Keeping in mind that this blog is a collaborative effort between several authors who do not necessarily always agree with each other, I’d like to offer the following reflection on the notion that pre-Reformation Christians allowed the Faith to be disastrously co-opted by “pagan philosophy” rather than remaining faithful to and consistent with Scripture, the understanding of which requires no significant interaction with an outside world that is taken to have its own created integrity, goodness, and usefulness.
Speaking for myself and not for the other authors on this blog, I take it as (almost) axiomatic that if one wants to practice catholicity, one must not start to approach the thing by confusing the sectarian with the catholic. What this means for the following reflection is simply this: the presumption that we, with our post-Reformation standards of biblical exegesis and theological activity have managed to do what our fathers in the Faith did not (could not?) because, supposedly, they were just not quite “into the Bible” as much as we are and thought too highly of “philosophy,” has to be jettisoned as a merely sectarian and not a catholic belief.
Said belief has been proposed by only one small sector of the Church (the Reformed sector – or really, the post-Machen Fundamentalist sub-sector of the Reformed sector), and, because it is soundly rejected by most of the rest of the Church, can thus in no way be taken seriously when it claims to be the standard-setter for everyone else. Indeed, that sub-sector of the Church is one which is arguably in the grip of several serious philosophical prejudices and a reactionary mentality that borders on Manichaeanism in its suspicion of the integrity of man as created. It’s not a catholic belief, and if it is embraced and consistently sought, it actually isolates us as Evangelicals from the only exemplar of living, on-the-ground catholicity which we have – the pre-Reformation era of Christendom.
Anyway, enough of that. Here’s my reflection on the topic at hand.
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Just as the idea of a great yawning antithesis between all things non-Christian and all things Christian can be overdrawn, yielding pessimistic excesses, it seems that the idea of a “prisca theologia” (ancient theology) in which the best of non-Christian thought virtually mirrors later developed Christian ideas, can be overdrawn, yielding optimistic excesses.
Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), king of early Renaissance Platonists, translated a 14th-century manuscript of an older Greek work known as the Corpus Hermeticum, which was believed to be a work by one Hermes Trismegistus and was dated to the time of Moses. Ficino and his contemporaries joyously celebrated the fact they discovered from the contents of the Corpus that apparently much of Christian theology had been known (albeit in a veiled, less developed form) by the best educated pagans many generations prior to the actual advent of Christianity. Ficino, indeed, wrote of a grand lineage of six pre-Christian philosophers – Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, Philolaus, and Plato – who together developed the prisca theologia. Writes Ficino:
…In this way, from a wondrous line of six theologians emerged a single system of ancient theology, harmonious in every part, which traced its origins to Mercurius [Hermes Trismegistus] and reached absolute perfection with the divine Plato. Mercurius wrote many books pertaining to the knowledge of divinity,…often speaking not only as philosopher but as prophet….He foresaw the ruin of the old religion, the rise of the new faith, the coming of Christ, the judgement to come, the resurrection of the race, the glory of the blessed, and the torments of the damned. – Cited in Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmidt, A History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 3: Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1992), pg. 147
Unfortunately for this joyous story, actually the Corpus Hermeticum was written early in the Christian era, not the time of Moses. In this sense, its celebration as an early non-Christian parallel with Christianity goes along with the mistaken Medieval attribution of the Neoplatonic works of Pseudo-Dionysius to the Dionysius whom Paul converted in Acts 17, the warping of papalist theology by the spurious Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore, and the like. To be sure, all these problematic attributions of authority to documents which were either fraudulent or not clearly seen for what they were had very human causes that, upon careful study of the circumstances often render the errors of the past based upon their acceptance much more understandable. We ought not to hold ourselves better than those who in times of great distress (the feudal chaos of post-Carolingian Europe which produced the Donation and the False Decretals) or starry-eyed rediscovery (the early Renaissance) made errors of judgment which had long-lasting and systematic repercussions. We likely wouldn’t have done any better ourselves, had we been there.
Still, keeping in mind the fact that for all our Modern sophistication we are able to be just as frail and fallible as our fathers, there is still a benefit to hindsight. Somewhere or another I read someone learned saying that one big problem with the Medievals was that, books being exceedingly rare and as a general class of things quasi-sacred, they had such a high reverence for them that they would believe just about anything if it was found in a book – especially an old book. The problems to which such a naive trust in the written word – or perhaps more accurately, such a naive trust in our culture’s (or subculture’s) interpretations of the written word – can lead are evident to any serious student of history and culture. While we should not spurn the wise counsel of the fathers, neither should we be too hasty to believe them unconditionally – the best of men are men at best. As Peter Abelard wrote in Sic et Non, all books not belonging to the canon of Sacred Scripture “are to be read with full freedom to criticize, and with no obligation to accept unquestioningly; otherwise they way would be blocked to all discussion, and posterity be deprived of the excellent intellectual exercise of debating difficult questions of language and presentation.”
The notion of a yawning, unbridgeable, antithetical chasm between all things non-Christian and all things Christian is a serious exaggeration of the truth. On the other hand, the idea that even after the Fall man’s rational powers remain able to discern, explain, and preserve really substantial outlines of truth such that perhaps only by changing a few words and phrases Plato or Aristotle might be thought of as Christians-in-disguise is a serious exaggeration of the truth. Yet, like all great myths, both of these exaggerations have a kergyma of the truth buried deep inside. The pessimistic antithesis idea retains the truth that whatever prisca theologia might actually exist, it always has to be subject to ongoing dialogue with and correction by the final theology, the revelation of God in Christ. The optimistic continuity idea retains the truth that at the end of the day God’s creation does actually reveal something and men are actually able to understand it in more than a trivial manner.
Contrary to the optimists, there really is such a thing as being taken captive by philosophy which is according to the basic principles of the world rather than according to Christ (Col. 2:8). However, contrary to the pessimists, there really is such a thing as a pia philosophia (pious philosophy) which prepares the way for Faith and after Faith is embraced, continues to function as the ancilla theologiae (handmaiden of theology). While we should remember that the antithesis-thinkers are properly interested in safeguarding the integrity of the final revelation, at the same time we should remember that for synthesizers like Ficino, the goal of the whole project was not some muddle-brained attempt to mix oil and water on account of a silly fascination with self-evidently dumb pagan ideas, but rather, as Ficino himself put it, a noble quest to “free philosophy, God’s holy gift, from impiety…[and] to save holy religion from detestable ignorance.” [ibid., 148]. Seen in this light the prisca theologia and the pia philosophia can hardly be all that objectionable.
Tim,
Curiously, from where I’m sitting as I write, I’m looking directly at my three volume set of The Letters of Marsilio Ficino.
As you know, I have been telling Reformed people of my acquaintance, for quite some time now, that the prisca theologia and the pia philosophia are nothing to be afraid of. And I certainly think very little of Van Tilian antitheses, or “worldview” chasing which amounts to postmodernist warrant for choosing commidifed ideology over the arduous work of acquiring wisdom.
One thing which is worth pointing out is that, much to the chagrin of the Van Tilians and their allies, the Reformers all held to a view of natural law and reason which puts them much closer to Thomas, rightly understood, than to Van Til. They felt that philosophy could go a long way, but never far enough. But it was hardly useless; it served for useful cosmic and civic knowledge and civic righteousness, which things become abiding Christian equipment when deployed by people reborn in the Spirit. In this regard, Reformed people, to be faithful to their own ancestors, ought to be *much* more comfortable in the company of Pieper and Maritain in this respect (in this respect- and despite their serious errors in religion), than in the company of Van Til or Bahnsen. This is especially the case now, since the best 20th c RC philosophers really did go a long way toward regaining Thomas’ original sense of Biblical primacy in wisdom (as our Reformers did long before), whereas many RC scholastics from the late middle ages to the 19th c had really lost that.
