Randal Rauser's Blog, page 85

Some Christians say the world is getting worse. Are they right?

Many conservative Christians believe the world is progressively getting worse.

Are they right? In this video, I challenge that assumption by way of a thought

experiment which provides evidence that North America, at least, is becoming

a more just society.

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Debriefing the Trinity Debate: A Conversation with Dale Tuggy

Recently, one of the foremost defenders of unitarianism today, the analytic philosopher Dale Tuggy, squared off in a public debate with popular speaker, radio host, and author Michael Brown to debate the topic “Is the God of the Bible the Father Alone?” Tuggy defended unitarianism and Brown defended trinitarianism.

I very much enjoyed this rigorous debate and after listening to it, I wanted to follow up with some questions for Tuggy. That conversation is below.

RR: Dale, thanks for agreeing to a follow-up conversation regarding your recent debate with Michael Brown.

In your opening statement, you list six facts which you argue fit better if the New Testament authors were unitarian. Meanwhile, Brown was tasked with arguing that those facts instead best fit the assumption that the NT authors were Trinitarian.

Like many Christians, I find myself left out of these options: I don’t believe that the NT teaches Unitarianism, but neither do I accept that the NT authors were already Trinitarians. Rather, I believe that the doctrine of the Trinity gradually emerged in the early centuries of the church as the best interpretation of the NT documents and thus the fullest revelation of God. And this historical development was guided by the Holy Spirit (John 16:13).

That brings me to my first question. While your six facts may provide a problem for Brown’s assumption that the NT teaches Trinitarianism, do you believe they present as serious a problem for the Christian who believes the Trinity is a post-NT doctrine which provides the most satisfactory overarching interpretation of the NT documents?

DT: First, you have to realize that by “unitarianism” I mean that thesis that the Father just is the one God, and no one else is. (As I use the term it is neutral about the preexistence of Jesus.) It is in that sense that I claim that the NT is unitarian in its theology. I think the texts I cite in my opening statement clearly imply that thesis. About those six facts, by the way, Dr. Brown could not and did not deny them, and in my view he didn’t show that any of them are unsurprising if the NT authors are trinitarians. Thus, he did nothing to undermine my point that those facts are strong evidence for my thesis that the NT authors are unitarian in their theology, not trinitarian.  

Like many with theological training, you want to say that it’s a false dilemma to be asked to choose between the NT authors being unitarian (God just is the Father) and the NT authors being trinitarian (God just is the Trinity). Why not say that they were proto-trinitarian, or semi-trinitarian, or just that they were neither trinitarian nor unitarian? In other words, the NT authors were confused, though they were sort of trying to head in a trinitarian direction, but lacked the needed terminology or concepts. Here’s the interesting thing: the six facts still confirm my thesis (that the NT authors are unitarian) over this new rival (that they’re confused); it’s just that the confirmation is to a lesser degree than in the unitarian vs. trinitarian comparison. In other words, my six facts are still surprising, given the confused hypothesis, just a bit less so, while again they are expected given unitarianism. I explicitly make this argument in a fuller, more technical version which I presented in Germany in 2017, which is a forthcoming chapter in a forthcoming book, and which is trinities podcast 189, “The Unfinished Business of the Reformation.”

RR: At the close of your opening statement you recount the failure of all Trinity theories to provide a biblical, orthodox, and coherent account of what it means for God to be one and three.

This prompts me to ask two questions. First, on your podcast, you’ve interviewed many theologians and philosophers who attempt to provide a satisfactory Trinity theory which is biblical, orthodox, and coherent. Is there any theory or approach that you find more promising than others? Or do you think they are all equally unsuccessful?

DT: I can sympathize with all of them, and I see what they are getting right, as concerns the NT. The “social” people, I call them “three-self” trinitarians, quite correctly recognize the personal relationship which the NT portrays between God and his unique human Son. But by endorsing the Nicene claim that they are each fully divine, they thereby posit two gods (two beings, each of which has the divine essence), and despite great effort, these theorists have not been able to show that their theory really should count as biblical monotheism.

The one-self people, they are surely right that the Christian God is supposed to be a “He,” a unique and wonderful Self, indeed, someone with a personal name – not a group, family, or set of three selves. Yet as I argued in the debate, it is a terrible error to see the Father and Son of the NT as the same self, or as two manifestations, modes, or personalities of the one divine self. Among other difficulties, it is incompatible with the Son serving as a mediator between God and us, and it rules out the Son being a real man. No human being is a property, mode, or action of anything or anyone. (The many agonies of two-natures speculations are shared by all trinitarians, although this debate didn’t focus much on those.)

The relative-identity theorists are the other current camp; such are theories that only a philosopher could love. But in my view they too are logically incompatible with clear, repeated NT teaching. The NT is explicit that the Father is Jesus’s god. Relative identity trinitarians say that even though they are different “Persons,” the Father and the Son are the same god. (By the way, I write “god” when using the word as a common noun, and capitalize it like a name, “God,” when using it as a singular referring term.) But no god can be god of himself; god-over is an irreflexive relation, like bigger-than. If A is the god over B, A and B can’t be the same god. (Notice that here I grant, but only for the sake of argument, that there are irreducible relative-identity relations.)

