Category Archives: Philosophical Theology

Encounter With Christ as Truth Conditions for Christian Doctrine

Philosophical Theology, Philosophy of Religion, Realism vs. anti-realism

At the beginning of Pope Benedict XVI’s encylical  Deus caritas est we are taught what it is to be a Christian. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.

My post on the incompatibility of aceptance of the Sexual Revolution with being a Christian suggests that holding some doctrine about Christ’s making atonement for our sins is a necessary condition for being a Christian. I  dare not  claim that any condition, let alone holding a particular doctrine, is a necessary condition for encountering Christ. Christ can meet whoever He wills and as He wills. I dare to say that holding some doctrine about atonement or redemption is a necessary condition for an honest claim to be a Christian by someone who also maintains that Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead thereby radically transforming the condition of humanity. Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, was such a Christian.

It is interesting to note that Ratzinger rather reluctantly acknowledged the need for a doctrine of atonement. In his Introduction to Christianity 2nd ed. On pp. 148ff. he contrasts incarnation Christology with Christology of the cross.  Incarnation Christology focuses on the work of Christ as forward looking. Christ came to transform humanity so that we could progress to sharing divine nature. Cross Christology focuses on the work of Christ as reaching back to atone for past sins of humanity. He clearly prefers Incarnation Christology but admits Christian doctrine contains both.

Here, though, the question is whether Pope Benedict XVI taught that a personal encounter with Christ is a necessary and perhaps, sufficient condition for being a Christian. In light of his well known rejection of relativism, the answer is no.*  Christianity can not be turned over to people’s personal experiences. But some, relatively few,  direct personal encounters with Christ were necessary and have been sufficient for the authentic Christianity of billions of people through two millenia. These relatively few were Jesus’ apostles, disciples and many others who encountered Him before and after His resurrection. The truth of Christian doctrine and action guides for Christian living is based on the witness of those privileged few in apostolic times who saw, heard, touched and trusted  Jesus as enabling them to find the way and for what to live. Without the experienced reality of Jesus’ public ministry, crucifixion and post resurrection appearances Christianity is, at best, reflection of ethical choices and lofty ideals.

Our current Christian faith is based on trust in the testimony of those who actually encountered Jesus.

Christianity has empirical falsification conditions as St. Paul clearly realized in Ch. 15 of 1st Corinithians. If Christ has not risen from the dead, then your faith is in vain.

I write of the direct witnesses of Christ as being a privileged few.  And, so they were, to some extent.  They experienced the reality which provides the truth conditions for Christian teaching. However, the experiences themselves did not provide the conceptual resources to articulate the doctrines. Articulation of the truths about this reality to which they were witnesess required a few centuries of testing lofty ideals about what was witnessed.

I stop here because writing about development of Christianity under the Church Fathers would be theology. I want to stay with philosophy. This post is philosophical because it makes no claim about the truth of Christian doctrine.  Indeed, it concedes how they could be false. I make the philosophical point, maybe only a banal critical thinking, point  that even if  direct experiences of some are needed to support a doctrine not only those who have direct experiences are entitled to believe the doctrines.

*In paragraph 17 of Deus caritas est, he writes of encountering Christ by seeing Him in the others we serve through acts of charity. I do not think that Benedict XVI is writing only of the expression of a lofty ideal which some, including me, express when asked why we serve the poor and needy. For instance, when asked why I dealt politely with someone obnoxiously seeking assistance, I might reply “Oh, I still saw the face of Christ in him.” I frequently make such remarks although I am not sure exactly what I mean. On reflection, I realize that I am only saying that I do these charitable works because I have the “lofty ideals” of Christian teaching and I have made the “ethical choice” to put them into practice.” Benedict XVI teaches that more than the lofty ideals of Christian doctrine and the ethical choice to put them into practice is necessary for being a full-fleged Christian. But this something more than holding the doctrines and morals of Christianity is not the truth conditions for the doctrines. It is some condition, properly called an encounter, which converts the holder of Christian doctrine into a full Christian. See my post on bonding with Christ.

Sexual Revolution Undercuts Christianity

Against moral neutrality of sexuality, Moral philosophy, Philosophical Theology, Philosophy of Religion

Christianity is Incompatible with Acceptance of the Sexual Revolution

Acceptance of Christianity is acceptance of at least the Apostles’ Creed.

Acceptance of the sexual revolution is acceptance of the Moral Neutrality of Sexuality.

  Characterizing acceptance of the sexual revolution as acceptance of a thesis in moral theory  characterizes the outlook in a neutral, if not favorable, way.  People who accept. in principle, extra marital sex, homosexual acts, etc., may strongly condemn various “outrageous acts” because they deem the consequences of those acts are harmful.

