I’d like to be able to say that I’ve never been a fan of claims of exclusive revelation but I’m not that naive. I’m sure there was a time, and I could think of it if I cared to dig about, when this idea filled me with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Why I should ever feel pride or accomplished because of this idea is beyond me. But that’s really outside of the scope of what I want to talk about in this post.

Pluralism, in my head, seems to be a word that represents the idea that many people all over the world are searching for things like truth and meaning in different and individually stimulating ways. More than this, though, the ism part of the word makes it a way, a method, for believing that this is the way things are and, in a sense, ought to operate. In other words, many searches for identical things  can be happening in different ways and still be successful and of value.

Thoughts of pluralism always lead me to this idea of tolerance, or that we are to be respectful of each other’s methods and distinctions as part of some sort of mutual transaction of equality that is both deserved and desired by all people. I respect a Republican’s or a Democrat’s choice to choose a party and follow political lines in a certain way. Why? Because, as silly as I may personally find that particular choice, I really want them to respect my choice to remain agnostic of such a choice. I’ve entered into an understood social contract with, hopefully, almost everyone I come into contact with. You get the idea.

The thing that concerns me most of all, regarding those who would claim to have exclusive access to a particular path toward truth (that inevitably segments them from other people) is not that this would belittle other methods toward truth. It would seem that the most obvious result of one culture or another claiming exclusive knowledge of a topic would demean the independent progress of others, but I don’t think this is usually the case. I’m actually worried about something slightly diagonal to that issue.

When someone believes they are right, whether about their choice of organized religious group or the best way to organize their bookshelves, they tend to close themselves off from those with other ideologies and systems. This doesn’t, though, usually happen in an outright fashion. What I tend to see instead is something that takes place below the surface, sometimes below the point where someone is wiling to acknowledge it as real, sort of like the place where so many people find comfort in hiding their racism. I’m concerned that a lack of plurality leads to a rampant breakdown of tolerance. And tolerance is a beautiful thing to see, so that’s sad to me.

I tend to re-organize my bookshelves every year or so. This is probably due to my love of re-organizing more than some desire toward altruistic self improvement, though.

I find myself frustrated, anymore, by thinkers that relegate differing paths and systems of thought to some lesser playing field. My thinking in this area was most definitely transformed by Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which describes the scientific process (and, though not his intention many other practices) as an irrational traverse between paradigms and without a collective goal. 

Many things seem to simply be paradigms anymore. That’s the level I want to talk at. And maybe I want to be too pragmatic about it, and find and work with those paradigms which lead people to live better and happier together, but the simplicity of such a goal is so much more attractive than defending some sort of intellectual hill.

That said, defending intellectual hills can be lots of fun, and I’m always up for climbing atop one of my own if anyone out there feels like jousting.

This post was written at least partially in response to Timothy Lloyd’s post over at Theological Current called “Historic Christianity & Christian Pluralism“, in which he argues that pluralism is in opposition with historic, doctrinal Christianity. I mean this small collection of words only to join the same lobby of discussion, as my intentions here are a bit more widespread (and thus, probably less concrete and directed) than what he wrote. In any case, his is worth a read if you are interested in the issue of pluralism within the realm of the Christian church. So go read his already.

I’d like to step through the points discussed by Socrates and his fellow debater, and hopefully clearly state some of Socrates’ thoughts on what makes (or doesn’t make) a definition.

Socrates discusses the definition outright in the Meno. The discussion begins when Meno brings the problem of virtue to the table. The question: can virtue be taught? Socrates wants clarification on what a virtue entails. Meno suggests that since what is virtuous for a man is different than what is virtuous for a woman, it must be the case that virtue is different for each individual. What’s virtue for a man isn’t what virtue is for a woman, or a child, and so on and so forth.

This concept actually starts further back than Meno, back in the mind of Protagoras. Protagoras is famed for his statement that “man is the measure of all things”, possibly claiming for himself the title of the first relativist. During a time when philosophers were attempting to discover what it meant for the world to exist, how exactly to dice it up and understand it, and beyond that how to quantify the world that was there, everyone had a different set of answers. And honestly, when set against the backdrop of “everything is water” and those crazy atomists (seriously, what were they thinking?) Protagoras”s idea doesn”t sound so bad.