On the prisca theologia: the distinction between philosophia and prisca theologia, in our terms, would be that philosophia is a person’s disciplined pursuit of wisdom, operating in virtue of common grace, and prisca theologia is a name for the deep mythic underpinnings of language (in the broadest sense) and social order. For Plato, part of philosophy is the recovery of the archaic truth of those mythoi, in part by means of undertaking critique of their simulacra, which is to say the bad interpretations of the mythoi, manufactured by, and clung to by, people ruled by disordered passions. In other words, wisdom isn’t simply the panoptic mastery of the lore of the tribe, or even the expansion of that lore to the widest range, but involves questioning- though not necessarily radically, definitively doubting- the basic categories or first moves of that lore as received; the idea is the pratice of a sort of mirror phenomenology, wherein the realities of beings, and the deepest mythic structures of mind, mutually disclose themselves in the space of wonder. Thus philosophia and the prisca theologia are bound up with one another.
But as you point out with regard to the theologia antiqua, there were many serious methodological problems with early attempts at divining the outline of such a thing: and in its naive form, Vico undid it decisively by refuting its chief assumptions (and the philosophic method he used was deeply informed by Scripture). Nevertheless, there is something to it: Melanchthon voiced a common view of the time when he said that what there was of the prisca th. throughout the world was the tatters of the Noahide pattern. Edwards held very similar views, and was even interested esp in Taoism, as I recall. And Lewis, who doesn’t get the credit for being the philosopher that he truly was, very openly held such views, most notably in “The Discarded Image” and “The Abolition of Man”. The field of comparative religion is still a highly contested one; in moves reminiscent of the debunking of the Hermetic Corpus, even its principles and motives have been called into question (v. Tomoko Masuzawa, “The Invention of World Religions”, and also S. Wasserstrom, “Religion after Religion”), nevertheless, it is a field worth pursuing by informed Christian researchers, and part of what it has to mean for these to be “informed” would be holding something like what you are calling the principle of “optimistic continuity”. Curiously, the fundamentalistically-minded John Warwick Montgomery has made some of the most interesting suggestions along this line of inquiry.
A last thought: you might be overstating things when you suggest that only American Reformed communities are seriously pessimistic about man as created (and sustained post-Fall). The traditional Roman schools were often extremely pessimistic about the possibility of man’s knowledge after the Fall: they often held (and some still do) that no one can really know it without the magisterium. Too, their nature/supernature distinction really does, even now, tend to denigrate the natural, far more than the Reformers’ view does. As Lewis points out regarding Puritans and marriage, the Puritans were much more “Chestertonian” than their RC contemporaries; and the point, since it involves a basic principle, could be extended. In practice, though, the RC version of the mistake is less immediately productive at present of obnoxious results than the American sectarian-Reformed version is.
peace
P
I believe all of this underscores the necessity to be more familiar with the source documentation of our common history in Christ–without that, Christians really are gullible to the misinformation provided by the bumper-sticker-like propaganda artists of modern Reformedville.
I am probably sympathetic here but I feel like it has to be said that is is not just some late modern “post-Machen” Reformed fundamentalists who have complained of the dangers philosophy or un-sanctified reason can/does pose toward a pure hearted faithfulness. I would think that the blatant teaching of Jesus and the rest of Scripture that God opposes the proud, and that out of the mouth of babies comes wisdom should be a part of the conversation whatever one thinks of Van Til. But biblical exegesis aside, ever hear of Martin Luther or Karl Barth? Obviously not philosophical lightweights, or trump cards for vantillianism. But lets not understate the age-old theological dilema or the people who have thrown their cards on a less to anti rational theology.
Peter and Tim,
Regarding the assault against Van Til and the Van Tillians: is it really that they think philosophy is useless, or is it that they believe that unless it is subordinated to divine revelation in Christ and Scripture it can’t bring us to see God and the world rightly? This does not mean philosophy and science serves no purpose. All Van Tillians I know, due to their conviction in common grace, believe that human understanding can grasp many things about the world and greatly benefit society thereby. What they want to emphasize, however, is that man will never come to know God through such pursuits unless he subject himself to divine revelation.
Please help me to understand your criticisms better, as right now I’m sitting in the Van Tillian capital of the world, and have been given heaping doses of Van Til in my courses, but haven’t been able to quite put my finger on the real problem you have both been warning against for some time now.
Also, I think we have to be a little more careful with our words. For instance, this needs some control:
Now if this is simply a rejection of philosophy, then yeah its bad. The complaint might, however, have more to it. Perhaps the argument is that the Patristics, for whatever reasons, lost their essential continuity with Judaism and the Old Testament, and thus misunderstood significant points of the New Testament.
Perhaps they rushed to every analogue except the Old Testament one, and thus there is legitimate gain for us to make in the realm of Biblical studies.
I do happen to think that our generation is equipped with the best historical knowledge, the best linguistic knowledge, and the most able interprative community ever.
And I think Jedidiah’s point about Luther and Barth is worth considering as well.
Peter, in support of Jonathan’s question I would add that what you say of the early reformers’ take on revelation vis a vis reason that you have described Van Til’s position entirely. And on the other hand, we shouldn’t soft-sell Calvin’s judgment of natural revelation apart from regenerative grace “ergo frustra nobis.”
You know what bugs me about Van Til is that criticism of his rather comprehensive position on things has been very light except in one or two places in Reformedville–and even that criticism proceeds along lines that are hardly less susceptible to similar criticism of their own school. Van Til obviously cast Karl Barth incorrectly, I wonder if more shouldn’t be said regarding where else he may have made mistakes.
I know across the pond they have little patience with the narrowness of Van Til’s views and perhaps–just perhaps–there is room for a little bit of self-evaluation on the side of Van Til presuppositionalists in regards to whether or not there is more to the story regarding Aquinas, the Reformers, and their continuity with those who came before them. I for one would be interested in a discussion along those lines especially if some of Van Til’s advocates were willing to lay down their arms and just have a discussion about it.
I suspect, however, that the hallowed hallway of the Philadelphia school (I would say “halls” but anybody who has visited that school knows just how small and tiny it really is) is less willing to really engage on some these points. I could be wrong, however, and in fact would love to hear otherwise.
Kevin,
The closedness to discussion which you have encountered hasn’t been my impression as yet at this teensy weensy little bitty place called WTS Philly. But I’ve only been here for a brief time, so that impression may change. (And for the record, we have exactly two halls, one center, and now, by golly, even a “loft”!)
I do however agree with you about Van Til on Barth. I think Van Til was right that Barth’s views, in certain respects, were incorrect. But he went too far in claiming that Barth’s theology was non-Christian. And we can see the consequences of that critique in the manner in which the term “Barthian” is often thrown around in certain quarters as a catch-phrase intended to ensure condemnation of a given individual’s views.
With all of these writers of the High Renaissance, their relationships with the prisca theologia of the pagans was pretty ambivalent at times. One of the main examples of this is their relationship with Savaronola and the bonfire of the vanities. It is believed that Pico della Mirandola’s invectives against astrologers and “vain learning” were under the influence of these tumultuous times in Renaissance Florence. Ficino to a certain extent became more “pessimistic” about pagan learning later in his life (I believe it got to the point that he venerated a bust of Plato and read his works from the pulpit). But even then, his very syncretic Book of the Sun was one of his last works.