Acceptance of the moral neutrality of sexuality is not logically inconsistent with acceptance of the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. Because I cannot argue for a logical inconsistency, I shall argue that acceptance of the sexual revolution, viz., the moral neutrality of sexuality, undercuts attempts to understand the Christian creed.

The line of argument goes as follows.

If we accept the sexual revolution, then we accept the moral neutrality of sexuality.

If we accept the moral neutrality of sexuality, i.e.,no intrinsically wrong sexual act, then we use consequentialist reasoning to decide what is morally wrong in sexual matters.

If we use consequential reasoning for sexual morality, there is no rationale preventing use of consequentialist reasoning for all moral decisions.

                The objection to universal use of consequentialist reasoning is that some natural features ought never be used a certain way because the nature of those features show us that certain way is not how they ought to be used.  The nature of sexual features are paradigms of natural features  showing how they ought to be used.  If we discard sexual features as showing how they ought to be used, we at least began making a paradigm shift away from regarding internal features of acts as having normative significance towards regarding only the consequences of acts as having normative significance.

If there is no rationale preventing consequentialist reasoning for all moral decisions, rational people use consequentialist reasoning for all moral decisions.

If rational people use consequentialist reasoning for all moral decisions, then rational people recognize no intrinsically wrong acts.

If rational people recognize no intrinsically wrong acts, rational people find no rationale for Retributive Punishment.

If rational people find no rationale for retributive punishment, then rational people hold that a doctrine that Jesus suffered and died to redeem humanity presupposes an incorrect moral theory.

If rational people hold that a doctrine that Jesus suffered and died to redeem humanity presupposes an incorrect moral theory, then rational people hold that the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds presuppose an incorrect moral theory.

Putting all of these claims together we can conclude:

If rational people accept the sexual revolution, they hold that the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds presuppose an incorrect moral theory.

What is Catholic Philosophy?

Philosophy of Religion

Long ago, in the mid-twentieth century, when I was starting out as a professional philosopher in the Universities of Minnesota and Ohio State, the short and, presumably, most honest answer was “There is no such thing as Catholic Philosophy.” However, since it is clearly grammatically and semantically correct to modify “philosophy” with “Catholic.” the answer “Catholic philosophy is philosophy done by a Catholic” was offered as an interpretation of “Catholic philosophy.” Nonetheless, the implication was that there was no clearly philosophical material that could be usefully labeled “Catholic.”

Actually, the view applied to any adjective, even “Greek.” There was simply philosophy. Greek philosophy was philosophy done by Greeks. Indian philosophy was philosophy done in the India sub-continent, Chinese philosophy was that done in China and so forth. There was speculation that philosophy could be found in the cultures of indigneous peoples throughout the world both in the past and present. To be sure, we might have to search carefully to find the philosophical thought mixed in with all sorts of other types of thinking. But mixed in with all sorts of religious and practical thinking we might find thinking of which we could make claims such as: In these passages they were wondering about free will, personal identity, mind/body connection etc. Perhaps, philosophical thinking cannot be precisely defined. To some extent, “we know it when we see it” or read it. I write “to some extent” because philosophy is more than an intellectual exercise. It is one of the human ways of trying to get the truth. We need to make a judgment about an intent to “get it right” to label a text or discourse philosophical. There is a philosophia perennis – a cultural universal usefully labeled “philosophy.” It is what I call “philosophy” when I conclude that Reason Alone cannot set aside nihilism.

Philosophy itself deals with topics which cannot be fully understood, viz., standard philosophical problems such as mind/body connection and knowledge of other minds. But philosophical problems are not religious mysteries; they are not posed as part of a religious tradition. In any application of philosophy to religious doctrines, the basic philosophical problems will be there; unresolved as always.

The universal style of philosophical thinking can be applied to religious mysteries. The religious mysteries are open to all as mysteries. As mysteries they are not any better understood by believers than non-believers. I am writing only of religious which do not have esoteric doctrines. The mysteries are available for those who want to understand them as well as to all who are merely curious about how intelligent people could take them seriously. If there is a religious tradition, eg., Catholicism, which contains a mysterious concept, such as angels, then use of the philosophical way of thinking to gain partial understanding of this concept is part of the religious philosophy of that religion. A paradigm of Catholic philosophy is Thomas Aquinas’ teaching on angels.