Socrates disagrees with Meno and, in turn, Protagoras, particularly because this form of relativism doesn’t allow for the forms to cascade down and affect all things. Due to Socrates” understanding of reality through the forms, he wants to say that a definition is something much more concrete, actually absolute, which can be applied to any situation and any circumstance. In some way, he means to say, everyone”s virtue is related in some way, whether apparent or not, and can thus be traced back to the forms.

In a related discussion Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing piety when it once again becomes advantageous to define exactly what piety is. Euthyphro, much like Meno, suggests a way of defining piety which doesn’t satisfy Socrates. Euthyphro tries using an example to define piety, but being that this doesn’t actually describe piety in a categorical and universally ascribable way, Socrates is not satisfied. He instead would have a definition which covers all instances of piety, in all examples and stories.

Socrates wants to define a definition as something which can apply to all instances of the defined thing, in such a way that it descends from the forms and thus contributes to real knowledge. Any alternative, according to Socrates, is not real knowledge.

And I still have not decided whether or not I agree with him.

Dear God.

Tonight’s essay was Ruth Benedict’s The Case for Moral Relativism. In it she argues for (duh) moral relativism, which is defined, by the book’s editor Louis P. Pojman, as:

…the theory that the validity of moral principles is dependant on cultural or subjective acceptance.

Louis P. Pojman, p. 151

Benedict in particular defends the idea that morals are determined by social systems and relies on what she calls “normal-abnormal categories” to do it. Normal categories would be the These are the distinctions made by societies that determine whether or not something is acceptable. Abnormal categories are the opposite.

In how far are such categories culturally determined, or in how far can we with assurance regard them as absolute? In how far can we regard inability to function socially as diagnostic of abnormality, or in how far is it necessary to regard this as a function of the culture?

Ruth Benedict, p. 152

This brings up the issue of absolute v. relative moral systems. I’m not yet convinced that these are the only two options.

No one civilization can possible utilize in its mores the whole potential range of human behavior. Just as there are great numbers of possible phonetic articulations, and the possibility of language depends on a selection and standardization of a few of those in order that speech communication may be possible at all, so the possibility of organized behavior of every sort…depends upon a similar selection among the possible behavior traits.

Ruth Benedict, p. 156

Obviously moral relativism throws a wrench into many modern interpretations of Christianity – or so they think. Most Christians don’t realize that their own faith is based on moral relativism, in essence. Think about it. What is right and wrong is not based on any absolute moral truth, but on whatever God says. That’s relativism.

Wild, right?

The very eyes with which we see the problem [of morality] are conditioned by the long traditional habits of our own society…

We recognize that morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say, “It is morally good,” rather than “It is habitual,” and the fact of this preference is matter enough for a critical science of ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous.

Ruth Benedict, p. 157

Benedict shook me with that last line. Historically speaking, it probably is true. At the very least it rings true, in some sense. Doesn’t it?

Ruth Benedict was an American anthropologist who taught at Columbia University. She is best known for her book Patterns of Culture.

It seems to me that ‘postmodern’ isn’t a word that should be thrown around lightly. One of the most important things I pulled from reading the small number of postmodern books that I have (mostly primers and introductions) was that during a culture shift it is practically impossible (and downright silly) to try and identify what the new shift means. For example it would be silly to be living during the shift from medieval to modern times and at the same time try and identify what it means to be modern. It doesn’t become apparent just what cultural period you are in until (go figure) 500 or so years later.

Postmodernism can be:

• an actual state of affairs in society
• the set of ideas which tries to define or explain this state of affairs
• an artistic style, or an approach to the making of things
• a word used in many different contexts to cover many different aspects of all of the above.

Glenn Ward, Teach Yourself Postmodernism (5.9-6.1)

The only problem with this set of definitions is that this could apply to any cultural change. This could apply to medieval, to modern, etc. So we need to go further and find out exactly what this postmodern idea is- if that’s even possible.

