St. Justin Martyr on Prophesy

Chap. XLII. — Prophecy Using the Past Tense.

But when the Spirit of prophecy speaks of things that are about to come to pass as if they had already taken place, — as may be observed even in the passages already cited by me, — that this circumstance may afford no excuse to readers [for misinterpreting them], we will make even this also quite plain. The things which He absolutely knows will take place, He predicts as if already they had taken place. And that the utterances must be thus received, you will perceive, if you give your attention to them. The words cited above, David uttered 1500 years before Christ became a man and was crucified; and no one of those who lived before Him, nor yet of His contemporaries, afforded joy to the Gentiles by being crucified. But our Jesus Christ, being crucified and dead, rose again, and having ascended to heaven, reigned; and by those things which were published in His name among all nations by the apostles, there is joy afforded to those who expect the immortality promised by Him.
~Justin Martyr, First Apology

It is interesting to note, as this passage I ran across in some recreational reading today reflects, that the Church Fathers often advanced an apologetic which was both Biblical and compelling precisely by pointing to the convergence of many manifest signs of Christianity’s truth, but these were seldom or never miracles or healings, but almost always prophetic. Craig S. Keener makes this point well in his two volume masterpiece on miracles, in which he observes that the Church Fathers seemed more-or-less embarrassed at miracles as far as their apologetic agendas were concerned, and yet were very keen on vindicating Jesus as the Messiah of God to the world by calling into evidence the story of Israel and the anticipatory prophesies which are apparently fulfilled in Christ. This can act as a reminder to us that a robust apologetic might not look so very different today, especially when Christianity must show its credentials to challengers such as the religion of Islam.

Two Beautiful Passages: Invitations to Pray

On that day:
A pleasant vineyard, sing about it!
I, the Lord, am its keeper;
every moment I water it.
I guard it night and day
so that no one can harm it;
I have no wrath.
If it gives me thorns and briers,
I will march to battle against it.
I will burn it up.
Or else let it cling to me for protection,
let it make peace with me,
let it make peace with me.
~Isaiah 27:3-5

“He said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.””
~Mark 6:31

Science and Schmience

I’ve been thinking about what kind of paper topic to pursue next semester in my intermediate philosophy of science class. I have been tempted to do something controversial, like pursuing issues raised by the debate over the legitimacy of the intelligent design proposal advanced by people like Stephen Meyer and William Dembski (I have also thought of audaciously arguing that if we were to reject certain Einsteinian assumptions about the special and general theories of relativity, then the empirical evidence today ironically greatly supports the thesis of Geocentrism). I think such a paper would ultimately come down to providing clear empirical tests for which the ID thesis would make one prediction, standard evolutionary theory another prediction, and where the ID thesis’ prediction is not merely ‘anything but’ the prediction of evolutionary theory. On these grounds alone ID would very likely be vindicated, as tests like this have already been done and the numbers are already in. This is why, evidence aside, those who argue that ID is not a legitimate alternative to evolutionary theory raise the issue of the legitimacy of proposing an ID thesis ‘as‘ science at all. How far should we carry the principle of methodological naturalism? Should we always constrain science this way, or can we loosen our grip of it under certain circumstances? What circumstances? These are all issues not of science proper, but of the philosophy of science (hence the license for pursuing the topic in a paper written for a philosophy of science class). Alvin Plantinga has proposed that if we really do want to constrain science by methodological naturalism under all circumstances then perhaps Christians can simply do something other than ‘Science’ but instead do Schmience, which will allow them to pursue the empirical evidence wherever it leads.

Here are some tentative proposals, and my reflections on them.

1) Methodological Naturalism ought always to constrain science because the invocation of anything beyond nature is simply no longer empirically verifiable.

This proposal seems to me to be completely wrong-headed. I don’t see any reason in principle to think that invoking God, or rather God’s activity in the world (immediately rather than mediately), is not empirically verifiable. After all, some things can be verifiable without being falsifiable (for instance, we can verify that the past is real by citing all the evidence we have of the appearance of age, but we cannot falsify the thesis that the past is unreal and the world was created with the appearance of age). What’s really at issue here is that the scientist wants a naturalistic explanation instead of an explanation tout simplement. That makes science out to be a Naturalistic enterprise, which it isn’t. One would practically have to presume Naturalism in order to lend this any credence.