Catholic philosophy, then, is use of philosophical methods to understand a mystery of Catholicism with the intent of at least getting partial truth about it. In Catholic philosophy scripture may be cited; but only as a motivation for dealing with the topic. It is unlikely that a non-Catholic would engage in Catholic philosophy. A non-Catholic might read through Aquinas’ arguments about the existence of angels merely to appreciate how Aquinas reasoned. You cannot read the philosophy of a Catholic philosopher without thinking philosophcally. But the philosophical thinking required to read Catholic philosophy is not by itself Catholic philosophy A Catholic philosopher is a faithful Catholic who engages in Catholic philosophy. I hope that I am a Catholic philosopher.

What about my own work?

My effort to provide Conceptual Model of Satan is an example of Catholic philosophy. My effort to articulate a notion of Moral Harm to provide a model of moral thinking in which there is a place for retributive punishment is by itself simply philosophy. I am only trying to bring out all the implications of human moral thought. However, my inclusion of this notion of moral harm in trying to build a model for Jesus suffering punishment for our faults is Catholic philosophy. See my Cur Deus Homo?

Faith, With & Without Mysteries vs. Nihilism

Nihilism, Philosophy of Religion

Reason alone does not overcome nihilism. Indeed, not even if reason establishes divine command morality, is nihilism decisively overcome. See results of my: Overview of Posts Confronting Nihilism . There are two dimensions in overcoming nihilism: attitudinal and intellectual. A firm sense of purpose for living provides an attitudinal antidote to nihilism. A firm sense of purpose is faith. The stability of faith is based on a purpose which is a fixed point. Reason fixes the point by closing the question of for what purpose the purpose is pursued. For instance, a person can live a purpose driven life by striving in thought, word and deed to be on the right side of the history of human development. Such a person, consciously or unconsciously, resolves not to undercut the existential significance of the purpose by dwelling on questions about what exactly it is to be on the right side of history and why it matters. Another might live to do what is right because it is right. This stoic believer in morality brushes aside any question about the purpose of living for duties sake. A third might live to do what God commands because God commands it. In this case, questioning the purpose of obeying God is dismissed as blasphemous.

The proposed purposes are universal: for all human beings. We, individually, have these purposes because that purpose is the purpose of being human. Suppose the purpose for life is said to be only for me or only for a particular society. The questions: Why me? Why us? are obviously open questions.

Although it is odd to ask for what purpose the purposes are pursued sense can be made of asking for what purpose they are pursued. The reality which give rise to the problem of evil is available to undercut even the most firm faith. See The Problem of Evil as the Cornerstone of a Christian World View and The Problem of Evil as a Cornerstone of a Nihilistic World View. Sense can be made of asking for what purpose we pursue them because reason shows that they are unattainable. Reason shows us that we are subject to sin and death. We cannot live up to these ideals. We simply have not been and are not now in pursuit of these ideals. Individually and collectively we are hopeless failures. In any event, death eventually takes away every individual and civilization. Because of intellectual knowledge of death and sin, the attitudinal antidotes to nihilism are vulnerable.

I have come to the end of what philosophy, including natural theology and natural moral theology, can accomplish in regard to providing an antidote to nihilism. Philosophy, via the reality underlying the problem of evil undercuts any purpose for life proposed by philosophy as ideology.

What is to be done? One can accept nihilism. But intellectual honesty does not require accepting nihilism even if nihilism cannot be set aside by human intelligence alone. See Does Respect for Truth Require Nihilism? William James argued well for this point in his well known The will to believe. The other alternative is to “tough it out” by holding fast to faith in some proposed purpose for life. There are two ways of holding fast to a faith. One way is to stay within the limits of reason and shut down the critical reflection that serves only to undercut that in which you have faith. These are secular confrontations with nihilism . Note that any antidote to nihilism requires shutting down the suicidal critical reflection which serves only to undercut that in which you have faith. The other is to be open to revelation which provides insights which reason could never produce by itself but which we can try to understand with reason even if we can never completely understand them. This is religious confrontation with nihilism. These revealed insights are properly called mysteries.

We get revelations from historical religions. There is a need for subsequent posts to support the thesis that revelation comes only via historical or traditional religions. Acceptance of mysteries involves less intellectual suppression than secularism for we have mysteries to think about.

Morality, Confessional Faith and the Maxims of Jesus

Divine Command Morality, Moral philosophy, Philosophical Theology, Religious morality

Belief in Christian Salvation History requires  belief in some crucial miracles . Similarly, belief in Christian Salvation History requires  belief in the sometimes puzzling action guiding maxims of Jesus.   In this case, faithful members of an orthodox Christian religion have an obligation to believe . Belief in the Salvation History requires belief in its entailments.  This is a logical requirement. The requirement presents challenges.  What, though, is  required belief? How can one feel convinced if he is not convinced?

