Paradox Of The Incarnation

Working through parts of Kierkegaard’s (pseudonymous) Philosophical Fragments in one of my classes, Johannes Climacus discusses Christ’s incarnation as a paradox, an affront to reason. The way in which I typically think of the incarnation as an affront to reason is in (probably far too simplistic and unhelpful) terms of percentages: Christ is 100% human and 100% divine. The problem, of course, is how something—anything—can be completely one thing and also completely something else, how it can “own” in its entirety and identity two sets of incompatible or contradictory or opposing attributes. (Which one of the three disjuncts we choose to describe the sets of attributes is important, but one that I’ll leave aside for now.)

Another way to put this is in terms of communicable attributes. There are certain attributes God has that are said to be communicable, or capable of being attributed (though in an analogical rather than univocal sense) to humans: loving, just, merciful, etc. And there are incommunicable attributes that specify characteristics unique to God, ones that can’t even analogically be said to describe creatures: omnipotence, omniscience, aseity (independence), immutability (unchangeableness), perfect, infinite, etc. (Because these latter characteristics are supposed to be describing a being completely different from us creatures (at least in those ways), they often have negative (a-, im-, in-) or superlative (omni-) prefixes attached.)

Apart from the question of whether or not we can even talk intelligibly about God’s incommunicable attributes (Michael Horton in his Lord and Servant has a very interesting argument for how we can), there is the question of whether, or how, God’s attributes can also be human attributes in the person of Christ. Of particular concern are the incommunicable attributes, but, really, both these attributes and the communicable attributes are problematic, for if Christ is God then he would have even God’s communicable attributes univocally and not just analogically. What has the finite to do with the infinite? Can omniscience be predicated of Christ as human or can mercy be predicated univocally of Christ as God?

In his chapter “The Lord as Servant,” Horton discusses some of the pitfalls of non-Chalcedonian takes on Christ’s two natures, in which there is either too much separation (emphasizing Christ’s humanity) or too much confusion or melding together (ultimately divinizing Christ). Horton, of course, wants to steer the course set by Chalcedon: one person in two natures without division and without confusion. One way to separate the natures, for instance, would be to say that some attributes apply to one of the natures (e.g., the communicable ones to Christ’s humanity) while other attributes apply to the other nature (e.g., the incommunicable ones to Christ’s divinity). But this makes Christ schizophrenic at best and is an unbiblical view at worst (e.g., Acts 20:28 – God purchased the church with His own blood). The way of confusion would be something like Barth’s position that Christ reveals God only in his divinity, only in terms of his divine attributes.

So how does Chalcedon steer clear of the paradoxical nature of the incarnation?

“The doctrine of the two natures of Christ must be articulated within a thoroughly Trinitarian framework, without simply reducing one nature to the other. The paradox must never be resolved in any final synthesis: this, it seems, is precisely the point that Chalcedon makes.” (176)

What is this Trinitarian framework? It has been easy for theologians in the past to view Christ’s humanity as being wielded by his divinity, like someone wielding a tool (e.g., Athanasius held this view). This would ease the tension brought on by the paradox, but it fails to give full weight to Christ’s humanity. Horton’s answer is that when we put Christ’s work, and, thereby, Christ’s nature(s), within the context of covenant—the covenants of redemption and of creation—we see him as both the eternal Son and the second Adam, respectively. It is particularly in his active obedience regarding the covenant of creation—accomplishing what Adam could not—where Horton sees the Trinity at work, for

“the Son of Man claims victory for himself by right and not merely by gift, nor indeed by virtue of his deity.” (172)

Christ, obedient in his humanity, was upheld by the Spirit of God to accomplish and fulfill the task set before him and not just because his humanity was carried along like so much baggage on the back of the Logos. The paradox is not finally resolved—at least not in the sense that it now becomes rationally acceptable and ceases to be an affront to (unregenerate) reason—but perhaps the tension could be eased a bit.

Horton has us think about the two natures—the finite and the infinite—in terms of containment, what is called the extracalvinisticum: the finite cannot contain the infinite. Reformed folks have not interpreted this to mean that there could be no uniting of the two, but to mean instead that the two couldn’t be confused or commingled. That is, the infinite will not be contained in the finite without remainder; the former will always outstrip the latter. Heidelberg Catechism Q. 48:

“Since divinity is not limited and is present everywhere, it is evident that Christ’s divinity is surely beyond the bounds of the humanity he has assumed, but at the same time his divinity is in and remains personally united to his humanity.”

