Dr. Michael Horton

05 / 28 / 10

In this paper I will give a summary of various approaches to the Doctrine of God from the early and late (or High) periods of Reformed theology.  Specifically, I will be looking at the Reformed orthodox doctrine of Divine Simplicity, taking Calvin and Turretin as representative of the orthodox understanding of the doctrine in the early and late periods, respectively.  In the second section of my paper, I will turn to a discussion of the compatibility of the Reformed orthodox doctrine of God with the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of God, looking specifically at two characteristic Eastern beliefs; the distinction between Essence and Energies in God, and the belief that God’s Essence is “beyond being.”  Because these two beliefs are absolutely essential to the Eastern conception of God, the judgment as to whether or not they are compatible with a Reformed orthodox understanding of God will also be a judgment as to the compatibility of the two conceptions of God more broadly.

It will be my contention that the Reformed orthodox doctrine of God is not compatible with the Orthodox doctrine that the Essence of God is beyond being.  Aside from internal theological considerations that make these two doctrines incompatible, there are also general philosophical considerations, namely that the doctrine of God’s Essence as beyond being is untenable and irrational from a Western metaphysical perspective.  Secondly, however, I will contend that the Reformed orthodox doctrine of God is not necessarily incompatible with the Orthodox distinction between the Essence and Energies of God, given a number of qualifications.  While these two conclusions obviously yield the final conclusion that the Reformed and Eastern Orthodox doctrines of God are not compatible in the fullest sense, the acceptance of the Essence-Energies distinction is still important and marks a potential improvement upon more traditional formulations of the doctrine of God in the West.

The Reformed View of the Essence of God

According to Richard Muller, quoting from Cocceius’ Summa Theologica, “God is not known through his essence—but ‘through his effects and his names, by which he wills to reveal his virtues to us.’”[1] This is a consistent theme among the Reformed theologians.  There is a general skepticism about the usefulness or legitimacy of metaphysical speculation apart from divine revelation.  Musculus is representative of this tendency in Reformed thought when he argues that there is a radical distinction or discontinuity between created and uncreated nature.  He states emphatically that there is no analogy whatsoever between God’s nature and the natures of creatures.[2] Because of such a radical discontinuity, it would surely be futile to attempt, as created beings, to penetrate into the depths of the “what-ness” of God’s essence.  It is important to note that when Musculus uses the term “nature” he should be taken to mean “essence.”  Calvin made an explicit distinction between nature and essence in his writings, where he typically used the term nature to mean what can be known about God.[3] Musculus does admit that knowledge of God’s nature can be gained through his works, but such knowledge would still be only analogous, which is just what other Reformed writers, including Calvin, say concerning the essence.

Because of this view of the ultimate incomprehensibility of the divine essence, nearly all Reformed systematics texts make use of the distinction between essence and attributes.  God’s “attributes” are properties that can be applied to him, including eternity, immensity, spirituality, omnipotence, loving-kindness, holiness, and so on.  A number of distinctions were proposed by different writers in different periods in an attempt to classify the attributes, one of which is the distinction between communicable and incommunicable.  In the early stages of orthodoxy, this distinction was not universally accepted,[4] however by the high orthodox period it had become the most common distinction, and was argued for by Turretin in his Institutes of Elentic Theology, effectively sealing its fate as all but dogmatic for Reformed theology.[5] The precise definition of this distinction and its relationship to the Orthodox distinction between essence and energies will be taken up in the next section.

One of the incommunicable attributes that emerged as primary among Reformed discussions of the attributes was unity.  To say that God possessed the attribute of unity was to say that God possessed absolute numerical identity of essence.[6] That is to say, there is only one being or essence that is God.  This has obvious implications for the doctrine of the Trinity, which explains why it became prominent in discussions.  However, unity for the Reformed orthodox actually transcends mere numerical identity by denying even the possibility of another God.[7] In this way, unity actually becomes a kind of representative attribute of all that makes God to be God.  It stands for his absolute uniqueness, and therefore also for his greatness and glory.  The God of the Bible reveals himself, after all, as the one and only God.

An obvious corollary of unity, and an attribute that most Reformed orthodox theologies saw as following directly from it, is simplicity.  If God is in an ultimate and absolute sense one, then it follows that he cannot be more than one.  This seems perfectly obvious, and taken by itself is merely a tautology, but there arises a problem:  If God is an absolute unity, in what sense can he posses multiple attributes?  Unity itself does not answer this question, for God could potentially be a single composite thing.  The attribute of simplicity is the corrective to this.  Simplicity is, at its most basic level, merely the denial of composition within God.  In most Reformed orthodox theologies, it was actually treated as part of a triad made up of simplicity, spirituality, and invisibility, which are “so related, indeed, that they imply each other and, at times, demand virtually the same definition.”[8] Muller goes on, “[Simplicity], for example, indicates non-composite existence and indivisibility – which is precisely the characteristic of spiritual as opposed to material existence – and spiritual things are, by definition, invisible.”  Thus, if God is spiritual and invisible, which none deny, then he must be simple.

Muller and others argue that simplicity is at its core nothing more than a denial of composition within God.  It is not primarily an abstract philosophical idea, nor does it obliterate all distinctions within God.  This is extremely important, for the absence of all distinctions within God would effectively refute the doctrine of the Trinity, since the Persons must be genuinely distinct.  In reality, the Reformed orthodox theologians saw simplicity as necessary for rightly understanding the Trinity, since to deny simplicity would be to accept composition, which would lead to Tri-theism.  Calvin, specifically, argued that simplicity was necessary for understanding the Trinity, as well as “the unity and consistency of the divine power and justice.”[9]

Now the question arises as to what is to be said about the divine attributes.  If God is simple, in what sense can he have many attributes?  The Reformed orthodox theologians all affirmed in one way or another that all of the attributes are in fact essentially identical with one another, and also each attribute is essentially identical to the essence.  In other words, the attributes are not really distinct, as in the distinction between one thing and another thing (for God is not composed of many things).  Again, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that there are no distinctions in God whatsoever.  Thus the question becomes what kind of distinction exists between the attributes?

In addition to real distinctions, the Reformed orthodox also recognized three other kinds of distinction; formal, virtual or eminent, and rational.  These three kinds of distinctions differ from real distinctions in that they deal with distinctions in things rather than between things.  They are “distinctions that do not separate a particular thing from other things or render the thing composite but which indicate the ways ‘by which a thing is differentiated within itself.’”[10] According to Muller, a formal distinction is one that “belongs to the primary actuality of a substance or essence” whereas a virtual or eminent distinction “identifies a quality belonging not to the primary actuality of a thing but to its potency or power.”[11] Yet a further division can be made between virtual and eminent, such that virtual refers to “an ad extra exercise of power” and eminent refers to “an ad intra causal foundation.”  Finally, a rational distinction is one that, “when it assumes a foundation in the thing, is an ideational distinction (nonetheless genuine) that, unlike the formal, eminent, and virtual distinctions, does not specify the nature of its foundation.”

Muller identifies three distinct answers proposed by different Reformed orthodox writers.[12] The first is that the attributes are rationally distinct ad extra.  The second is that the attributes are distinct ad intra, either virtually or eminently.  The third view, which is a slight variant on the second (and the position held by Turretin), is that the attributes are both eminently distinct ad intra, and also formally distinct ad extra.[13] Within this diversity of opinion, however, there is much unity.  All the Reformed orthodox agreed that the divine essence was simple, but that the attributes were in some sense genuinely distinct.  Also, all agreed that the “operations” or “effects” of the attributes in creation were really distinct.  In the end, the majority view of the orthodox was the second view, namely that the attributes possess “an essential identity with an eminent or virtual distinction intrinsic to the divine essence, reflected in the distinction of attributes in their operation ad extra.”[14]

The Orthodox View of God

And the Problem with the View that God’s Essence is Beyond Being

According to the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of God, there is a distinction between God’s essence and his energies.  The essence of God is so transcendent and unknowable that it is actually beyond the concept of being (or existence) itself.  All that we predicate of God, we necessarily predicate of the energies.  The energies (or “things around God”, highlighting their relationship to the essence) are God, but they are not his essence.  They are God as he manifests himself to his creation.  When we speak of God, experience God, or worship God, we are always speaking of, experiencing or worshiping the energies.

There is a serious problem with this view of God.  To say that God is “beyond being” is to say that God neither exists nor not exists, because we cannot predicate anything at all about the essence.  We cannot predicate existence, but nor can we predicate non-existence.  In order to accept such a statement, however, we must affirm an outright contradiction.  By the law of non-contradiction, certainly a non-negotiable foundation of logic, to exist is necessarily to not not exist.  Conversely, to not exist is to not exist!  There is no tertium quid between existence and non-existence.  To deny one is necessarily to affirm the other, you cannot deny both at the same time.

The Orthodox would counter that their understanding of the essence as “beyond being” is really just a safeguard for the utter unknowability of the essence.[15] But here we run into yet another problem.  To say that we cannot know anything about the essence of God is in fact to affirm a proposition about the essence of God.  We do know something about the essence, namely that it is unknowable.  We could even say that we know something about the properties or relations had by the essence, because it is (apparently) a characteristic of the essence that it cannot possibly be known, in any respect whatsoever, by finite human creatures.  For these reasons, then, I believe that the Reformed ought not to adopt the Orthodox doctrine of God’s essence as “beyond being.”[16]

The Compatibility of the Reformed and Eastern Doctrines of God

In a previous paper I explored the arguments given by David Bradshaw, an Eastern Orthodox Philosopher, against a certain conception of divine simplicity called “Absolute Divine Simplicity” (ADS).  According to this argument, if God’s attributes are identical to his essence, his attributes could not be different or else his essence would be different.  However, this poses a serious problem for divine freedom, because it means that for God to be able to will differently (to choose not to create, for example), he would have to be different.

I would like to briefly propose a response to this argument that does not require altering the Reformed view in any way.  According to the Reformed orthodox view sketched above, there is genuine distinction within God, but not real distinction.  Thus God remains simple within himself even while the effects of his attributes outside of himself are manifold and really distinct.  Now imagine two possible worlds, one (the actual world) in which God ordains Babylon to destroy Judah and carry the Jews into exile, and another (hypothetical world) in which God chooses instead to ordain Egypt to do the same job.  Imagine that we can stand outside of space and time and view these two worlds next to each other.  Imagine also that we can turn and “view” the two “Gods” of each world.  What would we see?  According to the Reformed view, the ad extra operations or effects of the divine attributes can be really distinct without there being any real distinction in God.  Thus whatever real distinctions we may observe between the different effects of God’s attributes in the created world, there is no corresponding real difference within God’s essence (because there are not real distinctions in the essence at all).  This means that, hypothetically, no matter what effects are produced in creation by God’s attributes, the essence never changes.  To answer the question I raised, then, the two “Gods” of our two possible worlds would look, ad intra, exactly the same, even though there are real differences between the effects produced in each world.  Thus it would not follow, on this view, that were God to choose not to create, he would be really different (although this argument does leave open the possibility that God’s attributes would be eminently or virtually different).

However, a potential problem is still left unresolved.  According to Muller, one of the primary meanings of the attribute of simplicity is that it suggests that God cannot be lacking in any of his essential properties and still be God.  God cannot lack the property (or attribute) of goodness, for example, and still be God.  What do we do, then, with the attribute of creator?  If being creator is an essential attribute of God, because all of his attributes are essential, then it would seem that the argument proves that God cannot not be a creator without ceasing to be God.  This obviously carries the implication that God is not actually free to choose not to create.

Here it may be possible for the essence-energies distinction to be of use to the Reformed.  According to my dialogues with Eastern Orthodox thinkers, I have learned that the East believes that in some sense there exists a single divine energy that is God.[17] This energy is the energy of the essence, the energy had by all three Persons of the Trinity.  It is a Person that must particularize this energy in a specific way.  So, for example, when God chooses to create he particularizes the one divine energy such that it becomes what we might call a “creative” energy.  Further, this single energy relates to all of the various particularizations of energies (the energy of goodness, the energy of holiness, etc.) in the way that an Aristotelian universal relates to each of its particulars (i.e. the universal red is fully present in each particular red thing, and all red things possess essential unity with respect to their redness).

Given such a view, it is difficult not to see striking parallels to the Reformed view I have outlines above (or even to the Western view in general).  I do not know what a knowledgeable Eastern Orthodox theologian would say, so I am forced to speculate, but it seems to me that the idea of a single energy that is the essential unity of all of the manifold particularizations of energies is almost identical to the idea of an essence that is the essential unity of all the manifold attributes.  Further, the energies can be said to be “essentially identical” in the sense that God is fully present in each of them, just as the attributes, in the West, are said to be essentially identical.[18]

While the divine energy (or energies) are not beyond being and are therefore capable of being known by us, they remain far beyond us, for they are uncreated and infinite (since they are God, they could not possibly be created or finite).   Thus they are in some sense incomprehensible.  Once again, this is just what the West has said about the essence of God.[19]

So is it the case that East and West have been saying the same thing all this time, but using different language?  Unfortunately, no, it is not that simple.  For example, the East can say without reservation that God can in fact be different than he is, as we comprehend him (or as he manifests himself to us).  In other words, if God had chosen not to create, on the Eastern view, it is not his essence that would be different, but merely his energy.  His essence remains untouched in the realm of beyond being.  Thus, in a sense, we might say that the East is simply able to bite the bullet in a way that West cannot (or, perhaps more appropriately, the East is able to avoiding biting any bullets in the first place).  The East does not need to make any judgments about whether or not God’s essence would or could be different than it is, because they cannot make any statements regarding the essence, period.

