Plato and Christian Theology

 

Andrew Louth, “The Necessity of Platonism for Christian Theology”. 

Delivered remotely to the King’s College Chapel, 17 January 2021.

Link to full video: 2021 Robert Crouse Memorial Lecture.

Copious Flowers provides some pertinent excerpts of the address.

Related reading: Plato's Debt to Ancient Egypt

Albert Einstein on Bertrand Russell

 

Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge

By Albert Einstein

When the editor asked me to write something about Bertrand Russell, my admiration and respect for that author at once induced me to say yes. I owe innumerable happy hours to the reading of Russell's works, something which I cannot say of any other contemporary scientific writer, with the exception of Thorstein Veblen. Soon, however, I discovered that it is easier to give such a promise than to fulfill it. I had promised to say something about Russell as philosopher and epistemologist. After having in full confidence begun with it, I quickly recognized what a slippery field I had ventured upon, having, due to lack of experience, until now cautiously limited myself to the field of physics. The present difficulties of his science force the physicist to come to grips with philosophical problems to a greater degree than was the case with earlier generations. Although I shall not speak here of those difficulties, it was my concern with them, more than anything else, which led me to the position outlined in this essay. 

In the evolution of philosophic thought through the centuries the following question has played a major role: What knowledge is pure thought able to supply independently of sense perception? Is there any such knowledge? If not, what precisely is the relation between our knowledge and the raw material furnished by sense-impressions? An almost boundless chaos of philosophical opinions corresponds to these questions and to a few others intimately connected with them. Nevertheless there is visible in this process of relatively fruitless but heroic endeavours a systematic trend of development, namely an increasing scepticism concerning every attempt by means of pure thought to learn something about the "objective world,"· about the world of "things" in contrast to the world of mere "concepts and ideas." Be it said parenthetically that, just as on the part of a real philosopher, quotation-marks are used here to introduce an illegitimate concept, which the reader is asked to permit for the moment, although the concept is suspect in the eyes of the philosophical police. 

During philosophy's childhood it was rather generally believed that it is possible to find everything which can be known by means of mere reflection. It was an illusion which any one can easily understand if, for a moment, he dismisses what he has learned from later philosophy and from natural science; he will not be surprised to find that Plato ascribed a higher reality to "Ideas" than to empirically experienceable things. Even in Spinoza and as late as in Hegel this prejudice was the vitalizing force which seems still to have played the major role. Someone, indeed, might even raise the question whether, without something of this illusion, anything really great can be achieved in the realm of philosophic thought-but we do not wish to ask this question. 

This more aristocratic illusion concerning the unlimited penetrative power of thought has as its counterpart the more plebeian illusion of na1ve realism, according to which things "are" as they are perceived by us through our senses. This illusion dominates the daily life of men and of animals; it is also the point of departure in all of the sciences, especially of the natural sciences. The effort to overcome these two illusions is not independent the one of the other. The overcoming of na1ve realism has been relatively simple. In his introduction to his volume, An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, Russell has characterized this process in a marvellously pregnant fashion:

We all start from "naive realism," i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow, are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false. 

Apart from their masterful formulation these lines say something which had never previously occurred to me. For, superficially considered, the mode of thought in Berkeley and Hume seems to stand in contrast to the mode of thought in the natural sciences. However, Russell's just cited remark uncovers a connection: If Berkeley relies upon the fact that we do not directly grasp the "things" of the external world through our senses, but that only events causally connected with the presence of "things" reach our sense-organs, then this is a consideration which gets its persuasive character from our confidence in the physical mode of thought. For, if one doubts the physical mode of thought in even its most general features, there is no necessity to interpolate between the object and the act of vision anything which separates the object from the subject and makes the "existence of the object" problematical.

It was, however, the very same physical mode of thought and its practical successes which have shaken the confidence in the possibility of understanding things and their relations by means of purely speculative thought. Gradually the conviction gained recognition that all knowledge about things is exclusively a working-over of the raw-material furnished by the senses. In this general (and intentionally somewhat vaguely stated) form this sentence is probably today commonly accepted. But this conviction does not rest on the supposition that anyone haactually proved the impossibility of gaining knowledge of reality by means of pure speculation, but rather upon the fact that the empirical (in the above mentioned sense) procedure alone has shown its capacity to be the source of knowledge. Galileo and Hume first upheld this principle with full clarity and decisiveness. 

Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection, cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best of philosophers who came after him. One senses him in the reading of Russell's philosophical analyses, whose acumen and simplicity of expression have often reminded me of Hume.

Man has an intense desire for assured knowledge. That is why Hume's clear message seemed crushing: The sensory raw material, the only source of our knowledge, through habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge and still less to the understanding of law-abiding relations. Then Kant took the stage with an idea which, though certainly untenable in the form in which he put it, signified a step towards the solution of Hume's dilemma: Whatever in knowledge is of empirical origin is never certain (Hume). If, therefore, we have definitely assured knowledge, it must be grounded in reason itself. This is held to be the case, for example, in the propositions of geometry and in the principle of causality. These and certain other types of knowledge are, so to speak, a part of the. instrumentality of thinking and therefore do not previously have to be gained from sense data (i.e., they are a priori knowledge). Today everyone knows of course that the mentioned concepts contain nothing of the certainty, of the inherent necessity, which Kant had attributed to them. The following, however, appears to me to be correct in Kant's statement of the problem: in thinking we use, with a certain "right," concepts to which there is no access from the materials of sensory experience, if the situation is viewed from the logical point of view.

As a matter of fact, I am convinced that even much more is to be asserted: the concepts which arise in our thought and in our linguistic expressions are all-when viewed logically-the free creations of thought which cannot inductively be gained from sense-experiences. This is not so easily noticed only because we have the habit of combining certain concepts and conceptual relations (propositions) so definitely with certain sense-experiences that we do not become conscious of the gulf-logically unbridgeable--which separates the world of sensory experiences from the world of concepts and propositions.

Thus, for example, the series of integers is obviously an invention of the human mind, a self-created tool which simplifies the ordering of certain sensory experiences. But there is no way in which this concept could be made to grow, as it were, directly out of sense experiences. It is deliberately that I choose here the concept of number, because it belongs to pre-scientific thinking and because, in spite of that fact, its constructive character is still easily recognizable. The more, however, we turn to the most primitive concepts of everyday life, the more difficult it becomes amidst the mass of inveterate habits to recognize the concept as an independent creation of thinking. It was thus that the fateful conception-fateful, that is to say, for an. understanding of the here existing conditions-could arise, according to which the concepts originate from experience by way of "abstraction," i.e., through omission of a part of its content. I want to indicate now why this conception appears to me to be so fateful. As soon as one is at home in Hume's critique one is easily led to believe that all those concepts and propositions which cannot be deduced from the sensory raw-material are, on account of their "metaphysical" character, to be removed from thinking. For all thought acquires material content only through its relationship with that sensory material. This latter proposition I take to be entirely true; but I hold the prescription for thinking which is grounded on this proposition to be false. For this claim-if only carried through consistently absolutely excludes thinking of any kind as "metaphysical."

In order that thinking might not degenerate into "metaphysics,'' or into empty talk, it is only necessary that enough propositions of the conceptual system be firmly enough connected. with sensory experiences and that the conceptual system, in view of its task of ordering and surveying sense-experience, should show as much unity and parsimony as possible. Beyond that, however, the "system" is (as regards logic) a free play with symbols according to (logical) arbitrarily given rules of the game. All this applies as much (and in the same manner) to the thinking in daily life as to the more consciously and systematically constructed thought in the sciences.

It will now be clear what is meant if I make the following statement: By his clear critique Hume did not only advance philosophy in a decisive way but also-though through no fault of his-created a danger for philosophy in that, following his critique, a fateful "fear of metaphysics" arose which has come to be a malady of contemporary empiricistic philosophizing; this malady is the counterpart to that earlier philosophizing in the clouds, which thought it could neglect and dispense with what was given by the senses.

No matter how much one may admire the acute analysis which Russell has given us in his latest book on Meaning and Truth, it still seems to me that even there the spectre of the metaphysical fear has caused some damage. For this fear seems to me, for example, to be the cause for conceiving of the "thing" as a "bundle of qualities," such that the "qualities" are to be taken from the sensory raw-material. Now the fact that two things are said to be one and the same thing, if they coincide in all qualities, forces one to consider the geometrical relations between things as belonging to their qualities. (Otherwise one is forced to look upon the Eiffel Tower in Paris and that in New York as "the same thing.") 1 Over against that I see no "metaphysical' danger in taking the thing (the object in the sense of physics) as an independent concept into the system together with the proper spatio-temporal structure.