2) Science ought to be constrained by Methodological Naturalism Ceteris Paribus, and science can lift this constraint just in case there are no plausible naturalistic explanations left on the table, and the evidence supports some non-naturalistic alternative thesis.

This is precisely what Christian scholars do when it comes to the empirical evidence in history (eg. the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth). Why not do the same with science? This seems reasonable on certain assumptions, such as scientific realism, realism about mind-independent reality, and such like. Assumptions, it is well to note, which are much easier to maintain on a Theistic view of the world than a Naturalistic view of the world. I think this principle fits well with a Christian view of science, and plausibly sits equally well with a nominal theism. One would, again, have to presume something like naturalism, and import assumptions inherited thereby into science in order to argue against holding to this ceteris paribus clause in science for methodologically excluding non-naturalistic explanations. Why, though, should we not be able to say of Naturalism, parodying Laplace, that science has no need of that hypothesis? As a theist, I’m not even sure we can make good sense of science as an enterprise at all without adopting peculiarly theistic (and perhaps even particularly Christian) assumptions. Moreover, to import theism is not to import religion, since theism simpliciter is a secular assumption.

3) Intelligent Design cannot be a scientific hypothesis since it is verifiable and not falsifiable.

Let us say it is falsifiable just in case a competing Naturalistic (or non-naturalistic) explanation becomes more empirically adequate than it.

4) Intelligent Design is a form of postulating a God of the gaps explanation, such that where there is no plausible naturalistic explanation the best explanation automatically becomes God.

First, this is clearly not true, as the evolution-thesis could be wrong without ID having been verified by the evidence. Moreover, postulating a default God of the gaps as an epistemic rule is not necessarily a bad idea – it’s at least no worse an idea than always postulating a naturalism of the gaps.

5) Even if Intelligent Design theory were correct (which is logically possible) it wouldn’t be part of science, it would just represent some truth to which science has no access given the rules of the game – science is the game of finding the most empirically adequate naturalistic explanations for the world, and so acceptance of a scientific hypothesis like evolution doesn’t preclude one from believing in the ID thesis about reality, it just commits one to saying that the best explanation qua science is evolutionary theory.

This is far too constraining a philosophy of science – why would we want to handicap science from discovering something like Intelligent Design in principle? If science is about observing the natural world and coming up with accurate models of reality, rather than merely empirically adequate models which may or may not tell us anything trustworthy about reality, then why not allow for the principle of methodological naturalism to be lifted under some conditions?

These reflections may be useful as it may help to make clear what kinds of assumptions one would have to adopt in the philosophy of science to justify the project of intelligent design. One would have to accept the ceteris paribus clause stipulated for methodological naturalism, and perhaps one would also have to see science as being something more than merely the project of looking for empirically adequate natural explanations and instead be the project of finding empirically adequate explanations for observations of the natural world. However, there is also the problem that if science’s umbrella is wide enough to include intelligent design, it might blur the line between science and metaphysics. I don’t think this is a serious concern, however, if we simply accept that intelligent design can be an empirically adequate explanation, commitment to which implies only the commitment to it’s empirical adequacy (as per van Fraassen). That way, interestingly, one could accept intelligent design as a scientific hypothesis while rejecting it as a metaphysical hypothesis.

Well, those are my thoughts for the day.

The Real Problem with Naturalized Epistemology

Other objections aside, here is the real problem with Naturalized Epistemology as I see it. On the one hand, the principle motivator for adopting Naturalized Epistemology is the view of Metaphysical Naturalism (which is what is most often called simply ‘Naturalism’, by which I understand the general claim that “nothing exists apart from all the objects, entities and forces postulated by physics and/or those which would be postulated by the most comprehensive physics“), and on the other, adopting Naturalized Epistemology does not marry one to Naturalism. One can adopt a Naturalized Epistemology, according to which one should only believe in entities which our preferred empirically adequate theory postulates, and not end up with beliefs which fall within the orbit of Naturalism. Since Naturalized Epistemology presumes that there is no first philosophy, that foundationalism is untenable, and that, as Quine himself (the father of Naturalized Epistemology) put it, “the stimulation of his sensory receptors is all the evidence anybody has had to go on, ultimately, in arriving at his picture of the world” (Lukas Graf, Theories of Knowledge), its presumptions seem to be the deliverances of a radical empiricism which is a concomitant of Naturalism. Naturalized Epistemology begins by presuming Metaphysical Naturalism or something very much like it (I’m inclined to think there is no difference between Naturalism rightly construed and the idealism Hume inherited from Berkeley, which is just wholesale and consistent empiricism), but quickly leads one to believe in the existence of things which fall outside the boundaries of what is usually called Naturalism. For example, W.V.O. Quine himself was led to postulate and believe in the existence of sets. It isn’t hard to imagine a Naturalized Epistemologist finding similar impetus for postulating God, or a being very much like ‘God’. So, Naturalized Epistemology begins by presuming Naturalism, or something very close to Naturalism (depending on how Naturalism is construed), and may end just about anywhere, including Theism (I take it that there is hardly any view more remote from Naturalism than Theism).