There are other less popular speculations out there, but they too seem to conflict with what look like self-evident and necessary truths. Still, for me the fundamental problem with Trinity theories is not their internal difficulties, or their clashes with other things we know, but just that none of them is the best explanation of what the Bible does and doesn’t say. It wasn’t the difficulties of the theories that made me a unitarian. Rather, those drive me back for a difficult, decade-long re-examination of the Bible, which ended in my concluding that such theories just aren’t well enough motivated by the texts themselves.

RR: Second, what would you say to the person who says they believe in the doctrine of the Trinity without a satisfactory theory of the Trinity just like they believe in libertarian free will without a satisfactory theory of libertarian free will?

DT: A difference here is that in my view belief that we have libertarian free will is properly basic, something that adult humans normally believe and know to be true. No Trinity theory has that epistemic status. Of course, most of us don’t have much of a theory of libertarian freedom, any detailed model of how it works. And I guess your point is that likewise, most trinitarian Christians don’t have detailed views about how God is three in some way and one in some other way. Of course, there are a few philosophers who think that there is some contradiction lurking in the idea of libertarian freedom.

I grant that in many cases we reasonably believe and even know important truths without having any explanation of those truths. I also grant that we can reasonably believe and know some truths even though there is some difficulty about them that we can’t solve. But I don’t grant that we can have strong reason to believe some set of sentences the meaning of which we don’t fathom. Some sophisticates, usually theologians, can see that however we understand sentences like “The one God exists in three Persons” or “God is three Persons sharing one essence,” hard problems quickly arise. Their solution is to refuse to interpret the words. They’ll say that all analogies, all comparisons to other things, fall short, and no “model” can be offered, that is, we can’t really set out under what conditions the sentence in question would be true or false. In my published work I call this “negative mysterianism.”

But I take it this is feigned ignorance. In fact, there is a certain way of thinking about the triune God that they’re employing, when not adopting this artificial, defensive pose of ignorance. Just about all Christians habitually think of God as a who, a someone, a “He,” a self. And since “Jesus is God,” Jesus is that same self, the same self as the Father. So one starts a prayer with “Oh Father, we love you…” and then two sentences later, “…and we thank you for dying for us.”  In practice, among the laity, all the sound and fury of trinitarian theorizing just gets dumbed down to this: sometimes confusing together Jesus and God. But then, you read the Bible, and when doing that, you think they’re two selves, two personal beings, two intelligent agents, indeed two friends, though one is the boss of the other, indeed, his god. It’s just a confusion.

Now what about the few hearty souls who will both say that their Trinity theory seems incoherent and they’ll even say out loud what that apparent contradiction is? E.g. “God is one being, and it is not the case that God is one being.” (Mind you, I’m not saying that all trinitarians are committed to that; but we’re supposing that some trinitarian does commit to this as the nub of the “mystery” in his theory.) The problem here is that apparent incoherence (here, seeming to have the form P and not-P) is very strong evidence of falsehood. It seems to me this is going to outweigh whatever reasons you have in favor of the theory, as I explain in my “On Positive Mysterianism.”

RR: Interestingly, during the debate Brown accused you of bitheism while you suggested his view was actually modalistic. You made it amply clear that the bitheism charge was unfair: as you pointed out, you refer to Jesus as “God” while recognizing that ontologically there is only one God, the Father.

However, could you say more about why you believe Brown could be interpreted as a modalist?

DT: As I said in the debate, by “modalism” theologians usually mean a view on which God is successively Father, Son, and Spirit, one after the other, with no temporal overlap. In that sense, he is not a modalist. But if “modalism” is just the “Persons” of the Trinity being just ways the one divine self is, then it seems he is a “modalist” in that sense. I used to use the word “modalist” that way, like here and here. But I don’t want to just quarrel about words, and I think the traditional heresy-labels are too often used as a substitute for critical thinking. So for some time I’ve preferred calling such views “one-self trinitarian.” The thrust of my rebuttal was that such a theory clashes with clear NT teachings, such that Jesus is God’s prophet (the predicted one who’d be greater than Moses), that Jesus is our high priest, that he mediates for us, that the Father commands and he obeys, etc. Also, it is self-evident that a thing can’t be and not be some way at one time. But he theorizes that the Father and Son are the same self and the same god, even though in his view, the two of them have differed in various ways. (This was the part in the debate where he said, I think against his better judgment, that the Son actually didn’t die – I was urging that on the first Good Friday Jesus was dead but the Father wasn’t – and then shifted to the view that the Son’s body (or human nature?) died, though his soul did not – or at least, the Logos did not.)

Brown made it clear that he was irritated by this sort of objection, that in his eyes it was “philosophy,” and that’s not what he was there to debate. But of course if something is manifestly impossible, and your reading of the Bible implies that claim, that’s a huge problem for your reading of the Bible. You can’t separate considerations of consistency from the process of interpretation. The more we respect a book, the more we should strive to read it in a self-consistent way. I don’t see how Dr. Brown could be exempt from such considerations. I certainly don’t think that I am.