On these issues, I wouldn’t think that my correligionists in the Church would be anymore accepting of a prisca theologia than the Protestants. On a lot of these issues, modern Christians of all stripes are in the same boat. Catholics can be just as rationistic and distrustful of “pagan roots” as Protestants. Just look how in the small incestuous world of Internet discussion, “Neoplatonism” is thrown around as a dirty word.
The main obsession becomes how we can prove that Christianity is not related in any way to the thought forms that came before it, as if some influences would prove that Christianity is false. (This even from the Orthodox, and especially converts as on a certain sight that I won’t mention but its name rhymes with “anergetic Frocession”.)
Jonathan,
It’s not merely the idea that discussion would be off-limits but that almost every discussion via Westminster somehow turns into a Moloktav-Cocktail-Throwing-Party courtesy of the OPC, certain elements of the PCA, and others. Granted, they don’t always start the fight but they’re not hesitant about lobbing their own grenades over the backyard fence either.
Frame’s essay on the major controversies in the OPC over the last 75 years or so is in mind here and a faculty known for firing a professor merely because he doesn’t phrase his generally Reformed faith as the power-brokers there and elsewhere would like signals to me that, yes, there are problems with having a mere discussion there and elsewhere in the Reformed world on these issues.
Can we get a little more care on our end guys?
I think everyone is agreed that Van Til used a machete when he needed a scalpel. A worthwhile consideration, however, is whether or not we’re doing the same thing in response.
Peter (#1): thanks for the additions and the note at the end about overstatement. Although, regarding overstatement, I did not intend to talk about non-Evangelical views of the prisca theologia / pia philosophia. This site is about Evangelical catholicity, and I am concerned with movements that detract from that. I bow to your superior understanding of the problems of Roman thought, to be sure.
Jedidiah (#3): Luther’s relationship to all of this is a complicated question, since Luther was simultaneously making great use of the cultural achievements of the Renaissance and also often pushing his criticisms too far in the heat of battle. His famous remarks about reason as “the devil’s whore” come to mind here, and raise all kinds of questions about the state of his understanding of the philosophical currents which he was damning. Not to mention that within the humanistic currents which were so deeply informing the Reformers there was a massive battle over whether reason or rhetoric, philosophy or rhetoric should be primary, and the deep tension between the desire to recover the lost ancient tradition (for the Reformers, the Fathers) and reverence it while at the same time trying to purify and extend it to deal with new problems was pretty profound and not easy to navigate. Luther is not to be simply given full faith and credit on these things, and I would assume the same is true of Barth.
Jonathan (#4): Much could be said on this, but I would recommend that you take a serious look (if you haven’t already) at Frame’s 1995 work on Van Til. That book is a superb critical analysis, from a friendly point of view, of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Van Tillian project. Frame is particularly helpful in how he highlights the severe ambiguity in the VTian tradition regarding common grace and the nature of the antithesis, how their writers are basically all over the map on these points and how, unfortunately, the extremism of the many and the less-gifted adherents of the school too often overshadows the attempts at balance and scholarly accuracy of the few and more-gifted. As well, Frame is helpful in terms of pointing out the profound connections between VT and Kant – a very interesting point since VTians are so concerned about not allowing faith to be “coopted” by “secular” stuff.
Steven (#5): I disagree with the assumption that our community has the best standards. Or at least, I disagree with that as baldy stated. We may in fact see many things that earlier ages didn’t, but in our peculiar ways we are just as blind as they were in theirs. For instance, our naive love of technological progress easily obscures concern for the ethical situatedness of man in a Nature that, it could be argued, wasn’t given to us to “master” and “possess” (ala Descartes), but to responsibly steward – which might mean deliberately NOT pursuing some kinds of progress. Or for another, our typically Protestant overvaluation of “the original meaning” of texts (ala the obsession with “grammatical-historical exegesis” – this is the Renaissance “ad fontes” method on steroids, and has led to some rather serious reductionisms of life and practice in our circles. Perhaps if your statement was qualified I might find more to agree with.
Kevin (#8 and #11), I agree about the general lack of serious discussion of these issues in Reformedville. Peter has pointed out before the obsession of many of these folks with flamethrowing polemics in an Us-Vs-Them At the End of the World mentality. And Peter has also rightly pointed out that early Reformed theology had none of these problems. I read not too long ago, in fact, that Beza started a school for ministers in which the core of the training was – get this – the humanities. The humanities, not “Greek Exegesis Down to the Sub-Quantum Level,” or “How to Maintain The Only True Religion When Everyone Else Nefariously Falls Away From Clear Truth,” or any of the other unbalanced fascinations of today’s very intellectually introverted Reformed Theology.
Arturo (#10), thanks for the inside look. Although in my experience, large numbers of Catholics online – at least, the ones who do any serious study – are very interested in the prisca theologia and pia philosophia (though sometimes they use other names for them), and in fact present the issue as if Catholicism has faithfully maintained all of this while Protestantism has simply abandoned reason itself and become a morass of pure subjectivism.
Arturo,
I agree with you strongly, most especially your last paragraph.
But RC scholars such as W. Schmidt, G. Anawati, L. Massignon, H. Dumoulin, and in liturgical anthropology, Odo Casel, were, whatever mistakes (and some are big ones) they might have made, much less timid and parochial than the American Reformed of their day, and broke new ground. James Jordan alone among American Reformed theologians could be considered in the same league as the the RC scholars mentioned, though he doesn’t work specifically in their fields, but rather brings that kind of learning to bear on his biblical commentary. That one exception aside, I’m afraid it is true that trying to imagine a modern American analog to the great Reformed polymath and author of De Theologia Gentili, JG Vossius (who was Reformed, though hounded by the Gomarus gangsters), arising in our communities now, takes a very great deal of effort and suspension of disbelief.
Adam Gopnik, who often says very interesting things (though sometimes not with the fullest information, I think; still), not long ago made the point that the Inklings’ apologetic was striking in that it based part of its claim for Christianity on Christianity’s essential coherence with traditional wisdom as expressed in philosophy and mythology. Gopnik, as I recall, thought this was something like a complete reversal of prior Xtian apologetic; and that isn’t true, of course, but perhaps the centrality of the theme in Inklings apologetic, and the principled thoroughness with which it was pursued, might well have been something of an apologetical novum (to lob a word we’ve been batting around a lot here lately), depending on what one thinks of Vossius (Reformed) and Vico (Roman). For as you say, most earlier attempts at a Christian account of a prisca theologia were often unsure of themselves.
peace
P
PS: beer anytime, hermano
Tim,
I haven’t read Frame’s work yet, and don’t know if I will, as this sort of topic really is not my bag. I can only speak for the limited exposure I’ve had to VT and VTians here at WTS, and it doesn’t seem to me that your take on their project really fits this particular VTian school, or the presentation of VT’s thought I’ve received here thus far, at least.
One thing I can say though is that I have talked to VTian folks of the WTS mold who have read Frame’s work, and the consensus I have received is that most of Frame’s criticisms do not apply to them. Take this with a grain of salt, as I’ve not read Frame myself.
Kevin,
You know I’m not one who will begin saluting the heresy hunters anytime soon, so I won’t contest your basic point.
But I will say that, in talking with profs and current students here, I do believe there is more to the Enns issue than your brief analysis implies. I have no interest in visiting that issue here, though. As I don’t agree entirely with either side, I’m probably best off just keeping my big fat yapper shut for now.