What options, then, are left open to the West, and specifically the Reformed?  Well, first, we can attempt to accept the proposition that God’s essence is beyond being.  However, given my critiques of this position, I think it would be very difficult to do so.  The only way that we could affirm such a proposition is if we can find explicit Scriptural support for it.  If a God who is beyond being revealed (via his energies in creation) that he is beyond being and that we cannot know anything about him other than the fact that he is unknowable, that would be acceptable.  However, I remain highly skeptical about this option for two reasons.  First, it is not likely that such an explicit case can be made from Scripture.  Second, even if it could, there is a serious problem lurking here, namely that we would have absolutely no way of knowing the God who is supposedly revealing himself to us is actually anything remotely like what he says he is.  The Orthodox position rejects even analogous knowledge of God’s essence, so there is literally a complete and impenetrable wall between us and God as he is in himself.  We can have absolutely no confidence that God’s energies are anything like his essence.[20] This is a scary thought, especially considering how closely the Reformed orthodox theologians tied the doctrine of simplicity to the believer’s comfort and trust in God.[21]

The second option is simply the reverse of the first, namely to adapt the language of energies to the Reformed conception of essence and attributes.  My own suggestion would include a unique take on the communicable-incommunicable distinction.[22] On this proposed view, the communicable attributes refer specifically to the energies.  Goodness, power, holiness, and all the other attributes that God is said to be able to communicate to creatures in a limited way would be understood as God’s energies.  We would have direct, univocal knowledge of the energies; however the energies themselves would only be analogies of the same properties as they are within the essence.  Thus while goodness can be predicated both of the energy and the essence, it is predicated univocally of the one and analogously of the other.  The strength of this suggestion, I believe, lies in the fact that it gives a much clearer explanation of just how it is that God can communicate attributes to us without also communicating his very essence to us (which is impossible).  Turretin makes a distinction between two kinds of communication in order to resolve this problem; essential communication and communication by way of “resemblance or analogy.”[23] But it remains unclear just how it is that an attribute of God, which is said to be essentially identical to the essence itself, can be “analogically” communicated.  By making a distinction between the essence and the energies we can resolve this ambiguity.  To make my case even stronger, I would also point out that making use of the notion of energies also provides an explanation for how it can be the case that God’s attributes can be said to have real distinctions in their ad extra effects (because the energies are really distinct).

The incommunicable attributes, then, would refer only to the essence and have no corresponding energy, and therefore would only be known analogically and not univocally.  This would include simplicity, immutability, eternity, immensity, and so on.  It is also possible that this distinction between incommunicable and communicable as applied to the essence-energies distinction may in fact be closer to the theology of the Cappadocians.[24]

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, then, I believe I have shown that the Reformed and Eastern Orthodox doctrines of God are not in general compatible with one another.  The Orthodox view of God’s essence as being beyond being is not only philosophically and biblically untenable, but even the use and application of the doctrine of the divine energies in Orthodox theology goes well beyond what can be supported by Reformed thinking.  I hope I have also shown, however, that adopting the terminology and concept of energies in a more limited sense (perhaps something closer to the original Cappadocian sense) is not only possible but in fact preferable as a compliment to the teaching of Reformed orthodoxy.

[2] Ibid., p. 209.

[3] Ibid., p. 210.

[4] Ibid., p. 217.  Zanchi argues that the distinction is untenable because none of the attributes are communicable to creatures.

[5] Ibid., p. 225.

[6] Ibid., p. 242.

[7] Ibid., p. 245.

[8] Ibid., p. 271.

[9] Ibid., p. 274.

[10] Ibid., p. 286.

[11] Ibid., p. 287.

[12] Ibid., pp. 289-297.

[13] Ibid., p 297.  Muller notes that La Blanc may actually go so far as to argue a formal distinction ad intra.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Admittedly this response is partly speculation on my part, but it is based upon many conversations with Eastern Orthodox friends.  The claim that “God’s essence is unknowable” is definitely a statement that the Orthodox would affirm, however, and so the point I go on to make is still a good one, it seems to me.

[16] It is interesting to note, however, that according to Muller (who is in turn summarizing the writings of the Reformed orthodox) being itself is thought to be beyond all categories and distinctions, in the sense that it encompasses all categories within itself.  I wonder if there is not in fact some overlap here between this understanding of being and the Eastern view of God as “beyond being.”  It seems to me, at least from my own limited perspective and possible lack of understanding, that this notion of being itself as beyond all categories of thought would service the ambition behind the Eastern doctrine just as well without falling into illogical absurdities (such as accepting an outright contradiction).

[17] According  to my Eastern Orthodox friend, Michael Garten, the East takes this view from St. Maximus the Confessor.  Much (if not all) of the summary that follows, however, I have taken from discussions with Michael, and have not read Maximus on this subject myself.

[18] Again, this statement was affirmed by my friend Michael Garten, who does not claim to be an expert in Eastern theology nor a representative of the Eastern churches.

[19] That is, the West has always affirmed that the essence of God cannot be known fully by human creatures, and so is rightly said to be incomprehensible.  Thus, my suggestion in this portion of the paper has been that all of the language that the West uses with regard to the “essence” of God is the same as that used by the East to refer to His “energies.”  And as Bradshaw points out, the West did not have a good Latin equivalent for “energies”, which is why the term never caught on as it did in the East.  This means that there is great potential for synthesizing the Eastern and Western views of God.

[20] And, in fact, given the utter difference between God’s essence and being, it is more likely that His essence is nothing like His energies (because, again, there isn’t even an analogy between them).

[21] Ibid., p. 237.

[22] I say that it is unique because I have found no literature that attempts to explicitly answer the various questions and problems I have raised in this paper.  Thus, I must view my own responses to these questions, which I have largely formulated on my own, as unique.

[23] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elentic Theology, vol. 1, p. 190.

[24] I say this because, according to David Bradshaw in Aristotle East and West, the Cappadocian Fathers do not place the incommunicable attributes (of course they would not have used that terminology) among the energies.  St. Maximus Confessor is the first to place attributes such as eternity and simplicity alongside attributes such as goodness and holiness, all under the umbrella of “the things around God.”  Later, of course, Gregory Palamas would come along and subsume the things around God, the Logoi, and the “divine light” under the term “energies”, but a strong case can be made that that is not at all what the original Cappadocian usage of the term actually meant.

Dr. Michael Horton

12 / 18 / 09

Introduction

In this paper I will examine the doctrine of the divine energies as developed by the early and later Eastern (Greek) Church Fathers.  Simply put, the divine energies are manifestations of God in the created world.  They are truly God Himself, but they are not His essence.  They are the ways in which God makes Himself known to us as created beings.  They would include concepts such as glory, power, mercy, and loving-kindness, as well as eternity and even simplicity.  All of these names or terms that we ascribe to God do not describe His essence (God as He is in Himself), but rather describe his manifold energies.  His essence remains utterly unknowable and beyond all human ability to grasp it.  This distinction between the essence and energies of God became extremely important in the later development of the Eastern (or Byzantine) Christian tradition, especially with regard to the doctrine of theosis or deification.  So important is this distinction to all of Eastern theology that modern scholars are beginning to recognize that it is one of the most important theological differences (if not the most important) that divides East and West.

This paper will be divided into two main sections.  In the first section I will briefly trace the history and development of the use of the Greek term energeia (activity, actuality, or energy), beginning with Aristotle, moving quickly through Saint Paul to the Cappadocian Fathers, and finally considering Maximus Confessor and Gregory Palamas.  I will primarily rely upon David Bradshaw’s book, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christeddom, along with several of his papers and journal articles, to guide us through this first section.  In the second section, I will deal with several claims made against Western theology (specifically against Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas) by both Bradshaw, as well as Joseph Farrell in his book, Free Choice in Saint Maximus the Confessor.  Both authors regard the error of Augustine and Aquinas to be the same, namely that of adopting a concept of God known as “Absolute Divine Simplicity” (ADS).  According to ADS, God is identical with His essence.  It follows that each of His attributes, such as His will, is equally identical with His essence.  But this poses a serious problem to traditional Christian theology regarding the doctrine of God.  On this tradition God has been thought of as free, for example, in the sense that God was free, before His act of creation, to choose not to create.  This means that God could have willed differently than He in fact did.  If, however, God’s will is identical to His essence, then it would seem to follow that for God to will differently, He must actually be different.  If, on the other hand, we wish to affirm that God’s essence is necessary, then we must say that His will is necessary, and thus He cannot truly be free.  Both Bradshaw and Farrell see the Eastern distinction between essence and energies as the best response to this problem, and others like it.  In this regard, I will come down on the side of the East in support of the essence-energies distinction.

However, there is another significant tension in Western theology that Bradshaw and Farrell believe can only be resolved by the essence-energies distinction, namely the tension between man’s free will and the sovereignty of God.  Both Bradshaw and Farrell argue that because the West lacked a robust doctrine of the divine energies, they lacked the conceptual tools necessary to resolve this tension, which lead to a view of the interrelationship between God and man that was rather like a pie chart.  On this “pie chart” model, the more God does, the less man does, and vice versa.  This, according to Bradshaw and Farrell, is what lead to the Pelagian controversy and Augistine’s “overreaction” in the form of double Predestination.  This tension was never resolved, and carried over into the Protestant Reformation in the form of Calvinism versus Arminianism.  The Eastern doctrine of the divine energies, on the other hand, allows for a view of synergy in which both God and man can be said to perform the same act, without one doing damage to the other.  Here I will disagree with both Bradshaw and Farrell, arguing that the essence-energies distinction should not be seen as a response to Augustinian-Calvinistic Predestinarian theology, but rather should be viewed as the best way of explaining the Augustinian-Calvinistic doctrine.  So much for introductory comments, now we move to the history of energeia.

Energeia in Aristotle

According to Bradshaw, Aristotle coined the term energeia.[1] Though energeia could mean simply “activity,” Aristotle uses it primarily in the sense of “actuality” in contrast to “potentiality.”  More specifically, he contrasts energeia with kenesis (motion).[2] An activity that involves motion is one that moves toward an end.  Aristotle’s example is that of building a house.  Energeia on the other hand is an activity that is its own end.  His example is sight (the object of the act of seeing is to see).  In order to distinguish between these two types of activity, Aristotle applies what Bradshaw calls the “tense test.”[3] At every point during the activity of seeing, it can be said that one “has seen.”  However, it cannot be said at just any point during the activity of building a house that one has “built a house.”

Aristotle’s most famous application of energeia is to his concept of the Prime Mover.  According to Metaphysics xii.6, the Prime Mover is a being whose very substance (or essence) is energeia.  Bradshaw explains Aristotle’s motivation for positing such a being,

First, since the Prime Mover is posited to explain motion it cannot itself be subject to motion, and thus it has no potentiality to change or be acted upon.  Second, because it must be eternally and unchangingly active it can have no unrealized capacities to act; everything it can do it already does, all at once and as a whole.[4]

According to Bradshaw, when Aristotle describes the activity of the Prime Mover as “thought [that] is a thinking of thinking,” he means not that the Prime Mover thinks only about himself, in some narcissistic fashion, but rather that the Prime Mover thinks all possible intelligible content at once as a whole.  Given Aristotle’s identification in other places of thought with its object, it is also true that the Prime Mover is all possible intelligible content.  From this, an interesting understanding of energeia follows,

Thus one could equally say that the Prime Mover is present in all things, imparting—or rather, constituting—their intelligible structure, and thus their being.  In light of all this, when we say that the Prime Mover is pure energeia, how ought we to translate that term?  Activity?  Actuality?  Plainly the answer is both—and therefore neither.  It seems to me that the closest we can come in English is to say that it is pure energy.  Specifically, I have in mind the sense given in the American Heritage Dictionary as “power exercised with vigor and determination,” and illustrated with the phrase, “devote one’s energies to a worthy cause.”  But of course no illustration drawn from ordinary objects will be adequate to the notion of a being that is pure energy, an energy that constitutes the being of other things.[5]

In the centuries following Aristotle, this use of energeia fell out of favor.  However it remained commonplace for philosophers of various stripes to refer to the energeia of the gods.  Philo of Alexandria, the prominent Hellenistic Jew of the first century B.C., makes frequent use of energeia in reference to God’s creative power.  He also draws a strict distinction between God’s essence, which is unknown to man, and God’s Powers, through which He acts in the world and can be known.  This will obviously become important later.

Energeia in Paul

The Apostle Paul uses the term energeia frequently, but two passages in particular are of primary importance for us.  In Colossians 1:29, Paul says, “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy (energeia) that he powerfully works (energoumenen) within me.”[6] And in Philippians 2:12b-13 Paul says, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  These passages, according to Bradshaw, illustrate the paradox of synergy.[7] It is both God’s energy and man’s energy at work in the same act.  Both God and man can be said to be doing the act, and yet neither negates the other.  It is man who works, and it is God who works.  Bradshaw also draws the following conclusion,

There is implicit in these passages a belief in the possibility of a personal union with God that is complete and unreserved, yet also free and self-aware.  St. Paul thus takes a large step toward articulating a goal that will become increasingly prominent among both pagans and Christians in late antiquity:  that of participating in the divine energeiai.[8]

Energeia in the Cappadocian Fathers

For the Cappadocian Fathers, the development of a robust understanding of the divine energies occurred on two fronts; First, in their exegesis of Scripture (specifically Moses’ encounters with the divine glory in the Old Testament), and second, in the Trinitarian controversy with Eunomius.

Eunomius was a neo-Arian deacon, and later a bishop, in Cyzicus.  His position differed from Arius’ in details and emphasis, but in essentials it was the same.  Bradshaw succinctly summarizes his main argument against the deity of the Son this way,

He [Eunomius] asserts that the term which best describes God is agennetos, unbegotten.  Because God is simple, “the unbegotten” must be not merely a part of Him or an aspect of His being, but His very essence.  Obviously such an ousia cannot be shared with another through begetting; hence the Son, who is expressly referred to in Scripture as begotten, cannot be God.[9]

Earlier, Athanasius had argued for the deity of the Holy Spirit by pointing out that whatever work (energeia) was attributed to one Person in  Scripture was also attributed to the other two.  He argued that whatever shares the same energeia must also share the same nature (ousia).  Eunomius turns Athanasius’ argument against him by arguing that one of the energeia of the Father is the begetting of the Only-begotten (the Son).  Since this energeia cannot be shared by the Only-begotten, there is a clear difference in energeiai between the two Persons, and thus there must be a difference in ousia.

St. Basil of Caesarea responds to the first argument by distinguishing between what a thing is and how a thing is.  To say that a man is someone’s son is not to say what he is, but how he is (or from whence he comes).  Thus, to say that God is “unbegotten” is merely to say that He is “from nowhere.”  The great insight of the Cappadocians was to argue that terms like “Father” and “Son” referred neither to the ousia of God nor to the energeiai, but rather to “a hypostasis that is distinguished by its mode of existence.”[10]

In response to the second argument, Gregory of Nyssa poses a dilemma.  Eunomius had argued that the Son is begotten by an energeia of the Father.  Thus Gregory sees two options:  Either the energeia is something substantial, in which case it is that and not the Father Himself that begot the Son, or the energeia is not substantial, in which case the Son actually comes from nothing.  Since both options are unacceptable, Gregory can conclude that the internal acts of the Trinity (the begetting of the Son and sending of the Spirit) are not energeiai, and thus Athanasius’ argument can be reaffirmed.  This line of argumentation also leads to the conclusion that whatever energeia can be applied to God (in the form of “God does X”) must be applied equally to all three Persons.  The Cappadocians see no conflict between the unity of the divine energeia and the energeia possessing a “Trinitarian scructure.”[11] Bradshaw quotes Gregory of Nyssa saying, “The same life is wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, and prepared by the Son, and depends on the will of the Father.”