RR: Okay, here’s the last question. Could you say more about what it means to worship Jesus if Jesus is only a human being?

DT: By “only a human being” I take it you mean a man, a human being who does not also have a (or the) divine nature. So, there’s nothing in the Bible that says that God could not will that we also give religious worship to his special man. And it is a core NT teaching that God has willed this; this is part of what it means for Jesus to be “exalted to God’s right hand.” This is a real and shocking promotion, not just Jesus resuming his previous position. For him to now enjoy that position is for us to owe him worship. We see Jesus worshiped, and not on the basis that he is God (or is divine, has a divine nature) in Revelation 5. And Paul explicitly says that the confession of Jesus as Lord is “to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:11) Of course, we should not “worship Jesus as God” if that means worshiping Jesus while thinking that Jesus is God himself. But if “worshiping Jesus as God” means worshiping both God and his Son in (outwardly) similar ways, then that is just what we see in Revelation 5, and in all Christian assemblies since the beginning.

The word “worship” has shifted in meaning since biblical times so that a lot of us assume that “worship” is something which in principle can only be fitting to give to God. (In philosopher-speak, there is no possible world in which it is not morally wrong to worship someone other than God.) As I’ve explained, the biblical words translated as “worship” are not so specific in meaning. Worshiping is a type of honoring, and there is nothing self-evident about the claim that necessarily, only God can be worshiped. You honor both your parents; you honor both the mayor and the prime-minister. Why shouldn’t religious honor be in principle give-able to more than one?

As I said in the debate, Dr. Brown seemed to have as an unexamined assumption that only one with a (or the) divine nature could be worshiped (so, Father, Son, Spirit, and presumably also the Trinity as such). But the Bible neither says nor implies such a claim. What the OT says is that only Yahweh (aka “God the Father”) should be worshiped. That looks like a problem for my view, since in my view Jesus isn’t Yahweh but rather his Son.

But I don’t think it really is a problem. Words like “all,” “only,” “none” etc. are interpreted in a context, relative to some assumed domain. So if I comment on your blog and say “Everyone knows that Rauser is a Christian apologist,” it would be silly to try to refute me by pointing out the existence of some man who lived in Borneo in the fifteenth century who surely did not know that. The objector doesn’t grasp that the assumed domain was something like: people who read this blog. So in, for example, 900 BC, among the beings then worshiped, i.e. God and the alleged deities of the nations, only God should be worshiped. That is still true now – out of that group, only God should be worshiped. Of course, if we shift the domain, so that now it includes the risen and exalted man Jesus, we get a different claim. It is now false that [out of all the available objects of worship] we should only worship God, precisely because we should also worship Jesus.

I think this is why no NT author seems worried about the worship of Jesus, that it should violate monotheism or count as idolatry. And notice that angel says “Worship God [and not me, the angel], not “Worship only God!” as some mistakenly translate. (Revelation 19:10, 22:9) This is because the very same author has just positively portrayed the worship of both God and his exalted Son. And speaking of “idolatry,” again, Dr. Brown, as is traditional, seemed to assume that any worship of someone other than God himself counts as a case of the sin of idolatry. (I would assume this to be based on Romans 1:25.) But again, that is not a scriptural claim, and the NT itself falsifies it!

Dr. Brown’s move here was to insist that John 5:23 says the Son should be honored “even as” the Father is, in the sense that exactly the same type of religious worship must be given to each (and this is the type only God should get). But the passage simply doesn’t demand that reading, and at any rate, the NT is clear enough that the exalted Son should be worshiped because of his faithful, redeeming, Kingdom-establishing service to God. (Revelation 5:9-10)

To hear more from Dale Tuggy, you can visit him online at his excellent blog and website: https://trinities.org/blog/

In addition, you can buy his fine book What is the Trinity? here.

(And you can read my review of What is the Trinity? here.)

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Would you rather be a Muslim who acts like Jesus or a Christian who doesn’t?

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Dumb-plin: My (Brief) Review of Dumplin

I watched Dumplin on Netflix yesterday, a film that promises to be a heartwarming depiction of an overweight teenager who enters the beauty pageant run by her mother in order to offer a protest to an intolerant society and the former-beauty-queen-mom who has long ignored her.

The film starts off in promising fashion, or at least it does if you are willing to set aside the ridiculousness of a rural Texas town that regularly hosts a Dolly Parton cross-dressing extravaganza.

Nonetheless, the film has a fatal flaw: beauty pageants are not redeemable. The one kid had it right at the beginning when she calls her friends to “Fight the patriarchy!” And there is a lot to fight. This retrograde event actually includes a swimsuit display as part of the program.

Alas, by the time the event rolls, our promising young protesters have all fallen into line, just as the plot requires. And so the pageant ends by becoming more “inclusive” of heavy-set people — Yes folks, fat girls can wear swimsuits too! — as if that is supposed to warm our hearts?

Lame. Lame. Lame.

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What can we learn from the Covington Boys Controversy?