In view of these endeavours I am particularly pleased to note that, in the last chapter of the book, it finally crops out that one can, after all, not get along without "metaphysics." The only thing to which I take exception there is the bad intellectual conscience which shines through between the lines.

ALBERT EINSTEIN 

SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS 

THE INSTITUTE of ADVANCED STUDY

PRINCETON 

1 Compare Russell's An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, 119-12.01 chapter on "Proper Names."

From The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Vol. V of "The Library of Living Philosophers," edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 1944. Translated from the original German by Paul Arthur Schilpp. Tudor Publishers.

Related reading: What Albert Einstein Thought of Christianity; Einstein Was Right About Education

Derrida's Style of Writing

 

Paul Austin Murphy looks at Derrida's intentionally obscure writing style. Murphy observes:

How much does a reader need to know about Derrida’s writing style (as well as his philosophy) in order to recognise his (to use Critchley’s words) “wordplay”, “intertextual references”, “allusions”, “neologisms” and “paleonomy”?

Clearly — a hell of a lot.

Of course one can easily argue that one needs to be tuned in — at least to some extent - to any philosopher in order to understand what he or she says. Yet added to that fact — again — is Derrida’s use of language to make it say things it hasn’t previously said. That compounds the difficulties for the reader. And, of course, it’s very clear that Derrida was very happy with making things difficult. Indeed one could easily argue that making things difficult for the reader was at least part of Derrida’s (philosophical) point!

 Read the whole article here.

David Bradshaw on Faith and Reason

 

Dr. David Bradshaw

In this 2018 article published in Touchstone Magazine, Dr. David Bradshaw (University of Kentucky) explores the relationship between faith and reason, and the views of various philosophers as to how Truth is perceived.

Related reading: David Bradshaw on the Relationship Between Philosophy and Theology

Of His Blood and Eternity

 

Joan Violet Robinson said, "Time is a device to prevent everything from happening at once." To this, someone quipped, "Space is a device to prevent everything from happening in Cambridge."

Dr. Alice C. Linsley


Humans today tend to think in terms of linear history. Events of history appear to have a beginning, a middle (climax or denouement), and an end. However, all events have complex etiologies and some of the forces at work are never recognized by historians.

Linear thinkers tend to view the progression of history as either positive and upward or negative and downward. The obsession of some Fundamentalists with the End Times is an example. They speak of moral corruption, crime, famines, earthquakes, pandemics, wars and rumors of wars as absolute proof that we are living in the last days and that Jesus Christ's return is near.

The secular positivists speak instead of the progress made through technology, medicine, and the sciences. They grow excited about the possibility that humans could live forever (transhumanism) or that human settlements on other planets could insure an eternity for the species. They embrace the concept of evolutionary progress over time.  

Spiral found on ancient petroglyphs in what is today Sudan.

In the ancient world it was common to think of time as cyclical and to equate the various cycles to patterns such as the seasons or the location of stars and constellations in the night sky. The cyclical view of time and the Fundamentalist view of time were challenged and eclipsed by the evolutionary mindset of the Twentieth Century.

That mindset became a template through which data was interpreted. In the study of religion, it was assumed that primitive humans were superstitious, animistic, and polytheists. This equates primitive to a brutish nature. However, this evolutionary conception of religion simply does not stand up when closely evaluated. Rudolf Otto wrote a book about this: The Idea of the Holy (1923). He believed that early humans responded to the "numinous" out of emotion rather than reason. That does not seem to be true when we look at all the data. Early humans were great observers of patterns in Nature, and they drew rational conclusions based on those observations. That is why Paul states that all are without excuse in Romans 1:20.

In reality, time is a great mystery. We cannot apply the term "time" to the eternal because the eternal is timeless. "Eternal” means outside of time. Time and space were created for humanity because humble clay needs fixed boundaries or external pressures to keep its shape.

The Triune God is not bound by time and space. The co-eternal Son is said to fill all things, seen and unseen. This means that the Blood of Jesus Messiah establishes a timeless covering for those who are "in Christ" or who "put on" Christ. Those living before His Incarnation and those living after His Incarnation are covered by the same Blood if they find communion with the Creator who seeks to be the God and Father of all.

Paul uses the term "pleroma" in his epistles when speaking of Christ filling all things. For Paul, the pleroma is the manifestation of the benefits of Jesus’ timeless blood. The Apostle Paul refers to the blood of Jesus no less than twelve times in his writings. Because God makes peace with us through the Blood of the Cross, he urges “Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together” (Ephesians. 4:3).