The Cappadocians, Gregory of Nyssa in particular, go well beyond Athanasius in certain respects.  Gregory argues that all names applied to God, such as “just” or “good” or even the name “god” itself, do not refer to God’s essence, but to his energies.[12] One conclusion that can be drawn from this is that energeia, at least for the Cappadocians, does not refer merely to God’s activities or operations.  It refers to his names, as well as qualities that in the West would typically be referred to as His attributes.  What we name when we refer to God Himself are in fact His energies.  Thus the energies must in some sense be God Himself.  But in what sense?  Bradshaw suggests, citing Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration 38, that the energies are God “as He is capable of being apprehended by us.”[13] The energies “manifest the ousia (essence), making it present and active in a dynamic way, but they do not constitute it.”[14] Finally, in response to Eunomius’ charge that applying the distinction between essence and energies to God would result in a form of Plotinian emanationism, the Cappadocians allow that at least some of God’s energeia could possibly have been otherwise.[15]

When it comes to Biblical exegesis, no passage factored more prominently in the Cappadocians’ understanding of energeia than Exodus 33:19-23,

And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”  And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.  Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

The Cappadocians saw here that the distinction between the back and front “parts” of God corresponded to the distinction between the essence and energies of God.[16] They also interpreted the “rock” upon which Moses stood as Christ, for it is only through Christ that we can enter into the divine life (which is participation in the energies).

Energeia in St. Maximus Confessor

Maximus Confessor rose to prominence in the midst of the “monoenergism” and “monothelitism” controversies in the 7^th century.  Maximus adopts the distinction between the ousia of God and the “things around God” (which is his preferred term for the energeiai).  Maximus takes the work of the Cappadocians a significant step further by adding to the list of “things around God” such concepts as infinity, simplicity, eternity, immutability, and reality.[17] Since God is beyond being, and therefore beyond the possibility of the intellect to grasp, it follows that whatever we “know” about God we cannot know about His essence.  Since the church affirms the infinity, simplicity, eternity, etc., of God, we must predicate these things not of the essence, but of the “things around” the essence (which Maximus describes as inhabiting an “infinite space” around God, which implies that they are themselves infinite).

The most interesting one of these divine “attributes” that Maximus places in the things around God is simplicity.  Joseph Farrell suggests that there are two senses of “simplicity.”[18] The first is a philosophical or definitional sense, which he describes as a “great metaphysical equals sign”, by which he means that all of God’s attributes (or the “things around God”) are simply identical to His essence.  The second sense is a “symbolic” sense, which Farrell attributes to Maximus.  Farrell describes this symbolic sense as one in which

…the term simplicity functions rather as a symbol of God’s absolute and ineffable unity, and therefore as a means or method whereby to insure that the divine essence, along with each of its energies or logoi, is wholly enhypostasized within each Person without any partition.

That is to say, simplicity here simply means that each Person is fully God, and that each energy or “thing around God” (which Maximus equates with the logoi) is also wholly and fully God.  Farrell goes on to say that Maximus’ understanding of the logoi or energies is thoroughly Neo-Chalcedonian.

The energies are undivided and therefore all equally divine and equally good because they are inseparably connected to the divine essence and because God is wholly, and without partition, in each.  But they are also unconfused, and therefore they are absolutely unique and distinct, and in no way may they be confused or “identified” with either that divine essence or with each other[19].

According to Farrell, Maximus is responding to the question of whether or not humans will have free choice in the eschaton.  Along with Origen, he responds in the affirmative.  However, Origen, according to Farrell, had held to the first sense of divine simplicity, the definitional sense.  Because on this sense there is no genuine multiplicity in God, there would be only one genuinely good choice for humans to make in the eschaton, and so in order to preserve free will Origen was forced to admit the possibility of another Fall, and indeed an infinite cycle of Falls and Redemptions.  Maximus avoids this problem by positing that the “things around God” or the energies are indeed distinct and therefore present genuinely distinct objects for the human will to choose between.  Yet they are unified and are each wholly God.  Bradshaw puts it another way when he says, referring specifically to the logoi, that, “The many logoi are the single divine Logos passed through the prism of God’s creative act and broken into innumerable separate beams.  Their collective meaning is simply the Logos Himself as He is manifested in creation.”  He goes to quote Maximus as saying, “the one Logos is many logoi, and the many logoi are one Logos.”[20] This ineffable conjunction of unity and diversity is at the very heart of the essence-energies distinction.

Energeia in Gregory Palamas

Briefly, there are several major contributions made by Palamas.  According to Bradshaw, what Palamas did was to synthesize the various strands of thought that existed in Eastern theology (the energies, the logoi, the “things around God”, and the divine “light”) and subsume them all under the term energeia.[21] Second, Palamas argues that the energeia are uncreated and eternal, because the essence is eternal, and an essence can never be without its corresponding energeia.  Third, Palamas takes a slightly different approach in arguing for divine simplicity.  He argues that that which acts is simpler than that which is acted upon.  Bradshaw explains, “The rationale for this principle is that when something acquires a new quality by being acted upon the quality comes “from outside”, as it were, and is therefore a new element in relation to the previous being.  Since God only acts and is not acted upon, He is simple in the highest degree.”[22] Thus Palamas provided another understanding of simplicity that remained consistent with Maximus’ use of the term, while giving a better understanding of what it means in relation to God as energeia.

Problems for the Western Understanding of Divine Simplicity

Now that we have seen the development and solidification of the doctrine of the divine energies in the East, we can turn to the Eastern critique of the Western doctrine of God.  As noted at the beginning of this paper, Bradshaw points out that in an Augustinian understanding of divine simplicity, which Aquinas inherits, God’s will is identical to His essence.  It follows from this that for God to will differently He would have to be different.  To me, this objection seems fairly straightforward and almost beyond the possibility of dispute.  The conclusion follows quite freely and naturally from the premises.  Surely it may be possible to nuance the doctrine of divine simplicity to avoid this charge (something similar to what William F. Vallicella does in his article, “Divine Simplicity: A New Defense”), but there is no doubt that the strict, Thomistic version of simplicity cannot stand up to it unaltered.

Another objection leveled against Western theology by both Bradshaw and Farrell, one I wish to spend more time considering, is in regard to synergy and predestination.  Bradshaw alleges that synergy played little to no role in Western theology, primarily because of the influence of Augustine.[23] Specifically, because of Augustine’s conception of absolute divine simplicity, God’s interaction with the world came to be viewed exclusively in terms of efficient causation.  He specifically points to an argument given by Aquinas, that “since God wills all the He wills in a single act—one that is identical to the divine essence—there can be no cause of His willing as He does.  Divine simplicity is thus the ultimate reason why creatures can contribute nothing to their own salvation.”[24]

Initially this examination of Western theology seems a bit myopic.  Because the controversy over the doctrine of the divine energies versus absolute simplicity was so profoundly important in the East, and lead to the establishment of certain dogmas not shared in the West, these things are viewed by modern Eastern theologians as the source of any and all perceived problems with Western theology.  But surely the assertion that synergy had little to nothing to do with Western theology will strike Westerners, especially of a Reformed persuasion, as a rather odd (if not outright ludicrous) claim.  While Aquinas might have been predestinarian, following Augustine, this was not true of the majority of Western theologians in the medieval period.  Man’s free cooperation with grace was a key component of medieval and Roman Catholic soteriology, just as it became for Arminian soteriology later on.  While it may be true that Westerners lacked the precise theological vocabulary for a proper explanation of synergy, it hardly follows that synergy was not present.

The main question that concerns us in conclusion, however, is whether or not the essence-energies distinction is necessarily linked to the sort of synergy that Bradshaw and Farrell assume it to be.  Obviously, as Eastern theologians, they both view the Augustinian-Calvinistic doctrine of predestination negatively.  Moreover, they take it for granted that predestination is inseparably linked to ADS, and that if Westerners were to take their cue from the East and abandon ADS in favor of the essence-energies distinction, Augustinianism/Calvinism would give way to synergy.  I believe, however, the exact opposite to be the case.  It is my contention (pending further research into the writings of the Reformers) that the essence-energies distinction in fact provides Reformed theology with the conceptual tools for explaining what it has always affirmed, namely the tension between God’s sovereignty and freedom in all things, and man’s moral responsibility.  Despite caricatures from all sides of a Reformed theology in which man remains totally passive in all things, merely acted upon by the direct causation of God, Reformed theologians have always sought to stress both “poles” of the antinomy.  They have sought to maintain the absolute power and freedom of God on the one hand, and the genuine willing and activity of man on the other.  The infamous passage of Scripture that speaks directly to this issue is Philippians 2:12b-13, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  As noted earlier in this paper, Bradshaw recognizes that this verse presents what he calls the “paradox” of synergy.  One and the same act is attributed simultaneously to God and to man.  They are both the actors, and the attribution of the act to one does not in any way diminish the activity of the other.

It seems to me that if Bradshaw is willing to admit that this “synergy” is paradoxical, and thus mysterious to us, he has no grounds for rejecting its application to Reformed theology.  To say that this passage, in conjunction with the doctrine of the divine energies, is incompatible with predestination in the Augustinian-Calvinistic sense, is in fact to deny the mystery and favor one “pole” to the exclusion of the other.  To say that God cannot be acting in and through the human person for His own purpose of election is to deny that God is genuinely the actor to the same degree as the human person is.  God’s energy becomes not truly the act being performed, but merely some kind of “boost” to the human energy, which is going to do whatever it wants to do regardless of God’s will.  In opposition to this, Reformed theology fully allows for the mystery to be what it is, and thus provides for the best interpretation of this passage, as well as the best use of the doctrine of the divine energies.  Reformed theology affirms that, for example, in the act(s) of working out one’s own salvation, God is truly exercising His will toward a certain goal and in accordance with certain of His desires, such that we could rightly say that if God did not will this particular act, it would not have taken place.  And yet at the same time, the human person who is said to be working out his own salvation is also truly exercising his will toward a certain end in accordance with his own desires.  The doctrine of the divine energies, then, does not exclude Reformed soteriology, it merely excludes a poor caricature of it, one in which man is said to have no part whatsoever in his acts of willing.  If, however, we affirm a true understanding of Reformed soteriology, one in which there is no “pie chart” that divides a given act between the energy of God and the energy of man, then the Cappadocian and Palamite doctrine of the divine energies (with some obvious modifications in emphasis) provides the best way of explaining the mysterious relationship between the will of God and will of man.

Works Cited

1. Bradshaw, David.  Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom.  New York, NY: Cambridge, 2004.
2. Bradshaw, David.  “Christianity East and West: Some Philosophical Differences.”  Available from http://www.uky.edu/~dbradsh/.  Internet; accessed October 2009.
3. Bradshaw, David.  “The Concept of the Divine Energies.”  Available from http://www.uky.edu/~dbradsh/.  Internet; accessed October 2009.
4. Bradshaw, David.  “The Divine Glory and the Divine Energies.”  Available from http://www.uky.edu/~dbradsh/.  Internet; accessed October 2009.
5. Farrell, Jospeh.  Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor. South Canaan, PA:  St. Tikhon’s Seminary, 1989.

[2] Ibid., 7-8.

[3] Bradshaw, The Concept of the Divine Energies, 2.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 3.

[6] The ESV and NIV are unique among English Bible translations in that they actually translate the first instance of energeia as “energy.”

[7] Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 120-122.

[8] Ibid., 123.

[9] Ibid., 156.

[10] Ibid., 159.

[11] Ibid., 160.

[12] Ibid., 161.

[13] Ibid., 167.

[14] Ibid., 170.

[15] Ibid., 171.

[16] Bradshaw, Divine Glory and Divine Energies, 17.

[17] Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 190-191.

[18] Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus Confessor, 141.

[19] Ibid., emphasis original.

[20] Bradsahw, Christianity East and West, 13.

[21] Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 238.

[22] Ibid., 241.

[23] Ibid., 265-266.

[24] Ibid., 254.

Dr. Dennis Johnson

12 / 04 / 09

In this paper my plan is to briefly sketch some of the major contours of Pastristic thought with regard to the exegesis of Philippians 2:5-11.  This passage is sometimes referred to as the “kenotic hymn” because, in addition to being song-like in form, it contains the infamous statement that Christ “emptied himself” in taking on the form of a man.  The Greek word Paul uses here, ekénōse, comes from the word kenós, meaning “empty.”  This term immediately became the center of Christological debate.  How is it that Christ emptied himself?  What did he empty himself of?  If he was truly God before his incarnation, did he totally empty himself of all divinity and become merely human?  How would such an emptying even be possible, and what would it mean for divine immutability?  The simple presence of this one word within this one short epistle meant that such questions could not possibly be avoided; they must be met head on.  And they were.  The answers, however, were varied, and it took several centuries for orthodox Christology to be solidified.

In addition to these difficult questions relating to the concept of kenosis, the Early Church Fathers made frequent use of Philippians 2:5-11 for a variety of other purposes (in fact, it is one of the most commented on passages of all of Scripture in the Patristic period).  These uses can be roughly categorized into three groups:  Christological, Soteriological, and Exemplary.  The Christological comments are generally aimed at defending (what would later become) Chalcedonian orthodoxy, namely that Christ was both fully divine and fully human.  The Soteriological comments have to do with what Philippians 2:5-11 teaches us about why Christ became incarnate and how the incarnation affects our salvation.  The exemplary comments focus on using Christ’s example as a model for the Christian, usually in regard to Christ’s humility.

I will begin by surveying a number of examples of each of these three types of comments on Philippians 2:5-11, in order to give a general sense of Patristic teaching on these issues.   I will then move on to address the kenotic concerns mentioned above, showing how different Fathers attempted to answer such difficult questions.