One may, be convinced, believe in his heart,  that the Salvation History, or the fragment with which he is acquainted, tells the truth about the meaning of life.  Here, the use of “religion” rather than “Salvation History” makes my points more familiar.  A conversion experience or simply being raised in a religion may be the cause of this heartfelt belief in the whole outlook. However, reflection on what the whole implies seems to challenge  faith in the whole.  Did Jesus really walk on water? Did he really rise from his tomb?  Can one live a sane life “by turning the other cheek.?”   The devil lurks in the details.

However, the temptation to diminish belief in the whole because of doubts about its details can be overcome. Belief in the whole requires going down to belief in the details.  But doubts about the details do not require going up to doubts about the whole.  St. Paul, in Rm 10: 9-10, reminds us of two dimensions of  belief.  “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, then you shall be saved.” The dimensions are confessional faith and faith in the heart. Confessional faith follows the laws of logic.  Confession of faith in the whole requires confession of faith in the details.  However, faith in the heart, firm conviction of truth of the whole, does not follow down to conviction about the details. But it guides what we say about the details.

Confessional faith concerns what you say (confess) to both yourself and others.  Confessional faith is not hypocritical. Despite doubts and skeptical thoughts running through the mind, you will not say even to yourself that Jesus most likely did not rise from the dead or “All things considered it is stupid to pluck out your eye   if you have an irresistible urge to view pornography.” The firm conviction about the whole does not logically descend to the details.  However, firm conviction, belief in the heart, provides  the tenacity that makes confessing into confessional faith rather than mere saying.  It is genuinely faith because one trusts what one affirms and will never deny is correctness.

Confessional faith is the faith which seeks understanding,

Because these posts are on foundations of divine command morality, it is interesting to note that Christians, at least one anyway, can belief that moral laws are divine commands, Jesus was God, but yet the maxims of Jesus are, for the most part, not divine commands of morality.

No Salvation History Without Miracles

Philosophy of Religion

The thesis of this post is that acceptance of some miracles is required by Christian faith but it is not essential for Christian practice to expect or to hope for miracles.

What do I mean by “salvation history?” My paradigm is the Christian history of salvation. A salvation history is a history of how God has been working in human history to rescue humanity from its evils for a better life after biological death.  For the most part, the events narrated in salvation histories are events which would be narrated in a purely natural, or secular history.  Obviously, salvation histories must include some events which tell of the natural and supernatural interacting. Otherwise, they would be simply natural histories. When the supernatural and natural interact in a recognizable way, there will not be an event which fits into a purely natural account of what we experience. It will, then, be a miracle.

My paradigm of a natural/supernatural narrative is Luke’s account of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would virginally conceive a child who is the Son of God, Mary’s acceptance and conception. (Lk. 1, 26-38)  Luke pinpoints the time and place of this miraculous: When Herod was king, in Nazareth of Galilee. Of course, there are other events: feeding 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes, walking on water and Jesus ‘resurrection. Scripture cites many more events which do not fit into the natural order, have religious significance and happen here on planet earth.

Despite the many events outside the natural order, the ratio of these events to those events fitting into the natural order approaches zero. So, for the purpose of finding natural laws, for science, the natural events with supernatural factors involved, can be ignored. Well, maybe, they can be considered as reminders of the methodological point that natural laws should be understood as probablistic – statistical. Acceptance of the miracles in Christian salvation history requires no rejection of science. A Catholic scientist may simply forget about the miracles recorded in scripture while working as a natural scientist.

What about the rationality of accepting accounts of miraculous events as true?  Is this question being asked before or after having faith in the Christian salvation history? First, there is a need to bring out when the question of believing in miracles arises.  For some of us, and these are the only people I will talk about, the question of justifying belief in miracles arises only after there is belief that the salvation history tells the truth about the human condition and the fate of humanity.  There is faith in the story. Then there is a need to justify believing that the crucial miracles actually occurred.  For instance, I find a need to justify believing that Jesus rose from the dead because I have faith in the Christian Salvation history. That is how St. Paul approaches the issue in 1st Corinthians 15. “ But if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. 

This is not the place to make a case that early Christian belief in the Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is correct. N. T. Wright has made a good case. Of course, we have to admit that the early belief could have been wrong. But that only requires conceding that Christian salvation history could be wrong. But faith in a religion is faith that it tells the truth; not that it is necessarily true.

So, miracles entailed by the scripture, tradition and religious authorities of a religion require acceptance, What about other miraculous events accepted by many adherents of a religion? My anecdotal evidence is that many of my fellow Catholics, some very pious, do not expect miracles. Reported miracles are like reports of someone far away winning a huge sum in a lottery. Some of us would not even like to win big in a lottery. It would disrupt our lives. I do not know how I would react if a putatively miraculous event happened to me or someone close to me. It would not seem right!

Cur Deus Homo?