Tim,
One more thing, regarding your comment to Kevin about Beza requiring training in the humanities, and the inference that somehow VTians are far from this: Actually, it is interesting to me that Reformed Seminaries like Westminster highly recommend that students receive their undergrad training in the liberal arts with an emphasis in philosophy before entering seminary, while it is the broad evangelical crowd, with its “optimistic” view of humananity, which has retreated to the world of the Bible College as the pinnacle of higher education. Again, I really don’t think your criticism sticks to “Van Tillian” schools like WTS, as they really do seem to want to preserve the old Reformed ideal of liberal arts education, and THEN advanced theological training..
Jonathan,
A few thoughts. I would not myself identify your Westminster wholly with Van Tilianism, let alone with Van Tilianism at its vulgar worst. But I know that there are many Van Tilians there. The brighter readers of VT have mostly accepted a revised version, one which has benefited from the friendly critiques of Frame, and the less friendly though still just critiques of Montgomery. So the thing has been much modified, and is now becoming hard to distinguish, in its better and brighter adherents, from Schaeffer’s principles.
I am glad to hear that WTS encourages its applicants to receive first formation in philosophy. But I have to say that this kind of thing isn’t always as promising as it seems: for one, there is a certain kind of interest in philosophy which is eristically motivated, and wants from philosophical studies nothing but what will be useful in forensics; the deformed character of university philosophy in the US, which is to say the lingering effects of analytic “philosophy”, lends itself to this misuse. Classical philosophy requires a thorough formation in the humanities, which means not just analytic tools (the only thing in the old organon which immediately useful to the eristically minded), but training of the imagination to wide and sympathetic liveliness through poetry (inclusive of literature), and the word-disciplines such as rhetoric and philology. I’m not saying the WTS is looking for nothing but analytic training for eristic usefulness; only that “philosophy” means many things, and what attracts many American Reformed to it is not the promise of wisdom, but the promise of weaponry.
On evangelical schools: this really depends. Many of them, almost entirely because of the influence of Lewis and Schaeffer, are very strong in literary studies and liberal arts. A quick glance through CT’s literary magazine, whose readership comes largely I believe from students and alumni of evangelical colleges, will reveal that this group would hardly consider fundie Bible Colleges as the pinnacle of education- though I think there is more to be said than many think for really traditional, simple, old-timey Bible Colleges. Frankly, anyone who mastered Edward Goodrick’s “Do It Yourself Hebrew and Greek” (Zondervan/Multnomah), including the author’s method and prescribed program of ongoing study, would have the basics of a *very* good intellectual formation.
In any case, a thought for all: whatever the rights and wrongs of the Enns case, and whether or not WTS is the size of Sealand, WTS is still doing the Lord’s work, and insofar as it is, it should have our prayers and support.
peace
P
I HEART WTS.
And I admitted that Barth and Luther were not mere vantillian trump cards or philosophical lightweights. I was only reminding that the tradition of damning philosophy goes back pretty far and deep for Christianity, maybe even to Jesus, Paul and beyond (that’s my take anyway), and should not be relegated to my favorite splinter of American Reformed theology. And I don’t think we are as nasty as you imagine! My experience as a WTS student was that serious vantilian faculty such as Oliphant and Edgar who wouldn’t even go along with Frame’s criticisms and still required heavy ammounts of reading Van Til’s sylabi, wouldn’t be able to fit into the narrow caricature you’re painting here. But that’s coming from the choir so take it for what its worth.
As an aside, anything Van Til said that’s worth anything, is in Bavinck. And there are some nice overlaps between the payoff of their antithesis and what the Cambridge/Radical Orthodox folks have been writing for a few years.
Jedidiah,
I don’t know which of us you’re addressing, but do note that I said that I wouldn’t confuse the VTilians on faculty at WTS with popular Bahnsenism, and said that the brighter Vtilians have essentially moved in the direction of Schaeffer’s more pragmatic and flexible approach.
I would agree that much of whatever is good in VT is in Bavinck; I am all for Bavinck figuring more largely than he does nowadays. But VT also has some strengths of his own as an exegete and dogmatician; I wouldn’t deny him that. You are also right that there are some overlaps between VT and the Cambridge people: I have pointed these out for some time now, and pointed out they are almost all extremely objectionable. What they share in common is a basic Anabaptist tendency regarding the civic sphere and creation, and the claim of a political character for the visible church, which tendency departs markedly from the Reformers, and, as ideological Anabaptism so easily does, tends to flip into its RC mirror image.
peace
P
Peter, I was addressing Tim’s (lame) response to my (lamer) response to his interesting post. Thanks for your thoughts though. I have not read you criticize Barth, Milbank or Van Til much and I’d have to say it would take a pretty thorough exegetical and theologically dense rebuttal to get me to jump ship on the basic premise of antithesis. If you have written extensively or otherwise on the question, point me in the right direction.
Well, gee, sorry to be “lame” jedidiah. As a student of the Middle Ages I am certainly aware that there is a parallel tradition of theologically criticizing philosophy. Tertullian is a big figure here (“What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?”), as is Bernard of Clairvaux. I have on my shelf, but have not yet read, an 11th century treatise by one Manegold of Lautenbach on what he thought were the great evils of using Platonism in theological speculation. Later on, especially prior to the Reformation, the Nominalists viciously attack philosophical theology, too. That’s a big part of the context of the Reformation attack on the “Sophists” of the Sorbonne, for instance.
So sure, there is a parallel tradition of suspicion of philosophy. But it isn’t the mainstream, and one of my points is that it doesn’t seem to yield much fruit in terms of building a Christian culture or presenting the claims of the Faith intelligibly to an outside world. It seems rather to yield sectarianism.
By the way, I would like to recall attention to my statements about how all this relates to the cause of “Evangelical catholicity.” I didn’t write this just to take a swipe at those I called “post-Machen Fundamentalists.” I wrote this because I think all of this has immense practical implications for how we as Evangelicals (whether Reformed Evangelicals or not) relate to each other – that is, how we can demonstrate catholicity toward each other.
I find it very hard to understand how this popular, but very excessive, mode of antithesis-think that I highlight here can lead to any meaningful sense of catholicity amongst Evangelicals. It basically amounts to replacing love with polemics, to seeing philosophy not as the pursuit of wisdom but as a source of weaponry for “Us” to be able to fight “Them,” to the maintenance of a reactionary, defensive approach to the Christian life, and to a reductionistic understanding of the cause of building a Christian culture.
In short, what I’m trying to stimulate discussion about is the issue of whether or not this very common deep suspicion of philosophy and reason is capable of stimulating true catholicity.
I’ll offer a short answer to your question:
The antithesis is an antithesis between Christ’s catholic kingdom and the kingdom of Satan. It is not an antithesis (theoretically!) between Christians who disagree with one another. That is, it is not suspicion of philosophy (rightly understood in the tradition as the pursuit of Wisdom) but damnable doctrines that the antithesis takes aim at.
I would ask how “popular” this “excessive” and harmful distortion of the antithesis you keep bringing up really is. I don’t know everyone but I don’t know anyone who quite fits the description you’ve laid out among the kuyperians. I went to a Bible college that drilled world-view think into our heads (and still not as shallowly as you tend to see it) and it wasn’t until I started hanging out with a bunch of Van Tilians from WTS that I realized God doesn’t hate culture. My suspicion is that antithesis is not where the problem lies but antithesis without the doctrine of common grace. And Kuyper and Van Til emphatically and robustly affirmed a doctrine of common grace. To use their categories, what we see in the circles you are criticising is the colapsing of god-ordained spheres into the sphere of the church.