1. Christology

The most important theological debate of the early centuries of the church was over Arianism.  Arianism taught that Jesus Christ, the Logos, was not fully and truly God, but merely the first and preeminent creation of God.  In light of this teaching, it is easy to see why Philippians 2:5-11 would be so influential in the debates with the Arians.  Philippians 2:5-7 reads,

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

If nothing else, this passage suggests that Christ was “in the form of God” and possessed “equality with God.”  As twenty-first century Protestants it is all too easy to read hundreds of years of debate into these short phrases, and wonder how anyone could have missed the true divinity of Christ!  But in the fourth and fifth centuries nothing could be taken for granted, and so the Early Fathers had to meet the challenge of Arianism with persuasive exegesis and argument.  Commenting on verses 6a, Gregory of Nyssa says,

He did not say “having a nature like that of God,” as would be said of [a man] who was made in the image of God.  Rather Paul says being in the very form of God.  All that is the Father’s is in the Son.[1]

Elsewhere he is even more definitive, saying,

The form of God is absolutely the same as the essence.  Yet when he came to be in the form of a slave, he took form in the essence of a slave, not assuming a naked form for himself.  Yet he is not thereby divorced from his essence as God.  Undoubtedly when Paul said that he was in the form of God, he was indicating the essence along with the form.[2]

Gregory uses the parallel drawn between Christ’s being in the form of God and then taking on the form of a slave to argue that Christ must have been truly God.  The word “essence” here might also be translated “nature.”  When we speak of the nature of a thing, we mean its essential qualities or characteristics.  Christ was truly a slave in the sense that he fulfilled all the requirements for having a “salve nature”, so to speak (he was humble, absolutely obedient to his master, etc.).  According to Gregory, it is clear from these verses that Christ’s being in the form of a slave is exactly parallel to his being in the form of God, and so he must also fulfill the necessary requirements for having a “God nature.”  But of course, to have a God nature is simply to be God.

Theodoret, in his commentary on Philippians, makes the same argument, but more clearly than Gregory, saying,

But if [the Arians]think the form of God is not the being of God, let them be asked what they think is the form of a slave….if the form of a slave is the being of a slave, then the form of God is God….Furthermore, let us recognize also that the apostle uses the example of Christ as a lesson in humility….If the Son was not equal to the Father but inferior, he did not obey in humility—he merely fulfilled his station.[3]

Theodoret also adds a new dimension to the argument, one that touches on the “exemplary” uses of the passage (which we will consider below), showing how readily the three categories overlap.  Christ, he argues, cannot truly be an example of humility if he was merely doing what he was designed to do.  If he was not God, his actions were no more humble than those of any other human being.

Commenting on the same verses in his treatise against the Arians, Athanasius says,

What clearer and more decisive proof could there be than this?  He did not become better from assuming a lower state but rather, being God, he took the form of a slave…If [as the Arians think] it was for the sake of this exultation that the Word came down and that this is written, what need would there be for him to humble himself completely in order to seek what he already had?[4]

Here Athanasius is referring to the end of the passage, where God is said to highly exalt Christ for his service in the incarnation.  Athanasius points out that this exaltation cannot be the motivation for Christ’s humbling himself, because he already possessed equality with God beforehand, and what higher exaltation could there possibly be?

Commenting on verse 6b, Marius Victorinus says,

Note that Paul did not say Christ was “similar to God,” for that would imply that Christ possessed some accidental likeness to the substance of God but not that he was substantially equal….Thus Christ is the form of God.  The form of God is the substance of God.[5]

Similar passages can be found in Augustine, Ambrosiater, Eusebius of Vercelli, and others.  The point is quite clear; Paul states in no uncertain terms that Christ had (and perhaps still had on earth) equality with God.  This is precisely what the Arians attempted to reject.

So much for the true divinity of Christ, but what of his true humanity?  While this is certainly less of a concern for most of the Fathers we are considering, since defending his divinity against Arianism was a more present threat to them, Gnostic and docetic tendencies remained ever present, and so his humanity does remain a secondary concern.  Commenting on verse7, Origen says,

In emptying himself he became a man and was incarnate while remaining truly God.  Having become a man, he remained the God that he was.  He assumed a body like our own, differing only in that it was born from the Virgin by the Holy Spirit.[6]

Similarly, Cyril of Alexandria says,

What sort of emptying is this?  To assume the flesh, even in the form of a slave, a likeness to ourselves while not being like us in his own nature but superior to the whole creation.  Thus he humbled himself, descending by his economy into mortal bounds.[7]

In both of these quotations we see again a defense of Christ’s true divinity, which is always the primary concern.  In addition, however, there is an explicit affirmation that Christ was truly like us in every way (barring, as Origen notes, the special circumstances of his birth).  In a way, we may view this as the previous arguments working backwards.  If Christ possesses the true essence or nature of God, then according to this verse he likewise possesses the true nature of a human (in the form of a slave).

An even stronger statement of Christ’s true humanity comes from Marius Victorinus, who says,

It is not as though Paul was in the slightest uncertain about Christ’s identity that he said Christ was found in human likeness.  He did not say in human likeness as though our Lord maybe was not truly a man but a phantom.  Rather he was found in human likeness while still being God yet at the same time being truly a man in the flesh, with a physical human body that he had assumed.[8]

The language of “phantom” is an echo of a similar statement made by Tertullian two centuries earlier in his work Against Marcion (“Suppose the terms figure, likeness and form referred merely to a phantom.  There would then have been no substance to Christ’s humanity….The apostle would not have declared him to become obedient to death if he had not been constituted of a mortal substance.”[9]).  And this vein of argument would be picked up and given even more force later by Augustine, who says,

He did not take on his humanity in the simple way that a person puts on clothes, as something exterior to him.  Rather he took on human form in a manner inexpressibly more excellent and more intimate than that.  The apostle has made it sufficiently clear what he meant by He was made to appear in human likeness.  He was not exhaustively reduced to being a man.  He rather assumed the true human estate when he put on the man.[10]

As is clear from just these few quotations, Philippians 2:5-11 was extremely versatile, and therefore of use against the Arians on all fronts.  Indeed, its statements appear to be so clear that it is no wonder that Arianism finally died out in favor of the Chalcedonian Christology.

2. Soteriology

The second major area of concern addressed by Philippians 2:5-11 is the salvation of humanity.  As Athanasius rightly pointed out in the quotation above, Christ’s purpose in coming to earth in flesh was not to receive a reward from God, for he already possessed far greater riches.  What, then, was his purpose?  As with Christology, the majority of the Fathers  are unanimous in their answer to this question; the purpose of Christ (and the Father, who sent him) was to save mankind from sin and death.  Again commenting on verse 7, Gregory of Nyssa says, “The Godhead is emptied so that human nature may accommodate it.  What is human, on the other hand, is made new, becoming divine through mingling with the divine.”[11]

Strictly speaking, Gregory of Nyssa is here referring only to the specific human nature of Christ, not to all of human nature.  Gregory of Nazianzus, however, takes a further step, saying, “Since he is emptied on our account when he came down (and by emptying I mean as it were the reduction and lessening of his glory) he is for this reason able to be received.”  Gregory Nazianzen defines Christ’s “emptying” as being like a veiling or shielding of his glory, since the glory of God cannot be looked upon by any man.  In this way, he is able to draw the conclusion that Christ’s emptying made it possible for his divinity to be received by all humanity.  Eusebius of Vercelli goes further yet (though still consistent with what the Gregories have said), saying,

The Word was made flesh by bearing and doing what was beneath him in his indulgence and compassion toward us.  All that he possessed by nature is emptied into this his person.  Having been made obedient as a man in the true fashion of humanity, he has restored to our nature by his own humility and obedience what had perished through disobedience in Adam.[12]

Thus Christ’s humanity is seen to have a direct affect upon our humanity, renewing it from the corruption that it had inherited from Adam.  Picking up on the theme of compassion, Eusebius of Caesarea says,

Read the record of his compassion.  It pleased him, being the Word of God, to take the form of a slave.  So he willed to be joined to our common human condition.  He took to himself the toils of the members who suffer.  He suffered and toiled on our behalf.  This is in accord with his great love of humankind.[13]

In summary, then, it was out of love for humanity that Christ became a man, and in so doing he renewed humanity, made salvation possible by the destruction of Adam’s corruption, and freely chose to suffer along with us, that he might know our plight and commiserate with us as he stands before the Father on our behalf.

3. Supreme Example of Christian Humility

The third category of exegesis of Philippians 2:5-11 is essentially a way in which the Fathers sought to apply this grand, though often highly theoretical and obscure, theology to the lives of those in their congregations.  Christ, as truly God, could not possibly be any higher in power or stature.  And yet he humbled himself to the lowest possible position; slavery, humiliation, and death.  If Christ chose freely, under no obligation, to humble himself to such a radical degree, how can we mere mortals, who owe everything to Christ, refuse to humble ourselves to a much lesser degree?  This, at any rate, seems to be the mode of thinking that the Early Fathers saw to be implicit within the text.

In this regard, Ambrosiater comments,

Christ, therefore, knowing himself to be equal to God, showed himself equal to God.  But in order to teach the law of humility when the Jews were binding him, he not only refrained from resistance but emptied himself, that is, withheld his power from taking effect, so that in his humiliation he seemed to be weakened as his power lay idle.[14]

He continues,

He indeed was taken captive, bound and driven with blows.  His obedience to the Father took him even as far as the cross.  Yet throughout he knew himself to be the Father’s Son, equal in divine dignity.  Yet he did not make a display of this equality.  Rather he willingly subjected himself.  This patience and humility he teaches us to imitate.  We are to refrain from making a display of our claims to equal dignity, but even more so we are called to lower ourselves into service as we follow the example of our Maker.[15]

We can see a very personal example of this sort of application in the life of Gregory of Nazianzus.  According to Brian Matz[16], Gregory saw in Christ’s kenosis an example of his own situation as pastor in Nazianzus.  He resisted taking the job for several years, fleeing from Nazianzus once, and only returned begrudgingly to care for his ailing parents.  For Gregory, the practical concerns of pastoral life only brought him down out of the pure bliss of continuous contemplation of God.  To do the work of a pastor was actually painful for him.  However, Nazianzus greatly needed him, especially after his Father’s death, and so out of obligation and humility he elected to remain.  Matz writes,

Gregory can do nothing less than serve the community in its hour of need because Christ did nothing less, in humanity’s hour of need, than give himself as our sacrifice….Gregory wishes the audience [of his Oration 12] to see the anguish of his decision, and yet the resoluteness with which he will proceed to the task ahead….Thus, we have an important exemplary use of Philippians 2:7 in Oration 12 that points to the hard road ahead for Gregory, a road which is no less difficult than that taken by Christ in his kenosis.[17]

4. The Kenotic Problem

Finally we come to the difficult questions raised at the beginning of this paper.  According to Sarah Coakley[18], at the time of Chalcedon there were essentially two major positions vying for the status of Orthodoxy.  One, represented by Cyril of Alexandria, took as its starting point the unity of the Person of Christ.  The other, represented infamously by Nestorius, took as its starting point the distinctness (even opposition) of the divine and human natures.  Coakley finds both potential as well as pitfalls in both approaches.  The Nestorian pitfalls are well known, as Nestorius effectively lost the battle for orthodoxy.  On the pitfalls of Cyril I find Coakley to be unclear, but she may be suggesting that Cyril’s insistence on unity cannot adequately escape a kind of Eutychianism in which one nature (the divine) effectively swallows up the other.  One reason to think this is her meaning is that she faults Cyril’s view for seeming to advocate a divine “takeover” of the human that “trumps” human characteristics such as weakness.[19]

Coakley offers in place of both of these models of kenosis a third way, represented by Gregory of Nyssa, which she describes as “progressive transfusion.”[20] On this model, divinity is gradually transfused into the human man Jesus Christ throughout his life, culminating in the resurrection where, according to Gregory, Christ’s humanity is “absorbed by the omnipotent divinity like a drop of vinegar mingled in the boundless sea.”[21]

Whether or not this model is truly representative of Gregory’s view, and whether or not it actually solves the problems raised against the other two views, are matters that must be left for another time.  Indeed, Coakley herself notes that Gregory’s view has always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship to Chalcedon, and so its orthodoxy may even be in question.  This paper is primarily concerned with a broad overview of Pastristic exegesis of Philippians 2:5-11, and not with the more detailed facets of a single theologian’s view.  There are, however, several concluding observations that can be drawn from our preceding overview.

First, none of the Fathers take kenosis to imply that Christ actually gave up or lost, in an ontological sense, his divine nature and attributes.  For them, the tiny baby cooing in the manger  of a stable in Bethlehem was at the same time truly the sovereign creator and sustainer of the entire cosmos.  Thus the “emptying” of Christ is seen primarily as a lessening of his glory, a kind of hiding of his divine power and majesty from human perception (perhaps, to different degrees and at different times, from the perception of the human nature of Christ himself).  As we saw, even Gregory of Nyssa took this position, which might give us reason to doubt the accuracy of Coakley’s description of his view.

Second, all of the Early Church Fathers we have surveyed have tried to maintain both “poles” of the mystery of the Incarnation.  Regardless of how well (or poorly) they have attempted to explain the mystery, they all affirm the absolute humanity and absolute divinity of Christ, existing simultaneously in the one person, neither doing damage to the other.  What was of primary importance to these pioneering theologians was that the equality of Christ and the Father be maintained, which required him to be identical with the Father in every respect, and also that the equality of Christ to the “form of a slave” be equally maintained, for the reasons we mentioned above.  In that sense, then, the consensus of Patristic exegesis is perfectly in line with Chalcedonian orthodox Christology, which is itself an attempt to maintain the opposite ends of the mystery without proffering a detailed explanation of how it works (which would, after all, defeat the whole notion of mystery anyway).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 238.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 239.

[6] Ibid., 243.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 248.

[9] Ibid., 249.

[10] Ibid., 248.

[11] Ibid., 244.

[12] Ibid., 245 (emphasis added).

[13] Ibid., 246-247.

[14] Ibid., 243.

[15] Ibid., 246.

[16] Brian Matz, “Philippians 2:7 as Pastoral Example in Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration 12” in Greek Orthodox Theological Review (Fall 2004; 49, 3/4), 279-290.

[17] Ibid., 286.

[18] Sarah Coakley, “Does Kenosis Rest on a Mistake?  Three Kenotic Models in Patristic Exegesis” in Exploring Kenotic Christology (ed. C. Stephen Evans; Oxford, UK.: Oxford University Press, 2006), 246-264.

[19] Ibid., 257-258.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

Dr. Michael Horton

05 / 15 / 09

In this paper I will examine the thesis of James K. A. Smith in his book, Who’s Afraid Of Postmodernism?, that certain trends in Postmodern thought are fundamentally compatible with (and may even be necessary for) a proper understanding of Christian orthodoxy.   My plan is to briefly summarize two primary arguments that Smith makes in support of his case, evaluating and critiquing each in turn.

Smith’s first argument is that Derrida’s statement, “there is nothing outside the text”, has largely been taken out of its context and turned into a bumper-sticker slogan divorced from its original meaning.  According to Smith, Derrida even attempted to clarify his meaning by saying, “there is nothing outside of context.”[1] What he means, according to Smith, is “everything is interpretation.”  In fact, Smith argues that all of postmodern thought can be boiled down to these three words.