Like many people, I was outraged at what *appeared* to be the overt disrespect and racism from the “Covington Boys” toward Vietnam vet Nathan Phillips. I described my visceral reaction in the article, “A Word on Behalf of the Idiots.” In that article, I assumed the moral culpability of the young men and then offered a reflection on the fact that I too may have behaved in that morally ignoble manner had I been in that situation.

But were the Covington Boys being confrontational? Were they exhibiting racism? Were they exemplifying all the preconceptions that many people have about Trump supporters and packs of loud Caucasian teenage boys?

The initial video that tore through social media, and the narrative that went with it, were soon shown to offer an incomplete picture at best. The Washington Post offers a good overview of the problems with that initial narrative. Over the last day, I’ve several of the defenses of the Covington Boys. Many have described them as wholly innocent actors in the entire affair.

However, there is a reason to think that too is doubtful. Consider, for example, this viral tweet from a young woman who claims to have been taunted by these boys before the encounter with Mr. Phillips.

The Covington Catholic boys harrassed my friends and I before the incident with Nathan Phillips even happened. I'm tired of reading things saying they were provoked by anyone else other than their own egos and ignorance ????? pic.twitter.com/utdPFii92D

— linds (@roflinds) January 21, 2019

Based on all the evidence I’ve seen to this point, it seems most likely that the boys are neither the irredeemable racist mob of their initial detractors nor the unwitting innocents envisioned by some of their supporters. Rather, the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle.

And where does that leave the rest of us? I’d offer the following simple lesson for this chapter of the saga:

The #CovingtonBoys Debacle reminds us that we all need to be more like Robert Mueller. In other words, keep your head down until you've gathered all the facts.

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) January 22, 2019

To conclude, I’m going to offer an excellent example of what I call the Mueller Principle. This is an extended excerpt from my book You’re Not as Crazy as I Think (which is only 6 bucks right now!):

It was a Sunday much like any other. I was a university student pulling in late (as usual, I must admit) to the large suburban church I attended. As I cruised slowly around the packed parking lot, looking for a space, I quickly began to grow more frustrated with the passing of each occupied stall. Then I saw it, a spot that somehow everyone else had missed. Immediately my car lurched forward like a hawk closing in on its prey. Then just as quickly I had to slam on the brakes as I realized that my ‘empty’ spot was actually occupied—at least partially. To my utter dismay and considerable anger, a shiny red Corvette was parked diagonally in this packed church parking lot, taking up two spaces. Perhaps, I might understand such behavior on a Monday afternoon at the shopping mall, but on a Sunday morning at church?

               So there I sat in my idling automobile, outraged by this incredibly obnoxious and egotistical act. But even if I was forced to surrender my claim on the parking spot, I was not going to retreat until I had at least secured the moral high ground. And so after I angrily parked my car in the empty lot across the street (a good five-minute walk from the church, mind you), I penned a note of brotherly admonition that I tucked under the fancy windshield wiper of this egregious offender’s sports car. The note went something like this:

My dearest brother in Christ,

I offer you this admonition in the spirit of Christian love and grace. While I recognize that you might deem it necessary to park your fine automobile in two spots on most days, I would implore you to take up one spot on Sundays in the spirit of Christian love.

With all blessings,

Your anonymous brother in Christ

Okay, maybe my memory has softened the tone of the note somewhat. But even if it was a wee bit more confrontational, it was surely justified. After all, I was merely presenting the spirit of pure, righteous indignation, exemplified by the biblical prophets. Whoever this fellow was—whether he be a musclebound meathead or a fifty-year-old banker living his second childhood—he needed a little instruction in the school of Christ, and I was happy to provide it. And so, with my duty done (complemented by a healthy dose of moral superiority), I left the note on the windshield and entered the church to join in choruses of praise to the Lord.

               At that point I quickly forgot about the whole affair … until the service the following week. After the morning music the pastor took the microphone and began to tell us about an elderly woman in the congregation who had broken her hip a few weeks before. When her car broke down, the woman borrowed her son’s Corvette to get to church. (Suddenly I began to pay very close attention.) Alas, with her bad hip the only way to get the car door open was by swinging it all the way out. But since Corvette doors are notoriously long and heavy, she was reasonably worried that a door swung fully open would hit the car parked beside her. (At this point I began slouching low in the pew while trying my best to appear casual.) And so, she came to church early and parked on the far edge of the parking lot, taking two spots so she could swing the door open after church without hitting another car. And even after all her efforts at doing the right thing she still received a self-righteous, handwritten reprimand from an anonymous congregant.

               Oops.

Now in my defense it must be said: Who on earth, upon seeing a Corvette taking up two spots, would ever suspect that it was being driven by a little old lady with a broken hip? But perhaps that was just the point: reality is often more complex than we first suppose. And when you realize that a Corvette taking up two spots just might be driven by an elderly woman, you are forced to rethink many other overly simplified judgments about the world.

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Can you be a Christian if you doubt?

I grew up in a Christian tradition that greatly valued the certainty of one’s convictions: the “man of faith” was the one who fully trusted God, not the one who doubted. As a result, I came to believe that doubt is the enemy of faith. But is that really true?