Paul explains that Jesus Christ is the fullness (“pleroma” in Greek) of all things in heaven and on earth, both invisible and visible. The term “pleroma” was used among the Gnostics to describe the metaphysical unity of all things, but Paul uses the term to speak about how the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ in bodily form (Col. 2:9).

Paul’s use of the term pleroma, as well the appearance of this term in other First Century writings, suggests that the concept was widely circulating in apostolic times. Against the Gnostics, the biblical writers used it to explain that the mystical Body of Christ fills heaven and earth; that He is sovereign over all and in all. For the Gnostics, the pleroma is vague and undifferentiated, but for Paul the pleroma is about the Son of God and the benefits of the blood of Jesus. Paul hoped to prevent the early Christians from wandering from the Blood of Jesus that brings forgiveness and eternal life.

The Cross is central for Paul, but its benefits are not bound by time. Doubtless, the reader will have heard about the cross as an especially excruciating form of execution invented by the Romans. That is true. However, the efficacy of the Blood of Jesus does not rely on the existence of the Roman empire.

Reality is the deposit of the fullness of all things hidden and revealed in Christ. Paul wants his converts to understand that they are “entrusted with the mysteries of God” so that they may faithfully proclaim the Gospel; so that hearers “may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ” (I Cor. 4:1, Eph. 3:9; Col. 2:2). The pleromic Blood of which Paul speaks constitutes a single reality. One is either in Christ or not in Christ; connected to the Life-giving eternal reality or not connected. Abraham was connected. His Faith was not of a different dispensation because Paul reminds the Gentile believers that they are grafted into the faith of Abraham (Rom. 11:17). 

Paul articulated his understanding of the pleroma as early as his second missionary journey when he preached to the Athenians that, “in Him [Jesus Christ] we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) However, Paul’s thoughts on this developed further as he continued to reflect on the Hebrew Scriptures, prayed and fasted, and received greater illumination by Christ. We find the fullest expression of the pleroma in his latter writings, especially in Romans and in Ephesians.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. (Ephesians 1:7-10)

Paul's confession of the pleromic Blood of Christ informs his understanding of the Body of Christ. He writes: “There is one Body, one Spirit, just as one hope is the goal of your calling by God. There is one Lord, one Faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, over all, through all and within all” (Eph. 4:4-5).

Lest we presume that the pleromic understanding of the Blood of Jesus is an invention of St. Paul, we should consider also these words from St. John:

Who can overcome the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? He it is who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with water alone but with water and blood, and it is the Spirit that bears witness, for the Spirit is Truth. So there are three witnesses, the Spirit, water and blood, and the three of them coincide. (I John 5:5-8)

Related reading: Paul's Application of Greek Philosophy; The Pleromic Blood and Gnosticism; Theories of Time; Meditation on the Holy Cross; The Oldest Known Religion; On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality; Three Views of Time and Eternity; The Timeless Mystery of God; Adam Green: The Past and Futures of the Philosophy of Religion

Is "Complementarianism" a Biblical Concept?

 

The king is shown with Sun-darkened skin. His queen appears with Moon-whitened skin.

This expresses the gender distinctions and binary reasoning of the Nilotic Hebrew.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Among Evangelicals the roles of males and females are prescribed by a doctrine called "complementarianism." This belief maintains that God created men and women equal in dignity and personhood, yet different and serving complementary roles in Church, Home, and Society. The male is the head of the home and the lead authority in the Church. 

The book of Genesis states that both male and female are made in the imago Dei. In the egalitarian mindset this is often articulated dualistically. Males and females are equally in the divine image. They are equally qualified for all jobs. Women can do anything men can do. Men can do anything women can do. 

Except this is not true. In the order of creation women cannot impregnate with sperm. Men cannot conceive and give birth. When it comes to reproductive processes, there is mutual dependence, but no equivalent function.

To impose egalitarianism on the canonical Scriptures is to distort the biblical view of the order of creation which denies dualism. The yin-yang may be equal and inseparable entities in Asian thought, but in biblical thought one entity of a binary set is always observably superior in some way to its partner. This is expressed in statements of the obvious. In the binary set of Sun-Moon, the Sun is the greater light (Gen. 1:16). The light of the Moon is refulgent. The male is larger and stronger than the female. 

Is complementarianism the same as the binary view of Scripture? 