Smith thinks this has huge implications for Christians.  When we approach the Bible we often think that we don’t need to interpret it, we simply “read” it.[2] But in fact we do need to interpret it, by considering the genre of a certain book, its original audience, etc.  Further still, the gospels themselves represent four particular interpretations of the events of Jesus’ life.  In other words, no matter how you slice it, it’s interpretation “all the way down.”  There is no “objective” meaning hidden behind the text that we can get to if only we get passed all this genre and context stuff.  Smith then addresses the concern that if the Bible can’t have an objective meaning for us as readers, how can it be true?  Or, more simply, why not adopt a “biblical relativism”?  The first thing he suggests is that it is merely a vestige of bad Enlightenment thought that we even equate “truth” with “objectivity” to begin with.  In other words, the notion that the two have to be the same is a commitment of modernism that we ought to reject.[3] According to Smith, just because everything is an interpretation, that doesn’t mean that some interpretations can’t be better (or truer) than others.

Smith then Distinguishes between two kinds of interpretation.  The first is a natural part of our being created as finite beings.[4] Smith’s example of Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid will work well to illustrate this.  When she finds a fork, her seagull friend Scuttle tells her that it is a “dinglehopper” used for styling hair.  Because of her background (and perhaps presuppositions) she has no reason to doubt Scuttle, and now it becomes part of her interpretive “grid” (my term, not Smith’s) that a fork is a dinglehopper.  This kind of interpretation is simply a part of our being finite and lacking omniscience, and therefore needing to rely on finite experiences and finite presuppositions in order to interpret our world.  The second kind of interpretation has come about due to the fall.[5] This is the interpretation of fundamental truths such as the existence of God, the meaning or purpose of human existence, and so forth.  Presumably, in our pre-fall state, we would all have been in direct communion with God and in that sense would have had the same interpretive grid when it came to questions like, “Does God exist?”, “Is God a Trinity?”, “What is authentic human flourishing?”  Smith’s point here is that we need to see the difference between Christianity and Buddhism as a deep difference of interpretation, rather than “glibly” dismissing everyone else as being a mere interpretation and claiming objectivity for Christianity alone.

Because of these post-fall “deep” interpretive differences we have, the Holy Spirit is required to come in and regenerate us back to a place where we can again have the right interpretation of things.[6] As Smith says, “our confidence rests not on objectivity, but on the convictional power of the Holy Spirit (which isn’t exactly objective).”[7] He believes that this fits very well with Presuppositional apologetics, which, unlike Evidentialism, comes to the table with the assumption that everyone is bringing their own presuppositions that are, in some way, determining what they believe. He also believes that this will translate into a certain humility on the part of the Christian, who can be very open about his own presuppositions from the start (as opposed to simply asserting that Christianity is objectively true, which Smith thinks tends to translate into “the worst kinds of imperial and colonial agendas”).[8]

All of this leads quite naturally to a single question, “How do we interpret the Bible in the correct way?”  Smith’s answer (following Derrida) is community.[9] Specifically, the consensus of the community is what determines correct interpretation.  To flesh this out a bit, the community comes together and, based on their common goals and purposes, establishes the rules that will govern good interpretation.  For Smith, this translates into the need for the entire Christian community (both “global” and “temporal”) to come together and aid one another in interpretation. We not only need to learn from the churches of Africa and Asia (which, Smith thinks, are marginalized in the West), we also need to learn from the historic Christian community (the early Fathers as well as the Reformers).   Along these lines, he gives a few practical suggestions for church praxis, one of which is to recapture the practice of the “lectionary”, where the church as a community would work through the whole Bible, Genesis to Revelation (by way of assigned readings). In this way, the church is saved from the “pet” passages and doctrines of a particular group or pastor.

Finally, Smith thinks that an appreciation of this line of postmodern thought will call us back to “The” text.  Since there is nothing outside the text, this should remind Christians that all of life must be interpreted through the text of the Bible.[10] Thus, taking up this postmodern understanding of the world will help to call us back to the Word, and force us to try to live every aspect of our lives in and through the Word, rather than imposing worldly presuppositions onto the Word (whether it be individualism, consumerism, materialism, or other cultural products of modernity).[11] In this way, what Smith calls a “deconstruction church” would look very different from the “Emerging” church, which, even though it claims to be Postmodern, is, according to Smith, still driven by strong remnants of modernity.

What can be said by way of response to all of this?  Let us begin with Smith’s own example taken from a famous Disney Classic.  Ariel, we are told, is right to interpret the fork as a “dinglehopper” because within her context and community she can’t possibly know any better.  But when she comes into contact with Prince Eric and his human community, she ought to change her interpretation, not because Eric’s belief about what a fork is and what it should be used for is objectively true, but because it is a better interpretation.  This is the key for Smith.  Christian doctrine is not objectively true, because human beliefs and language could never truly express reality as it is (in the mind of God), and thus are consigned to being, in a qualified sense, subjective.  Even the truths expressed in the Bible are merely the correct interpretation of things, rather than being objective, because they are accommodated to finite human understanding and language.

So far so good, but how does Smith argue that Ariel ought to change her interpretation when she encounters the “true” use of a fork?  Primarily, says Smith, it is because of community.  As humans (and Mermaids) a fork simply does not make for a good hairbrush, especially compared to an actual hairbrush.  On the other hand, its shape and design make it a perfect eating utensil.  But there is a problem here for Smith.  In this example, his suggestions seem perfectly obvious, but only if we assume that Ariel has direct access to the fork, at least in some sense, as it truly is.  Ariel cannot simply have access to a dinglehopper, for if that is all she can be aware of, how could she ever come to see it as something else?  She must be aware of the object itself as a dinglehopper in order for her to change her interpretation to the object as a fork.  One way of putting it would be to say that we can have direct access to something without having exhaustive access (which would be the sort of access that God has).  But what does this do to Smith’s claim about objectivity?

It seems to me that what Smith means by “true interpretation” is just what most people mean when they say “objective truth.”  At least when Christians say “objective truth” they are not likely to mean “exhaustive, God-like knowledge of reality.”  All orthodox Christians are (or should be) in complete agreement with Smith on this point.  Neither “direct” nor “objective” need mean “exhaustive” or “God-like.”  If Smith were to push the point here, however, and insist that “objective” must mean “exhaustive” (for knowing something “as it truly is” may imply knowing it exhaustively), the orthodox Christian might be able to concede the point.  For Smith agrees that one interpretation can be better than all the others, and isn’t this just what Christians mean to say when they contend that Christianity is objectively true?  On this point, or so it seems to me, the debate is more of semantics than actual substance.  Moreover, Smith may be right to suggest that this change in focus, and subsequent abandonment of the term “objective”, could lead to a kind of epistemological humility that would suit Christians well.  Still, there could easily be an opposite danger in abandoning terms like “direct” and “objective”, namely the loss of confidence and certainty in the truth claims of the Bible.

Even if we agree on the point of objectivism, however, what about Smith’s correlating commitment to (what seems to be) anti-realism?[12] This brings us to the question of how we differentiate between various interpretations.  Will Smith’s suggestion of communal consensus be enough?  I think not, for several obvious reasons.  First, if our only access to reality is necessarily mediated through communally determined standards of interpretation, then upon what basis does the community ground the goals and purposes that inform those standards of interpretation to begin with?  Smith leaves us wondering why his particular brand of “communal relativism” isn’t just full-blown, “anything goes” relativism.  To see how much of a problem this is for Smith’s view, we need only look at all the Christian communities that exist (or have existed) in the “global” and “temporal” church.  Roman Catholics are a Christian community with a distinct set of goals and purposes, as are Anglicans, Calvinists, Pentecostals, and so on ad infinitum (well, almost).  These groups also have radically different views not only of specific doctrines, but of how to interpret the Bible (i.e. different communally determined standards of interpretation).  Smith’s claim that the Bible is “only properly opened and active within the believing community”[13] raises the question, “which believing community has opened and used it properly?”  One possible way of interpreting Smith’s talk of listening to the voices of the global and temporal church is that he is suggesting that all Christians today ought to believe only those things that all Christians have believed in common at all times and in all places (the so-called Vincentian Canon).  This might seem remotely plausible (if, perhaps, Christians don’t believe anything dogmatically beyond the Nicene Creed), but we quickly run into more problems.  Are Unitarians Christian?  If so, then is Smith suggesting that Christians ought not to hold dogmatically to the doctrine of the Trinity?  If not, well, how would Smith know?  Remember that Smith described the internal convicting of the Holy Spirit as being purely subjective.  How can he know, without direct access to something outside of his interpretations, whether or not Unitarians truly have the Holy Spirit?  Perhaps the Holy Spirit has told him directly?

But this raises another, more serious problem for Smith.  If no direct access to anything is possible on his account, how is he to know that the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is what he interprets it to be?  Indeed, the seriousness of this cannot be overestimated.  Again recalling Smith’s comments quoted above, he is explicit that our confidence in the truth of the Christian interpretation of things rests on the internal convicting power of the Holy Spirit.    But if we do not have direct access to even that, from whence does our confidence come?  Am I to believe that my interpretation of something is better than the opposing option because my interpretation of something else told me so?  This perspective engenders anything but confidence!  It seems that Smith has left us with an endless regress of interpretations, so that when he says that everything is interpretation “all the way down”, it is a long way down indeed!

Now we move on to Smith’s second argument.  According to Smith, another famous postmodern bumper sticker has been wrenched out of context and taken to mean something that it was not intended to mean.  Lyotard’s famous statement that postmodernism is “incredulity toward metanarratives” is not referring to incredulity toward “big, all-encompassing” stories.  In fact, Postmoderns would actually say that all systems of thought are “myth-based” (in the technical sense of the word); they are stories told by a community within its contexts.  A “metanarrative”, on the other hand, is a myth that claims to be objectively authenticated by an appeal to autonomous reason (i.e. secular modernism).[14] But as we have already considered, Postmoderns deny that humans can have access to any such reason.  Only God can stand outside of all contexts.

By undercutting autonomous reason, Smith thinks that postmodernism returns to an Augustinian epistemology of faith preceding reason (or “trust preceding interpretation”).  He believes it rightly exposes the myth-based presuppositions of secular modernity and “levels the playing field” for an unashamedly myth-based Christianity in the public square.  In this way, postmodernism frees Christians to abandon modern forms of apologetics (classical and evidential), which try to play modernism’s game by appealing to an autonomous reason.[15] Instead Christians can call everyone’s presuppositions to the table and engage in an apologetic of “proclamation” rather than “demonstration.”  Moreover, because Christian faith is primarily narrative in character, evangelism will be more “full-orbed” (in the sense that will touch all aspects of a person, not just their mind).  But this also means that it cannot be “dumbed down” or catered to a group that is outside the narrative.  While Smith thinks our churches must be inviting to the unbeliever, he says that they must be inviting them into our narrative, not changing the narrative to be more inviting to them.[16]

Because of the “narrative character” of Christianity, the postmodern church will be called back to the centrality of the Bible and the “story” of redemption.  Rather than merely memorizing a set of facts about the faith, each believer will be called to find his role within the story.  As before, Smith offers a few practical applications of this.  One is that the church should return to the practice of reading a passage each week from each of the “acts” of the “drama” (one Old Testament passage, one Gospel passage, and one Epistle passage).

Once again, there are a series of problems that arise here for Smith’s view.  For one thing, when Smith contends that postmodern thought frees Christians from the need to “demonstrate” the faith via modernist forms of apologetics, one might wonder how well Smith’s own project fits his paradigm.[17] After all, he seems to be using a very modernist apologetic method in his attempt to demonstrate to his readers that Postmodernism is true.  Indeed, Smith’s books ought to be considered an utterly useless exercise for all those outside of his own language game (or, indeed, those within it as well).  Moreover, Smith is not presenting a “full-orbed” view of the Christian narrative so much as he is simply putting forth arguments that he hopes will logically lead to the truth of Postmodernism.  If Smith were serious about his Postmodern commitments, he would simply proclaim, quite unashamedly, the narrative of Postmodernity and rely on the internal convicting power of the Holy Spirit to illuminate his readers.

Another problem comes from Smith’s view of Augustine’s “faith preceding reason.”  Smith seems to uncritically accept this principle as a kind of fideism.  But any such notion is far from Augustine’s thought.  In his Epistle 120, Augustine is clear that “faith ought to precede reason because this is in itself reasonable.”[18] According to Augustine:

It is, then, a reasonable requirement that faith precede reason, for, if this requirement is not reasonable then it is contrary to reason, which God forbid.  But, if it is reasonable that faith precede a certain great reason, which cannot yet be grasped, there is no doubt that, however slight the reason that which proves this, it does precede faith.[19]

Thus, the concept of reason taking place solely within a “community of faith” is foreign to Augustine’s thinking.  This does not prove Smith wrong, of course, but it certainly means that he cannot claim Augustine as an ally on this point.

Smith’s point that unbelievers ought to be invited into the Christian narrative, and that the narrative itself ought not be “dumbed down” to meet the unbeliever in his own context, are both points that have been held by Christians, especially in Reformed circles, since long before the deliverances of Lyotard’s incredulity.  Thus, while I am in complete agreement with Smith’s conclusion on this point, I do not think his Postmodern premises are needed in order to reach that conclusion.

I would like to note one final problem with Smith’s view raised by Kevin Vanhoozer.  Vanhoozer raises this problem in the form of a question.  He first notes that Christian thinkers have appealed to Scripture to legitimate Christian truth claims since the early Fathers.  He also cites Bruce Marshall, who argues that Christian doctrines should be the primary criteria of truth.  Marshall also argues that the biblical narratives ought to have “epistemic trump” over other narratives or truth claims.  This seems to fit with Smith’s view rather nicely, as Smith has argued that the Christian ought to live every aspect of his life (including his epistemology) in and through the Word.  It is, after all, “The” text by which all else is to be interpreted.  If this is the case, then Vanhoozer asks, “Is a biblical narrative that has the force of epistemic trump a metanarrative or not?”[20] In other words, is an appeal to a narrative that transcends all other narratives, and to which all other narratives must look to in order to be legitimated, really all that different from an appeal to a neutral, autonomous reason?  Here again the question seems to turn on our ability to have access to the Holy Spirit, from whom we receive the faith that the biblical narrative is supposed to be legitimated by.