So lets be catholic to them and grant that it takes a messy hatchet job on them to turn their criticism into an antithesis against culture outside the church.
For what its worth, I think the whole sphere sovereignty thing is not biblical so I’d probably critique them in the opposite direction as you have.
jedidiah, I mostly agree with that (#24).
Brethren – It seems to me that Van Til, coming as he did [after his defection from the CRC] from the OPC, pursued an almost entirely eclessiastico-centric, and – thereby as a consequence, intended or otherwise – self-referential project.
Who reads and listens to Van Til, really?
THE “O”-“P”-“C” as really a purifying movement of churches, to this very day, speaks little if at all, to the wider Christian world, let alone a thoroughly secularized culture.
And, to what extent could that be said of 99.999999 (to quote Ali-G in his hilarious mocumentary/interview “Techmology”) of Presbyterian and Reformed churches, in our cultural context?
Some attribute this to stilted proses on CVT’s part, but I can’t help but wonder if it is due to a much more fundamental problem, as has been underscored ably (as usual) by brother Escalante….
Hoss, there you go – my point exactly. Who reads and listens to Van Til, really?” 99.999999 percent of the Evangelical part of Christendom doesn’t care (though, much of that part has its own peculiar anti-intellectual problem with “vain philosophy”), and no doubt 99.999999 percent of the RC and EO wings of Christendom don’t care. This is simply a sectarian belief system, and not a catholic one.
Now of course it is true that sometimes the minority can be right, so it is within rational possibility that all this antithesis-think stuff is right. But as I think the history of the Reformed world, and Presbyterianism in particular well shows, rightness isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. If one is right for all the wrong reasons, and pursues the cause of rightness from the wrong motivations and aimed at a wrong goal, what is the use of being right?
My own comments on the “prisca theologia” have more to do with praxis than theory. I actually care very little for what academics of all stripes think, since they are, as the last comment made clear, an insignificant minority. Even Dom Casel’s kultmysterium is a remnant of distant memory, used to demolish the old doctrine of the Mass only to make something worse. “Pop Catholicism” today is under the impression that Christianity is the kid brother of rabbinic Judaism, and what passes for scholastic philosophy now is a weird mixture of logical positivism and phenomenology with a few grains of Patristic incense for good measure, even though they have lost any vision of what ancient thought was really like. There may be a few lights, but they are far from influential.
Arturo, I’d like to hear more on your take on Catholic scholastic philosophy today, particularly the “weird mixture of logical positivism and phenomenology with a few grains of Patristic incense for good measure.” Would you elaborate?
Tim and Arturo,
I want to say that I would second Arturo’s description of very recent RC “scholastic” philosophy, and could say more myself (my formation was largely in RC neothomism and phenomenology); but I would first very much like to hear more from Arturo on this score, since his gift for apt description far exceeds mine.
peace
P
Tim,
An afterthought on terms:
I think we have to be very careful in our use of terms such as “catholic” and “sectarian”. The latter term is the one you give the most definition; to paraphrase, you seem to be using it to indicate a replacement or supersession of creation and the realm of common grace with an ultrabiblicism. Also, you seem to identify it with what Lewis called “chronological snobbery”, a conceit which is however not only not exclusively a Christian problem, it is not even exclusively a modern one, though it is in some ways definitive of modernism as an ideology. Vico called it the “boria dei dotti”, which basically means “snobbery of the pedants”. It *is* a sort of sectarianism, but not a specifically Christian one: it is a sectarian retreat from catholicity in the most general sense: the catholicity of history and humanity.
“Sect” suggests something small to us, the “squalid conventicle”, and thus is more easily associated in our minds with things such as American Reformed microdenominations: and since we are Reformed, those things are our problem indeed, and we need to attend to them. But “sect” means “cut”, and the “cutting” action definitive of “sectarianism” as a mental posture can be executed even by very big, old communities: which was the gist of my earlier point about the anti-creationism of Rome’s nature/supernature theology in its worst forms: it is an anthropological “sectarianism”. As was also, in a more local and specifically religious way, the Ref. era papacy’s decision to break the unity of Christendom by refusing Reformation. So a “sect” can be giant and cosmopolitan, as well as tiny and parochial.
“Catholicity” you leave undefined, but you seem to use it in the sense of what is, and what is done, “on the ground”, as you put it: so it would what is “according to the whole” in a communal, practical, and, with regard to the past, historical sense. I think that’s certainly one legitimate meaning of the word; we might even call that “material catholicity”, the stuff of catholic-mindedness. But, and this is really crucial, though a catholic man will always be profoundly interested in what is indicated by this sense of “catholicity”, he will not always *receive* everything it contains. This is because of what is involved in the other senses of catholicity, what we might call the senses of “formal catholicity”, and these are two: a) doctrinal catholicity, and b) rational catholicity. The principles of good creation and common grace make us affirm the “catch-all” of cosmopolitanism and tradition, make us historically-minded (for we are historical beings), but we do not affirm everything *in* the catch-all; we do not believe all. We use the criteria of revelation and reason to judge things.
These two, truth of revelation and truth of reason, judge the totality of practices, opinions, et c which surround us and which come down to us. Many opinions and practices are wrong, some have truth or use but are badly expressed or done or circumstantially inappropriate, some permissible but not certain or central, and so on. Revelation and reason judge these matters. But here is always a danger that this power of judgement, when the minds exercising it lose their wonder, humility, and proper principles, can be perverted along the lines of what Vico calls “boria dei dotti” and Lewis calls “chronological snobbery”. There is also the problem of radical individualism, which takes the individual as unqualifiedly independent of collective wisdom; for the power of judgment by revelation and reason is never atomic or atemporal; we are historical and political animals. Too often this truth is mystified as “the Church” supposedly thinking for us, vs supposed “private” judgment; but its truth is simply a creational one, a general truth of anthropology which applies to Christians as much as anyone: that the full exercise of our personal powers is interdependent with those of others, and that the objects of our thought have historical dimension, cannot be reduced to ahistorical lexical-conceptual atoms.
We must affirm material catholicity, on the principles of creation, common grace, historicity, and the political character of man. But its elements and products are judged by revelational and rational catholicity. Sometimes this judgment will seem very restrictive in what it affirms, sometimes very inclusive. The first is not ipso facto sectarian, and neither is latter ipso facto catholic.
As catholic-minded men, we do have to affirm our historic continuity with our history- that *we* have a *past*, and is a *common* past, including the medieval West; and as charitable and intelligent men (one hopes) we have to approach it with great interest and good faith. But we would never approach it with the assumption that we will indiscriminately affirm whatever we find there (and of course I am not saying that you are suggesting this: all your published work is an exercise in intelligent discrimination of the good and bad in our common past.
There is thus a “sectarian” ad fontes approach, and a catholic one. The sectarian basically confuses a cardboard version of the fontes with the world they are meant to apply to, and thus creates a self-referential cell of the mind. The catholic man, though, does judge things by the light of revelation and reason, and this involves an ad fontes approach. The early church appealed ad fontes against the more all-inclusive traditionalism of their Pharisee brethren; Jerome works by ad fontes in his attempt to give Latins a better edition of Scripture; Aquinas works ad fontes in the realm of nature and philosophy, appealing to Aristotle against the jumbled syncretism of certain schoolmen on the one hand, and against the sectarianism of obscurantist such as Tempier on the other; and our Reformers of course, perhaps the greatest example of catholic use of ad fontes.
