Lesson in logic

I probably should have given up on Steve Hays by now, since as I suspected, his knowledge in the area of natural theology is not much, and people who don't make convincing arguments from natural theology don't make convincing arguments period. However, Hays happened to fall into a rather common trap regarding the distinction between validity and soundness of arguments, so I can use this example to good effect.

Validity deals with the form of a deductive argument; it strictly deals with the form of an argument. An argument is valid if it follows from its premises as a matter of logical form, regardless of whether the premises are true.

Soundness is the additional consideration of whether the premises of the argument are true. A sound argument is a valid argument whose premises are also true. Since most premises are somewhat debatable, it will frequently be the case that an argument one person considers sound will not be considered sound by everyone. In that case, the argument is not compelling, so long as there is some articulable basis for disagreeing with the premises or finding them unconvincing. Sometimes, there will be a lower expected threshold for how persuasive the premises must be, so arguments might be said to be not cogent or not convincing. In any event, unless there is some way to make the premises sufficiently persuasive, then the parties simply have to agree to reasonably disagree.

But speaking of ways to make the premises convincing, there are some odd cases in which you deliberately use an argument that is valid but NOT sound, the most notable of which is the reductio ad absurdam (reduction to absurdity). In that case, you assume certain premises arguendo, that is, you accept them for the sake of argument. The purpose of the reductio ad absurdam is to produce a dilemma, which is a choice between two premises A and B he explicitly holds to force the person to discard one ("dilemma" being named for the two premises) . As Geach notes, this is within a legitimate class of ad hominem argumentation directed toward the person in question's inconsistency, because the purpose is to persuade someone to accept a premise that he is currently not inclined to do (viz., it is directed at changing an opponent's belief about a certain premise). However, the argument still must be valid, and to be sound as a reductio argument, all premises not explictly accepted for the sake of argument must still be true, and all premises accepted for the sake of argument must be premises that the opponent actually holds (either explicitly or by necessary implication, the latter of which usually requires a separate argument to show). In other words, the argument must stil be valid and sound as applied for the purpose of deductively reducing one of the opponent's premises to a contradiction of another premise. Note that it is also valid to challenge the soundness of an argument being applied as a reductio by challenging that the premise accepted for the sake of argument is a premise that one actually holds, and this is by and large the response that I (and others) have given to Perry and Daniel.

So turning to the situation, it is obvious that "Calvinism is monotheletism" or "Thomism is monotheletism" or "X is monotheletism" is a reductio ad absurdam based on the opponent also holding the premise "not monotheletism." If the opponent openly holds the position "monotheletism" or has no qualms about adopting the position "monotheletism," the reductio would be pointless. The argument would conclude "So you're a monothelite!," and the opponent would simply say "You didn't need an argument to show that; I would have just told you." As a reductio, it must be valid and sound as applied, meaning that whatever is not accepted for the sake of argument must be true and the argument must be valid. Because White himself said he considered the argument fallacious, I concluded that he couldn't possibly be using it this way, because it would be openly dishonest to use an argument that you knew was not valid and sound in its application as a reductio.

But Hays appears to be entirely oblivious even of the requirement that a reductio must be valid and sound in its application to be a legitimate ad hominem argument (viz., for the production of a logical dilemma forcing the opponent to choose between premises). My words quoted by Hays are in blue, and Hays's are in red:

The point is to pose a dilemma for the opponent. He can only stick to his position on pain of self-incrimination. If the opponent admits that he was wrong, then he can’t deploy a wrong argument against the other side. So, if Prejean were wrong, that would have direct implications for the wrongness, or lack thereof, of White’s position—if the cases are parallel.Of course, it’s unlikely that the opponent will admit he’s wrong. But in that event, before he can use that argument against Dr. White, he has to win the argument with his Orthodox disputants.

The problems are manifold:

1. An argument that isn't valid and sound to the extent required for a reductio can't serve to create a dilemma in the first place, because it can't reduce the premise accepted for the sake of argument (A) into a contradiction of the other premise (not B). So for my opponent to turn this argument against me, he must concede that it is both valid and sound (in the sense of all premises not accepted for the sake of argument being true and all premises accepted for the sake of argument actually being held by me).

2. It's only self-incrimination to "stick to my position" if it is actually the case that I hold the premise accepted for the sake of argument in the reductio. If I don't hold the premise and if no argument can be made for why I must hold the premise, then I can cheerfully go on asserting the argument until said opponent can actually make the reductio stick. Certainly, I am obliged to defend myself against the application of the reductio to myself if I perceive the argument to be formally valid, as I must with any formally valid argument, but I believe I've done that.

3. An admission that I was wrong in this case would entail that I believe the premise that you seem to believe is shared (i.e., determinism) is wrong. Why on earth would a Calvinist make an argument aimed at reducing to absurdity a premise that he himself holds? That's why the use of this argument by a Calvinist would subject him to a legitimate charge of inconsistency; he would be attacking a premise that he really does hold.

4. On the flip side, I am attacking a premise (Calvinist determinism) that I really do NOT hold, and my reply to Perry and Daniel has been to say exactly that I do not hold the premise. If it turns out that I DO hold it, I still wouldn't have to retract the argument. In fact, given that I consider it valid and sound as applied to Calvinism, I wouldn't even be able to retract it. So if I admit error regarding my response to Perry and Daniel, I would presumably have to convert to Orthodoxy or to change my beliefs in some other way. In any case, it would be completely immaterial to the charge against Calvinism; people paying attention to that debate (although I completely welcome those who do so) will find nothing there that will defend Calvinism, because my entire response is based on NOT sharing a premise with Calvinism

"If being advanced as a serious challenge to my consistency, then White must consider the argument both valid and sound (else it wouldn't actually demonstrate that inconsistency). If White is advancing an argument that he himself doesn't consider valid and sound as applied for the purpose you describe, then he would just be dishonest."

Hardly. He would simply be raising the objection for the sake of argument. There’s nothing the least bit dishonest about that tactic. Rather, it takes the form of an internal critique. You don’t have to share your opponent’s assumptions to answer him on his own grounds.

This is simply a mistake. You accept premises for the sake of arguments. An objection is an argument; you can't raise arguments for the sake of argument. It would be dishonest using a reductio argument that you didn't consider valid and sound as a reductio argument, just as it would be dishonest to use ANY argument that you didn't consider valid and sound. For a reductio argument to take the form of an internal critique, it must take the form of a reductio (that is, it takes a premise actually held by the opponent to a contradiction of another premise). You don't have to share the opponent's premise to do this, but your argument must still be valid and sound for the purpose of reducing that premise to the contradictory premise.

“Ironically, in that case, it would be a legitimate use of Geach's tu quoque rationale against White to point out that he is using an argument which, if he conceded its validity, would be compel him to accept premises that conflict with other premises he holds.”

That is a complete misreading of Geach’s explanation. In his illustration of the foxhunter and the animal rights advocate, the foxhunter does not have to concede that the opposing position is cogent. To the contrary, he’s raising this objection for the sake of argument, on the assumption that the opposing position is false.

Cogency is a property of arguments not premises. Objections are not raised for the sake of argument; premises are. What Hays ought to have said is that one doesn't have to concede the truth of a reductio premise to apply a reductio argument, which is true (you ordinarily apply a reductio argument precisely because you believe the starting premise is NOT true). In fact, that is exactly what Geach said (emphasis added): "You start from something *he* believes as a premise, and infer a conclusion he won’t admit to be true." Hays is the one misreading Geach, because he evidently doesn't know the difference between a premise and an argument. But the inference of a conclusion requires a valid and sound argument, so you do have to accept the validity of a reductio argument and the truth of every premise that you have not accepted for the sake of argument to use it against someone. Since I know of no dispute between Daniel and James White on any premise BUT determinism, I assume that if White concedes the validity of the argument by applying it as a reductio, he would also necessarily concede the absurdity of his own position as entailing monotheletism.

“I suspect that White is actually trying to render forth some sort of proverbial platitude like ‘If you attack people with fallacious arguments, then people will attack you with fallacious arguments.’"

No, the comparison is far more specific. Prejean contends that Reformed determinism entails monothelitism. Prejean’s Orthodox opponents contend that Scotist, Thomist, and Molinist versions of determinism entail monothelitism.The common denominator is determinism, regardless of the particular version it takes.

I don't believe in Scotism, Banezian Thomism, OR Molinism (either the original, or per Suarez). That's part of the problem with Perry's argument. Banezian Thomism in particular is based on Cajetan's theory of analogy, which more or less everyone concedes to be a Scotist reinterpretation of St. Thomas; a similar charge could be leveled at Suarez's version of Molinism. Now that people are getting back on board with the philosophia perennis more rigorously and treating St. Thomas's doctrines of analogy, divine simplicity, and the like more rigorously, the Thomism/Molinism debate has been practically rendered obsolete as a fundamental misconception of God's metaphysical operation.

“But the ‘make a conclusion in this field of theology, transport it over here and use it as a club to beat someone over the head’ fallacy is not in any logical textbook that I have ever seen.”