They propose that society, culture and lifestyle are today significantly different from what they were 100, 50 or even 30 years ago. They are concerned with concrete subjects like the developments in mass media, the consumer society and information technology. They suggest these kinds of development have an impact on our understanding of more abstract matters, like meaning, identity or even reality. They claim that old styles of analysis are no longer useful, and that new approaches and new vocabularies need to be created in order to understand the present.

Glenn Ward, Teach Yourself Postmodernism (6.9-7.1)

More than anything else I think the last sentence hits it. If postmodernism is currently anything tangible it is the claim that current systems don’t work. This is actually the way I can most easily conceptualize postmodernism.

The problem is still, though, that the term means too much. It carries so much weight with so many people that it loses meaning in mass.

Another author, this one specifically speaking toward postmodernism in the church, says it this way:

…some of the shifts:

• from propositional expressions of faith to relational stories about faith journeys.

• from the authority of Scripture alone to a harmony between the authority of Scripture and other personal ways God mysteriously and graciously speaks to Christians.

• from a theology that prepares people for death and the afterlife to a theology for life.

• from a personal, individualistic, private faith to harmony between personal and community faith.

• from anti-Catholic and non-protestant perspectives to greater acceptance and curiosity about other approaches to knowing God.

• from the church being a place where people take up space to the church as a mission outpost that sends people out.

• from an approach to missions that emphasizes mass conversions by individuals to “share the good news with the whole world” approach.

• from arguing faith to the “dance of faith.”

• from salvation by event to a journey of salvation.

• from a salvation of humanity to a salvation of all creation.

• from a Western, American understanding of the gospel to a worldwide view.

• from motivating through fear to motivating through compassion, community, and hope.

• from a search for dogmatic truth to a search for spiritual experience.

Dave Tomlinson, The Post-Evangelical (42.9-43.6)

If this doesn’t get you excited nothing will. A lot of this actually takes on more meaning for me now, after the Isn’t She Beautiful? conference. The bullet points about a spiritual journey, for instance (the first and ninth points) remind me of what Bell said about journey theology.

I would also classify all of these things under the heading “emerging church.” In fact, I would call these “emerging church” things before I would call them postmodern things, simply for the reasons I’ve stated above. And I suppose it is a possibility that the emerging church is simply what the postmodern church is referred to, in which case both Tomlinson and I are correct. (By the way I wrote about contemporary, prevailing, and emerging churches a few posts ago.)

Maybe this is only a silly semantic distinction that doesn’t have any real bearing one way or another. Then again maybe forgoing the use of a hasty term like postmodern to describe all of these (exciting) changes as postmodern (although calling them that is cool) is what may make some people more willing to take them on. I say let them become “postmoderns” (or whatever, who cares) in due time, without knowing it. In the meantime let’s focus on the emerging church more than defining what postmodernism might be – it is fun, but aside from pure speculation none of us can really contribute anything of value.

I learned some things and I was challenged by many things. There were times when it was very exciting and times when I wanted to die. Part of me wonders if this isn’t just going to be the very nature of philosophy; the other part wonders if it isn’t something else. Only time will tell.

I wrote one essay which was pretty terrible (I will never post it for the sake of my dignity) and wrote two more for the final. The final went well; I was able to write on retrocausation and some of the junk Senor talked about. So that worked out in my favor; however I will not know for sure until my grade rolls in.

An important note to add to these “final thoughts” is that, as far as God and time goes, this is not my final thought. This is something I will continue to work on and struggle with. It may not be that I find the answer through A/B time theory or other grandiose ideas – but I will continue looking.

Although part of me still wishes I had just taken calligraphy. Damn.

I would like to talk about omniscience (also the topic of my paper for class). The easiest way of jumping into the issue is to give the quote that had me thinking this direction as soon as I read it.

…There is no known univocal answer to what is essential for us being human…”

The quote comes from Thomas Senor in his essay “Incarnation, Timelessness, and Leibniz’s Law Problems”. He really struck me with this one. I immediate wrote in the margin: “If that is the case then why do we assume we know what it takes to be divine?” The emphasis in that sentence was on the why – which is an interesting topic – but I want to focus more on the what and the how.