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A Word on Behalf of the Idiots

Like the rest of the world, I was enraged as I watched footage of the students from Covington Catholic High School mocking and threatening Vietnam Vet and Omaha Elder Nathan Phillips. One comment on YouTube directed toward the kid — “A punchable face” — perfectly captured my sentiment. Those teenage idiots are now the latest unwitting chapter in Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Hope you enjoy your public infamy, punks.

As for Mr. Phillips, he is a hero and his response to the racist taunts and threats of those idiots exemplifies true power, character, and poise. (He has been equally impressive in subsequent media interviews.)

However, I want to conclude by offering a modest word on behalf of the idiots.

In one of her books, Baroness Mary Warnock recounts the period in Post-War Britain when the horrific details of the Final Solution came to be known. She observes,

“[T]he horrors of the Holocaust became generally known at this time, and I reflected for the first time that humans have a great deal in common: I could not be sure that I did not have instincts as detestable as those of the Nazis, nor that I would have had the clarity of vision or the strength of character to resist these instincts, had I been a German at the time.”

By the same token, I ask myself, had I been a teenager from Covington Catholic High School in that moment, how would I have responded to Mr. Phillips? As I’ve thought about that, I cannot be sure that I would not have instincts as detestable as those of those idiots, nor that I would have had the clarity of vision or the strength of character to resist these instincts, had I been one of those kids at the time.

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The Problem of Religious Skeptics Singling out Religious Beliefs for Criticism

I regularly encounter religious skeptics who single out religious beliefs as presenting some particular epistemological problem. The catalyst for this article is one of those opinions which I read just this morning on Twitter. The skeptic writes:

“Why do folks ”struggle” with religious beliefs? We happily let our other beliefs evolve as we go thru life. But we cling to the religious ones or lament their waning. Seems to me a good thing to mature in our convictions. That entails changes in belief. Me not understand.”

The subtext of the tweet is clear: religious beliefs track with epistemic and emotional immaturity, a refusal to engage the evidence and revise one’s beliefs accordingly. In short, religious beliefs inhibit rational maturation.

Defining Religion

The first problem here is that the tweeter never defines “religious” beliefs. If we’re going to argue that religious beliefs track with epistemic and emotional immaturity, one should first explain what it means for a belief to be religious.

In fact, that is an enormously difficult question because the concept of religion is an essentially contested concept. In other words, people do not agree on the essential components by which a religion should be identified. There are paradigm instances of religion, but there are many liminal cases: e.g. Marxism, humanism, patriotism. Many of these phenomena may form doxastic communities of belief and ritual which structure the lives of their adherents and imbue them with meaning. Are these doxastic communities and/or the systems of belief and ritual that frame them thereby religious? And if not, why not?

To ask that question is to embark on an endlessly complex debate with no clear answer. Needless to say, if we cannot define religious beliefs then we cannot say that religious beliefs track uniquely with epistemic and emotional immaturity.

A Paradigm Religious Belief

Let’s set aside the challenge of identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions of religion and instead focus on a paradigm example of a religious belief. In What’s So Confusing About Grace? I relay my experience growing up in the Pentecostal church. As a Pentecostal, I grew up thinking that after conversion, Christians should await a second blessing, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, the hallmark of this Spirit-baptism is the supernaturally bestowed ability to speak in other languages. I would propose that (i) the belief in second blessing Spirit-baptism and (ii) the belief that speaking in other tongues is the hallmark of the Spirit-baptism are paradigm cases of religious beliefs.

So now a question: do epistemic and emotional immaturity track especially with the religious beliefs (i) and (ii) over non-religious beliefs? I see no reason to think that is the case. In my own experience, I gradually came to the conclusion that (i) and (ii) were false based on my assessment of the evidence. As I recall in the book, I observed that many spiritual people (i.e. people who evinced behaviors indicative of spiritual fruit) did not speak in tongues or claim the Spirit-baptism while many of those who did, failed to exhibit that spiritual fruit. And this evidence provided prima facie evidence to disconfirm (i) and (ii).

Subsequently, I took a course in university in which I studied the relevant texts in Acts and 1 Corinthians 12-14 and I came to the conclusion that the New Testament also did not support (i) and (ii). Based on this evidence I abandoned (i) and (ii). In retrospect, I would count that process as a paradigm example of the reasoned assessment of evidence and the revision of one’s beliefs accordingly.

Furthermore, I have many other examples like that which I recount in the book. And I’ve seen similar experiences among other people as well. So it seems to me that the evidence from paradigm instances of religious belief does not bear out the tweeter’s claim.

Existentially Significant and High Ingression Depth

The real issue, I would suggest, involves beliefs that have the (overlapping) properties of being existentially significant and having a high ingression depth. Ingression depth refers to the extent to which a belief in one’s noetic structure (i.e. the totality of their beliefs) connects to other beliefs within that structure such that abandonment of the belief would require a person to change many other beliefs.

Here is an example of an existentially significant belief with a high ingression depth: Jane believes her dad is a kind man who loves her deeply. Consequently, when evidence surfaces that he is, in fact, a psychopathic serial killer with the inability to bond emotionally with anyone, Jane is initially resistant to the evidence. Indeed, she evinces the very hallmarks of epistemic and emotional immaturity lamented by the tweeter.