Actually, I believe that White treated that as a separate objection. One of the points of dispute is theological method.

That's by no means apparent by what he said, and even if it also had this sense, it was clearly directed at my argument as well.

Calvinism has direct Scriptural prooftexts for predestination. Prejean, as well as Perry and Daniel, act as if they can simply sidestep the direct exegetical evidence for Calvinism and negate its Biblical foundations by appeal to some inference-of-an-inference-of-an-inference from philosophical Christology.

Actually, I think your exegetical method includes reckless anthropomorphism because you don't have the philosophical wherewithal to know when your claims are absurd when applied to an entity that could even possibly be God. So, for example, you believe that God has literal emotions, that God makes choices from among possible worlds, that God has knowledge propositionally, that God literally elects from among people, and all sorts of other things that can't possibly be applied to a being that could qualify as God. Personally, I'm with Augustine that you have to get your philosophy at least straight to the point of being consistent with your professed faith before you can do exegesis intelligently, so from my perspective, starting from the Bible is ridiculous on its face. You have to get your natural theology straight first before you even start trying to obtain an articulate and reasonable theology.

More from Hays:

A couple of basic errors in this reply

i) It isn’t necessary to mount an independent argument every time if a preexisting argument is available.

That's trivially true, but we are discussing the use of this particular argument.

ii) Moreover, it is not irresponsible to use the same argument against your opponent which he is using against you when he is subject to the very same criticism.

IF you are willing to concede the validity and soundness of the argument as applied as a reductio, THEN it is not irresponsible.

iii) Furthermore, this is not based on assumptions shared in common between White and Prejean, but Prejean and his Orthodox critics.

If it's strictly true that White doesn't accept the premises of the argument to the extent required for the argument to be a successful reductio, then he would be dishonest to assert it, because the assertion of a reductio implicitly accepts the truth of all premises not explictly accepted for the sake of argument. But with regard to the disputed premises, the dilemma itself, it's true that if White rejects one or the other premise freely, then the reductio won't work on him. Which premise does White reject: determinism or dyotheletism?

iv) It is also true that at some point we also need to show why it is unsound in application to our own view. But the initial countermove is hardly the only arrow in our quiver:

a) Both White and I have marshaled many direct arguments in support of Calvinism.

b) Both White and I have also marshaled many direct arguments in objection to Catholicism—and, in my case—in objection to Orthodoxy as well.So it’s not as if our defense is limited to a tu quoque response.

The question isn't what other arrows might be in the quiver. The question is how this arrow is being handled. By using an argument as a reductio against someone else, you concede a great deal about the validity and soundness of the argument, which creates a burden on you to explain how it is that you concede all this while denying its applicability to yourself. I have been quite diligent about explaining why I believe this particular argument does not apply to me, as have numerous other Catholics, including Dr. Michael Liccione, Dr. Philip Blosser, Dr. Scott Carson, and (listed last, but certainly not least) Fr. Alvin Kimel. For someone who hasn't done anything in the way of responding to use the argument would be grossly irresponsible.

c) In addition, both Prejean and his Orthodox critics are guilty of the very thing he falsely accuses us of.For he acts as if raising his Christological objection automatically discharges him of any duty to respond to the exegetical arguments for Calvinism or against Catholicism. So he is using his Christological objection to deflect attention away from the exegetical debate because he knows he can’t win on exegetical grounds.

d) Apropos (c), the underlying issue remains the issue of theological method. Does philosophical theology trump exegetical theology? That is what renders his argument unsound in objection to Calvinism. For his argument to have any traction, it would need to have a traceable basis in divine revelation. Otherwise, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You can’t do theology by stipulation.

First, I don't think that presenting philosophical arguments automatically discharges me of responding to exegetical arguments. What it does is render Calvinism infeasible as an alternative for the people I am trying to convince, which are those who consider the historical condemnation of monothelitism authoritative. Conversely, if I think that any exegetical argument renders my view infeasible for a reasonable person, then I would certainly respond to it. But that is the only thing that I would consider a "loss," and I have seen no compelling argument that doesn't turn on a premise that can be gratuitously denies (frequently, a peculiar view of Scriptural authority or, in the case of anti-Catholic arguments, a peculiar view of Catholic authority). If I don't think that people are going to have any good reason to accept that premise, then there is no need to respond to it.

I've made the analogy to astrology before, and I'll make it again. I'm not going to try to prove an astrologer wrong over whether this particular conjunction between Jupiter and Mars means people are going to make more money on average, because I don't think there is any good reason to think his method reliable in the first place. It seems more expedient to just ask "What reason do you have to think that Jupiter and Mars have anything to do with it?," and if he can't give one, then I'm justified in ignoring whatever he says. Frankly, I just use you as examples of what happens when you aren't careful and rigorous in your thinking, and particularly, when you don't have multiple checkpoints in reality for your beliefs. This is why I consider the methodology of putting "exegetical theology" ABOVE "philosophical theology" or "historical theology" necessarily suspect. If you can't independently come up with consistent results using all indicia for truth that you consider reliable, if you have to resort to competition between them, then it seems to me that your whole concept of truth and objective reality is defective. That strikes me as a fundamental problem common to lots of later thinkers, notably Kant, Reid, Descartes, and Leibniz. Stoic and Aristotelian-influenced Christian thinkers, particularly the Scholastics and most particularly St. Thomas, tended not to do that.

Second, my argument at Calvinism is targeted against people who would become Calvinists by mistakenly thinking that it was consistent with their beliefs. If someone wants to accept the concept knowingly, if they want to take this concept of Biblical authority, then there is little I can do about it. Lots of people have figured out that their belief in Calvinism was inconsistent with the rest of their beliefs, so that's my target audience. Other people have felt compelled to believe certain things, knowing that they have serious intuitive objections, and I can help them by showing that the belief is not rationally compelled. But if you are, with full consent of the will, committed to the idea of the Calvinist concept of Biblical authority, then it may well be the case that there is nothing I could possibly say that would change that. It's possible to construct a cognitive fortress, and that appears to be what Frame, Poythress, Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Helm, and a large number of others have done. So long as they have no capacity to sally forth to hit people who don't share their view of Biblical authority, then they aren't a threat to me.

You used the word “libertarian” to define your own position. You took this word from contemporary philosophical action theory. That is where it derives its meaning.i) If you wish to invest it with a nonstandard sense, then you need to explain your idiosyncratic usage the first time you first introduce the term to define your own position.

I thought I was pretty clear in saying that I was talking about the Thomist/scholastic definition of God's freedom. I also thought that it was relatively clear in the philosophical context that the translation of libertarian freedom to God was not univocal. If it wasn't, then I will explicitly state that I am adopting the Thomist position as outlined by, inter alia, Barry Miller and Gregory Rocca. Sorry for any lack of clarity on my part.

ii) No one said that evil is a power. Rather, evil is an object of power.

That seems philosophically no better. The only object of a power can be a good; evil can't be willed for its own sake.

iii) To identify your own position as libertarian, only to deny that there is such a thing as the freedom to choose evil, is simply eccentric.

It would not be for a Thomist, so perhaps that clarification will help.

iv) Do you deny that it lies within God’s sheer omnipotence to do evil? Not whether he would, but whether, other attributes aside, he could.

"Other attributes aside" as applied to God violates the divine simplicity, so I consider the statement nonsensical. No, it does not like within God's sheer omnipotence to do evil.

If so, how do you redefine omnipotence?

Same way all scholastics did: in terms of potentia absoluta. Specifically, it is defined by lack of ontological limits imposed on God by creation.

God's freedom pertains to potentia absoluta, which in turn pertains to ontological dependence. The notion that different possible worlds represent different potentia in God says that God varies from world to world, which is simply modal polytheism

Prejean suffers from reading incomprehension. What I said is that if divine freedom is defined in libertarian terms, then God is pure potentia rather than pure actus since his choices are thereby dissevered from his nature or moral character.

All I say in saying that God has libertarian freedom is that He could have done other than He did, that His actions were not determined by His nature or moral character. This does not contradict God as being actus purus. God being actus purus entails that God is simple, so we can't even speak of God's will, nature, and moral character as being separate things. The fact that God can choose otherwise in an undetermined way says nothing at all about there being unactualized potency in God. God can be fully actual and yet not determined in any effects. Indeed, being purely actual precludes such limitation.

“Also, Hays's remark regarding God's goodness here proves that Hays has defined divine goodness solely in terms of the divine will.”

Prejean suffers from an unfortunate inability to distinguish between my own position and the position I oppose.

No, I distinguished them and spoke to yours. There is no way of identifying what the divine goodness is in your regime other than what God does. You simply affirm, presumably on the strength of revelation, that whatever God reveals to be good is good, but there is no ontological support for the claim, no natural theology as it were. To say that what God does is in accordance with his nature is tautology in your formulation; it's something you affirm without giving any additional content.