Philosophical Theology, Philosophy of Religion

Cur Deus homo

These reflections on Anselm’s (1033-1109) question about why God became man, suffered a horrible crucifixion and rose from the dead were provoked while reading pp, 150 ff. of Joseph Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity*”  With reluctance, the then Fr. Ratizinger, accepted what I below call the “atonement theory.” He calls it “satisfaction theory. ” The satisfaction theory is biblical and Church teaching.  He favors, under acknowledged influence from Fr. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), what I call the “re-creation theory.”  This optimistic theory also has basis in scripture and is Church teaching. It promises humanity that God’s suffering was forward looking; not only to remedy what had been done. The Paschal Mystery created a future for humans to be like God; not God, of course, but to have a new human nature with God’s selfless loving as its way of loving.

Ratzinger admits that  an outstanding theological problem is reconciling these two theories.  In this post, I try to reconcile these two theories by use of my idiosyncratic notion “moral harm.” This may be foolish for someone with no theological training.

There are two answers to Anslem’s question: Atonement, Re-creation

The atonement theory holds that God became man so there would be an appropriate man to suffer the retributive punishment for offending God.

The re-creation theory holds that God became man so human nature could be recreated so that humans could have eternal life with a divinized human nature.

The objection to the atonement theory is that we should not conceive of God as requiring intense misery for an offense to Him.  God should not be thought of as being satisfied with suffering.

The objection to the re-creation theory is that is that we should not conceive of God as being unable to re-create human nature without the intense suffering of the crucifixion.

My defense of the atonement theory assumes my notion of moral harm. Moral Harm Distinguished From Vengeance Moral harm comprises the human produced norms that harm ought to be whenever we violate a moral law. Our morality now requires fulfilment of these special moral rules that someone be harmed.   Humanity can never fulfill these harm requiring moral norms.  Way back with the first humans norms requiring harm – norms requiring retributive punishment – have been accumulating. We are all born into the human community whose justice cries out for indefinitely many unpunished wrongs. God has given us the capacity to create a moral order.  For humanity to be complete all its norms must be satisfied.  Our moral order requires suffering of harm that no individual or group of humans can bear.  So, God becomes man to bear the suffering which we require.  It is our retributive justice which demands an execution that only God can suffer.

I made this point in an earlier post on nihilism.

See Jesus has saved us from nihilism being a correct account of the human condition on August 4,2017 I outline my unprofessional theological interpretation of the Paschal Mystery as Jesus carrying out accepting annihilation to save humans from having annihilation as our fate. The gist of my speculation is that human’s original sin is to set the moral obligation that humans’ fate is to be annihilated. We have chosen that human destiny ought to be no different than that of any other animal. But this obligation is incompatible with being like any other animal who have no obligations.

This incompatibility is resolved by the human nature of Jesus suffering annihilation and then being restored with a human nature that has fulfilled the obligation to be annihilated. Jesus suffered what we have required humanity to suffer. His death was not a sacrifice to God. His death was a fulfillment of the human moral demand for human annihilation so that human nature could be free from this moral imperative that nihilism be humans’ fate.

Back to re-creation theory:

My explanation of why recreation of humanity required the crucifixion is that the old humanity had chosen to live under obligations by choosing to have Basic Human Goods become obligatory goods.  For instance, instead of having sexual desire be for sexual intercourse  for procreation and lifelong male/female bonding,we chose to have  an obligation to have those goals for sexual activity. The original sin activated the capacity of the basic human goods to become obligatory goods. We turned away from loving the basic goods for humanity in the way God loves them. We chose not to love as God loves. We chose to be obligated to loves as God loves. Hence, humanities end became fulfillment of the law.  Living for fulfillment of the law is only the most meager antidote to nihilism. Living for basic human goods as God wills them is everlasting human life. That old humanity of living for fulfillment of the moral law had to be destroyed by fulfilling the service to the law.

The crucifixion does double duty. It fulfills the demands of our moral law and kills the humanity whose highest goal could be only fulfillment of the law.  Resurrection is not necessary for atonement. But for recreation there was a need for the resurrection.

*Introduction to Christianity 2nd ed 1990, 2004 ,Ignatius Press, San Francisco, German original 1968

The Value of Conceptual Models of Satan

Core philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Realism vs. anti-realism

In Seriously Have we Been Captured by Satan?, I sketched out a conceptual model or philosophical theory on humanity being captured by Satan. What is the purpose of such a model? Most Catholics who hear about the temptations of Christ, demonic possessions or hell have no interest in such abstract discussions. (I write “most Catholics” because I believe that much of the time I think and act as a “typical Catholic in the pews.”)We read the words of scripture and hear homilies. We accept the words and, more or less, heed the instructions not to take any images as portraying spiritual realities. We need not rely only on own own imaginations for imagery to set aside. We enjoy an immense artistic tradition illustrating Satan and his “works and pomps.” For instance, see Temptation of Christ by Vasily Surikov (1872) and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel .  See also Temptation of Christ .  What is the value of all of this imagery? Of course, much of it has artistic value although, for the most part, not by presenting what is beautiful.