To sum up, it seems clear that the case for adopting Postmodernism is not as straightforward as Smith makes it out to be.  I would like to suggest, instead, that all of Smith’s insights can be accepted simply by appealing to the traditional Reformed distinction between Archtypal and Ectypal knowledge.   While it is true that all human knowledge is Ectypal, and therefore not in any way identical to the “God’s eye view”, this is almost an uninteresting claim with little relevance to the topic at hand.  The question, it seems to me, is not whether we humans can have a God’s eye view, but rather whether we can come into direct contact with the world and arrive at objective conclusions about it from a universally human perspective.  In other words, to say that our awareness of and interpretation of a fork as a fork is not the same as God’s, has no bearing on the question of whether or not it is universally true for all humans (from a non-divine, Ectypal perspective) that a fork is a fork, rather than a dinglehopper.  Thus, if it is must be true for all human beings that a specific human child was born of a virgin in a specific historical time and place, died on a cross and was raised on the third day, then from an Ectypal perspective such historical claims are objectively true.  Again, I agree with Smith that it is important to recapture the narrative character of the Christian faith, and to return to “The” text as the lens through which we view reality.  But adopting Postmodern categories and language to the complete exclusion of all that is “Modern” seems to cause as many problems as it purports to solve. 

Bibliography

Penner, Myron B. (Ed.).  Christianity And The Postmodern Turn. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006.

Smith, James K. A.  Who’s Afraid Of Postmodernism? Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.

Sproul, R. C., Gerstner, John, & Lindsley, Arthur.  Classical Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

[2] Ibid, p. 37.

[3] Ibid, p. 48.

[4] Ibid, p. 50.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, p. 48.

[7] Ibid, p. 51.

[8] Ibid, pp. 54-55.

[9] Ibid, p. 53.

[10] Ibid, p. 55.

[11] Ibid, p. 58.

[12] I must point out here that Smith may not actually be dogmatically committed to anti-realism.  He may in fact be a sort of critical realist, but if so, it is very hard to tell.

[13] Ibid, p. 56.

[14] Ibid, p. 65.

[15] Ibid, p. 73.

[16] Ibid, pp. 77-78.

[17] Thanks to my friend Michael Garten for suggesting this response to me.

[18] Classical Apologetics, p. 192.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, p. 191-192.

Dr. R. Scott Clark

04 / 03 / 09

Introduction

My project in this paper is to examine Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy to determine what Boethius was attempting to communicate to his audience about Philosophy itself.  The single most perplexing issue to arise in Boethian studies since at least the early medieval period has been the question of why Boethius, a Christian who had written several theological treatises defending orthodox Christian doctrine, chose in his final days to console himself not with Christian revelation, but with Neo-Platonic philosophy.  Many supposed that Boethius was not really a Christian and that the author of the Consolation could not have been the same man who wrote the theological treatises.  More recent scholarship has dispelled this notion.  Thus the question remains the same, but the issue now becomes an attempt at reconciliation between the catholic Christian Boethius of the treatises and the Neo-Platonist Boethius of the Consolation.

Several theories emerge as likely contenders.  The first two are similar, but with important differences of nuance.  The third is a radically different and relatively new take on the issue.  First, then, is the simplest answer, put forward by several history of philosophy texts[1] as well as the introduction to the Loeb edition of the Consolation.[2] According to this theory, Boethius was an Aristotelian who held to a rather strict division of the disciplines, and so when writing a work of philosophy he was writing philosophy and not theology.  Implied in this theory is that no further explanation is needed.  The second theory is proposed by C. S. Lewis.[3] Lewis echoes the first theory but goes on to add a further reason for Boethius’ choice of philosophy over theology as his comforter, namely that it was the Neo-Platonic philosophy of the Romans that separated Boethius from (and, no doubt in his eyes, elevated him above) his Barbarian captors, who were all Arian Christians.  Had Boethius chosen to write a work in which he was forced to point out Christianity’s manifold disagreements with this great Greek and Roman tradition that he loved so much, says Lewis, he would have been robbed of half his comfort.

The third theory diverges significantly from these first two.  The first two theories share the common feature of taking for granted that the Consolation is meant to do what it sets out to do, namely to console the despairing character of Boethius by satisfactorily answering his questions.  But according to John Marenbon, lecturer on the history of philosophy at Cambridge, Lady Philosophy does not accomplish this goal, at least not fully.[4] Marenbon argues that Philosophy’s overall case is really only half convincing (which is why she often supplements her arguments with rhetorically powerful poetry).   More importantly, says Marenbon, Philosophy’s attempt in the last book of the Consolation to solve the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom ends up in contradiction.  For while she succeeds in showing that God’s foreknowledge need not cause contingent events, she turns around in her closing remarks at the very end of the book and declares (according to Marenbon) that God does indeed cause all events, thus undermining her entire argument from the previous sections.  Marenbon suggests that this is no accident, but rather intentional on the part of Boethius, because the Consolation is written in the style of Menippean Satire, a genre of literature that purposefully satirizes its main character.  Boethius, then, is subtly pointing out the shortcomings of philosophy to answer questions of theology.

My thesis is that Marenbon’s interpretation of the Consolation is correct.  My plan is first to briefly summarize the relevant passages from the Consolation itself, then to explain and defend Marenbon’s thesis in light of that evidence, considering and responding to possible objections.  I should note here that there have been two other variations on the three interpretations of the Consolation mentioned above, a “Hellenist” interpretation which says that Boethius was attempting to construct a completely rationalist theology apart from any divine revelation (anticipating Thomas’s division between faith and reason), and a “Christianizing” interpretation which overemphasizes the Christian elements of dialog to make Lady Philosophy herself into an angel from God, rather than a personification of human reason.[5] I will not deal directly with the Hellenist interpretation, as it is subsumed under the general category to which C. S. Lewis’s interpretation belongs, and so in looking at Lewis’s I will be indirectly dealing with the Hellenist’s as well.  The Christianizing interpretation I will deal with in the third section of my paper as a possible objection to Marenbon’s theory.

The Consolation of Philosophy

The Consolation begins with the character of Boethius wallowing in self-pity over the loss of his high status and possessions after his imprisonment due to suspected treason.  Philosophy appears to him as a woman, at once young and old.  She tells Boethius that he is sick and that she will have to cure him, first with easier and eventually bitterer medicine.  She begins by showing him that he has suffered no true loss at all, for what he has lost are merely transitory goods that could never have secured him true happiness anyway.  They are of no eternal value and should only be sought in moderation.[6] What these transitory goods point to, however, is the true aim of all humanity; happiness, which is the good.[7] Later Philosophy will demonstrate that the good is God, and so therefore is happiness.[8] Thus what all men really seek is God, and that is where true happiness lies.  Such happiness cannot at all be affected by the changes of fortune, and so Boethius’s own run in with ill fortune cannot truly affect his happiness.

In the closing sections of Book III, Philosophy argues for a kind of divine Providence.  God is entirely sufficient and so governs the whole cosmos through himself, which means he governs it by the good.  And because all things desire the good by nature, God’s providence is not coercive.  But this leads, in Book IV, to an obvious question:  If the cosmos is governed by the good and all things seek the good, why are some men wicked, and moreover, why do the wicked so often seem to prosper while the good (like Boethius) suffer?  Philosophy’s answers are quite intriguing.  First she argues that wicked men are actually weaker than good men, since all men seek the good and therefore wicked men fail to achieve that which they seek after, while good men succeed.  She then argues that wicked men are not happy, since she has already shown that happiness is the good and wicked men fail to acquire the good, and so fail to acquire happiness.  Finally, she shows that wicked men do in fact receive punishment in this life by achieving the wickedness that they set out to do.  In other words, because God allows the wicked acts of wicked men to come to fruition, they are made even more wicked, which is a punishment in itself.  And because good men do good, they become even more virtuous and more happy, which is its own reward.  Indeed, if happiness is the final good that all men seek, what other reward could there be?

But Boethius does not find this line of reasoning convincing.  He still finds intuitively that there is some good in the transitory blessings of fate, and some evil in their loss.  More importantly, there seems to be some evil in the fact that good men can be oppressed by wicked men, and by implication, some evil in the fact that the actions of evil men are allowed to come to fruition.  And so, for the remainder of Book IV, Philosophy takes a completely different track in arguing for divine providence.  She distinguishes between “providence” and “fate”, where providence is a simple unity in God’s mind and fate is the manifold outworking of providence in the cosmos.  Philosophy uses this distinction to explain that providence is beyond the ability of human beings to grasp, essentially saying that there is an ultimate plan behind everything even if we can’t see what it is.  But she also makes several attempts at explanations for why bad things happen to good people.  In some cases, for example, bad things happen to good people to test their patience and virtue, or to strengthen them.  Conversely, the wicked are sometimes allowed to prosper in order to restrain them from even greater wickedness (since, for example, a wicked man who is in want will steal), or to give them the ability to punish other wicked men, or even to bring them to ultimate ruin.

Finally, in Book V, Philosophy must face a new problem, introduced by her defense of providence at the end of Book IV.  If the outworking of fate in history is a direct result of providence, then it would seem that all things are determined.  How then can human acts be free?  Philosophy responds that human acts are the result of the rational powers of the will and nothing else, so that they are not within the causal chain of providence in the same way that other events (which today we might call “natural” events) are.  God, then, foresees how his creatures will freely will and arranges providence accordingly.  But this leads to an equally serious problem that will take the rest of the Book V to answer.  If God knows what will happen in the future, then it must happen necessarily, and if all things are in this sense necessary, how can there be any contingency?  Again, how can any human act be free?   Philosophy’s response to this problem is ingenious; a fact that sometimes escapes us today because we’re so used to hearing it.  It’s not that Boethius (the author) is saying something totally unique.  Like everything else in the Consolation he is drawing from his philosophical heritage, but the way in which he combines elements to respond to this specific problem is quite brilliant.  God is eternal.  And, says Philosophy, eternity is not merely the endless succession of moments in time, but “the whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of boundless life.”[9] God, then, is not “in time” as we are, experiencing a succession of moments.  He experiences all of time simultaneously.  All time is present to him, strictly speaking there is no past or future.  Philosophy asks Boethius to imagine watching a chariot race and asks whether the fact of his watching it in the present makes the acts of the charioteers any less contingent.  Of course it does not.  Likewise, God foresees the future in the same way that we see the present (in fact it would not even be correct to speak of foreknowledge with respect to God).  And just as our present knowledge of events does not make them necessary, nor does God’s eternal knowledge of events bind any necessity to them.

The Failure of Philosophy?

For the sake of space I have painted the picture of the Consolation in very broad strokes.  Now that the background is set, I will dive deeper into specific sections to defend Marenbon’s interpretation.  According to Marenbon, the various arguments that Philosophy makes “do not provide a coherent and full answer to Boethius’s questions.”[10] I will focus on the two main pieces of evidence that Marenbon gives to support this claim.  First, at the end of Book III, after describing what true happiness is and arguing that it is identical with the good and with God, Philosophy offers no explanation of how Boethius can actually enjoy this good.  How is the individual man, Boethius, supposed to relate to God?  No answer is given.  Marenbon finds this to be a huge gap.  Philosophy’s mission is, after all, to console Boethius.  But to hold out this idea of true happiness in front of Boethius without explaining how he can attain it seems almost cruel.  Second, at the very end of the Consolation, just after Philosophy’s masterful response to the problem of foreknowledge, she says that the way in which God foreknows the future is “from his own simplicity.”[11] This is meant to resolve another problem that Boethius had brought up at the beginning of Book V, namely that it would be unworthy for God to be dependent upon anything outside of himself.  If, however, God foreknows the future through himself, as it were, this would no longer be a problem.  But Marenbon thinks that this single admission undoes the entirety of the previous argument, for “how does God know all things through himself unless he sees himself as their cause?”[12]

Marenbon concludes that there are four possible explanations for these major problems:  (1) they are the result of Boethius’s own ineptitude, (2) they are a common feature of the genre of consolatory works, (3) they are only apparent problems, or (4) they are intentional.  Marenbon finds the first three of these options to be highly implausible, and argues that (4) is the best explanation.  This is where he believes an understanding of the genre of Menippean Satire and how the Consolation relates to that genre will make sense of these problems.

Menippean Satire is a genre of literature in which sections of prose are alternated with sections of poetry, as we find in the Consolation.  These satires were “short works, sometimes in dialogue, often aimed at ridiculing pretension, especially pretensions to wisdom, containing short snatches of usually borrowed verse.”[13] Although Marenbon admits that the Consolation is closer to a later, modified version of Menippean Satire (which is most notable for the fact that the verses of poetry are original rather than borrowed and the tone is slightly more serious) this difference is not great enough to affect his interpretation.  The work is still meant to show, not the utter failure of Philosophy, but rather her limitations.  She does at many points provide powerful arguments that go a long way to accomplishing her goal.  But Marenbon notes that Philosophy herself recognizes her shortcomings, clearly stating that she is no goddess and that she is bound by the limits of human reasoning.  Moreover, “one of the uses Philosophy has for poetry is as a way of adumbrating truths that she cannot capture through straightforward philosophical reasoning.”[14] And of course, Marenbon maintains that the one thing Philosophy cannot of her own abilities give to Boethius is a way for him to attain the highest good that she has showed him, noting that “Boethius might, like Augustine before him, have written eloquently and movingly about this gap.  Rather, he leaves the structure of his dialogue to make the point silently.”[15]

Objections

The first thing that needs to be addressed is whether or not the first interpretation proposed in the introduction is applicable.  Is Boethius simply a good Aristotelian who doesn’t mix his disciplines?  This might be an adequate explanation if the Consolation was a straightforward didactic treatise, but it is not.  The special genre, with its interwoven and often difficult to interpret verses, makes it much more complicated, even at face value.  Moreover, this suggestion would imply that the philosophical incoherencies pointed out by Marenbon are in fact a result of the ineptitude of the author.  But given what we know about Boethius’s training and intellect, this seems an unlikely possibility.

Next I will address the “Christianizing” objection.  Put simply, this position sees Philosophy as an angelic figure sent by God to draw Boethius back to Himself, much like an Old Testament prophet.[16] But Philosophy cannot be viewed as a Christian character.  She presents herself as the representative of Boethius’s studies, and he was a trained philosopher, not a clergyman.  Moreover, she often refers to “my” Socrates, Aristotle, etc.  But she never once claims any famous Christian theologian as one of her own.  In addition, her poem in Book III.9, taken largely from Plato’s Timaeus, contains a number of doctrines that would be contrary to orthodox Christian teaching (such as the eternality of matter), and she obviously recites the poem approvingly.