I do not define divine goodness solely in terms of the divine will. Rather, that’s an implication of the libertarian position he espouses. Libertarianism is inherently voluntaristic.

No, it just happens that lots of libertarians are also voluntarist.

Actually, possible worlds flow from the Scholastic distinction between potentia ordinata and potentia absoluta, for God’s potentia absoluta is not exhausted by his potentia ordinata.

Yes, and the way you have defined God's nature and moral character, it's incoherent. I point out that Calvin himself rejected the distinction, and it was his reliance on some muddle-headed concept of mystery in the divine nature, effectively confusing epistemology and ontology, that is in some way responsible for the debasement of the concept in contemporary discourse.

It also follows from certain counterfactual propositions in Scripture.

... which is convenient, because you've implicitly contradicted those as well. This is why I like to get the philosophy straight before going to exegesis.

Strictly speaking, a possible world is a synonym for divine omnipotence (i.e. for what God can possibly do).

Then you ought to have no qualms either with the statement that God's freedom is libertarian (i.e., that he could have done other than He did) and that God not being able to work evil is not a limit on God's omnipotence, since there is no possible world in which God works evil. Good luck explaining how your view allows multiple possible worlds.

i) More reading incomprehension. I didn’t say that he was “constrained.” Indeed, I said the opposite. ii) However, unless one is a voluntarist, God’s choices are characterized by all his attributes. His will is not a sheer will. His omnipotence is inseparable from his other attributes. This is why he cannot do everything of which he is otherwise capable.

What you said in (ii) is exactly the "constraint" I was talking about. You are suggesting that God cannot do something of which He is otherwise capable. That sounds like God as a maximally possible intersection of great-making attributes, the same sort of perfect being nonsense that comes from modeling God implicitly according to dependence on creation. The notion that God's attributes act as constraints on each other is nonsense. It certainly isn't from Anselm or Aquinas.

Yes, it would suffice for Prejean to show that Reformed theology is, indeed, irrational and unjustified. So when is he going to show us rather than tell us?

Right about the time that you can provide an argument that it is at least arguably rational and justified, i.e., based on a premise that cannot be gratuitously denied and that many people are not likely to gratuitously deny. Like I said, it's not my business to deal with quacks who can't convince me they aren't quacks.

“You're simply asserting two prima facie incompatible concepts [soft determinism and a compatibilist definition of free will] without argument.”

You haven’t shown them to be prima facie incompatible.

Well, the compatibilist definition of free will is based on the idea that a decision can't be guaranteed unless determined, and soft determinism entails that the divine will does not guarantee decisions, so they seem obviously contradictory to me.

“Given your metaphysical assumptions, I don't think it is possible for you to coherently affirm the existence of any of those distinctions.”

He doesn’t *think* it’s possible. And *why* he doesn’t think it’s possible he doesn’t say.

For one thing, because you don't coherently explain why there is a distinction between potentia ordinata and potentia absoluta, but you rely on it anyway.

In that case, he can’t read the Latin Fathers in the original. What about his knowledge of Greek? Can he read the Greek Fathers in the original?If not, then he has no mastery of the primary sources of patristic theology, in which case his triumphalist appeal to Nicene Orthodoxy and the like should be judged accordingly.

Which is the fortunate part of living in a society where the opinions of those who do study these things for a living are relatively freely disseminated, and that the opinions of various scholars are evaluated against the opinions of other competent scholars in the same area, so that even people like me can have conceptual access to their works, provided that I believe the methodology employed by these scholars is a solid and reliable independent criterion corresponding to reality (which I do). If I had to rely on my own original translations of everything, then I probably wouldn't do as good a job, and more generally, the scholarship as a whole couldn't do as good a job, because there is no way I could reproduce the same level of expertise. But this system allows a handful of scholars to be truly expert in each author, so that the coherence of large numbers of reliable opinions can be examined. So I am not the least bit shy to say "Don't take my word for it," when it comes to any patristic opinion, and I freely encourage people to read what is on my bookshelf.

The fine art of defending the indefensible

Steve Hays continues to try to defend James White, who, unfortunately, happens to be just plain wrong. I'm impressed by the effort to render a silk purse from a sow's ear, but it just gets progressively sillier. I previously pointed out that White's argument amounted to a fallacious tu quoque argument. But Hays points out the rather obvious point that tu quoque arguments, and ad hominem arguments more generally, are not even fallacious if used to demonstrate an opponent's inconsistency, thereby requiring him to modify a premise that he believes to fit with another. I entirely agree, although the argument had better identify the dubious premises in question and show that there is some reason for doubting them, on pain of not being effective for the point. But unfortunately for Hays, this has nothing to do with what White is doing.

White is using this argument as either a defense against my argument or an attack against my consistency (the "or" is inclusive; it could be both). If used as a defense against my argument, which certainly appears to be how it is being used, then it is simply fallacious. It can't logically be deployed for the purpose White is advancing it, because my being wrong doesn't have any implications for White's being wrong.

If being advanced as a serious challenge to my consistency, then White must consider the argument both valid and sound (else it wouldn't actually demonstrate that inconsistency). If White is advancing an argument that he himself doesn't consider valid and sound as applied for the purpose you describe, then he would just be dishonest. Ironically, in that case, it would be a legitimate use of Geach's tu quoque rationale against White to point out that he is using an argument which, if he conceded its validity, would be compel him to accept premises that conflict with other premises he holds. But since White himself says he considers the argument to be based on a fallacy, I will assume that he is not dishonestly advancing the argument to show inconsistency in my position, so I have given him the benefit of the doubt for the only honest use he could possibly have (as a defense), meaning that it must be a (fallacious) defense.

I suspect that White is actually trying to render forth some sort of proverbial platitude like "If you attack people with fallacious arguments, then people will attack you with fallacious arguments." There is some practical truth to that: if you can't spot fallacies in your own argument, you probably won't be able to defend yourself when someone uses the same fallacies against you. This might have been useful, had White actually identified the fallacy. But the "make a conclusion in this field of theology, transport it over here and use it as a club to beat someone over the head" fallacy is not in any logical textbook that I have ever seen. It appears to be a species of category error, but that would actually require a demonstration, not an assertion. And of course, White's method has always included mountains of assertion and pebbles of demonstration, so it is entirely consistent with his M.O. to ignore the substance here. Anyway, this use to comment on my tactics in dialogue is not the use that Hays cites either, so his citation of Geach still has no applicability.

Therefore, White's move is not a "legitimate move in a cumulative counterargument," and the only one guilty of a "logical gaffe" is Hays, for citing Geach's position in a situation in which it is inapposite.

Nor is that Hays's only logical gaffe. Regarding my dispute with Perry and Daniel over the soundness of apply their argument to Catholicism, Hays says:

However, a counterargument often proceeds by process of elimination. To knock the Catholic competitor out of the running by turning Prejean’s own argument against him is one stage of a cumulative counterargument in which you both argue against the opponent’s position as well as arguing for your own.

Even though this wasn't what White was doing, it's just irresponsible to use the same argument that is being used as a defeater against you without mounting a defense against it yourself, and most of the time, that will mean that your use of it against someone else would be inconsistent with your own defense. That is why tu quoque actually has some legitimate uses, because people are not always particularly careful about checking their own consistency. Neither you nor White have any responsible use of this argument unless you can show why it is unsound as applied to your view.

Hasker uses the word “creature” at one point, so we need to make a verbal adjustment when we apply his definition to the case of God or God Incarnate, but that aside, if we plug this standard definition into the case at hand, then, even though Christ was sinless, he was not impeccable.

This requires a great deal more than a verbal adjustment, which is why God's freedom qua divine is never defined this way in Catholic theology, but rather in terms of ontological independence. Good and evil actions have different ontological status, so there's no such thing as a freedom to "choose" evil (evil is no power; it is simply the corruption of another power). Mutatis mutandis, the definition holds, but it's more than a mere verbal change.

If God, or God Incarnate, is a libertarian agent, then God’s goodness is entirely tautologous. If he’s a libertarian agent, then he’s pure potentia rather than pure actus.

God's freedom pertains to potentia absoluta, which in turn pertains to ontological dependence. The notion that different possible worlds represent different potentia in God says that God varies from world to world, which is simply modal polytheism. Hays's definition of God's freedom in terms of what might happen in other possible worlds is therefore inapposite. Also, Hays's remark regarding God's goodness here proves that Hays has defined divine goodness solely in terms of the divine will; that's the only way the conclusion follows.

Speaking for myself, God has no “circumstances.” Rather, God is the author of our circumstances. God creates the situation we’re in. God doesn’t find himself in a preexisting situation.

Neither do I. I make no such commitment when I say that God has libertarian free will.

In some ways, God has more freedom than we do, and in other ways less.

Only because people speak less than rigorously about what freedom is.

I think we should view the relation between God's nature and the creation more in proscriptive rather than prescriptive terms. God's nature is such that he will not create a world of pure evil, or a world with gratuitous evil, or a world in which evil triumphs over good, or a world wherein evil overbalances good.God's nature is such that he will not create a foolish or frivolous world.So God's nature is proscriptive with respect to certain logically possible worlds. These are not live possibilities. They would never make the cut.