It must be emphasized that the imagery of Satan et al. is to be ignored for purposes of representing what was the case in natural and supernatural reality. The religious value of the imagery is as a heuristic leading us to take the words of scripture seriously. By catching our imaginations, we pay attention to the words. To repeat: The imagery is not be ignored. In so far as, the imagery helps appreciate and follow the words of scripture and doctrines developed from scripture, the imagery is valuable.

What is the value of the scripture and doctrines?

The scripture and doctrines tell of our relation to God, the supernatural and how we are to live our natural lives so that we can be happy with God in heaven. The scripture, doctrines and heuristic imagery of Christianity form a vast conceptual scheme. It is a way of speaking and living. Here the attention is on the speaking. As a twentieth century philosopher who wrote his Ph. D. dissertation* on Wittgenstein, I class the Catholic way of speaking as at least a language game . There is no need to digress into the literature on language games. The important point is about what is the right thing to say. The word “game” suggestion that what is right or wrong in the game is contained in the game’s rule, explicit or implicit. The language game specifies what is correct to assert and correct to deny. Reality beyond the game need not be consulted on how to play the game, viz., say the right thing. Call the right thing to say “warranted assertions.”

I write mostly of Catholicism. But what I write can be applied to other religions.

Catholic faith is trust that the warranted assertions of the Catholic teaching and practice, the Catholic language game, tell us what is the case with the natural and supernatural and how to live properly in it. Simple faith is trust that the warranted assertions tell the truth without any consideration of what it would be like for them to have truth conditions in reality – to represent what is the case.

It might be proposed that Catholic faith is trust that the warranted assertions of Catholicism tell us what is true, and not merely warranted, because they come from a language game developed from the reality of Jesus’s teaching, crucifixion and resurrection. However, how do the first century reality of Jesus’ teaching, death and resurrection justify, outside our Catholic language game, assertions in the twenty first century? This is a problem which calls for a philosophical model.

Faith seeking understanding is hope that we can have some understanding of what it is like for there to be truth conditions for the warranted assertions. In particular, the value of conceptual models of Satan is to sketch out how there can be truth conditions for talk of Satan.

However, the conceptual models will be ignored by most, unverifiable by any empirical tests and controversial amongst the few who pay attention? (There is always quarrelling about any philosophy.) The fact that there are philosophically minded Catholics who are trying to understand how assertions about the transcendent and supernatural can be true becomes part of the language game of Catholicism. This contribution to the Catholic outlook, the Catholic language game, is an antidote to non-cognitivism about religious belief and, in particular, in Catholic religious belief.

Roughly, the non-cognitivist interpretation of religious assertions is that they do not tell us the truth about a reality independent of the religious beliefs. Truth and falsity are irrelevant. The function of religious assertions is to guide conduct and inculcate life-guiding attitudes and outlooks.  For instance, they may lead us to having a purpose driven life, construct a sense of being a community, prescribe rituals for making daily life feel sacred, or protect ourselves from the uncanny.  Reconsideration of the paragraph about he role of stories at the beginning of Seriously: Have We Been Rescued From Satan?  leads to an insight into non-cognitivism.

“We passionately believe that the most urgent task is the compelling proclamation of the gospel, one that not only shares it in an attractive – and concentrated – way, but that also offers people a way of seeing reality, and of making sense of the world, history, and life that is vastly different from the story our modern culture tells.” N.T. Wright is quoted: “This is how stories work. They invite listeners into a new world, and encourage them to make it their own, to see their ordinary world from now on through this lens, within this grid.”

The non-cognitive interpretation of religions is that they are nothing more than these life guiding stories.  They are only language games.

Call a religion which holds that its story is worth using because it tells some basic truths about what is and what ought to be “realist religions.”  Christianity, and especially Catholicism, have been realistic religions.

A trend within a realistic religion to  adopting non-cognitivism, explicitly or implicity,  provides a basis for a temptation to think that the story is no longer worth telling.  Secularism in the surrounding culture fosters such a trend. I do not want to talk with my fellow Catholics about this temptation because I fear that it may help it become vivid for them. That temptation certainly threatens me.  So, I struggle to understand how the Catholic Christian story can tell the truth about what is and ought to be. Perhaps, making my thoughts public may help others with similar anxieties.