C. S. Lewis’s position provides a slightly greater challenge to Marenbon’s interpretation.  Lewis notes that Boethius compliments Philosophy for using “inborn and domestical proofs” rather than “reasons fetched from without.”[17] Lewis interprets this to mean that he is congratulating her on reaching otherwise Christian truths using only philosophical reasoning.  In response to this it seems that Lewis is probably right, but that need not mean that the dialogue as a whole is intended by Boethius the author to show that philosophy can adequately reach the conclusions of Christian theology.  Also, as noted above, there is at least one place in which Philosophy does not reach Christian conclusions (the poem in III.9).

Second is Lewis’s point that if Boethius were to point out the flaws of his Greek and Roman philosophical heritage he would be robbed of half his consolation.[18] Here it can simply be said that Lewis is speculating and that there is no sure objective way to determine whether his suggestion is true or not.  Moreover, this suggestion is actually not helpful in answering the question of why Boethius did not attempt to make his Philosophy closer to Christian orthodoxy.   This particular suggestion is just as plausible as the suggestion that Boethius, in an attempt to distance himself from his Arian Christian oppressors, abandoned his Christianity altogether in favor of Neo-Platonism.  Neither of these seems to account for all the evidence that has been considered thus far.

Finally, Lewis notes that there is no return to the character of Boethius and his situation at the end of the Consolation.[19] Lewis sees this as intentional, which surely it is.  But he interprets it to mean that we the readers are meant to feel as if there is no need to return to Boethius, because Philosophy has so adequately answered his questions that no more needs to be said.  But Marenbon has persuasively called this assumption into question.  Philosophy has not presented an air-tight case with no problems of coherency, and she may have even contradicted herself.  Moreover, Lewis’s interpretation of this literary silence ignores the genre of the Consolation.  Lewis does mention briefly that it is in the genre of Menippean Satire, but he only mentions the alternating of prose and verse, and never mentions the satirical element.  As Marenbon shows, given the centrality of satire to this genre, Boethius’s silence is best interpreted as showing the inadequacy of Philosophy, rather than her accomplishments.

Conclusion

Marenbon points out two things that must be understood in order to properly interpret the Consolation:  the character of Boethius is a Christian; the character of Philosophy is not.  From this it becomes apparent that no simplistic reduction of the Consolation into either a wholly theological or wholly philosophical work will do.  The character of Philosophy is not an angel sent by God, and Boethius is not a Neo-Platonist whose Christianity was only a shallow guise put on in times of prosperity.  Rather, the Consolation is a work that satirizes its own subject in a very subtle way.  Philosophy is shown to have pretensions to Wisdom that she ultimately cannot make good on; she is inadequate.  And yet she is not completely useless.  Like the transitory goods of fortune that she discusses in Book II, she is both useful and an appropriate object of desire, so long as she is used in moderation.  And also like those goods, she is only a pointer to the good, who is a God of mystery and wonder that limited human reason can never fully penetrate or comprehend.  Philosophy does succeed in showing us that, at least.

[2] Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973)

[3] C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964)

[4] John Marenbon, Boethius (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)

[5] Ibid., 156.

[6] Boethius, Consolation, p. 203.

[7] Ibid., 233.

[8] Ibid., 277.

[9] Ibid., 423.

[10] Marenbon, Boethius, p. 158.

[11] Boethius, Consolation, p. 433.

[12] Marenbon, Boethius, p. 145.

[13] Ibid., 160.

[14] Ibid., 162.

[15] Ibid., 163.

[16] Marenbon cites F. Klinger as representative of this school of interpretation.

[17] Lewis, Discarded, p. 78.

[18] Ibid., 79.

[19] Ibid., 90.

ST501 – Christian Mind

Dr. Michael S. Horton

12 / 05 / 08

Introduction

(1) You can believe in God without any evidence.  (2) Without God, you can’t know anything at all.  These are perhaps the most controversial Christian claims of the 20^th century.  Both were made by Christian apologists.  The first is the claim of Reformed Epistemology and its most prominent advocate, Alvin Plantinga of Notre Dame.  The second is the claim of Presuppositionalism, pioneered by Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary.  These two approaches to apologetics have many similarities, both in theory and practice.  In this paper, my aim is three-fold.  First, I will compare and contrast these two apologetic schools and offer suggestions as to how they might work together to strengthen one another.  Second, I will offer a critique of Presuppositionalism from the perspective of Reformed Epistemology, which I have playfully dubbed the “Transcendental Argument against Presuppositionalism.”  The final section of the paper will be devoted to a brief interaction between a synthesized Presuppositional-Reformed Epistemology method and the remaining heavy hitters in the Apologetic world; Classical Apologetics and Evidentialism.  My hope is to show that there is actually a great deal of consensus between the modern representatives of these other two schools and my proposed “middle way”, and that once the epistemological insights of both Presuppositionalism and Reformed Epistemology are used as our apologetic grounding, we will find ourselves free to adapt our apologetic method to particular situations.  We move, then, to the first task of compare and contrast.

Presuppostional Apologetics

First, I should make clear an assumption of this paper.  For the primary exposition of what the Presuppositional method is, I will be relying almost exclusively on one of Van Til’s most prominent disciples, Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen.  My un-argued-for assumption will be that Bahnsen represents the best and most persuasive version of Presuppositionalism that almost remains the most true to Van Til.  So then, what is Presuppositionalism?

The two pillars of Presuppostional thought are “the myth of neutrality” and the necessity of presupposing God as the precondition for intelligibility.  Says Bahnsen:

The unbeliever will challenge you to build your case for God on neutral ground, without building on your foundation in God.  Be warned!  If you don’t start with God as your basic assumption, you can’t prove anything.  The assumption of God’s existence is essential to all reasoning.[1]

Everyone has presuppositions, and everyone reasons from them to conclusions.  So there can really be no such thing as a neutral, unbiased perspective, the “view from nowhere.”  Bahnsen’s warning is meant to show that when an unbeliever says that we all ought to be “neutral” and without any presuppositions in our reasoning, what he is actually doing is being biased towards his own hidden presuppositions and against the presuppositions of the believer, namely, the existence of God.  In other words, one way of understanding the Presuppostional method is that it starts by asking the preliminary question, “Why should we favor the presupposition that there is no God over the presupposition that there is?”  Of course, that’s only the beginning.  Presuppositionalism makes the much stronger claim that, in fact, no other presupposition but the Christian one allows for the possibility of reason, period.  But before we get ahead of ourselves, we had better ask the question, “What is a presupposition?”

Bahnsen, interpreting Van Til on this very question, says:

A Presupposition is, therefore, an “elementary” (i.e., basic, foundational, starting point) assumption about reality as a whole.  An elementary presupposition serves as an essential condition necessary to one’s outlook on the world and life.  It is a necessary precondition for human thought and experience, without which logical reasoning would be impossible and human experience unintelligible.[2]

Presuppositions are not just implicit beliefs that you hold.  They actually govern the way you think, “all the way down to how you select and employ specific facts from the countless number of facts ceaselessly flowing through your senses and into your mind each and every moment of the day.”[3] You cannot even think about the most basic facts of your daily life without presuppositions, let alone argue about concepts such as the existence of God or universal moral laws.  But this is only the first part of understanding presuppositions.  Presuppositions do not operate in isolation from one another, but rather work together within a worldview.  Bahnsen defines a worldview as follows:

A worldview is a network of presuppositions (which are not verified by the procedures of natural science) regarding reality (metaphysics), knowing (epistemology), and conduct (ethics) in terms of which every element of human experience is related and interpreted.[4]

Everyone must have a framework by which they understand the world and their own relation to it.  Without such a framework there could be no coherence to our thought life.  Thus, it makes no sense to speak of neutral epistemic ground, if by that we mean a ground without any presuppositions.  The presuppositions are the ground![5]

What is the practical significance of all this for the Presuppositional apologetic method?  First, you cannot be neutral.  You cannot assume the unbeliever’s worldview (which perports to be neutral) when attempting to prove it false, for despite the claim to neutrality, we have seen that no worldview can function without presuppositions.  And the unbeliever’s presuppositions are antithetical to those of the Christian (which is seen most clearly in the unbeliever’s presupposition that there is no God).  To accept the unbeliever’s worldview, then, would be to accept those presuppositions, which the Christian necessarily cannot do.  Bahnsen goes one step further by claiming that it is not merely unreasonable to attempt neutrality, but sinful.  When Christians attempt to reason in an “unbiased” way in the hope of establishing neutral ground, “they are not only contradicting reality (since no one can be neutral), but are denying the creator of all reality (by not bowing before His absolute Lordship).  Such an attempt is both vain and immoral, both illogical and unfaithful.”[6]

The second practical application to apologetics comes from the much stronger Presuppositional claim that God is the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of reality.  Put simply, unless a person S presupposes the existence of the Christian God, S has no rational justification for any of his beliefs.  This is because all of S’s beliefs are either reasonable or unreasonable.  If they are unreasonable, then obviously they are not justified.  But if they are reasonable, it must be because they meet all the necessary criteria that make something reasonable.  All of this seems perfectly mundane and obvious.  But, says the Presuppositionalist, one of those criteria must be that reason itself is intelligible.  And this requires presupposing the Christian God.  Bahnsen elaborates:

…the non-Christian must establish his theory of knowledge on the same foundation upon which he established reality: nebulous, chaotic, irrational chance.  If followed out consistently the non-Christian theory of knowledge would utterly destroy the very possibility of knowledge, causing it to drown in the turbulent ocean of irrationalism.  There is no way to account for reason in the non-Christian system.[7]

The point of emphasizing “consistently” in the above quotation is to highlight the fact that non-Christians do in fact use reason and do have true beliefs.  This is possible because they do in fact presuppose God, which is inconsistent with their professed worldview.  This also involves the touchy matter of self-deception, which we will address in later.

The Presuppositional method, then, has several distinct features from traditional or evidential methods.  Christianity is not presented as the best possible worldview, but as the only rational worldview to hold.  Presuppositionalism attempts to prove this by showing “the impossibility of the contrary.”  This is a very important phrase that makes up the core of the Presuppositional method.  The unbeliever is required to consider which worldview, as a whole, makes all of human experience intelligible.  As such, “It is not a direct argument dealing with individual facts, but an indirect one dealing with the nature of facts.”[8] Presuppositionalism seeks to establish the truth of Christianity by demonstrating that no other worldview can make intelligible any aspect of human experience, and are therefore ultimately self-contradictory and impossible.  To quote Van Til’s most famous (or perhaps infamous) line in describing this method of doing apologetics:  “The only ‘proof’ of the Christian position is that unless its truth is presupposed there is no possibility of ‘proving’ anything at all.”[9]

The corollary of the impossibility of the contrary is that of total epistemic certainty.  In this regard Presuppositionalism stands alone.  Both Classical and Evidential apologetics deal with probability.  Based on the available evidence and the use of best reason, we can come to the conclusion that Christianity is the most plausible worldview, but we must always admit that there is some finite chance that we are wrong.  Our certainty may reach 99.9 percent, but it can never reach 100.  Presuppositionalism, on the other hand, claims to give us absolute certainty in the truth of Christianity, because all contrary options are impossible.

Reformed Epistemology

Put simply, Reformed Epistemology tells us that it is possible to believe in the existence of God without any evidence.  This is because belief in God can be classified within that group of beliefs known as properly basic.  A basic belief would include things like sensory beliefs (beliefs about the external world) and memory beliefs.  Examples of these might be:

(1)  I see a tree,

(2)  I had breakfast this morning.[10]

There is no evidence for these beliefs other than the fact of the sensory or memory experience itself, and yet we would normally want to say that such beliefs are perfectly rational.  And yet it would also be wrong to say that such beliefs are groundless.  In these cases, though the beliefs are not based upon other beliefs, they are indeed grounded.

Upon having an experience of a certain sort, I believe that I am perceiving a tree.  In the typical case I do not hold this belief on the basis of other beliefs; it is nonetheless not groundless.  My having that characteristic sort of experience—to use Professor’s Chisholm’s language, my being appeared treely to—plays a crucial role in the formation and justification of that belief.  We might say this experience, together, perhaps, with other circumstances, is what justifies me in holding it; this is the ground of my justification, and, by extension, the ground of the belief itself.[11]

Belief in God can be like this.  Plantinga cites John Calvin’s concept of the Sensus Divinitatus.  This “sense of the divine” was given to us by God in order to predispose us to forming beliefs such as:

(1)  God is speaking to me,

(2)  God has created [the world],

(3)  God disapproves of what I have done,

(4)  God forgives me,

(5)  God is to be thanked and praised.[12]

Beliefs such as (1), (3), and (4) might arise when one reads the Bible, spontaneously and in the same way that a belief such as “I see a tree” arises when one has the experience of seeing a tree.  Beliefs (2) and (5) might arise when someone observes the beauty and order of the natural world, or when life is “sweet and satisfying.”  At this point, Plantinga notes that none of these beliefs is the belief “God exists.”  But each of the beliefs above self-evidently entails the existence of such a person as God.  So, strictly speaking, belief in God qua belief in God is not properly basic, but rather beliefs such as (1) – (5), beliefs about his attributes and activities, are properly basic.

Another important feature of Reformed Epistemology is the concept of warrant.  Warrant, according to Plantinga, is that feature that tips the scales and turns a true belief into knowledge.  It would be impossible to treat this concept adequately in a paper of this size.  For our purposes we need only give the briefest sketch.  A belief has warrant if (1) it is produced by properly functioning cognitive faculties, (2) in an appropriate epistemic environment, (3) according to a design plan aimed at truth.  Plantinga argues at length in his book Warranted Christian Belief that belief in God without evidence does indeed meet these criteria.

The apologetic application of Reformed Epistemology is two-fold.  First, it provides justification (or warrant) for belief in God, even in the face of objections.  Without attempting to defend him here, Plantinga argues that a strongly held basic belief can be an intrinsic defeater-defeater, meaning that it may possess a certain inherent ability to defeat objections (defeaters) raised against belief in God, such as the problem of evil.  Reformed Epistemology maintains that it is not irrational to continue believing in God even if a Christian has no other response to an objection (like the Problem of evil) than the basic belief itself.  Second, the concept of proper function and all that it entails allows for several versions of a transcendental argument for theism.  These transcendental arguments are similar to the transcendental arguments of Presuppositionalism, only far more limited in their scope (they do not purport to show that all other worldviews are false or irrational, only naturalism.  And they do not argue in favor of Christianity specifically, only theism in general).