There are a few “givens” when it comes to God – some call them control beliefs or assumptions – such as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Those are the three “o’s” and the only ones I’m going to be concerned with for now. (The others are usually “personal” and “creator,” sometimes “atemporal.”) On the one hand I recognize the place of control beliefs, if only as a starting point. I don’t see starting points as bad things, necessarily.

I do feel as though the prefix “omni” is used a bit too liberally though. It carries different meanings across the words, and that bothers me a little bit – something you’ll see in a minute or two. The first important definition is the definition of “omnipotent”:

almighty or infinite in power

Dictionary.com

Nowhere in this definition (or any of the other ones on the page that I could fine) define omnipotent as anything more than the possession of power. But this power doesn’t seem to have to be something that is acted out all the time. Actually, imagine God exercising all of His possible power at once…doesn’t seem very plausible, right? It seems downright silly. Whether our intuition is enough to except this as the reality of God’s omnipotence or not is a question in itself. Assuming it is, then we have a case where God has all the power in the world without having to exercise all of it at one time. In other words, God has the ability to use all the power in the world, whether He uses it or not.

Now is where I give the reason for the “Incarnation” in the title of this post. In the incarnation of the Son there is an issue regarding omniscience that I don’t think is seen when looking at omnipotence. Omnipotence, for instance, is easily acceptable of Christ without having to leap through very many (if any, really) philosophical hoops. It seems easy for us to say “Well, Christ just didn’t use the power that was clearly at His disposal. He chose to limit Himself.” It’s probably a bit presumptuous to think that anyone would accept that; really all I can say is that it appears obvious to me.

Examples of Christ exemplifying a limited omnipotence: allowing Himself to be crucified, not calming the storm.

Assuming that we can say that about omnipotence: can we say it about omniscience? If God can control His power can He control His knowledge? In other words, could Christ have chosen not to look into the future so that some greater good may come of it? (Or simply for the sake of being more human-natured?)

One example where this idea comes in particularly useful is the issue of the prayer of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. In this prayer Christ prays for this cup to pass over Him – now, would anything short of a temporal being with a limited (in some way) knowledge of the future pray a prayer like that? It doesn’t seem likely. It seems that if Christ knew He was to be crucified there would be many fewer attempts to escape coming out in His prayers. No, it seems as though even Christ had a choice up until the last moment when He decided it would be the will of God that would win out.

I can imagine a couple of immediate objections to this idea, partly because I’ve already received them – one was in class. The first objection goes as follows:

What do you mean God is limiting His knowledge? I don’t know what that looks like. For example, go ahead and forget something right now. Forget your phone number. Wait a year, and remember it again. Does that make sense? Is that possible? So why should we expect it of God?

I hope that’s a fair representation of that objection.

My response is simple: that misunderstands the idea I’m putting forward. My proposal is that God can choose whether or not He wants to know the result of any available future fact (I’ll explain ‘available’ soon). Maybe an illustration will help. Imagine a man standing in front of a house, directly in between two windows. This man is more than capable of moving over and looking into these windows – he doesn’t consider it a difficult task at all. And although he could do it, easily in fact, he decides not to. (Don’t even ask me why he’s putting so much thought into it, it’s an illustration!) Do we think less of the man for not looking into the window?

My point is that just because God has the ability to do something doesn’t (or shouldn’t) necessarily mean that He has to. God could look through any one of the windows, even into the window of a future act of yours. But maybe He doesn’t because He doesn’t want to.

Why wouldn’t God want to know the future?

I believe that God has created us to love Him for eternity. True love comes through choice – choice is one of the fundamental principles we live on; without choice true communion with God would never be possible. It seems that a God who has created a relationship in this way would hold choice and freedom to make said choice a very important aspect of life. It is this reason (which may be wholly intuition and to some untrustworthy) which makes God not want to look ahead and “know” what you are going to do – as this would, of course, make it so you would have to do the act. It makes sense – if God knows something you can’t do otherwise; therefore it would make sense that God would limit himself in order to give you free will. (God even values free choice in the manner of His Son’s crucifixion on the cross, as I said above.)