* An improved version of my dissertation examining Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics is in my book: Strict Finitism, The Hague 1970

Seriously: Have We Been Rescued From Satan?

On the Nature of Satan, Philosophical Theology

I have volunteered to be a discussion group facilitator in my parish’s presentation of The Rescue Project . The goal of the Rescue Project is strengthening belief in the Christian Salvation story.
The project is guided by the maxim: “We live our lives according to the story we believe” The website announces:

“We passionately believe that the most urgent task is the compelling proclamation of the gospel, one that not only shares it in an attractive – and concentrated – way, but that also offers people a way of seeing reality, and of making sense of the world, history, and life that is vastly different from the story our modern culture tells.” N.T. Wright is quoted: “This is how stories work. They invite listeners into a new world, and encourage them to make it their own, to see their ordinary world from now on through this lens, within this grid.”

The project is structured around eight videos in which Fr. John Ricardo dramatically lays out the Christian Salvation Story. There are group discussions after each video.

The third video is titled “The Enemy is the Enemy.” Fr. Ricardo speaks in an emphatically realistic way about Satan, the devil or the evil one as OUR ENEMY. In the fourth video, Fr. Ricardo dramatizes how humanity, with the disobedience of the first two humans, were captured by Satan. The fifth video describes Jesus’ crucifixion as rescuing all of us from him.

I am uncomfortable about participating in discussions of Satan. I cannot decide what I believe about the narratives. I do not want indications of skepticism to undercut the point of the Fr. Ricardo’s narratives. So, I tell myself a “metaphysical story.” What is the story? I begin by adapting St. Augustine’ doctrine that angels are essentially messengers.* I use, and maybe misuse, Thomistic notions of matter and form. My metaphysical story should not be blamed on St. Augustine or St. Thomas. Is in my “metaphysical story glib?.” I grasp at metaphysical straws to build a conceptual structure. Telling a metaphysical story is my rationalization for participating in discussions about Satan. In The Value of Conceptual Models of Satan , I exam why I seek a rationalization. via metaphysics.

In creation the transcendent God has there be out of nothing potentiality for being formed in various ways for various purposes. (I use a passive construction “has there be” to avoid attributing our concept of action to what is transcendent.) The transcendent God has, also out of nothing, there be entities conveying to potentiality the various ways of being formed for various purposes, i.e. formal and final causes. These entities for conveying ways of being formed for various purposes can be regarded as messages from the transcendent; as such they are angels. They are not the Word of God. They are the messengers bringing the Word of God.to potentiality.

Without conveying ways of being formed for various purposes to potentiality, potentiality is formless void. So, having there be conveying ways of being formed for various purposes, viz., angels, is the beginning of creation: When God said “Let there be light.” Angels are not identical to that to which they bring form and function. Nonetheless, the conveyers of the form to potentiality, viz. matter, have the form and function conveyed but without forming matter. So, the angels forming humanity have the forms of free will, self-consciousness, thoughts of God and obedience to laws of God.  (Attributing the forms conveyed to the conveyers of forms is my construction for rationalizing anthropomorphizing angels. )This is not platonic self-predication in which the form of man is a man. It is the conveyer of the form of man to potentiality which has the form it conveys, while remaining spiritual.

Angels are spiritual entities because they have no matter. This means that they have no potentiality for taking on accidental forms by which they can be spatially located and distinguished from one another; they can only be what they are essentially. However, these angels can change if their essence, the forms they have, provide for the attainment of a goal, eg. informing matter or making a decision as would be the case for angels conveying the form for free will. There is a formal succession; a before-and-after succession which cannot be tracked by an spatial succession.

This metaphysical speculation has set the stage for Fr. Ricardo’s anthropomorphic tale of the fall of Satan and Satan’s enslavement of human beings. The conceptual structure makes anthropomorphism plausible. For the angels for humanity have the forms of the traits they convey to humans. We think of them as similar to people while trying to ignore any spatial imagery of them.

Some of the highest angels, perhaps those charged with bringing the highest intelligence to humans, were envious that humans would share with them eternal life. They believed that the humans tied down in matter should not share their high goal of eternal life. In their pride, with their free will they chose not to convey the form of eternal life to humans. With their choice not to convey the form of eternal life to humans, they chose not to be what they are essentially, viz., conveyers of the Word of God. By choosing not to be what they are essentially, they chose total death. Total death is annihilation; not being at all. But they cannot be annihilated for they have the form of eternal life. The result is that they have chosen eternal torment of having as their chosen goal being annihilated while they can never be annihilated. Simply being, as opposed to not being at all- is an eternal torment for them. There is no rest. That is hell.