Given all this, I think you might be unwittingly getting close to the edge of the very precipice you warn against, when you say that the pre-Reformation Christendom is the only example of “living, on the ground catholicity” that we have. That is a move of historical “section” which I think is unwarranted, on your own principles. For one thing, the pre-Ref Christendom of the West didn’t look very catholic from Byzantium’s point of view (which itself didn’t look very catholic from the Persian Church’s point of view); and for another, the post-Reformation commonwealths were doctrinally much more purely Catholic in the theological sense than what had gone recently before, and they were politically catholic too; I think we could take them as exemplary more easily by far (England survives healthy until the 1960s!) than we could take the medieval system, and it’s worth remembering too that the old Imperial system survived the Reformation era, and included both Romanists and Evangelicals after Westphalia (there were even knightly orders with bi-religious membership). In any case, Christians on the ground are Christians on the ground, and that is no different after the Reformation than before. I see no reason to draw a line at the Reformation: we are continuous with what came after too; heir of all for better and worse, and judges of it all as either good or bad.
peace
P
Good stuff Peter.
This is why I think we have to be careful. In discussions on the relationship between theology and philosophy, we don’t want to unwittingly slip in all sorts of other issues. If Van Til is too reactionary, that is not the same discussion as the proper use of technology or historiography. I also don’t see a lot of consistency in warning us not to dismiss too much medieval thought, while at the same time dismissing tons of modern thought without much explanation.
This post was about Ficino, but there was a bit of cluster-bombing going on, and I’m afraid that will cause more distraction than clarity.
I would actually like to see a solid critique of the 20th century movements without the invention of new epithets such as “Machenite Fundies” or “Antithizers.” That sort of language just makes us look the newest edition of reactionaries.
Well, I suppose all this shows that my own impression of my post isn’t necessarily what counts. I thought I provided both positive and negative points in tension with each other and took note of the need to critically evaluate ancient sources. Apparently, however, I wrote too generally, lamely, distractingly, and reverse-reactionarily. So instead of stimulating discussion, as I’d desired, apparently I just stimulated irritation. My bad, sorry.
While I will certainly admit to not always being the clearest or most level-headed of writers, and while I mean no calculated offense to the others involved here, I think Peter’s earlier point to Jonathan about the necessity of a formation in the humanities is an important recognition. I am not a seminary student, but a humanities student. Everything I study is set in a broader context; there are no “self-contained” disciplines, not even Theology, that get to proceed without reference to all the others. Theology can be found in Tolkien and Dostoevsky just as much as in any dogmatics texts assigned in seminary, and if someone wants to call me an arrogant crank for bringing in “irrelevant” stuff, he can just take it up with Calvin and Dabney and Hodge, who liberally pepper their theological texts with references to Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Vergil, Plutarch, and many other things that the modern seminary seems to have no use for because it’s too focused on teaching micro-exegesis of Greek prepositional phrases and unexamined slogans about how Totally Awesome the Reformed Faith is.
Unfortunately, my personal experiences with seminary students and theology-wonks elsewhere than this blog has, I admit, left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth for the contemporary phenomenon of “Reformed Theology.” From my point of view, the great problem with seminary education is summed up precisely in the fact that for at least one seminary student here, a point made about the nature of technology just doesn’t seem to fit at all with the concept of the nature of the exegetical discipline. Well, all I can say is that if you don’t see the point, you need to read more widely before just assuming I’m a cranky blowhard writing wandering prose full of “cluster bombs.”
On the other hand, I am glad that Peter is around, because as a far more advanced humanities student than I am, everytime I think I know something he steps in and reminds me that I really don’t know much at all. Still, for all my ignorance, the issues that have been raised here have been percolating in my mind for a number of years now, and oftentimes have more to do with long, slow, ruminating on, say, Herodotus, Plutarch, Plato, and Aristotle than on, say, Calvin, Turretin, Kuyper, or Bavinck. Perhaps part of the difficulty here is that there are two different approaches to the issues.
Anyway, far from calling for a new reactionaryism, I’m actually calling for a return to a perspective that allows for peaceful contemplation, fruitful reflection, and cultural flowering.
Tim,
I guess I’m the Seminary student you have in mind. However, I also have a humanities background, as my father would tell me the Odyssey, Beowulf, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as bedtime stories. I have a BA in English Literature and Philosophy, and I’m currently teaching at a classical school where I’m having to read Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chaucer, and Shakespeare as I teach my courses. Whatever disagreements you and I may have, and I think they are really less prominent than our agreements, they are not because I lack a liberal arts background.
This is why I am simply asking (not yelling) for more care and perhaps slowing things down. The actual causes of the problem you’re addressing may be more fundamental than what you’ve outlined, or more complex. I think we have to be rhetorically sensitive to this, particularly if we want to have a point of impact among the various communities we critique.
And finally, unless you are an exegetical agrarian, I don’t think you and I will be too different on our views of technology’s role in interpretation. I’m not much of a fan of ANE sources controlling our reading of the OT. I do think, however, an honest evaluation of the Christian faith’s relationship with Judaism, including how the Greek and Latin branches quickly distanced themselves from their Semitic roots, is worth pointing out. Justo Gonzales does a good job of this in his Story of Christianity. Also of great value are the new studies on the Temple cultus (Edersheim, Barker, Biel, etc.) and Jewish proto-Trinitarianism (A. Segal). The German Evangelicals did some pretty good work in this area, and Protestant insistence on Biblical Theology is a preeminently good thing, worthy of our approval and mastery in the realm of catholicity.
One of the strengths of the Reformation, and one I don’t think we should give up on in the least, is the ability to effectively utilize the tools that God gives us. Creativity is, after all, a product of man’s God-given rational imagination.
Tim/Peter – I think you raise good points, here and elsewhere, with regard to the “fruit” or the offspring, as it were, of particular theologians and theological movements.
The average presuppositionalists I’ve met are generally maladjusted types, at war with other Reformed people, and – in some instances – on a seemingly never-ending carousel ride of broken relationships with other Calvinists 99.99% as disconnected from Christendom as they are.
Having said that, there is something to the meta-narrative, or over-arching approach by Van Til that reflects the kind of dynamic one finds in Acts 17:16-34 and the Mars Hill address, where Paul spends ZIPPO time trying prove the existence of God, or engage in the kind of laughable and toothless evidential apologetics of not a few Evangelicals present-hour (“The Case for Christ”, or it’s 70’s version, “More than a Carpenter”).
I am not precisely certain where that ought leave us, but perhaps in part, that’s one of the reasons for these discussions…
Brethren,
Tim,
First: your post is an excellent one, and it elicited a good deal of very helpful discussion: it did *not* merely elicit irritation. On the apparent disagreement between you and Steven: SW is willing to say that our generation is the best equipped in history, but not primarily (though indeed partially) because of our machines; he was referring to the state of the art we have in historical and linguistic learning, inclusive of both the material of knowledge and the disciplinary methods we have. And the latter are simply highly specialized and historically developed branches of the humanities. I think you two are actually in agreement.
On my last comment, #31: it was not meant to disagree with you, but rather was a contribution toward clarification of terms you had left somewhat undefined in your post, and also, was an attempt to show that on your own principles given in the post, we can actually extend the historical range of exemplary models right up to our back door, as it were, rather than drawing a line at the 16th c.
