dealing with many who are still fairly enamored with a more Fundamentalist take on Christianity. I was having a conversation with several people at my church on the wearisome and fairly quixotic "divide" between science and faith (specifically in the form of the evolution vs creationism debate, etc...) Several were taken aback that I advocated that the book of Genesis was not a scientific textbook and that, given its purposes, there was no a priori reason, despite whatever prima facie differences there may have been, to say that the Genesis account and evolution are at odds with one another. I was accused, then, by several of them for "forsaking," the literal nature of the text into a fantasy realm of allegorical misrepresentation for the purposes of creating an artificial ecumenical harmony between faith and science.

This is, however, where my primary irritation comes in. Despite whatever your take on the whole debate of creationism, evolutionism, or whatever, to call "creationism" the "literal" sense of the text is petitio principii or begging the question in the favor of creationism. It has to assume that on its literal level the text is speaking to a real seven days of creation, a "factual" account, as it were. But this is not so. My argument is that the primary purpose of Genesis is against a creationist reading. Ergo creationism is against the literal nature of the text. One has to distinguish between a "literal" reading (i.e. what the text actually says in its proper context) and literalism which takes the words of a text at complete face value, disregarding the context in which they were given. In this case, specifically since the book of Genesis is not attempting to answer modern "scientific," accounts, it is hardly tenable that its "literal" reading is a scientific textbook elaboration in this manner.

Moreover it itself represents its embeddedness in its own context. We see that the Genesis creation account is very similar to other Ancient-Near Eastern mythologies of creation, but at several key points the narrative is altered. The stars, in the Genesis account, for example are no longer themselves seen as demi-god like figures who aid in creation, but are simply lights whereby God illuminates the heavens. The order of creation in the Genesis account is not so much outdated science, then, as it is an outdated controversy. Moreover given that whoever authored Genesis (be it Moses or whomever) there is a strong possibility of a type of literary redaction which fits the Genesis narrative account to an already established 7-day sabbath week as a type of narrative etiological framework. In this case what is occuring is not "fiction," but it is established for different purposes than a scientific account, hence its organization and content are displaying a meaning other than a factual elaboration on the beginning. In this instance then, the literal reading must be said to fit with the original intention.

It is not, of course, my purpose here to "disprove," Creationism or its reading of Genesis (though obviously I disagree with both). Rather my intent is simply to say that one cannot appeal to the "literal," meaning of the text in defense of their position, because this simply begs the question. Rather what has to occur is reasoned argument in order to demonstrate the plausibility of presenting something as the literal meaning. Anyway, thats my soapbox rant for the day.

A bit (more) o' Anselm

"The mercy of God, which seemed to you to be lost when we were considering God's justice and humanity's sin, we find now to be so great and so in accord with justice that neither a greater nor a more just can be thought. For what possibly could be understood to be more merciful than that God the Father should say to the sinner--damned to eternal torment and having no means whereby to redeem himself--"Take my Only-begotten and offer him for yourself"; and that the Son himself should say "take me and redeem yourself"? For thus they speak, when they call us and lead us to Christian faith. What indeed was more just than that he--to whom is given a price exceeding every debt, if only given with the love that he is truly owed--should put aside every debt?"

Anselm Cur Deus Homo? II.XX