In their hellish state, they still envy humans having eternal life with being with God as their good. Other angels fulfilled the function of conveying the form of eternal life to humans. Perhaps, the other angels taking over this function could be portrayed as St. Michael casting Satan and his angels down from heaven. In their envy, they wish to pervert the good of eternal life in humans into the eternal torment to which their disobedience perverted their eternal life. Satan persuaded the first humans, viz. the humans from which the forms and purposes of humanity would be biologically transmitted to other humans, to choose not to be with God by choosing to disobey God. By choosing not to be with God, these first humans chose for humanity not to have the goal of being with God. For humans not to have the goal of being with God is not to be. For humans not to be as they ought is NOT TO BE. So, the first humans who chose the forms for subsequent humans, chose the final form as not to be. Thus, humans, by this primeval choice have their final goal as the perverted good of not being. But it is perverted because they have the form of eternal life while having the goal of not having life, viz. annhilation. Thus, humans now have the hellish condition of the fallen angels. They eternally seek annihilation; a restless striving for a total death which never comes.

To be sure, humans have a type of death for death is what has been chosen. The death we get is not being full humans because we are all ultimately to be separated from matter, viz., biological death. We still have the form of eternally being which is now a curse for our choice is not to be. So, with Satan we have the eternal torment of seeking not to be.

Thus, Satan has captured us by making our destiny the same as his, viz., eternally tormented spiritual beings. For each of us the capture is completed at our biological death. For in the spiritual condition we are completely in his realm. So, it is biological death, becoming disembodied, which is the doorway to hell. In this sense, death is as much our enemy as Satan. Overcoming death, as disembodiment is the way to rescue humans from the hellish destiny of Satan.

I shall not attempt a rationalization of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection as overcoming death. I try to understand the Paschal Mystery with philosophy. But these philosophical speculations are only faith seeking understanding. I regard philosophical speculations as rationalizations when used to excuse anthropomorphic stories about spiritual beings.

* See Taylor Marshall on creation of the angels according to Augustine. Taylor Marshall writes clearly on this point. I need not agree with all of his opinions on theology and Catholic Church policies.

The Problem of Evil as a Cornerstone of a Nihilistic World View

Nihilism, Philosophical Theology

Undercutting any solutions for the problem of evil is the cornerstone of nihilism.

Of course, this post connects with The Problem of Evil as a Cornerstone of a Christian World View. In that post, I developed a line of argument in philosophical theology adapting a line of argument reaching back at least to Epicurus’ classical formulation of the problem of evil, around 300 BC. It culminated with:

10. If God has delegated creation of reality as we experience it to subsidiary creators, He had a good reason for delegating creative activity and has a good reason for correcting the experienced reality produced by susidiary creators.

11. So, ultimately there will be a correction of reality as we experience it although we cannot imagine experiencing it!

These lines (10) and (11) provide an intellectual rationale for developing a world view of some type of salvation history. Salvation histories are histories of reality as we experience it using language of ordinary history plus reference to religious beings, processes and events. The world view of Christianity is a salvation history. My paradigm salvation history is given in the Catholic Bible plus interpretations of the Christian Church Fathers and expressed in the Nicene Creed. At the risk of being cryptic: Salvation histories are solutions to the problem of evil. Salvation histories make sense of life – tell of a point and purpose for living despite the sin and suffering all experience by living.

Most likely, the intellectual rationale behind a salvation history comes, in fact, after the salvation histories have been told for generations. However, being a subsequent rationale for narrations of the salvation history does not reduce the rationalization to unimportant additions to a salvation history. A dimension of our being rational animals is being theological animals. Experienced sin and suffering drives us to seek understanding of our believed salvation history.

Good reasons have been given for theological theories behind Judeo-Christian salvation history. Unfortunately, despite being good reasons, none of the rationalizations are compelling. The theories of philosophical theology simply do not have mathematical certainty. There are no intellectually compelling solutions for the problem of evil. Logic allows hardening the heart and saying: No!

Hence, the problem of evil provides a foundation for nihilism. Nihilists find loop-holes for setting aside the theological rationalizations and let the experience of sin and suffering lead people to despair of there being any point or purpose to living. All history, secular and salvation, tell only “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

When I think of loss of the naive faith of a child or even of an adult, I think of a nursery rhymme about an egg named Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All of the king’s and all of the king’s men.
Could not put Humpty together again.

Faith and rationalization are now needed to go on living with hope that the salvation history tells the truth about the point and purpose of living. Both faith and reason are needed in religion just as both are needed in science. This religious faith that sustains hope is not naïve fideism justifying believing because one wants to belief. Religious faith justifies nothing. It is a gift that comes and goes sustaining hope that ultimately “all manner of things will be well.”