Lastly, please stop crediting me with greater scholarship than I have, and please stop deprecating your own! You know much more than I do about any number of medieval figures, some of whom I’ve barely heard of.. Manimcold of Loitersintheback, for one. I am certainly not attempting to aim any Socratic reminders at you- you can do that for yourself; my aim is to engage your excellent work.
Hoss,
I actually agree with you; my concern with VT is his epistemologizing and ideologizing of the presuppositional method, not the idea itself. The proper presuppositional method starts from that tried and true evangelical principle, that the unbeliever has a Jesus-shaped hole in his heart. Which sounds schmaltzy, but has an impeccable Augustinian pedigree and can be expressed with the gravest Latinity. You are right that evidentialist apologetics are at best only indirectly useful. We should start though not from VTilian fantasies about coherent vs incoherent a priori systems, but rather from the fact of moral-existentialist restlessness and disorientation: man heart-knows himself lost and wrecked and guilt-stricken, and it is exactly to this that we preach the Gospel. This is agapic rather than eristic; but much, altogether too much, apologetic is actually eristic, and often enough results from the apologist trying unconsciously to keep his own insecure self convinced, through projecting upon others and trying to secure their conviction, and thereby, vicariously (or so he expects), his own.
I’d like to say to all of you how grateful I am for your conversation, and how blessed I am in it.
peace
P
Just to clarify my own comments about contemporary philosophy in the Catholic Church, I would say that a lot of that comes from my being force fed manuals as an RC traditionalist seminarian, and my realizing that in some ways readings of Aquinas such as those of Etienne Gilson are historically conditioned and have agendas that are not necessarily in Aquinas (his aversion to Neoplatonism for one). It feels that a lot of the proponents of the Patristic resourcement were using Patristic sources to uphold Heidegger, rather than Heidegger to uphold the Patristic sources. It doesn’t help that Catholic philosophy is always about fifty years behind the rest of the world. That means that we are due for a Catholic Derrida in about ten years; they are still obsessed with with existential phenomenology when the rest of the world has moved on. Also, it has to do a lot with the contemporary rhetoric and apologetics in the Church over the nature of truth and doctrine. As my drinking buddy Peter will say, Catholicism already assumes that you are put together on epistomological questions. It seems that the obsessions of what I call the Catholic magisterial positivists is that they want to make the Church the ultimate bulwark of the reality of human knowledge: we can only know anything with certainity because the infallible Magisterium defines it so. That at least is the line in American conservative “pop Catholicism”, as opposed to any idea of faith and praxis in the Church as paradosis. The Faith is true because it has been passed down and is as it always has been, and in this we must give the most faith to the immediate past since we have no real idea how the Church was in the fourteenth, ninth, fourth, or even first century.
But for more, you will have to turn in to my blog….
Arturo,
You’ve spoken half the secret: a lot of the ressourcement people (you see this especially clearly in Olivier Clement, who is EO but Western), and certain neothomists, were having it out with some neopalamites over the question of whose tradition *really* was the hidden treasure of existentialism avant la lettre, with Heidegger as the court of appeal, though they never quite meet the standard: “Vee haff decidet dat you are alle STILL infectet mit der gottverdammte theologie of praesenz!”
You are absolutely right that traditional Romanism, on the ground, expects a man to be free of epistemological obsession, and that the modern Romanist right really are magisterial positivists in many respects. But I would argue that this trend toward magisterial positivism goes *very* far back in Roman theology, whatever the character of the continuum of ordinary praxis was; and sadly, this sort of anti-creational ecclesiototalism is an attraction for less well formed Protestants now too, especially those with “high church” leanings (church as only guarantee of knowledge; sacraments as bottlenecks of common grace; mitred bureaucrats as only source of true human political order, et c). Its resemblance to Van Tilianism is obvious enough: both are bad default responses to the stresses of intellectual modernity.
peace
P
Peter,
Would you say that in the contemporary narrative of Roman Catholicism, it was the Jansenist and Gallicanist controversies that spelled the end of any real sense that truth was a product of something other than ecclesiastical authority? I think here of such 19th century figures as Joseph de Maistre and Dom Gueranger who thought that “Rome is the Church and the Church is Rome”, to the point that Dom Gueranger didn’t even see a need to have any other rites other than that of the Roman? In that sense, and this continues to influence many Catholics to this day, plurality is always the enemy of Truth and thus suspect. I have experienced this most of all in Catholic traditionalist and conservative circles: tribalism, clubbishness, and the sense that the more eccentric and weird you are, the more Christian.
The other side of the cult of authority is that it abolishes any real eschatological dimension to the Church. In other words, the Church under the Pope here on earth becomes the Kingdom of God, full stop. The Pope, at least in the popular consciousness of the few, becomes King David, the High Priest, and Prophet all in the same office (“vicarius Christi” in all senses of the word), whereas before, Christians would have a more dispersed sense of the presence of the Divine (the king, in a sense, also being a “vicarius Christi”). I have always been very disturbed by this, since if we are to assume these analogies between the Old and New Law, are we then to also assume the parallel of the same history: unfaithful kings, the schism between Israel and Judah, the destruction of the Temple, etc.? Is the Roman Catholic Church “eschatology now” for its most enthusiastic members, and is this viable as an ecclesial vision? I will never leave the Catholic Church since I know it to be the true Church, but where are we to draw the line?
Arturo,
You are expressing here some of the basic reasons why I am a Protestant Western Catholic rather than a papalist. Your last paragaph could have been written by me, with the one exception of the last line: or rather, you and I would define “Catholic Church” differently there. The matter your outline here is directly related to what I wrote earlier about the sectarian effect of the nature/supernature setup, part of which involves a view of the sacraments as what used to be called “actual grace”. The realized eschatology basically destroys the creational/common grace order, in my view: I wish that certain others could see this as clearly as you do. I also think it is intimately bound up with idolatry: but you and I would differ there, but though we differ in the deepest way on this, I also have the deepest respect for your thoughtful stance and the honesty with which you hold it.
The authoritarianism you speak of predates, at least on paper, the Gallican and Jansenist controversies; it predates the Reformation, and goes back to the beginning of the Middle Ages; it is at the root of the struggle between the Imperium and the Sacerdotium. But it acquires its peculiarly militarized form after Trent, I think. To be fair, Gueranger and de Maistre are part of a broader movement of 19th c reaction, and because this was a Europe-wide political and literary development, Gueranger and de M. had Protestant counterparts such as Vilmar-though it is true that the Protestant reactionaries consistently tended Romeward in many respects. (as an aside: on de Maistre and the 19th c, the most thoughtful engagement with him I know is in Roberto Calasso’s “The Ruin of Kasch”).
That said, I am sure it is possible to remain a Roman Catholic and believe and practice along older, saner, paths with regard to this matter of authority. If the Jesuits were (as the Opus Dei and Legionaries of Christ are now) the champions of the cult of authority you speak of, the Dominicans, sometimes at least, continued to safeguard and champion a more populist, dispersed, God-fearing form of authority. One sees this very clearly expressed as recently as fifty years ago in the work of Thomas Gilby, OP. Part of the trouble is that those RC nowadays who are critical of the authoritarian, realized-eschatological understanding of the Roman Church are generally not principled old Catholics of the conciliarist kind, nor are they very close to the principled Reformed Catholic doctrine of Luther and Calvin. Rather, they are generally either sentimental, spiritually formless liberals, or ineffectual academic-ecumenists. And this is much to be regretted. I hope it changes soon.
peace
P
RE: #39
I don’t mean to but into your conversation, not knowing much about modern RC theology, but your comments on the hyper-authoritarian strand of RC theology that consolidates in the 19th c. reminded me of an American Reformed theologian of that era, John W. Nevin’s interaction with the zealous RC convert Orestes Brownson. Both Nevin and his colleague Schaff were deeply sympathetic to Roman Catholicism’s liturgy, history and theology but were critical of the rationalism they saw in authoritarian theological constructs. Nevin compares Brownson to his other great foe, the rationalistic trumpeter of individual authority, the American Puritan and sees them as more alike than dissimilar.