Combining Strengths

At first it may be difficult to see where these two schools meet and where they diverge.  This is in part because Reformed Epistemology (hereafter, RE) is hard to nail down.  On the one hand it fits very nicely into the Classical/Evidential schools, providing justification for belief in God without considering presuppositions.  And yet the primary fruit of Plantinga’s labors has been a transcendental argument which, like Presuppositionalism, aims to show that the naturalistic worldview does not meet the preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience.  For now I will restrict my comments to one area where I believe these two schools can greatly benefit one another:  The problem of the self-deceiving unbeliever.

One objection raised against Presuppositionalism has been that it is forced to the absurd conclusion that unbelievers can’t know anything.  Some have taken this conclusion to follow naturally from the fact Presuppositionalists require belief in God to justify any belief.  If the unbeliever does not believe in God, it would seem to follow that he has no justification for any of his beliefs, and therefore has no knowledge.  But isn’t it absurd to say that an unbeliever doesn’t really know that 2 + 2 = 4 because he doesn’t believe in God?  Bahnsen has a response to this objection, taking his cue from Romans 1:18 – 21.  There, Paul says:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

According to Paul, all men do know God.  Not just any vague sense of a deity, but God; His attributes, power, and even His very nature.  But according to Paul the unbeliever suppresses this truth “by their unrighteousness.”  This is obviously a form of self-deception, but how exactly does it work?  If we call belief in God “G”, are we forced to conclude that the unbeliever believes G and not G at the same time?  Bahnsen’s solution is simple, yet brilliant.  Let “S” stand for any non-Christian person:

(1)  S believes G

(2)  S believes the proposition “S does not believe G”

Here S’s false belief is not about G itself, but about S.  The non-Christian has a false belief about himself, about his believing in God, rather than a false belief about God.  The non-Christian, then, is no longer forced into believing a blatant contradiction, and can use (2) to suppress (1).

It seems to me that both sides can benefit from each other at this point.  By making use of RE’s arguments for belief in God being properly basic, Presuppositionalism gets a neat epistemological system to fit its claims that all men know God.[13] It even fits perfectly into Paul’s argument in Romans 1.  Those things which are “clearly perceived” are God’s “attributes” and this is prompted by nature.  This fits with the argument that beliefs such as “God created me”, “God is worthy of thanks and praise”, “God is good”, etc, are properly basic, and that from these basic beliefs we know necessarily that God exists.

The benefit to RE is, I think, even greater.  One objection to the Sensus Divinitatus model is that not everyone believes in God, basically or in any other way.  Plantinga’s response has been that due to the noetic effects of sin, not everyone forms the basic belief in God.  But this seems inadequate, for two reasons.  First, it fails to give full weight to Paul’s teaching in Romans 1.  All men do know God, and there seems to be no good reason not to understand Paul as saying something like what RE is saying, namely that all men have basic beliefs about the attributes, creative power, and nature of God.  Second, Plantinga wants us to conceive of the Sensus Divinitatus as being like any other cognitive faculty we possess.  But if sin does not prevent us from forming properly basic beliefs with our other cognitive faculties, why should it do so with respect to the Sensus Divinitatus?  Adopting Bahnsen’s model of self-deception seems a much wiser course.  This would strengthen RE’s case for a Sensus Divinitatus by showing how it could be the case that everyone does in fact believe in God in the basic way.  So much for mutual strengthening.  Now we move to the second section, the critique of Presuppositionalism.

The Transcendental Argument against Presuppositionalism

Central to Presuppositionalism is the claim that belief in God is required to justify any otherwise rational belief, and even to justify rationality itself.  No worldview can even get off the ground unless it presupposes the existence of God.  This claim is literally what makes Presuppositionalism what it is.  I believe it is false.

Now for the qualifications!  William Lane Craig makes a very helpful distinction between God being the ontological grounding for all of reality, and being the epistemic grounding for all of reality.[14] For a Christian, God obviously must be the former, and if the former then the latter as well.  But for the unbeliever, God need not be the latter (the epistemic grounding) for his beliefs to be rational (at least, not that the unbeliever needs to be aware of).  Hopefully this point will become clearer after I have presented my argument, so I will turn to that now.

In Presuppositionalism we are required to presuppose the existence of God.  But if we presuppose God, specifically the Christian God, then it would seem to follow that He has created human beings with properly functioning, truth-producing cognitive faculties (as RE suggests).  But if this is indeed the case, then any beliefs which are produced by said properly functioning, truth-producing faculties will necessarily be justified, and therefore rational.  But if that is the case, then it follows that a person need not believe in God as the direct epistemic justification for the beliefs produced by his properly functioning, truth-producing faculties.  They are justified on the basis of the faculties themselves, without reference to the designer of those faculties.  Therefore, on Presuppositionalism’s most basic presupposition, it is shown to be self-contradicting.[15]

One possible response to this argument could be to deny that God has created human beings with reliable, truth-producing faculties, but this seems like an unlikely response for a Christian.  A second objection could be to say, along with Plantinga, that the noetic effects of sin are of such a quality and severity that our faculties are neither reliable nor truth-producing after the Fall.  But this also seems inadequate, for several reasons.  First, this would make the Presuppositionalist claim out to be that only fallen man needs to presuppose God in order to make human experience intelligible, but this not, I don’t believe, the claim that Presuppositionalists are making.  Second, Presuppositionalism is committed to the claim that fallen man knows God, which would seem to indicate that man’s cognitive faculties are functioning properly.  It is only after this that the unbeliever suppresses his belief in God, which is a moral failing and not a cognitive one.  In other words, it is not man’s faculties themselves that are corrupted by sin, but how he uses them.

How might this argument play out in example?  One prominent example that Bahnsen liked to use against the naturalist was the belief in the uniformity of nature.  Given a chance and chaotic universe, how can the naturalist justify his belief that nature is ordered, and that the future will resemble the past?  The option seems open to the naturalist to claim that his belief in the uniformity of nature is properly basic (indeed, the Christian can and should say the same).  If God has indeed created him, like everyone else, with reliable, truth-producing cognitive faculties that have produced in him, under the proper circumstances, his belief that nature is uniform, then it is justified without direct reference to God, and the naturalist is therefore perfectly rational.  But of course, the notion of reliable, truth-producing faculties cannot be accounted for on a naturalistic system (which is what Plantinga’s transcendental argument aims to show).  In which case it might be objected that RE merely pushes everything back one step, and in a more indirect way still requires presupposing God, just as Presuppositionalism does.  But the whole point is that basic beliefs are justified without reference to any other beliefs.  So until the naturalist hears Plantinga’s argument for theism from properly functioning faculties, he is perfectly rational in believing in the uniformity of nature without believing in God.[16]

A New Method?

It would be too ambitious to claim that I am actually proposing an entirely original way of doing apologetics.  What I have done instead is to take the strengths of Presuppositionalism and RE and allowed them to work together, I hope, for the betterment of both.  And while I have offered an argument that effectively rejects Presuppositionalism as its own apologetic method, I should note two things here.  First, I have not proposed to reject the marvelous insights of Presuppositionalism when it comes to the myth of neutrality.  I whole-heartedly agree that there can be no neutral, unbiased, presuppositionless way of reasoning.  I also agree that it is impossible to adopt the presuppositions of the unbeliever, since they are contrary to Christianity.  But that does not mean that we cannot adopt the unbeliever’s worldview, for the sake of argument, in order to show them that their presuppositions lead to contradiction or absurdity from within.[17] Second, it seems that Presuppositionalism is not really an apologetic method of its own, so much as it is a critique of false epistemologies.  Craig suggests that, “The central insight of Presuppositionalism is that theological rationalism is a false doctrine.  We are not dependent on argument and evidence in order to believe rationally in God, or even to know that he exists.”[18] This should sound familiar.  Craig’s claim seems to be that the central insight of Presuppositionalism is exactly the central insight of RE.  This may not be the whole story, but it is certainly true that they share this feature in common.  In addition, the same critique has been lodged at RE, namely that it does not represent a unique method for doing apologetics, but that, like Presuppositionalism, it offers some very good insights regarding epistemology and justification, which ought to inform our apologetics.

I am inclined to agree, and with that we arrive at the final section of the paper where I will offer some very brief comments about the relationship our two schools have to the “old schools.”  Both Presuppositionalism and RE make room for (and even encourage) the use of evidences.  Both schools would allow for historical arguments, such as the arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, as well as the so-called theistic proofs of Classical Apologetics.  In that sense there is significant agreement.  Where Presuppositionalism parts ways with the others is in its claim that such arguments cannot be made in their traditional forms, but must be subsumed under the transcendental argument showing the impossibility of the contrary.  Here I would disagree again with Presuppositionalism, especially when it comes to the resurrection arguments.[19] First, the assumption seems to be that such traditional arguments require one to adopt a “neutral” perspective.  But as we have seen, this is not the case.  Even Bahnsen admits that we have “common ground” with the unbeliever in that we all see the same facts of reality, and this is all the traditional arguments require.[20] Second, Presuppositionalism rejects these traditional arguments because they only give us probability, not certainty.  Two points need to be made here.  One, Presuppositionalism can’t really give us 100 percent certainty either, because it cannot in the final analysis make good on its claim to prove the impossibility of the contrary.  There is always the chance that finite (and fallen) human beings can make errors in our reasoning, and even the transcendental argument is not immune from this.  Two, even if we cannot have complete epistemic certainty, we can have perfect existential certainty, which is granted to us by the Holy Spirit (it might be better to drop the language of “certainty” altogether and simply talk of the assurance of faith).  Finally, Bahnsen claims that such traditional arguments cannot ultimately be effective because the unbelieving naturalist can simply say, “Ok, Jesus rose from the dead, but all that proves is that weird things can happen.”  But the unbelieving naturalist could say essentially the same thing in response to Bahnsen’s transcendental argument from the uniformity of nature.  “Ok,” he says, “there is no good naturalistic explanation for the uniformity of nature yet, but there could be one that is currently outside of our present understanding, and regardless, that doesn’t mean I have to accept the Christian explanation.”  Now Bahnsen would simply dismiss this as “wishful thinking.”  But then why can we not dismiss the naturalist who says “weird things happen” in the same way?  Bahnsen is, I think, inconsistent on this point.

On the other side, neither Classical nor Evidential apologists (at any rate, not their modern representatives) would disagree with Bahnsen that presuppositions are a necessary part of our reasoning about the world, nor would they disagree that unbiased neutrality is a myth.[21]

In the end, then, I believe these distinctive schools are not really all that far apart.  And thus I would advocate what might be called “Practical Apologetics”, “Common Sense Apologetics”, or even (if I may be so bold) simply “Christian Apologetics.”  The labels may have become unnecessary at this point.  This should be especially true for those of the Reformed persuasion.  If we really believe that it is the Holy Spirit who changes peoples’ hearts and minds, according to God’s sovereign plan, and that we are not actually responsible for anyone’s conversion to Christianity, then we should be free to use any apologetic strategy or argument, depending on the circumstances.

In summary, I believe that our apologetics must be informed by the epistemological insights of Presuppositionalism, recognizing that no one can be neutral or reason without guiding presuppositions, and of Reformed Epistemology, understanding the nature of basic beliefs, warrant and proper function.  But with that epistemic grounding established, I believe we are free to adapt our actual apologetic method to particular situations, employing different tactics and arguments based upon the questions, needs and concerns of our audience.

Bibliography

Bahnsen, Greg L. Pushing the Antithesis: The Apologetic Method of Greg L. Bahnsen. Powder Springs: American Vision, 2007.

Plantinga, Alvin.  Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Craig, William Lane, ed. Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002.

Cowan, Steven B., ed. Five Views On Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.

Anderson, J. “If Knowledge Then God: The Epistemological Theistic Arguments of Alvin Plantinga and Cornelius Van Til.” Calvin Theological Journal. 40 (2005): 49-75.

Bahnsen, Greg L. “The Crucial Concept of Self-Deception in Presuppositional Apologetics.” Westminster Theological Journal. 57 no. 1 (1995):1-31.

Swinburne, Richard. “Plantinga on warrant.” Religious Studies. 37 no. 2 (2001):203-214.

Plantinga, Alvin. “Rationality and public evidence: a reply to Richard Swinburne.” Religious Studies. 37 no. 2 (2001):215-222.

Frame, John M. “Van Til on Antithesis.” Westminster Theological Journal. 57 no. 1 (1995):81-102.

[2] Ibid., 44.  (Emphasis mine)

[3] Ibid., 45.

[4] Ibid., 42-43.

[5] I should add a brief caveat regarding Bahnsen’s parenthetical note that presuppositions cannot be verified by the procedures of natural science.  What he means to say is that natural science itself is founded upon certain presuppositions (for example, that nature is uniformly ordered, that the future will resemble the past, etc.).  In this sense, natural science cannot test those presuppositions because it must rely on them in the process of testing.  In another sense, natural science is necessarily empirical in its method, and presuppositions themselves are neither material nor capable of being empirically tested (they cannot be weighed, measured, etc.).

[6] Ibid., 41.

[7] Ibid., 66.

[8] Ibid., 146.

[9] Ibid., 148.

[10] Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief In God Rationally Acceptable?” in Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, ed. William Lane Craig (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 43.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Examples borrowed from Plantinga.

[13] Thanks to Nate Taylor for suggesting this to me in conversation.

[14] William Lane Craig, “A Classical Apologist’s Closing Remarks”, in Five Views On Apologetics, ed. Steven B. Cowan, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 315 – 316.

[15] I understand that this isn’t exactly a transcendental argument, but it does seem to demonstrate that Presuppositionalism fails to work given its own presuppositions, and so it is akin to a transcendental argument.  I chose the title (as I said in the introduction, “playfully”) mostly for shock value.

[16] It remains a question as to whether or not the naturalist would be required to accept theism in order to remain rational even after hearing Plantinga’s argument, and one which I must leave unanswered for now.

[17] What puzzles me is that Bahnsen says the same thing, and even suggests that we have “common ground” with unbelievers which we can use to reason with them.  But so far as I know, this is all the Evidentialist or Classical Apologist would say in the first place.  Certainly Craig and Habermas would not suggest that we actually accept the presupposition that God does not exist!  Bahnsen’s insistence that Evidentialism requires the acceptance of neutrality is, I think, a straw man.

[18] Ibid., 232.

[19] Again, to be clear, I am only interacting with Bahnsen on this point, and not with other Presuppositionalists like John Frame, who would differ slightly with Bahnsen and adopt a position closer to the one I am advocating.

[20] Bahnsen, Pushing the Antithesis, 58.

[21] And if Craig, Habermas or any others from these schools would disagree with Presuppositionalism here, then I would simply say they are wrong.  I see no reason why either Classical or Evidential apologetics would be required to reject these insights and claim neutrality.