This is not an explanation; it is a statement of what you must explain. Now explain it.

But it doesn't follow from this that God's nature is prescriptive withrespect to possible worlds.On the face of it, there seem to be alternative goods as well asincommensurable goods. It isn't a choice between good and evil. So God isn’t constrained to choose just one possible world—or any at all.

Possible worlds again. This is just anthropomorphism. The notion of God being "constrained" AT ALL shows that you don't have a coherent concept of what power is in the first place. Lack of a non-power is not a constraint.

i) Prejean is tacitly mapping Catholic theological method onto Calvinism, as if Calvin is to Calvinists what the Pope is to papists.But Reformed theological method takes its point of departure with exegetical theology, not historical theology.Even if Calvin were guilty as charged, this does nothing to overturn Reformed theology, for it does nothing to overturn the exegetical foundation of Reformed theology.At most, it would only mean that Calvin was unsuccessful in presenting a philosophical theodicy.

And that is all I care to show. Why would I even think that I would be able to "overturn Reformed theology?" As far as I have seen, people believe it for no good reason or purpose in the first place, so why would I think that I could reason people who have already chosen to behave irrationally out of their position? It suffices for me to show that it is irrational and unjustified; I have neither desire nor need to show that it is inconsistent with itself.

ii) Prejean makes a string of empty assertions rather than actually interacting with Reformed scholarship, such as chapters 4 and 11 in Helm’s book on Calvin’s Ideas.

And I imagine that Helm will do the same thing that he always does, which is to mumble something about "biblical worldviews" not requiring "philosophical argument" for justification, but how he can mount "logical defenses." Frankly, I'm not all that worried about people like Helm, who more or less confess inability to justify their position with respect to natural theology. But like I always do, I'll buy the book, read it, and if I think that anything in it actually threatens my posiiton, I'll answer it.

Actually, my statement isn’t based on the concept of sovereignty. Rather, it’s based on the concept of causality. In particular, it’s based on a counterfactual (sine qua non) definition of causation—according to which A caused B in case B would not obtain unless A obtained.

Errr, yeah. The metaphysical error I had cited was exactly screwing up God's causality, and defining causation counterfactually might as well be the definition thereof. My view isn't "contracausal." It just doesn't accept a counterfactual definition of causation. I suppose that does make inspiration an "otiose" category to some extent, because God is "otiose" in some sense by His nature, though not in the formal sense.

This is simply a straw man argument because it attempts to redefine the Reformed doctrine of divine sovereignty in coercive, hard deterministic terms whereas compatibilism is a version of soft determination which eschews compulsion.

I can't give any coherent sense to "soft" determinism with a counterfactual definition of causation combined with a compatibilist definition of free will. It simply trying to mix oil and water; I've yet to see any good argument for the consistency of the two. You're simply asserting two prima facie incompatible concepts without argument.

This is simplistic and equivocal because it fails to draw elementary distinctions between means and ends, necessary and sufficient conditions, as well as the prescriptive or decretive meaning of the divine will.

Given your metaphysical assumptions, I don't think it is possible for you to coherently affirm the existence of any of those distinctions. That's why I said what I did. If you can philosophically justify those definitions (not exegesis here), then I might be persuaded. But the mere fact that you draw distinctions without substantiating them doesn't prove anything.

And by the way, not that I would expect you to go to this much trouble just for effect, but I think the Latin translation of my name would be something like "Agroioannis" ("agro" (field) + "Ioannis" (John's), from the French "Prejean," shortened from "pre de Jean," meaning "John's meadow"). It would be something like that anyway, but my Latin knowledge is close to nil, so I might have got an ending wrong somewhere.

Et tu, tu quoque?

Steve Hays says this.

I reply:
"Tu quoque" is the best you can do? Granted, your philosophical idealism is even sillier than Berkeley's, so it's not as if you are a paragon of logical rigor, but I still wouldn't expect such an obvious mistake from you.

It's just factually inaccurate to say that the argument came back to bite me; where do you think I got the argument in the first place? I use it against Calvinists precisely because (1) I think it's a valid argument, (2) the reason I think it is unsound as applied to Catholicism is that I don't think St. Thomas means what Photios says he does, (3) I think Calvin DOES say what Photios thinks he does, and (4) I have yet to see any response from a Calvinist that convinced me it was unsound as against Calvinism. In other words, I knew the gasoline wasn't landing on me well before I started pouring it on anyone, which might be contrasted with White, who wouldn't know it if he were on fire. So while I certainly take your point regarding care with flammable substances, I know exactly what I'm doing.

By the way, if I thought the argument were sound as applied to Catholicism, I could have converted to Orthodoxy and still cheerfully used it in the same way against Calvinism, because the success of the argument as a defeater against Calvinism doesn't depend on its success against Catholicism. That's the nice thing about valid arguments; anyone can use them against anyone.

It just so happened that White's abortion remark was so sick-minded that it made a good example of the mentality that was under discussion, but I never had any delusions about White even understanding it, much less actually responding with anything other than name-calling. And, lo and behold! That's what he did.

The only thing that surprises me even a little bit is that Calvinists are offended by a charge of monothelitism. Historical dyotheletism says that there are two libertarianly free wills in Christ. You say that there is no such thing as libertarian free will. Why do you care? If you don't believe in libertarianly free moral agents, then there is only one actual will in the whole universe: God's.

Digital Voting

Zippy Catholic has proposed a formalism for why non-negotiable issues (NNs) imply that people should be abstaining from elections left and right (except for the rather bizarre case when both candidates are equally wrong on all NNs). He proposes the following:

Define each candidate's morality word P to be his platform on all of the non-negotiables in play in the race. A "1" means he is wrong on that non-negotiable, a "0" means he is right. I may only vote for candidate A without making a proportionalist judgement if the logical AND of his platform Pa with all of the other candidates' platforms Pi is equal to his original platform Pa. If it isn't, that means that some other candidate is right on a non-negotiable for which my candidate is wrong: so (no negotiating now!) I may not vote for my candidate.

His idea of "negotiating" means as between issues, so that the bits of the NNs can't be compared among one another, but that's not what I had in mind (nor is it what CAA had in mind, I think). Zippy's definition means that unless two candidates are exactly the same on all the same issues, any comparison between bits would be illicit (they simply can't be valued as against each other), so I think that his conclusion is correct. But I don't agree with his formal concept of non-negotiability, and I'll appeal to the concept of bit significance (most significant bits to the left, in this case) to explain why not.

Let's take Zippy's formalism, but replace the morality WORD with a morality REGISTER made of two 5-bit words, with a most significant word (MSW) including 5 bits for non-negotiable issues and a least significant word (LSW) including 5 bits for other issues (negotiables). It looks like this:

xxxxxxxxxx
MSW LSW

Since 1 is a wrong, these words indicate a harm score for the candidate. The MSW has a score from 0-31, as does the LSW. To include my concept of great moral weight for these issues, I will weight the MSW by a factor of 64 (which will of course seems contrived, but it's selected to illustrate the principle). So the harm score for each candidate would be given by the following formula:

H = 64*MSW + LSW

where H is the harm inflicted by the candidate if elected.

My point is that if you are voting against a particular candidate, the good accomplished by your vote is the harm score of the person you voted against minus the unintended consequence of the harm score of the candidate you had to support in order to keep the other guy out of office. In the following, G(VA) means the good accomplished of voting against the candidate, H(VA) is the harm that would have been inflicted by the candidate voted against, and H(VF) is the unintended harm of the candidate that you voted for (NOTE: Grammar regarding prepositions has been sacrificed for easier subscripts).

G(VA) = H(VA) - H (VF)

Because of the weighting factor, a candidate who is wrong on any of the NNs is going to have a higher harm score than someone who is wrong even on all of the other issues. Formally, this is because the LSW can never have a value higher than 31, and any non-zero NN value is going to be at least 64. That doesn't mean that you can't choose between people with different scores in the MSW. In fact, in my formalism, you can rather easily do this by assigning the most serious issues to the most significant bits (say, abortion, stem cell research, cloning, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage, left to right). So long as your rationale is voting against a candidate in relative error on the non-negotiables, it's licit to vote for the other candidate. This is analogous to voting in favor of a more restrictive abortion law, even an unjust one, if a less restrictive law is already in place: the harm you avoid is greater than the unintended harm you obtain. But that rationale will never obtain in the case of someone wrong on even one NN as compared to the other candidate, because that difference on the NNs will always (based on the weighting factor) entail more harm than being wrong on all the negotiables combined. Therefore, there can never be a net avoidance of harm by voting for someone in relative error on the non-negotiables, just as there can never be a net avoidance of harm by voting for a more restrictive law to prevent the passage of a less restrictive abortion law. Both laws are wrong, but one clearly does more harm than the other, so voting against it avoids more harm.