There are two points to make here. First, Jane’s belief in her father is not a religious belief. And yet, she struggles much more with abandoning her belief in her dad’s basic goodness than I ever struggled in giving up my paradigm religious beliefs in (i) and (ii).

Second, Jane is not necessarily exhibiting epistemic and emotional immaturity at all. You see, when a belief is existentially significant with a high ingression depth, the reasonable and psychologically natural response is to evince a high degree of conservatism in retaining that belief as one carefully assesses the evidence. To be sure, one may indeed eventually lapse into epistemic and emotional immaturity if irrational defense mechanisms take over. But that is by no means the expected outcome.

I’d say the same thing about people who find religious beliefs that are existentially significant and with a high ingression depth to be under evidential assault. They too are reasonable to be conservative in their assessment of evidence. It doesn’t automatically follow that they are exhibiting epistemic and emotional immaturity. Indeed, the case may be quite the opposite.

One more thing: the same phenomenon is evident with the person raised in an atheistic household who gradually becomes convinced that Christianity is true. They likewise are experiencing a change in their noetic structure which affects beliefs of existential significance with a high ingression depth. And as a result, they are predictably conservative in their response to the challenge. In short, where worldviews are concerned, conversion doesn’t happen overnight. And that’s as it should be.

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Can You Be a Calminian? Yes … and No

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God in a Transcendental Signifier: A Conversation with Joseph Hinman

A few months ago, I published an article on “The Top Five Problems with Contemporary Christian Apologetics.” Number 5 was “Lack of Imagination”: in short, among contemporary apologists there is an inordinate focus on a small number of arguments (e.g. the Kalaam; the argument from cosmic fine-tuning) at the expense of countless underutilized arguments to say nothing of still other arguments yet to be imagined.

That’s one reason I appreciate the work of Joseph Hinman. Mr. Hinman has an MTS from the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and has studied at the doctoral level at the University of Texas at Dallas. And he quite deliberately seeks to explore underexplored and wholly new avenues of argument. Consider, for example, our recent conversation on his argument for God from mystical experience.

In this article, we take up a second argument for God that Mr. Hinman has been developing, one that proceeds from what he calls transcendental signifiers.

RR: Joe, thanks for joining us for another discussion in the philosophy of religion. This time out we’re going to discuss your argument for God from transcendental signifiers. I suspect a good place to begin is with your concept of a transcendental signifier. When I first read that term I thought of C. Stephen Evans’ argument in his book Natural Signs and Knowledge of God. Evans argues that arguments for God’s existence are based on so-called “natural signs” which are non-coercive pointers to the reality of God. As such, these signs provide the intuitive appeal for various arguments for God’s existence. Is that what you mean when you refer to transcendental signifiers? Or is your concept different?

JH: You would think so, since he’s just down the road in Waco, I’m up here in Dallas. There is some commonality, in the sense that both views deal with natural theology. It may be a case of great minds thinking alike because I see many aspects that our views hold in common but my idea has nothing to do with him.  I started working on my argument back in 2002 when I had just discovered internet apologetics and began arguing on message boards and blogs, and I created the Christian CADRE apologetic group. I was adapting things I had been thinking about at UTD when I was studying Derrida, This argument is rooted in my study of Derrida; I don’t think Evans deals with Derrida. At first it was just a fun way to flabbergast atheists on message boards, A couple of years ago I decided it was time to dig it out of mothballs and turn it into a real argument.

I like Evans idea of signs pointers, that is similar to my notion of what I call “deep structures of being.” Speaking only of my own argument,  because I’m not sure his idea and mine are really the same, I have not read his book. My argument is based in Derridean ideas but it seeks to reverse Derrida. I ask what if Derrida is wrong and there is a transcendental signified? Then that on itself is a good reason to believe in God. Derrida’s whole program was a reaction against belief in God; the desire to tear down hierarchies because he rejected the ultimate hierarchical principle. If as he supposed reason and rationality stem from an overarching principle that forms the basis of all meaning and thus sets up the ultimate hierarchy the will of God, the reality of that hierarchy ought to mean we accept or assume the reality of God. So the ultimate reason I can give for doing so is that without it we have only the dissolution of meaning. The TS is the only way to have a rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe, of life, of nature.

Before going on I need to remind the reader that all of my God arguments are about rationally warranting belief not proving the existence of God.

RR: Okay, can you say more about the specifically Derridean ideas you’re engaging with and then how you seek to reverse them to, as you put it, “flabbergast atheists”?

JH: Derrida’s overall project* is to explicate the end of metaphysics, but not to merely explicate he also wanted to help hasten it. His major issue was the myth of presence,which begins with the Platonic theory of knowledge and sees this  theme echoed throughout Western thought up into modern times. Scientific hegemony of thought is a hint of this, latest version of the myth of presence. The myth says that meaning is present in the signifiers. There is meaning in an overarching final sense and it is immediateness present to us. That was the case with belief in God or the Platonic realm, now only hinted at with science which makes all truth available through its own ruination; or with formal logic.