Now, I believe that Naturalism is clearly false. I can think of no good arguments for its truth, and I think the attraction to it has been eroded by philosophical developments in the later part of the twentieth century, among them being the dismissal of the chronological snobbery of scientistic optimism; it is no longer a very popular prejudice to have. However, the Naturalized Epistemologist has to convince us of Naturalism in order to convince us that we should adopt Naturalized Epistemology, and yet, if we were to adopt Naturalized Epistemology, we may plausibly end by rejecting Naturalism altogether. Who would retain Naturalized Epistemology if they were no longer a Naturalist? Why?

So, Naturalized Epistemology seems completely unattractive to me; nevermind that I lean towards rationalism contra empiricism, nevermind that I think we intuit logical and mathematical truths along with some metaphysical truths, nevermind that foundationalism seems plausibly tenable to me, the real point is that Naturalized Epistemology finds its home in Naturalism, but may reach beyond the borders of Naturalism and force it’s adherents to postulate any number of entities which are not ‘naturalistic’. The epistemology makes too many metaphysical (or otherwise philosophical) assumptions, and then doesn’t guarantee those assumptions against falsification.

This is the fatal, singularly unattractive flaw of Naturalized Epistemology; in a market place of ideas it isn’t likely to be bought by anyone who isn’t a Naturalist already, and it may easily push its adherents beyond the borders of Naturalism (making it possibly and easily self-defeating unless one either constrains it more tightly by metaphysical assumptions, or defines metaphysical naturalism so broadly as to make no view ‘in principle’ opposed to it).

Maximally specific propositions and libertarian freedom

There may be a concern that adopting the convention of talking of logically possible worlds as maximally specific propositions, each of which entail all truths at/in that logically possible world, seems to undermine libertarian freedom, since contingent choices are entailed by the fact that the world is this maximally specific proposition rather than that one. I think this is confused, but I also think I can help people see why.

Imagine that every different logically possible world can be represented by a different letter or symbol, so that one world is @ another is ß, and so on. Now if God knows a maximally specific proposition to be true (where a maximally specific proposition stands for a logically possible world) then what he knows is that, for instance, ß is true. That one truth is then apprehended by us partially (i.e., propositionally). It is easy to see how ß can entail contingent truths of the libertarian-free kind. It is the libertarian-free choices which gives the actual world the character of ß rather than @.

Ontological argument from S4

1. It is conceivably conceivable that existence is a property (eg. Krypke’s quantified modal logic uses existence as a first order predicate).
2. If something is conceivably conceivable then it is conceivable (by S4 modal logic).
3. Therefore, it is conceivable that existence is a property.
4. If it is conceivable that existence is a property then existence possibly is a property
5. Existence possibly is a property
6. If existence possibly is a property then God possibly exists
7. If God possibly exists then God does exist (by the ontological argument)
8. Therefore, God exists.

van Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism

Bas van Fraassen is not your typical scientific anti-realist. Against the positivists, van Fraassen doesn’t want to admit that two different theories which predict all the same observations and experiences, are semantically equivalent, and thus he rejects the positivist construal of science according to which science needs to be ‘properly’ understood because science is to be ‘properly’ construed (where properly means according to the positivist theory of semantics). Instead, he agrees with the realist that science is to be literally construed. He says that a good definition of scientific realism might go as follows:

Scientific Realism: Science aims to give us theories which are literally true, and the acceptance of a scientific theory commits one to it’s literal truth.

On this definition somebody could be a scientific realist without accepting all (or even any) modern/current scientific theories. However, it does mean that once a scientific theory is accepted, the one accepting the theory is committing herself to the literal truth of it’s story.  van Fraassen is concerned, however, about belief in unobservables being difficult to justify epistemically. Though we have empirical evidence for electrons, for instance, it is not the case that we have ‘access’ via the five senses to electrons. Some might suggest that if we have no access to some entities via the five senses then the entities are not, strictly, empirical, and to broaden empiricism beyond the realm of the five senses is to broaden empiricism, potentially, to everything metaphysical, so that even numbers, sets, or God, are empirical entities.