Since my concept turns on inherent disproportion between the WORDS, it doesn't mean that bits in the MSW cannot be weighted and compared in comparing the relative harm inflicted by the candidates. It simply means that any degree of relative correctness on negotiables will be irrelevant as compared to relative error on the NNs.

Catholic Answers Action Voting Guide: Right Answer, Wrong Reasons

A recent debate on torture (on which I might comment here after the dust settles) oddly intersected with the Catholic Answers Action Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics. Specifically, the suggestion was that the omission of torture as one of the intrinsically evil issues to be considered non-negotiable by Catholic voters indicated some political bias (and this supposedly reinforced the idea that people were trying to avoid labelling torture as an intrinsic evil for political reasons). I believe there is a far less suspect motive for the selection of the five issues; they were picked out of Magisterial documents that singled them out for special consideration without much care as to why they were selected. This led to an inadequate explanation of the reasons for selecting them, which left the selection open to objections that would have otherwise been spurious.

The guide gives the following advice:

This voter’s guide identifies five issues involving "non-negotiable" moral values in current politics and helps you narrow down the list of acceptable candidates, whether they are running for national, state, or local offices.
You should avoid to the greatest extent possible voting for candidates who endorse or promote intrinsically evil policies. As far as possible, you should vote for those who promote policies in line with the moral law.

The guide lists the following non-negotiable issues:

FIVE NON-NEGOTIABLES
These five current issues concern actions that are intrinsically evil and must never be promoted by the law. Intrinsically evil actions are those that fundamentally conflict with the moral law and can never be deliberately performed under any circumstances. It is a serious sin to deliberately endorse or promote any of these actions, and no candidate who really wants to advance the common good will support any action contrary to the non-negotiable principles involved in these issues.

1. Abortion
The Church teaches that, regarding a law permitting abortions, it is "never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or to vote for it" (EV 73). Abortion is the intentional and direct killing of an innocent human being, and therefore it is a form of homicide.
The unborn child is always an innocent party, and no law may permit the taking of his life. Even when a child is conceived through rape or incest, the fault is not the child’s, who should not suffer death for others’ sins.

2. Euthanasia
Often disguised by the name "mercy killing," euthanasia is also a form of homicide. No person has a right to take his own life, and no one has the right to take the life of any innocent person.
In euthanasia, the ill or elderly are killed, by action or omission, out of a misplaced sense of compassion, but true compassion cannot include intentionally doing something intrinsically evil to another person (cf. EV 73).

3. Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Human embryos are human beings. "Respect for the dignity of the human being excludes all experimental manipulation or exploitation of the human embryo" (CRF 4b).
Recent scientific advances show that often medical treatments that researchers hope to develop from experimentation on embryonic stem cells can be developed by using adult stem cells instead. Adult stem cells can be obtained without doing harm to the adults from whom they come. Thus there is no valid medical argument in favor of using embryonic stem cells. And even if there were benefits to be had from such experiments, they would not justify destroying innocent embryonic humans.

4. Human Cloning
"Attempts . . . for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through ‘twin fission,’ cloning, or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union" (RHL I:6).
Human cloning also involves abortion because the "rejected" or "unsuccessful" embryonic clones are destroyed, yet each clone is a human being.

5. Homosexual "Marriage"
True marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Legal recognition of any other union as "marriage" undermines true marriage, and legal recognition of homosexual unions actually does homosexual persons a disfavor by encouraging them to persist in what is an objectively immoral arrangement.
"When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic lawmaker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral" (UHP 10).

The guide also provides the following instruction:

Do not vote for candidates who are right on lesser issues but will vote wrongly on key moral issues. One candidate may have a record of voting in line with Catholic values except for, say, euthanasia. Such a voting record is a clear signal that the candidate should not be chosen by a Catholic voter unless the other candidates have voting records even less in accord with these moral norms.

The reasoning presented to justify the selection of these issues is fundamentally flawed. While it is true that just laws can never promote intrinsically evil actions, it does not follow that laws can never permit intrinsically evil actions, and indeed, permission of intrinsically evil actions can be in line with the moral law if the common good and social order is better served on the whole by permitting such actions. This has effectively given dissenters a loophole through which they could drive an 18-wheeler. They protest that it does not matter what means are taken to reduce abortion, so that it is better for the common good to allow abortion to remain legal while attempting to reduce its incidence. They maintain that other candidates also do intrinsically evil things like prosecuting unjust wars or advocating torture, while the pro-choice politician is merely advocating permission of abortion, not actually promoting it. They protest that mere advocacy will not produce any actual change, and where people are powerless to work change, advocacy is pratically irrelevant. And because the characterization of the non-negotiables is made in terms of promoting intrinsic evil, all of these responses are legitimate, and the dissenter has reason to charge that the guide is simply a thinly veiled ad hoc selection of particular issues.

Unfortunately for the dissenter, even though the Catholic Answers Action guide might not have made the reason clear, the conclusion is dead on. There is a two-part justification why these issues have a unique position in the hierarchy of goods:
1. The evil is so grave that the government has a positive obligation to oppose them, an obligation that is fundamental to its existence as a state. Unlike many other intrinsically evil activities, the government may neither promote the activity in question nor even permit it.
2. Because the obligations are so fundamental to the existence of the state, mere advocacy of laws permitting them is itself a grave evil against the common good.

This is made clear by the Magisterial teaching on the point. From Evangelium Vitae 72-73:
Now the first and most immediate application of this teaching concerns a human law which disregards the fundamental right and source of all other rights which is the right to life, a right belonging to every individual. Consequently, laws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia are in complete opposition to the inviolable right to life proper to every individual; they thus deny the equality of everyone before the law. ...Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. ...In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to "take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it"

Likewise, the CDF says, with same-sex "marriage":
It might be asked how a law can be contrary to the common good if it does not impose any particular kind of behaviour, but simply gives legal recognition to a de facto reality which does not seem to cause injustice to anyone. In this area, one needs first to reflect on the difference between homosexual behaviour as a private phenomenon and the same behaviour as a relationship in society, foreseen and approved by the law, to the point where it becomes one of the institutions in the legal structure. This second phenomenon is not only more serious, but also assumes a more wide-reaching and profound influence, and would result in changes to the entire organization of society, contrary to the common good. Civil laws are structuring principles of man's life in society, for good or for ill. They “play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behaviour”. Lifestyles and the underlying presuppositions these express not only externally shape the life of society, but also tend to modify the younger generation's perception and evaluation of forms of behaviour. Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.

It is true, of course, that voting for a particular candidate is merely remote material cooperation with his actions in office, so that a voter might vote for a particular candidate (and thereby remotely materially cooperate with his evil) for proportionate reasons. This is one of the issues in which the analysis is most confused in the CAA guide. It appears that there was some confusion between the issue of political support for a candidate and the question of whether a politician could licitly receive the Eucharist. In that context, it is also true that error on abortion and euthanasia presents a greater sense of scandal, and that it is more likely to be a manifest grave sin of the sort that can result in denial of the Eucharist. But that doesn't particularly deal with the special obligations of the state to prevent abortion and euthanasia; rather, it deals with the fact that the formal cooperation with evil is obvious in that case. There are numerous other forms of formal cooperation with evil, even acts that are evil by disproportion rather than intrinsically, that might be manifest as well. Ordinarily, this will not be the case, simply because the reasons for voting for a particular law are rarely manifest, and laws themselves are rarely such that they would obviously violate the common good (then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, outlines examples like capital punishment and just war). But the point is to determine whether it is manifest that the politician has formally cooperated with evil so as to commit a mortal sin, NOT the gravity of the sin he has committed.

On the voter's side, however, the pertinent criteria for remote moral cooperation is the proximity of the voter to the sin and the gravity of the sin with which the voter is cooperating to determine whether there are proportionate reasons to do so. It doesn't stop at the bare fact of the commission of a mortal sin, but must examine the gravity of that sin to determine whether the cooperation with that sin is justified by proportionate reasons. In that analysis, the relevance regarding the state's grave obligation to prohibit these activities is considered. So it isn't simply a question of the activity being intrinsically evil or the state (or the candidate) having an obligation not to promote these activities. Rather, it deals with an area in which the state has a positive duty to prevent the activity, a duty that is fundamental to its legitimacy qua state.

That is really what separates the five non-negotiables from other issues. The first four deal with life issues, and the last deals with an issue that was specifically pointed out by the CDF as being in the same class as abortion and euthanasia. What separates these issues is that even advocating laws that give permission for these activities to take place is a grave sin against the common good. They are fundamental to the state's obligation to protect the common good, and as such, they take precedence over other issues in their gravity. Moreover, since the mere advocacy of such laws is gravely sinful, the degree of cooperation is far less remote even than with the laws that the candidate might support. In such cases, there are no proportionate reasons to vote for a candidate who is wrong on any of the five non-negotiables if his opponent is not. So while the CAA guide might not have articulated this justification, it does accurately pick out the issues that are fundamental to the state's obligation to protect the common good. The charges of political bias may be stilled; CAA might not have understood the reasons that the Magisterium picked these issues out, but they correctly discerned that the Magisterium DID pick them out.