Steven,
My apologies for being abrupt and for misunderstanding you. Along with the problems of terms that Peter has pointed out, I must confess that I often write in a form of “shorthand” which relies on numerous studies I have done, some published online, some not, and with which I seem to unconsciously assume the average reader is familiar. Thus, I don’t always provide clear definitions of my terms or spell out key premises of my arguments, and this can lead to misunderstandings of what I’m getting at.
Nevertheless, once again, I thought that my initial post was pretty carefully crafted to acknowledge several sides to the problem, and even to point out some positive aspects of the antithesis-think case. I guess I really didn’t expect the negative responses I got, and, like Kevin put it in his early comment, it seemed like few cared to understand and discuss, but only to react and condemn.
Look, I’m not trying to start some reverse-imbalanced crusade here, some latest phase of reactionaryism that’s as bad as what it’s combatting, but this extreme antithesis-think stuff really is bad news for Protestantism, and I really do believe it is a serious reason why we are so culturally ineffective, so internally divisive, and such easy targets for the calculated idealisms of other traditions such as Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
Hey Tim,
Just for the record from my end: I did appreciate the basic point of your post. Sorry for not saying that up front. My question to you and Peter was one of sincere inquiry as someone currently immersed in a Van Til think-tank. I’m still trying to get a grasp on where the real, substantial differences lie between Van Til and his orthodox Christian sparring partners.
I, for one, am very thankful for your continued contributions here.
Peace,
J
Jonathan, one of the best and most succinct descriptions of the problem I have yet found is this from R.L. Dabney:
I’m tempted to say “Q.E.D.”
Tim,
But Van Til doesn’t deny the idea of natural theology as such. He claims that man, because of his rebellion against God, will always reject what is plainly revealed about God in nature. For Van Til, the self-existent God revealed in Christ must be presupposed in order to grasp natural revelation rightly. This is not to say that there can be no such thing as natural theology, only that apart from faith in Christ it will always be skewed because of sin.
How I see it, what Van Til is wanting to safeguard against is a bifurcation of natural and supernatural revelation, as though they are two completely separate spheres of knowledge: one attained through reason alone, the other attained through faith alone. In contrast to this, Van Til insists that natural revelation and supernatural revelation are intimitely connected and complimentary, not separate. Faith is necessary for the proper understanding of both.
I know you’ll probably still find this problematic. But I just thought I’d throw it out there. There’s a difference between denying all natural theology and what Van Til does with it.
One place where VT spells out his view of Natural theology in his essay “Nature and Scripture” in The Infallible Word. In my reading, he doesn’t differ much at all from either Bavinck or Berkouwer on this, and a good deal (though not all!) of what he wants to say regarding natural theology is already present in Calvin. And really, Barth and Brunner both go much farther than VT ever did with the denial of natural theology, but I don’t see them getting whipped very much around here. (But maybe that’s just because those guys get whipped in our circles enough as it is.)
That’s one way to read Van Til, Jonathan. Unfortunately, as Frame well shows, it’s not the only way, because Van Til was inconsistent in his view of common grace and left much behind him that lesser lights could pick up on and use with far less competence than he himself did to rip and rend and shred others. Peter can better tell you the problems with Van Til himself, but I stick by my own characterizations of the problems. The more I look at the Ancient, patristic, and Medieval worlds in detail, paying close attention to the primary sources, the less I find credible this fantastic myth of Reformation purity. I am simply personally unable to judge the rest of Christendom through the lens of the Reformed Faith as it is presently constituted and practiced. For me, the Reformed Faith as it is presently constituted and practiced is the thing that must be proven, not all the things against which it sets itself.
Jonathan and Tim,
Jonathan- There is a more moderate Van Tilianism, which approximates something like the traditional position. But Van Til himself, I’m sorry to say, basically does adopt a position of radical skepticism and then attempts to found knowledge in an a priori system with a fideistic core. He will grant that there is a natural theology (and for the record, I’m not particularly happy with calling it a “natural theology”- it’s an unfortunate phrase), but, since nothing is really knowable outside the a priori system, it basically amounts to the cosmological part of the system, as distinct from the historical and scriptural part; but no one outside the system really “gets” any of the cosmological part (CS Lewis, of course, held directly the opposite and built his apologetic on it: and which approach has brought countless numbers to Christ in the 20th C: that of Lewis, or that of VT and Bahnsen?). Thus, VT’s position is (notoriously) circular, and denies unbelievers any knowledge at all properly speaking. So Dabney’s objection holds here: VT’s view is basically a skepticism which supposedly saves itself by taking refuge in a circular a priori system privileged as “true”. As I wrote earlier in the thread, the problem is that VT takes the fact of spiritual-moral uselessness of natural knowledge, and epistemologizes it as incoherence: he transposes the traditional doctrine regarding the heart-soul into rational-cognitive categories (see the last paragraph of my comment, #36, above).
As I’ve said, I am willing to give VT due credit as an exegete and dogmatic commentator: he is right, sometimes very right, about any number of things. But his epistemology and apologetic is really destructive, though there are retrievable aspects and even some peculiar insights in it.
On Barth: I am more than willing to say that he was crazy in his rejection of natural theology, though I am sympathetic with his intention; he was trying to call us back to Luther’s attack on the theology of glory. But natural theology is not, as such, the theology of glory, and Luther didn’t think it was. Barth’s fideism here is socially (and thus ecclesially too) destructive. But I’m not sure why you mention Brunner here: he was one of the few Protestant theologians who vigorously defended the traditional doctrine regarding natural theology, and actually opposed Barth in this matter.
Tim-
just remember that the Reformed faith, even as “presently constituted and practiced” certainly isn’t identical with Van Tilianism or ahistorical sectarianism. To mention just one instance, at the Biblical horizons conference in July, I found myself in conversation with three Thomists (one a Peruvian Indian pastor working on the theme of the divine ideas in Aquinas; another, a missionary with a deep knowledge of traditional theology). And there have been a number of great teachers in recent decades who are catholic theologians of the first order: Barth, for one, whom Pius XII, as I recall, thought to be *the* great theologian of the 20th c. I am comfortable calling myself Reformed; I am certainly a Calvinist; but one of the greatest Protestant doctors of our time, CS Lewis, called himself a “mere Christian”, harking back to Baxter; and perhaps that name is best.
peace
P
Tim and Peter,
Thanks for the responses. They were both helpful in my attempt to get to the heart of the issues involved here.
I am with you, Tim, when you reject the notion that all ages of Christendom were steeped in darkness until the Reformation. I think you know this.
And I shouldn’t have mentioned Brunner. I was posting in a rush, and my mentioning him was based on a critique of Schleiermacher I read by him a while back that seemed to reject all notion of “natural theology”. I could have been reading him wrong, and I really haven’t read enough of him to have a right to mention his name in any discussion. If I would have taken a moment to think about it I wouldn’t have brought him up.