Thus, van Fraassen promotes a form of scientific anti-realism which he has called Constructive Empiricism. The best definition of it might go something like this:

Constructive Empiricism: Science, which should be literally construed, aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate, and acceptance of a scientific theory commits one only to that theory’s being empirically adequate.

Now, on the one hand, this is an attractive construal of science. It has the advantage of not being open to  error, such that no scientist who commits him or her self to some theory is, in so doing, erring, even if the theory turns out to be wrong. Science, instead of having a history of failure after failure, as one theory is superseded by another theory and so on apparently ad infinitum, has a history of creating more and more empirically adequate theories. The disadvantage is that none of these theories aim to be literally true, but perhaps van Fraassen could say that there is some terminus to how empirically adequate some theory can be: the terminus is exhaustive empirical adequacy. Science aims to terminate there, in a final scientific story which is exhaustively empirically adequate. Moreover, he could then say that he is a kind of realist if he only said that the exhaustively empirically adequate theory, literally construed, is literally true. He could also simply adopt the view that even the commitment to the most empirically adequate scientific theory, which should be literally construed, need not entail being committed to its truth qua scientific commitment or scientific practice.

I’m not sure if I accept anything like this Constructive Empiricism. I certainly don’t want to be a naive realist who thinks any or all the scientific theories of today are closed to reform, or are not tenuous. However, I also want to uphold a confident scientific realism which is optimistic about science. Perhaps I could say, then, that as theories become more and more empirically adequate, or perhaps to the degree that theories are empirically adequate, they approximate to the truth. For example, I myself have no trouble believing in unobservables, like electrons or angels, since I think we have good reasons for believing in both. However, perhaps my belief in the reality of unobservables like electrons is a commitment over and above my ‘scientific’ commitment to atomic theory. If my commitment to atomic theory involves no more than a commitment to it’s empirical adequacy then my commitment to the reality of the entities which the theory postulates becomes a philosophical commitment.

I rather like that.

Mondays are Hell

Ever notice that when Genesis 1 organizes it’s creation narrative into six consecutive days, the second day is the only one at the end of which God actually doesn’t say “it was good”? Well, Kabbalists have.

Bachya ben Asher ibn Halawa, a 13th-14th century Rabbi commenting on Genesis 1:6-8 says:

The Midrash asks why does it not say ‘It was good’ in the Creation story on Monday? It answers that on that day Purgatory [Gehinnom] was created… and our Sages say that another reason was because on this day argument and dispute were also created, as it says: ‘And to divide water from water’. … If it cannot be said ‘that it was good’ about an argument and a dispute that was for the sake of rectifying the world and making it inhabitable, how much more so can one not say this about an argument and a dispute causing chaos in the world.

The explanation of this is that Monday, the second day of the week, is the beginning of duality, therefore it is called ‘day two’, and it is the cause of all division and dispute. When the Sages say that argument, dispute and Purgatory were created on that day, we may understand from this that anyone who initiates an argument or a dispute will be judged in Purgatory. Since argument, dispute and Purgatory were all created on this day we learn that it is a destructive day; therefore our Sages prohibited anyone starting an undertaking on a Monday, and they said, ‘One should not begin things on a Monday.’ For a similar reason it is prohibited to eat food items in pairs, for that is something which causes damage. This is why the Sages have said that a person should neither eat nor drink things in pairs. The argument and dispute that was on the first Monday are the origin and cause of all later arguments and disputes.

~ The Kabbalistic Tradition: An Anthology of Jewish Mysticism, Edited by Alan Unterman, 48-49.

So then, we can say facetiously, but also with some genuine theological conviction, that Mondays really are Hell [Gehinnom translates to Hell, though the idea Jews often entertain of Gehinnom is the notion of purgatory, but I'll leave that point aside]. As far as a liturgical view of cosmogony is concerned, rooted in the liturgy and revelation of Israel, Mondays really do represent the division of all things, and the separation makes possible the existence of evil and separation from God, along with separation of man and neighbor.