Christmas poem from a soldier

A good reminder received in an email from Dad...

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS,
HE LIVED ALL ALONE,
IN A ONE BEDROOM HOUSE MADE OF
PLASTER AND STONE.

I HAD COME DOWN THE CHIMNEY
WITH PRESENTS TO GIVE,
AND TO SEE JUST WHO
IN THIS HOME DID LIVE.

I LOOKED ALL ABOUT,
A STRANGE SIGHT I DID SEE,
NO TINSEL, NO PRESENTS,
NOT EVEN A TREE.

NO STOCKING BY MANTLE,
JUST BOOTS FILLED WITH SAND,
ON THE WALL HUNG PICTURES
OF FAR DISTANT LANDS.

WITH MEDALS AND BADGES,
AWARDS OF ALL KINDS,
A SOBER THOUGHT,
CAME THROUGH MY MIND.

FOR THIS HOUSE WAS DIFFERENT,
IT WAS DARK AND DREARY,
I FOUND THE HOME OF A SOLDIER,
ONCE I COULD SEE CLEARLY.

THE SOLDIER LAY SLEEPING,
SILENT, ALONE,
CURLED UP ON THE FLOOR
IN THIS ONE BEDROOM HOME.

THE FACE WAS SO GENTLE,
THE ROOM IN SUCH DISORDER,
NOT HOW I PICTURED
A UNITED STATES SOLDIER.

WAS THIS THE HERO
OF WHOM I 'D JUST READ?
CURLED UP ON A PONCHO,
THE FLOOR FOR A BED?

I REALIZED THE FAMILIES
THAT I SAW THIS NIGHT,
OWED THEIR LIVES TO THESE SOLDIERS
WHO WERE WILLING TO FIGHT.

SOON ROUND THE WORLD,
THE CHILDREN WOULD PLAY,
AND GROWNUPS WOULD CELEBRATE
A BRIGHT CHRISTMAS DAY.

THEY ALL ENJOYED FREEDOM
EACH MONTH OF THE YEAR,
BECAUSE OF THE SOLDIERS,
LIKE THE ONE LYING HERE.

I COULDN'T HELP WONDER
HOW MANY LAY ALONE,
ON A COLD CHRISTMAS EVE
IN A LAND FAR FROM HOME.

THE VERY THOUGHT
BROUGHT A TEAR TO MY EYE,
I DROPPED TO MY KNEES
AND STARTED TO CRY.

THE SOLDIER AWAKENED
AND I HEARD A ROUGH VOICE,
"SANTA DON'T CRY,
THIS LIFE IS MY CHOICE";

I FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,
I DON'T ASK FOR MORE,
MY LIFE IS MY GOD,
MY COUNTRY, MY HOME."

THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER
AND DRIFTED TO SLEEP,
I COULDN'T CONTROL IT,
I CONTINUED TO WEEP.

I KEPT WATCH FOR HOURS,
SO SILENT AND STILL
AND WE BOTH SHIVERED
FROM THE COLD NIGHT'S CHILL.

I DIDN'T WANT TO LEAVE
ON THAT COLD, DARK, NIGHT,
THIS GUARDIAN OF HONOR
SO WILLING TO FIGHT.

THEN THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER,
WITH A VOICE SOFT AND PURE,
WHISPERED, "CARRY ON SANTA,
IT'S CHRISTMAS DAY, ALL IS SECURE."

ONE LOOK AT MY WATCH,
AND I KNEW HE WAS RIGHT.
"MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FRIEND,
AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT."

This poem was written by an unnamed Soldier. The
following is his request. I think it is reasonable...

PLEASE. Would you do me the kind favor of sending
this to as many people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon
and some credit is due to our U.S. service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let's try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us. Please, do your small part to pass on this small seed of remembrance.

Oh no

Supreme Nerd. Apply for a professorship at MIT now!!!.

All men are liars

Decided to take a little side track from the series to address a a relevant side issue that I came across regarding the exegesis of Psalm 112:6, which says that David in his ecstasy learned that "all men are liars." There are two distinct patristic approaches to this passage. The earlier version appears to be that of Didymus the Blind. This version interprets the passage in terms of deification, concluding that the term "men" here is to be contrasted with the term "gods" as applied to the deified Christian who has received the Word of God. St. Augustine follows this approach in his exegesis, and it is indicative of a generally Platonic trend of the soul mounting up to divinity from humanity, transcending creaturely limits. The passage is therefore viewed in an ontological, moral, and noetic sense, so that men being liars is taken as a limitation on humanity attaining to the truth that is the Word of God.

Gregory Nyssen takes a different approach. He views this passage as dealing with an inherent limitation of language, so that it does not deal with an ontological limitation on human nature, but with the ability of human concepts to fully express that to which they refer. This passage therefore supports the classic Cappadocian version of apophaticism. It is notable that this conception does express anything pejorative about this limitation, unlike the version propounded by Didymus, which expresses a sense of failure. This difference cannot be pressed too far, since both Didymus and Augustine viewed the soul itself as being akin to a piece of divinity, so that no man is ever entirely lacking illumination. Rather, the notion of "men" is placed in the context of progress, teaching, and increasing illumination, much like the account that Clement of Alexandria gives. Thus, neither approach expresses a disdain for matter or any suggestion of a "fall into matter" from which the soul must recover.

I think it is safe to say that the Augustinian version DOES view the progression through matter as a stage of progress, a limitation that will eventually be transcended in favor of a new and more perfect mode of knowledge and communication that will render what we experience a "lie" by comparison. But this is not said with the connotation of sin or evil, simply incompleteness, much as an infant is not any less human despite not having reached the age of reason. There is some sense of privation associated with not having attained to the later stages, which is probably what Augustine has in mind by original sin. Had Augustine been entirely consistent on the point, he probably would not have gone so far as to say that infants could be condemned for this condition. But as I have pointed out on Sacramentum Vitae, he did not have access to the medieval Power Distinction, so he lacked the analytical basis to distinguish what might be absolutely possible from what was possible as ordained in God's justice. We cannot anachronistically expect Augustine to have seen all of that through. It suffices to say that Augustine's view, though different from Gregory Nyssen's, has its own traditional support and its own unique theological applications.

Helpful references:
Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition
Scot Douglass, Theology Of The Gap: Cappadocian Language Theory And The Trinitarian Controversy

Franco-Roman conspiracy theories

Rather than repeating this particular bit of historical inquiry in comboxes multiple times, I've decided to dust off the old blog to comment on the notion, popularized by John Romanides in particular, that there was some sort of monolithic nation formed from West Romans and East Romans in pristine unity against the barbarous Franks.

I contended on Michael Liccione's blog, Sacramentum Vitae, that this was untenable, and that the Western Romans had their own interests and their own theology:

The Franks were more or less holders of the antiquated homoian creed from the synod of Constantinople in 360 delivered by Ulfila, and I find it a little odd for the West to be simultaneously accused of Eunomianism/Origenism AND homoianism, since the positions were polar opposites regarding the knowability of God. The relative unsophistication of the Frankish view is fairly obvious from the Libri Carolini. Given the military realities of the time, it's unsurprising that the Pope was willing to deal with them, but to say that the Frankish position on this subject had substantial theological influence over Rome is to strain credibility. Romanides's history is palpably weak on this point; the West Romans cheerfully allied themselves with various barbarian groups (frequently playing them against each other in the process) to secure their autonomy, which even Romanides admits. They seem to have been entirely cognizant that the Frankish version of the filioque was different from their own, but that the similarity might be exploited for the sake of manipulating the Franks or the difference exploited to manipulate the Easterners.
...
Photius was pretty well played by Pope John, for example, while the West was conniving for control of Bulgaria, even though that didn't actually get pulled off until Rome had the Normans as pawns. I see no reason to think that situation ever changed, that Augustine's formulation of the filioque was heterodox, or that the Frankish version thereof ever replaced Augustine's.All that is ugly history, no question. It would be nice to live in the sort of world where Christians didn't do this to each other, where West Romans and East Romans formed one big happy family against the nasty barbarians, but, to quote Jules in Pulp Fiction, "that s&!t ain't the truth." The truth is that Rome had cut Byzantium loose way before any of this had ever happened; the signs were there all the way back to Justinian in the resentment many Westerners had toward his high-handedness. Pretending there was some sort of mutual regard and understanding, that West Romans and East Romans were "one country" in any meaningful sense, would just be a happy fantasy.

Photios (Daniel) Jones replied to these remarks and others, and I think they tend to illustrate just why it is that I have trouble accepting the thesis. Daniel's words will be quoted in red below:
And you are incorrect that Rome had broken itself from the Roman-Byzantine oikonomia prior to 9th Century (Nicholas I). That does not make sense of the stance of Pope Leo III's (a real bishop of Rome) speech to the Frankish envoy or his crowning Charlemagne emperor of the IMPERIUM ROMANUM. Yet we are told that this is what Charlemagne wanted, and he was extremely displeased even angry at Pope Leo III for such a move (since he wanted to obtain such a goal through marriage to the Empress Irene). The joke was on Charlegmagne as Pope Leo III knew the Romans in the East would never recognize a foreign ruler. Hence, Leo III played the spoil to Charlemagne’s crafty plan making an idiot out of him.