Western thought has always assumed a logos, a first principle that gives meaning to all ambiguity and grounds all knowledge and norms (reason, logic, mathematics, truth, God, whatever). This concept has been embodied in many different ideas; collectively Jacques Derrida calls them “transcendental signifiers” (TS). These differing notions all point to a single idea, the one thing that is necessary and universal that orders and gives meaning to all signs and signification. That is the thing signified by the words used to mark it, the transcendental signified (TS). The term G-O-D is the Transcendental signifier and the actual reality the word points to is the transcendental signified.

Humanity has been unable to find any matching candidate for this post in modern thought primarily because we gave up the idea of a logos. Gave up on a universal ordering principle. Modern science has a sort of truncated logos in the idea that empirical observations will eliminate all false hypotheses until just the truth, scientific truth. That will never happen because it cannot; science can’t render first principles in areas like ethics and morality and it can’t delve into the spiritual, the phenomenological, the existential or anything not immediately verifiable empirically. Postmodern thought has given up on the whole project. They reject the concept of truth itself and seek not to understand anything beyond their self referential language game. Yet in rejecting the concept of truth, and tearing down hierarchies, they create their transcendental signifier differance, (with an a)i. Only the concept of God fits the parameters for the TS. God offers the best explanation for hierarchical ordering, thus offers the most likely correlate for TS. Or to put it another way, mind is the missing dimension that enables the TS to unite human experience of being with understanding. That in itself should warrant belief in God.

My argument says Derrida didn’t believe in the reality of a TS and he assumed such terms just refer to empty promises. Thus the consequence of such hierarchies as are mandated by the veracious notions of a TS are oppressive and totaling, so says the upshot of Derridean thinking. Thus he seeks to tear down hierarchies.I say more power to him Those hierarchies in so far as they are oppressive should be torn down. The problem is true to his own deconstruction, Derrida contradicts himself by also stating that we can’t avoid metaphysical hierarchies and that some hierarchy is inevitable.

At that point I make my argument. Rather than tear down all hierarchy (only to have it replaced by others) let’s seek the true TS that mandates the right hierarchy (God’s Love). I argue that the missing element is mind. of course specifically the mind of God. Thus most of the arguments are oriented issues like mind and cosmos. It’s not a design argument or the CA but does reference both ideas. I have a deductive version and an abductive version.

Both Derridians and modernists (scientism) want to take mind out of the equation, That’s a mistake because the forms are ideas, the TS is a reflection of mind, the mind of God. The necessity of understanding Mind as the ground of the TS is the basis of the argument.

RR: I commend your efforts in seeking to develop an apologetic argument that can reach an oft-overlooked constituency. Christian apologists typically focus on developing arguments to appeal to modernist-engineering types, so this is a breath of fresh air.

To get the basic idea clear, are you saying that there is a fundamental problem in the postmodern world with human persons gaining knowledge and relationship with the world around them in terms of relating signifiers (our ideas, beliefs, cognitive states, mental representations) to the things signified (e.g. those things our ideas, beliefs, cognitive states, mental representations are about)? And thus, in order to overcome this gap we need a transcendental signifier, i.e. a means to secure the relationship between mind and external reality? And God is the only means to do this? Is that the gist of what you’re saying?

JH: Not exactly. Most people want a rational, coherent view that enables them to understand the world better. That’s the beef of most skeptics of belief in God, that God as an idea does not so enable us. Yet most rational thinkers, either knowingly or unknowingly, assume that there is an overarching organizing principle at the top of the metaphysical hierarchy (here I use that term in the Heideggerian sense) that guides meaning, truth, and understanding.

Modernity has two reactions: it either seeks overtly to replace God with an impersonal TS such as reason, logic, math, or science, or it denies the need of a TS but in seeking to fill the void imposes one anyway in the forms just mentioned. That fails because it doesn’t account for so many things such as moral philosophy, existential meaning, or aesthetics,  to make up for that lack: most of the hard materialists deny that those things matter, or they try to supply them through a scientific view. Most Christian thinkers have no trouble dealing with either permutation.

The postmodern reaction typified by Derrida is to say ok let’s just destroy hierarchies and bash reason, we will just wreck rational views and be irrational. Most atheists don’t want that either. The problem that precipitates this state of affairs can be traced back to the removal of mind from the slot at the top of the hierarchy, (the position of the TS). If understanding the TS in terms of universal mind puts us back in the ballpark where God is the TS then we have a good reason to believe in God. We need God as the overarching explanation that motivates all meaning and value.

A rational, meaningful and coherent view of the universe (including the life world) must of necessity presuppose an organizing principle that bestows meaning and grounds understanding. The transcendental signified serves this purpose as the top of the metaphysical hierarchy. Modern Thought rejects TS outright or takes out all aspects of mind, which organize and situate meaning through the hierarchy. Therefore, Modern Thought fails to provide a rantional, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe. The  Concept of God unites TS with universal mind therefore offers best explanation for a view that is Rational, Coherent, and Meaningful. Thus we have a rational reason to assume God as the foundation of thought, the TS.