Given that the Church Fathers often spoke about Jesus’ resurrection as the eighth day of creation, I wonder if Christians might baptize this insight. Perhaps when Jesus said things like the following:

 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
~Matthew 10:34-36

He was indicating, in a sense, that he had come to bring a new creation. To do Mondays over again, so as to ‘make all things new’ (Revelation 21:5). Perhaps this helps shed some light on why Jesus said this in the context of going on and on about having a ‘Baptism‘ to undergo:

I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;they will be divided:
father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’
~Luke 12:50-53

Jesus referred to his crucifixion as a baptism. That seems rather puzzling to some, and though I think it makes a lot of sense of baptism, there may be a fear that these words were thrown back onto Jesus’ lips by the early Church, which had inherited from St. Paul a theology of Baptism which understood it to be a participation in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Instead, however, suppose Jesus historically referred to it as a baptism – might he have had the theme of new creation in mind? After all, the term baptism was indicative, in Jewish thought, of new creation – from Noah’s flood baptizing the earth to the nation of Israel coming out of the Red Sea as a newly born nation of God, baptism was always ‘about’ new creation. Could Jesus have had the Genesis narrative in mind if this were his theme?

Perhaps he did have Monday in mind, and if he did, then he intended to ‘Baptize’ Mondays, such that, at long last, God could say ‘and it was good’. Where modern readers read Jesus as saying ‘I have come to start arguments’, perhaps his immediate audience understood him to be saying ‘I have come to start a new creation, starting with a new kind of separation, a new kind of division – and it will not just be between Israel and the world, but will divide even in Israel, even in your very households’. I think that’s an interesting thought to contemplate, and it certainly fits the thinking of Jesus of Nazareth if we take him to be all about new creation. Perhaps there’s another anachronistic worry about whether anyone in Jesus’ day shared anything like Bachya ben Asher’s interpretation, but one need only point out that Bachya ben Asher referred to various traditions already extant already asking these questions at least as far back as the Mishnah. Moreover, whether we can find historical evidence of Jesus’ contemporaries talking about the second day in these ways, it certainly isn’t unthinkable for a first century Jew to have such an interpretation, and so it is far from implausible that Jesus and/or his contemporaries would have had such a view of Mondays. Finally, it bears noting that Jesus and his contemporaries do not have to have had a full blown view of Monday as the day typifying the creation of hell – so long as Jesus and his contemporaries recognized that the second day of creation was the day on which division was introduced into creation, so that Jesus’ referring to separation could have reflected the implication of a creation narrative.

In any case, such a reflection was really more for the fun of being able to theologically justify the claim that Mondays are ‘hell’ than it was intended to be any kind of serious theological proposal. But who knows, maybe there’s something to this.

“This is what I find about the Torah”

N.T. Wright says that Romans 7:21 is tragically mistranslated when it says “so I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.”

Instead, Wright suggests, it should not be translated as ‘I find this law at work [in me]‘ but rather, in keeping with the context, and staying closer to the sense of the Greek, it should read ‘this is what I find about the law (Torah).’ He is thus drawing a conclusion about the Torah.

I think this is the right way to translate and read this passage, and it accords well with, and better reflects, the thinking of St. Paul.

 

The same definition of Omniscience worded differently

Consider this definition of omniscience: “God believes all true propositions and does not believe in any of their negations.” One might wonder whether this is logically equivalent to “God knows all true propositions, and does not believe any false propositions” or to “For any proposition P, if P is true then God knows it, and if P is false then God does not believe it.”

Let’s start here: a being X is Omniscient if and only if, for any proposition P, if P is true then X knows P, and if P is false, then X does not believe P.

(∀x)(Ox ≡ (∀y)((Ty ⊃ Kxy) & (Fy ⊃ ∼Bxy)))

Where Ox is “x is Omniscient,” Ty is “y is true,” Kxy is “x knows y,” Fy is “y is false,” and Bxy is “x believes y”. However, for a proposition to be false just means for some proposition to be ‘not’-true. So:

(∀x)(Ox ≡ (∀y)((Ty ⊃ Kxy) & (~Ty ⊃ ∼Bxy)))

However, for God to know something presumably requires only that it be true, since it isn’t possible for God to have unjustified beliefs. So,

(∀x)(Ox ≡ (∀y)((Ty ⊃ Bxy) & (~Ty ⊃ ∼Bxy)))

However, that seems to be logically equivalent to the following:

(∀x)(Ox ≡ (∀y)((Ty ≡ Bxy)))

So, a being is omniscient just in case that being believes all true propositions and doesn’t believe any of their negations.