By and large, I agree with everything said here except the conclusion announced in the first sentence. The only thing that follows from this scenario is that Pope Leo III was interested in protecting his own power. How this shows Roman-Byzantine harmony is entirely beyond me. Leo seemed perfectly willing to protect his own prerogatives by thwarting the ambitions of Frankish rulers, just as the popes before him had exploited the Franks themselves for the same purpose, as even Romanides admits:

While still consolidating their grip on Gaul, the Franks conquered Northern and Central Italian Romania in the middle of the eighth century, in the guise of liberators of Italic of Papal Romania from Lombard oppression. At this time, the papacy was deeply involved in the iconoclastic controversy, having taken a firm stand, against the Roman emperors and patriarchs of New Rome who supported the iconoclastic movement.

The Franks applied their policy of destroying the unity between the Romans under their rule and the Romans under the rule of Constantinople and the Arabs. They played one Roman party against the other, took neither side, and finally condemned both the iconoclasts and the Seventh Ecumenical Synod (786/7) at their own Council of Frankfurt in 794, in the presence of the legates of Pope Hadrian I (771-795), the staunch supporter of Orthodox practice.

A less paranoid rendering of history would point out that there was nothing guileful in the Pope's acceptance of the Franks' assistance. To say that the Franks were responsible for "destroying the unity" between West Romans and East Romans is simply revisionism; the very fact of resistance to the iconoclast emperors and patriarchs shows Rome's insistence on its own autonomy in matters theological and political. The West Romans were simply willing to deal with the Franks to serve their own interests, and they appear to have viewed the Emperor as simply another piece in the puzzle. Certainly, there was not any loyalty to the East after Justinian, having ostensibly reestablished himself as Emperor of both East and West, gave little if any thought to Rome, practically establishing Ravenna as a competitor to Rome. The West Romans were not played against the East; rather, the West Romans saw which side was going to be most useful to them, and they went that way.

Regarding my observation that Franks were homoians, exactly opposite to the Eunomians, Daniel says:

Not really since it is all dialectical to begin with. The filioque reproduces Polytheism and Sebellianism depending on which route one goes to develop (Uncaused-Cause and Caused-Cause vs. Father-Son as a single principle) which are polar opposites. And the Franks were not “more or less” holders of the homoian creed. There is nothing different about Alcuin and Paulinus’ conception then Augustine’s or Anselm’s.

To clarify one point up front, I meant "more or less" to indicate that the Franks were homoians in spirit and substance, even if not holding onto that Arian creed in every detail. There is something to be said for both approaches being dialectical. Eunomius starts with agenetos as a defining characteristic or name and asserts that we know by this name every bit as much as the Father knows about Himself. The Homoians (and probably Arius himself, at least later on in his controversy with Alexander) take a radically opposite view: that the Father is entirely unknowable, and that it is precisely because the Son is knowable that He cannot be of the same essence as the Father. But in some sense, these come back to precisely the same point, as some definite property about divinity is being asserted, whether negatively (the Homoian view) or positively (the Eunomian view), so I take the observation that both views were dialectical amicably.

What I find difficult to accept is that one could simultaneously be Eunomian and Homoian. Homoianism commits one to at least some formulation of divine unknowability that serves as a definition of the divinity. No Eunomian could ever accept that, because on the Eunomian view, it would render all talk about God meaningless (N.B., it would also violate the anomios tenet that every name has a definite meaning different from every other name, a philosophical weakness that Athanasius pointed out to good effect). "As from a single principle" would be impossible from the Homoian position; it would effectively assert a mixture of two absolute contraries. That's why the filioque could be used with great effect against the Franks; on the authority of Augustine, it could not be denied, but it was absolutely incompatible with the Gothic Homoianism.

In fact, the use of the filioque as a response to Gothic Homoianism appears to have been used for as long as there were Goths in the West. For example, in writing to Turribius in Visigothic Spain, Pope St. Leo the Great affirms the filioque as the correct orthodox position as against the Priscillianists ("And so under the first head is shown what unholy views they hold about the Divine Trinity: they affirm that the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is one and the same, as if the same GOD were named now Father, now Son, and now Holy Ghost: and as if He who begot were not one, He who was begotten, another, and He who proceeded from both, yet another..."), which demonstrates that the theological position of the West as against the Visigoths included the filioque (and it was the theological filioque, not the economic filioque, as the context demonstrates). It's also evidence against the conclusion that this is simply a Sabellian pole being opposed to the Homoian polytheist pole, because Leo specifically accuses the Priscillianists of having taken their denial of the filioque from Sabellius.

There remains, then, the open question of whether Leo is simply using a Eunomian position taken from Augustine as against the Homoian position, because the Eunomian position, although wrong, would also oppose both the Homoian position and the Sabellian position. I'll explain the implications of that in the next installment.

Signing off

After a lot of long, hard thinking, I've decided that I just don't have enough left to keep up Internet theology. I think I've done some good (I hope that I have anyway), but with the upcoming holidays and a new little boy on the way soon after, I just don't have anything left to give. I hope I've left enough of an impression for people to carry on where I'm leaving off, and I appreciate all of the thoughtful comments and questions that I have received from various readers.

Grace and peace,
Jonathan

Divine Infinity: St. Clement of Alexandria

Continuing with my theme of extracting mathematics from theological study, I now turn my attention to a subject of particularly mathematical interest: divine infinity. Happily, there have been a few intrepid souls who have examined the ideas of various Saints on the subject, and I will be reporting on some of their ideas. It will turn out, as I hope to show, that the concept of divine infinity is inextricably bound in the Western tradition with divine incomprehensibility and divine simplicity, so if God wills, this examination may actually prove helpful for putting into context just what the West means by these concepts.

To begin, we turn to Arkadi Choufrine's analysis of Clement in Gnosis, Theophany, Theosis, Chapter III. Choufrine notes that the attribution of infinity in the sense of apeiron (lit. without limit) to the highest metaphysical principle is often thought to begin with Plotinus, as Plato considered the term pejorative, reflecting the thought that things were good to the extent they were limited by form. Having no limit, no form, was therefore not a characteristic that would have been considered desirable in Greek metaphysics.

In endorsing a kind of infinity, later authors drew on pre-Socratic insight for their ideas, and in particular, on the problem of infinity as examined in Plato's Parminides. In distinction from Plotinus, however, Clement introduces an original idea by bringing in a separate concept from Aristotle, that of the unending end, in place of Plato's infinity of multiplicity ("And so the one, if it is, must be infinite in multiplicity? Clearly."). Plato's concept really captures the basic Greek prejudice that formless things are inferior. The basic line of the Clementine response is this. An infinity of the sort when steps are reached and surpassed is impossible for Aristotle (and rightly so, I should imagine), but an infinity in which the end is never achieved (the unending end, an asymptotic progression) is not. This corresponds to what Aristotle calls an infinite magnitude, and Aristotle uses this term interchangeably with Plato's term for infinity of parts. In this case, the infinite is still technically without parts, as the end is not included within the asymptotic series, but it is not without limit (apeiron) in the sense of having no limit whatsoever (as opposed to having no self-limiting principle). This allows Clement to conceive of the "magnitude of Christ" as a bridge to the infinite, that which is spanned in divinization.

With respect to the Father's own infinity, Clement adheres relatively closely also to Plato's presentation of apeiron, but with one major difference: he rejects the idea that a multiplicity of parts is necessary for wholeness (which is logical, since Aristotle has shown the ability to use the same term without requiring the parts/limits to actually be included in the thing itself, overriding the default Greek prejudice), and on this account, concludes that infinity can then be inferred directly from indivisibility into parts (adiastaton). This equation of infinity and simplicity at least foreshadows (if not anticipates) the usage of infinity in several later Christian authors, as I hope to show soon. With the addition of infinite magnitude of the monad allowing a bridge between the infinity of the One (the Father) and the monad (Christ), Clement has managed to circumvent the rather notorious problem of how the One can be truly infinite, in the sense of apeiron, without being entirely inaccessible to multiplicity or motion, in that Aristotle's concepts of the unending end and infinite magnitude show how both can be truly infinite (apeiron) while still being distinct and in intimate relation with one another. Plotinus, apparently lacking the insight from Aristotle, ends up having to resort to one or another subordinationist solution (as indeed, Middle Platonists were wont to do even among Christians, leading to struggles with subordination as evident in Justin Martyr, Origen, et al.).

I suspect that the Stoic influence on Clement had some bearing on his receptivity to this solution. Clement was a fan of the concept of logos spermatikos, particularly in the context of the wisdom of God delivered to man, and it may be that this concept of Christ as the end of a process implanted in creation helped his receptivity to the Aristotelian concept of infinity.