It cannot be the same because Evangelicals omit an important feature of the binary worldview: the unique contribution of the Virgin Mary as the mother of Jesus the God-Man. Unless she be venerated (not worshipped) the binary balance of Righteous Manhood and Righteous Womanhood is absent. Why is Mary declared the most blessed among women? Because she did what only a woman could do. She brought forth the God-Man! Mary shines with the refulgent brightness of her son, Jesus Messiah.

Archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic research provides many examples of the binary reasoning of the early Hebrew from whom we received the Messianic faith we call "Christianity." This reasoning extends to the metaphysical: Life is greater than death. However, it does not apply to the Godhead which is uncreated.

The God-Man would not be considered a binary set in the biblical sense because 1. this is unique, 2. in Christ these are of one being/substance/essence, 3. in Christ the Man has been made God, 4 in Christ God has been made Man. So the mystery of the Trinity does not meet the requirement that one entity of the set be superior to the other in an observable way.

Binary reasoning in the Bible pertains to the order of creation and the God-Man is not created.

The bishops, priests, and deacons who came together at the early ecumenical councils struggled with the created-uncreated distinction, and after more than one difficult and costly convocation, began to resolve the Christological and Trinitarian questions.

Until the Anglicans recognize the unique nature of the priesthood as a divine ordinance which began with the biblical Hebrew, the question of women's ordination will not be resolved to anyone's satisfaction. The Evangelical approach is to speak of the priesthood as a generalized "pastoral ministry." This obfuscates the historic nature of the priesthood as being about the Blood. It comes close to denying the blood work of the Cross. Among the biblical Hebrew, blood work was observed as binary: the bloodwork of males and the blood work of females. The first involved war, hunting, and animal sacrifice. The second involved reproductive processes. That is why women were never priests. The two bloods could not be present in the same locale. 

Related reading: The Athanasian Creed; The Binary Distinctions of the Horite Hebrew; Binary is a Bad Word These Days; Why Women Were Never Priests; Blood and Binary Distinctions; Rethinking Gender Equality; What Christians May Safely Disbelieve

A Popular Fallacy to Suppress Dissent

 

Michael LaBossiere

While the Leave It fallacy can be seen as a type of Ad Hominem because it involves rejecting a person’s claim based on an irrelevant attack on the person, it has two distinguishing features.

First, the person is attacked because they are being critical of something. This attack often involves asserting the critic is motivated by a secret association or agreement with a disliked group. Second, rather than refuting the criticism, the attacker only tells the target to “leave.” There is, however, the implied conclusion that the person told to leave is thus wrong in their criticism. The fallacy has the following general form:

Premise 1. Person A makes critical claim X about Y.

Premise 2. Person B attacks A (usually for an alleged association/agreement with a disliked group G) and says that if A does not like X about Y, then they should leave Y (usually for G).

Conclusion: Therefore, X is false.

This argument is a fallacy because attacking a person and telling them to leave does not prove their criticism is false. The fallacy draws much of its psychological power from the cognitive bias of groupthink and ingroup bias. Groupthink is the tendency to try to minimize conflict and form a consensus by suppressing dissent and avoiding outside influences. Ingroup bias is the tendency to see one’s own group as superior and outsiders as inferior. Someone who is critical of a group can easily be presented as a threat and people in that group can be motivated to reject that criticism out of anger and dislike. These biases do not, of course, have any logical weight.

Care should be taken to not confuse the Leave It fallacy with the False Dilemma “love it or leave it.” The idea in this False Dilemma is that one has just two options: to love something (typically a country) utterly and never criticize it or leave it. There are obviously many other options. The difference between the two is that the Leave It fallacy involves using an attack on the person to “argue” that their criticism is false while the False Dilemma “love it or leave it” is intended to silence criticism by wrongly asserting that one has only the two choices. It can often be hard to distinguish the two because people often combine them and those attempting these fallacies often do not know what they are doing themselves.

Defense: The defense against this fallacy is to try to reason through any negative feelings one might have and ask if any relevant refutation of the criticism has been offered. If it has not, then the “argument” gives no reason to reject that criticism. This does not mean that the criticism is therefore true—it just means the fallacy does not provide any reason to reject it.

Example #1

“These woke liberals claim that America still has systematic racism. But their brains have been corrupted by the foreign philosophies of the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism. If they hate America so much, they should just leave!”



Example #2

“These conservatives claim that America has Marxist elements. But their brains have been corrupted by the foreign philosophies of fascism and Nazism. If they hate America so much, they should just leave!”