RR: Hmm, it seems to me that there is an interesting confluence between what you’re arguing and Bernard Lonergan’s seminal work in Insight. It seems to me that hard reductionism definitely faces debilitating problems in providing a satisfying account of reality. Consciousness exists, as do knowing subjects, objective moral and aesthetic values and moral obligations, as well as meaning and purpose, and if a philosophy has no room for those aspects of reality then, in my view, so much the worse for that philosophy.

However, many atheists would agree. They too would reject a hard reductionism about the world and they would be willing to recognize a metaphysically rich worldview that includes various realities irreducible to the material. However, they wouldn’t appeal to a personal transcendent to explain it. In closing, what would you say to that person? Why, specifically, should the transcendental signifier be viewed as personal, i.e. as God?

JH: There are really two basic aspects to the major argument (1) the TS, the top of the metaphysical hierarchy, (2) that the TS is mind, and that this is the missing piece of the puzzle that Western thought has lost. What I consider to be my innovation, such as it is, is that by making TS mind, and universal mind in particular, I solve sets of problems that otherwise create a rift in my sets of concerns and render the two aspects contradictory. To understand this and for the sake of a consistent argument we have to explore this concept of universal mind. It is not that modern thought rejects the TS per se, there’s GUT which aims at establishing a TS but that they denude it of mind which is what makes it workable and gives it meaning. Modern secular thought seems to assume that science has disproved the possibility of transcendent mind by showing that mind can only be produced by brain chemistry. Such is not the case. Science has proven no such thing. It the most it could prove is that this is true for biological life only but it has not even proved that.

There are certain junctures at which an appeal to a personal TS would explain things that are yet unexplained. For example if we accept Big Bang cosmology we have time beginning out of a background of non time, the problem being that in a state of timelessness there should be no change. So it should be impossible that time began. There has to be some point where something happens that turns off one set of rules and turns on another. The idea that this is just a natural impersonal maneuver really begs the question. It would have to be a conscious decision. Or rather, a conscious decision would better explain it.

The problem with moral philosophy is moral philosophers all have minds, (I’m sure of it) the judgement that moral precepts need not be grounded in personal judgement is odd since it is personal judgement that arbitrates moral behavior.  

It seems there must be a mental dimension to consciousness that is not entirely accounted for by reducing the phenomena to their constituent parts unless the mental is one of those parts. That would mean acknowledging that there is some aspect of reality that is not entirely physical. Now, I am not going to assert the existence of a spiritual realm or an immortal soul based upon that. For one thing I see the soul as symbolic of the general direction of a life in relation to God, not as Casper-like ghost in the machine. I see spirit as the property that lives on after death but I also see spirit as consciousness, not a ghost-like quality. Consciousness is largely a black box. Admitting there is a black box that science can’t open is apparently anathema to many scientifically inclined. Nevertheless, there seems t be such a dimension in consciousness.

Thomas Nagel argues,** that the conscious or mental dimension must mirror a basic property of nature. He does not argue that this is God or a reasoning mind. I will argue that understanding that basic property as a reflection of a universal mind is the best answer. Nagel doesn’t have a full blown theory as to the origin or nature of that mental dimension. That is an area where Carroll has a point, Nagel sloughs that off “I’m not an expert, scientists need to work on that” (my paraphrase). While we can’t provide that level of scientific understanding of God, we do have a developed tradition that’s a couple of thousand years old, and has been subjected to rigorous modern thought. Maybe this is a province of the religious domain. That doesn’t invalidate it. It makes a lot more sense to say there is a mind thinking the universe into existence than to say there is a mind-like quality (even though we don’t know what mind=like is) but it doesn’t have will, volition, or personal awareness. How do we separate will, volition, and personal awareness from mind? If Searle is right about intentionality and if the humunculus problem is true then it’s hard to see how mind could be devoid of these attributes. Thus it makes more sense to think of an actual mind in back of the origin of things, and t think of God is the best explanation.

Based upon what has been said so far there must be a transcendental signified, an actual referent corresponding to the many transcendental signifiers. That referent, the top of the metaphysical hierarchy exhibits aspects of mind involving the organizing of great complexity. As Searl says trying to account for intentionality with a purely physical model doesn’t work, there is no problem with mind as the model. There is no reason to think it would be mind-like qualities lacking the major aspects of consciousness; will, volition, personal awareness. The structure of our conscious experience itself lacks the homunculus problem. That means there is no infinite regression of causes in seeking to find ever more basic physical processes to account for consciousness. As with the intentionality argument meaning is inherent in mental perception of things. This means that the mind-likeness of reality must have conscious recognition. If we assume that mind as a basic property is not itself mental then we would have to assume a physical process in the origin of consciousness and removing mind from the issue which leads again to the homunculus problem.With arguments by both Chalmers and Nagel about consciousnesses as a basic property of nature there is a lot to counter the often heard reductionist nonsense. But can we understand consciousness as a basic property of nature, which depends upon a transcendental ???? (first principle) yet we are supposed to ground that in the impersonal?

*John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1997 2. Difference is not God but it functions as a TS in Derrida land.

**Mind and Cosmos, 7.

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