One of the problems with the paradox is thinking of the divine attributes as applying in the same way to the Logos as to Christ, without taking into consideration the humanity with which those attributes are united. Is Christ infinite in exactly the same way as the Logos? No. Is Christ infinite? Yes. QED

Kierkegaard and Apologetics

Christianity has always rooted itself and its claims in historical fact, not only in the Scriptures themselves but in the creeds of the Church—after all, Pontius Pilate makes his way into the Apostles’ Creed. In the Philosophical Fragments Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus (“John the Ladder”), considers the role of historical evidence, particularly regarding the Incarnation, in providing a basis for faith. Climacus claims that historical evidence is neither necessary nor sufficient for faith, yet it plays the role as an occasion for faith. In fact, Climacus argues that we can’t reason our way to God at all; the attempt is doomed from the start, for we cannot raise ourselves, epistemologically speaking, to God’s level in order to know Him. One reason, I think, that Kierkegaard has Climacus say this is because Kierkegaard is very much concerned to counter a kind of intellectualized Christianity that he saw permeating Denmark, one where Truth was not seeping into the very persons who assented to Christian doctrine. Another reason, closer to Climacus’ concerns, has to do with the nature of the relationship between us and God. A problem arises between unequals for any love affair (as Climacus calls it), but this is especially so in a love affair between an infinite, holy God and finite, sinful human beings. How can this inequality be overcome? What point of contact could God have with human beings?

Climacus begins the work by considering two contrasting ways of coming to a knowledge of truth: Opinion A and Opinion B. Opinion A is essentially a Socratic/Platonic view of knowledge from Plato’s dialogue, Meno. In the dialogue, the truth is seen as something that resides in the person and knowledge is brought about by a teasing out of this truth by the teacher through Socratic questioning. In this case, the teacher imparts nothing but acts as an intellectual midwife (as Socrates once called himself), birthing the truth that was already within. The learner is not transformed. According to Opinion B, on the other hand, the learner is transformed by the teacher, who imparts upon the learner the condition for understanding the truth. The learner is unable to come to a knowledge of the truth on his own but needs help—he needs a savior, a deliverer, a judge (as Climacus says). He needs what Climacus calls “the god” as teacher.

Climacus claims not to be a Christian; he has not ascended to a knowledge of God, even through faith. But, I think, Kierkegaard was a Christian, and Opinion B clearly has God (and not just “the god”) as teacher in mind. The reason why we cannot ascend to a knowledge of God on our own, the reason we need a teacher, a deliverer, a savior is, ironically, the very point of contact that God has with human beings: the Incarnation. Human reason cannot comprehend the Incarnation; its paradoxical nature offends reason, so reason (apart from faith) decides not to believe it. Faith, says Climacus, is a gift from God that allows the individual to believe what reason could not. Reason, in this case, is not abrogated but rather fulfilled.

But, and this is closer to whatever apologetical implications Philosophical Fragments might have, reason is also unable to believe—at least with any certainty—based on historical evidence. Climacus’ reasoning for this claim is admittedly difficult and convoluted, but it amounts to seeing an historical event as being contingent by virtue of its coming into being, since that which comes into being from not-being cannot be necessary (for what is necessary cannot change or not-be). The upshot here is that reason is unable either to accept or reject any historical event with complete certainty—including the Incarnation. Because of the paradoxical nature of the Incarnation, reason takes offence and refuses to believe. Although this may seem like a “reasonable” way for reason to react, it can’t disbelieve with certainty—it can’t say, “It is absolutely true that the Incarnation is impossible.”

Belief is a function of the will, a conclusion of the will. Both reason and faith can be grounds of belief (in a causal sense, at the very least), but as belief is a function of the will, reason and faith will ultimately both be grounded in passion. Reason, the intellect, for Climacus, is not some neutral arbiter with regard to what it accepts or rejects. In the end, it has as little (or as much) rationale behind its decisions as does faith. It is no better; it is no worse. But because of its imperialistic nature, because it wants to impose its rational standards and criteria upon the world, because it refuses to see its own limitations, because (as Climacus says) its capacity to understand the things of God is affected by sin, there is the need for God to provide the condition necessary to understand the things of God: faith.