Why else wouldn’t God know the future? One possibility: it doesn’t exist. This may be an easier idea to sell than the one I just tried to sell above. Think of the definition of omniscience as “knowing all which is knowable”. (This is the ‘available’ stuff I previewed above.) If the future doesn’t exist yet (as adherents to a dynamic theory of time will say) then it is no big deal that God doesn’t know it. Think about it this way: Does God know that I am on a mountaintop right now breaking the land speed record in a 85 degree dive down a snowy bank? Of course not. Why? Because I’m not doing that. Now He knows that I was thinking about that just then, but He doesn’t know I was doing that. That knowledge isn’t available to be known because it doesn’t exist.

Where else can I go with this? It is worth mentioning that my logic for coming to the conclusion about omniscience being a choice of God (which is really cool if you think about it) may rest solely on an unjustifiable connection between the connotations of omnipotent and omniscience. I say unjustified because if the same principle is applied to the other “O” called omnibenevolent it may be the case that God has a choice whether to be truly good or not.

(Again, I don’t see this idea as especially unsatisfying.)

But again to the topic at hand. When it comes to omniscience it is important to keep three things in mind: what is logically sensible and necessary, what is scriptural and historic in terms of God’s nature, and what it is that we expect and experience out of God – for lack of a better word our intuition. If we keep these things in mind it may help guide our discussion a bit more. And that discussion is one which has existed for some time, and will continue for some time to come – what sort of omniscience do you prescribe to? Or, in other words, what does God know?

What I would like to pay most attention to are the parts of his essay where he referenced and discussed the incarnation (that is, Christ becoming man on earth) and how we are to deal with this issue when considering the nature of time and (especially) omniscience.

As I’ve said before there are a couple of different theories regarding time; to make things simple let’s reduce these options to:

1. God is temporal.
2. God is atemporal.

Technically these are the only two options, but I don’t really want to get into the nitty gritty by breaking down each of these into the different possibilities under them.

When we look at the trinity (a huge Christian issue in and of itself!) we see God in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I’m not going to make the claim that I understand the trinity – and anyone who says they do is lieing to you – but there are a couple of things I will affirm concerning the trinity. First, it is true (at least it seems to me to be true) that properties which parts of the trinity have must be shared by all. As three in one and one fully realized by three, it would become very messy to start giving the triune God different qualities. Not to mention running the risk of giving conflicting qualities!

No, I don’t think it’s out of line to say that the trinity shares characteristics. One of these characteristics must be the trinity’s relation to time.

In the incarnation we see and experience God (literally, we are told, God) coming to us in the form of Christ, the Son. It is important, as Senor shows, to identify the different things that Christ’s life on earth shows us. (I will be following from this point on the traditional understanding of Christ’s life on earth – that is that he lived, died, resurrected – lived a true human life. This ignores the possibility of other understandings, and I recognize that.)

Living a life, Christ existed temporally. Is there any question to have with that? He was born, He lived, He acted and reacted to reality in ways which were not simultaneous with one another, and He died. He also was resurrected, some time later. So it is nearly indisputable that Christ the Son of the triune God existed temporally.

The next question is this: Is it possible to enter into time from an atemporal state? In other words, could Christ have existed atemporally (supposedly in His natural state) and entered into the time of our world only for (excuse the term) a time, only to return to His natural state in atemporality? As far as our discussions went in class (which is hardly far enough to be considered adequate) we could not find an answer which would make this possible. In other words, the very idea of entering or exiting time is (at best) counter-intuitive and (at worst) illogical.

Therfore God is temporal.

Ah, but it isn’t that easy! There is one objection that stems from such atemporal philosophers as Stump or Kretzmann (who I wrote about) or Brian Leftow. This objection states that God exists in the eternal now (separate from our time) and that any and all actions or interactions that take place (apparently) within time are really part of one eternal act that takes place infinitely, eternally, through all of time.