It is difficult to say how much direct influence Clement had on his successors in this regard. With Augustine, it was probably little, but the common threads of influence (particularly Aristotelian and Stoic) appear to emerge in Augustine's own original synthesis. Origen seems to be more rigorously Platonic, although there are certainly shades of these ideas in Origen's notion of apokatastasis, particularly its relationship with paidagagos (thinking of the divine process as received teaching, much like Clement's idea of wisdom as logos spermatikos dropped down onto humanity). Gregory of Nyssa is a more likely candidate for direct adoption of Clement's ideas, something a parallel discussion of his doctrine of infinity should illustrate. In any event, Clement's own views illustrate a parallel concept of divine infinity and simplicity distinct from that of Plotinus and Origen within the Christian tradition. Confusion of the two can lead to misguided charges of "Origenism," but I believe that a rigorous survey of historical development supports the thesis that the Clementine and Plotinian ideas are independent of one another. I will argue, therefore, that the essential concept of Clement (i.e., that of an unending progress toward an end of infinite magnitude) will appear over and over again in Christian history and, furthermore, that this represents an orthodox solution to the problem of the One and the Many, parallel to the Neoplatonic solution adopted by Pseudo-Dionysius and more thoroughly Christianized by St. Maximus Confessor.

Zummary: Augustine's Trinitology and the Theory of Groups by Thomas Ryba

At heart, I'm a math guy, and you don't get much of that in theology, so I've been focusing lately on the scraps of mathematics that I can get where I find them. One of the reasons I love Zubiri so much is that he was trained in physics, so what he says makes sense to a quantum mechanics junkie. As a result, I've decided to write my first Zummary (rather than Zoobie review, because I'm mostly reporting rather than reviewing) to this article in Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, pp. 151-168.

In this article, Thomas Ryba takes on A.C. Lloyd's classic critique, "On Augustine's Concept of Person," in which Lloyd argues that Augustine's account of persons as relations gores him on the horns of a dilemma between modalism and tritheism:

Not only can God be said of the Son, but the Son is identical with God; for according to Augustine himself, diversity of substance implies plurality of gods; from this it follows that singleness of gods is also, according to Augustine, a necessary fact, so that God is at least (i.e., if he is not a species) a member of a necessary one-member class; and whatever has the same substance as such an object must be identical with that object. Since therefore God is identical with the Son, a fortiori, Son can be said of God. The attempt to have three persons entails a non-symmetric identity [A is identical to X, but X is not identical to A].

Where Ryba takes issue with Lloyd is in his identification of relations with the substance, something that Augustine never did, at least according to Ryba. Ryba makes some textual arguments to the effect that Augustine used the non-accidental Aristotelian category of relations in a way that renders them neither accidental nor identical to the substance (a point which I happen to think is a valid one, and one that I wish more critics would note). But the real meat of Ryba's argument is his formal mathematical demonstration that it is possible to have reflexive relations with the divine substance that are nonetheless non-symmetrical and non-transitive. More or less, Lloyd argues that the denial of symmetry (if A is identical to X, then X is identical to A) and transitivity (if A is identical to X and B is identical to X and C is identical to X, then A is identical to B is identical to C) makes Augustine inconsistent, so Ryba's demonstration would render Lloyd's argument ineffective.

Ryba conceives Augustine's relations as mappings between a set x and itself, where x is taken as domain and range (origin and terminus) of the respective reflexive mappings (relations). The mapping G (for generation) maps the set F (the domain of G) to the set S (the range of G), and it is a bijective mapping (there exists an inverse mapping of S to F). However, spiration S, which maps both F and S to H, is not so invertible, although it may be represented as the product of two mappings of the same set [S(F, G(F)]. At this point, though, we are simply at the level of mathematical curiosity, having formalized the relations as such.

The real question is whether one can coherently define interesting identity relations, and here Ryba exploits the fact that only the generation relation is bijective to show that the identity mapping can reproduce any element or relation but cannot apply across relations (one of which is bijective and one of which is not). In other words, even though the mapping G between F and S is reflexive on x and the mapping S between (F,S) and H is also reflexive on x, there is no identity between the mappings or between the elements qua domains and ranges of the relations (viz., the identity relation between the mappings and the element x is neither transitive nor symmetric). Moreover, Ryba also demonstrates that one can have an additive associative relation that reproduces a unit element which is its own inverse, so that the reflexive mappings do not entail either an increase or a change in the substance.

Ryba summarizes the conclusion as follows:

Augustine is maintaining that the trinitarian relations themselves define the personal properties. These relations are reflexive with respect to the substance but directional. Put in modern logical terms this means that the substance standing as the one element of the domain of the relation of generation defines the property of Fatherhood but standing as it also does in the range of that same relation it defines the property of Sonship. But this identification of Fatherhood with the range [sic] of the relation of generation is absolute as is Sonship with the domain [sic] of the same relation. Sonship cannot be associated with the domain (or point of origin) any more than Fatherhood could be associated with the range of the same relation. The order which the direction of the relation of generation imposes on the substance defines a simple serial order. Because this order is formally absolute, the property of being in the domain of the relation of generation is not identical to the property of being in the range of the relation of generation -- in the language of the Trinity, the Father is not the Son....

Ryba closes with a physical analogy:

Imagine you have a bipolar bar magnet and you place it on a white flat surface. Then, you spill iron filings around it. The iron filings will line up in concentric arcs whose end points are the poles of the magnet. Now imagine you could pare down the magnet almost to a point source. The shapes of the arcs would change to form two circles with a commonly shared point (the fragment of the magnet). The area atop the point soutce would be one pole of the magnet and the area below the point source would be its opposite. If you let the magnet stand for the trinitarian substance, the arcs of magnetic force for the relations of generation and spiration and the poles for the trinitarian persons, then you have a rough idea of the structures Augustine was describing. Of course, in Augustine's Trinity there are three poles, two relations, and one substance, all of which are metaphysical and beyond physical categories of space, time, and force as we understand them. Neveretheless, they do have formal similarities to things we do understand, like sets, relations, and groups.

Ryba is not, of course, arguing that Augustine had anything like set theory in mind, but that isn't the point. The point is that so long as there is a formal mathematical structure that is isomorphic with the logic of someone's argument, it doesn't matter whether that person actually thought of it or not, so long as it exists. In many instances, the conclusions that someone drew can be supported even if the resources available were not adequate to justify those conclusions, and in those cases, we should not neglect them, particularly when there is good Scriptural or traditional reason to think that those conclusions are true. Or as Ryba put it, paraphrasing Maritain, we should not confuse what is unimaginable for us with what is logically impossible for everyone, particularly when dealing with divinity that defies every finite analogy our feeble minds can apply.

Making myself sick again

Took the opportunity to reread David Bradshaw's Aristotle East and West, and in light of the reading I have done recently, some of the incredibly stupid things he says about Augustine, entirely bereft of footnotes, were almost enough to make me ill all over again. For starters, he might ought to think about the connection between infinite being (it's not just act; it's infinite act) and simplicity in the energeiai. Then, rather than trying to dig things that either aren't or are barely there out of Palamas, he'd give some attention to the fact that the ideas he advocates regarding the identification of Trinitarian love with the participation of the soul in God are developed quite explicitly in the Western theology of the beatific vision, and far more to the point than the fumblings of Patriarch Gregory at Blachernae. More pointedly, maybe he would discern that identifying infinity and simplicity as energies, so that God is "even beyond them," represents a fundamental mistake in Triadology.

More proof that the most triumphalist anti-Westerners are those who are least willing to attempt to understand the Western Fathers on their own terms. The sham of "fairness," as if Bradshaw actually showed any such thing, makes it even worse. If Bradshaw would even have answered his own (sarcastic) rhetorical questions, he might have shown some insight, but this is one of the most poorly-veiled attempts at polemics in the guise of scholarly objectivity that I have seen since Romanides. The sad thing was that I actually thought this book was reasonable until I started reading up on Augustine. For Bradshaw to calumniate Augustine as he does on such thin evidence from the scholarship is inexcusable. Had he stuck to defending the Eastern view, this might have been worthwhile, but the half-truths Bradshaw ends up peddling are worse than no truth at all.

Stupid bronchitis

I've been laid up all weekend with a fever that was bad enough to render me barely ambulatory and mostly incapable of focusing my eyes on black squiggles on a printed page without some pain. Antibiotics are slowly helping, but it will be a couple of days before I'm back to normal. Should be recovered in a couple of days; talk to you then.

Yet another reading break

I have been reading tons lately, and I plan on reporting soon. The highlight has been Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, which actually had a math article on theology that I just loved (and hope to report on shortly, and I may just go article by article, because the collection has so many good ones), but the others have also been solid, including: The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, Augustine and His Critics, Byzantine Christ, Origen of Alexandria and St. Maximus the Confessor: An Analysis and Critical Evaluation of Their Eschatological Doctrines, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism. Nice to have so many good options; sad to be limited in time!