Example: Dr. Woodruff loves his children. At one time he may wish to reward them by giving them something they want; another time he may want to punish them by taking the same thing away. My understanding of the eternal present states that both of these acts comprise a much larger act, one act, that is, loving his children. So these smaller acts, though actually part of an eternal act, are really only temporal because of our limited understanding.

Now I don’t know if anyone else is buying this as a viable solution, but it seems like escapism to me. Using this theory in regard to the incarnation would mean that the act of Christ being born in Bethlehem and the act of Him dying at Calvary are both part of the same act, that is, God’s love for mankind.

What’s that smell? Is that heresy? (Not that I’m all that against all forms of heresy, but I can’t resist.)

You can see where I’m going with this eternal present stuff. It may be convincing to some, but I see it as a lame attempt to avoid what (admittingly to me) is very clear: God is temporal.

As the discussion in God and Time today showed, not all views of time really allow for any sort of meaningful prayer – at least not the way many of us think about it.

The view I’m talking about, of course, is the atemporalist view (in other words the view that God is outside of time). The atemporalist view is normally taken, so it seems, in order to say certain things about God. Atemporalists call God “eternal” (read: infinite whereas we are finite) and “omniscient”. Whether they really come away with these characteristics of God is another conversation entirely.

But try and imagine something outside of time. I ask for a description here, or at the very least a mental picture I can use, because I’ve never been able to comprehend it. Nevertheless, let’s say you have a timeline ‘A’ and a God outside of time ‘B’. The atemporalist explanation for how God knows and interacts with the world (at least commonly – all of these are generalizations of course) is the “eternal present”. In the eternal present all things are present to God at once – there is no past, present, or future to God. This is desirable because the atemporalist believes we must remove God from time in order for the implications of time not to apply to Him (such as dying, beginnings and ends, etc.).

Follow me. If all things are present to God then all at once I am dead and alive. All at once I am being born and I am dying. All at once I am praying for a need and forgetting the need altogether. My point is – and this only touches on one aspect of atemporality by the way – what do we pray for if all of our prayers are going to be viewed without their temporal character? If everything we pray for is simultaneously present to God, doesn’t that change the way we pray? Shouldn’t it?

Background: we have been reading a variety of essays this week by philosophical theologians arguing for an atemporal God. There have been different ways of going about it, but the basic illustration stays the same. Think of time as a line (a timeline) on which events in our time take place. Then there is God, removed from time, and (depending on the particular philosopher) still able to act in and on our timeline. But God cannot be seen as having his own seperate timeline – God does not experience time.

Dr. Woodruff’s analogy is related to a popular understanding of time that most atemporalists would agree to: that is, the “B theory” of time. The A theory of time is one that most hold to without realizing it. If you think of time as having a present (now), a past, and a future, you would be an A theorist. A B theorist, however, would assert that the idea of “now” is an illusion. Everything can be reduced to tenseless language – that is, before, after, and simultaneous with. I will illustrate the difference in regard to my writing this post right now:

I am writing this post right now.

My writing of this post is simultaneous with 11:00 am on January 13, 2007.

The first statement fits into an “A” understanding of time. The tenseless statements of the second are “B” statements.

The analogy was one to try and illustrate how time may operate. Think about time as a dimension (just as you think about a flat plane or the dimensions of a 3 dimensional world) laid out as a line. If you can, draw a line out in front of you horizontally. Now distinguish the left from the right side of the line. If you understand what a line truly is (an infinite number of points that extends in two directions infinitely) then you’ll see a problem with identifying a left and a right side. As long as you have a 2 dimensions (such as a square or rectangle) it is not a problem to divide the line in half. Notice that it is impossible to denote a left and a right absent of a reference point. In other words, with a point it would be easy to label a left and a right.

Relate this to time. Can we have a past or a future without an ontologically unique present? Not only that, but should it be within God’s power to know the current “now”? This is related to the Kretzmann article from a few days ago. After typing this I’m not sure whether or not I communicated it as well as I would in person without a whiteboard. You’ll have to let me know. Or contact me in person about it; I don’t mind talking about it!