The apologetical implications are these. In the end, historical evidence will not decide the acceptance or rejection of the things of God. Understanding will ultimately come from God in the form of faith, not from reasoning our way through to an understanding, because the intellect has been made incapable of understanding the things of God through sin; that is, the problem is ultimately moral rather than epistemological. Yet, evidence can provide the means by which God transforms the individual.

As C. Stephen Evans notes in his essay on Philosophical Fragments, this looks a lot like Reformed epistemology: beliefs can be warranted even if they are not based on any evidence that can be appealed to, and beliefs are warranted by virtue of their being the result of “faculties designed to reach truth that are working properly in the kind of environment in which they were designed to function” (Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function). Our faculties were designed to reach the truth by working properly in God’s creation. But sin got in the way—our faculties no longer work properly, though they remain in the environment in which they were designed to function. So, (un)naturally, we’ll mess things up about God’s world. Where faith comes in is that it reorients our faculties to their proper working order. So, as Augustine and Calvin claimed, faith is necessary for understanding and for properly warranted belief.

Channel of the Beast

Well, maybe not, but anyway...

The soon-to-be-my-new-pad has cable TV. While taking a break from moving stuff into the apartment, against my better judgment (and better judgment in general) I watched a little bit of TBN. Pat Robertson and a couple of others of his ilk were in some kind of infomercial about why Christians should give money to this group in order to provide help to and care for Jews. Christians should certainly be interested in helping others, including Jews, but the basis on which Robertson et al. urged action was completely misguided and reflected a lack of biblical understanding. The reasoning: Since God says in the bible that those who bless Israel will themselves be blessed, and since giving money to help members of the Jewish race constitutes blessing them, if you give money to this group then you will thereby be blessed. What's the problem? It certainly doesn't lie in the action urged, but just because the conclusion is agreeable doesn't mean the argument is a good one. We should combat poor arguments no matter where they occur.

The missing link in this chain of reasoning is that the blessing of the nations no longer points to national Israel but to Christ. "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying 'All the nations shall be blessed in you'" (Galatians 3:8). The blessing that comes is justification by faith. Faith in who? Abraham? Israel? No, in Christ. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us ... in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Galatians 3:13-14). The coming of Christ, the inauguration of a New Covenant, was significant. It showed that the covenant promises once given to national Israel are now ultimately fulfilled in Christ. Sure, the blessing comes through (and to) Abraham and his descendents, but, as Paul argues, the true descendents of Abraham are those who have the faith of Abraham and it is this faith that brings the blessing. The blessing has its basis in Christ, not in the Jewish race.

Lost: Men of Faith

[Spoilers below]

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

There were a number of significant things happening in this week's episode, but the one that stood out to me the most was the issue of faith (and losing faith) in the interaction between Locke and Ecko. Up until fake Henry told Locke that the button didn't do anything, Locke had complete faith in pushing the button, that it was accomplishing something grand and significant, even though he didn't know quite what the purpose was. The important thing is that it was important to do; Jack's suggestion that it was just some big experiment didn't phase him. His experience of a miraculous recovery initiated his faith in whatever else the island would bring ("The island changed me, it made me whole"). He felt led by the island (e.g., in dreams). He embraced the weird and unexplainable things going on on the island (such as the black smoke), even against Jack's skeptical objections. But now he has become Jack in his skepticism, and Ecko is there to rekindle his faith.

In Season 1 when Locke and Boone were trying to get the hatch door open, Locke shows faith in the island against Boone's skepticism.

"This is useless. It's a dead end, you can't get in."
"Don't tell me what I can't do. We didn't find this by accident. We were supposed to find this."
"If we're supposed to open it, then why haven't we opened it yet?"
"The island will send us a sign. All that's happening now is that our faith is being tested, our committment. But we will open it. The island will show us how."

The sign ended up being a vision/dream of a plane crashing on the island and a bloody Boone. A plane did crash (carrying Ecko's brother) and Boone ends up bloody...and dead.

In the last episode of Season 1 when they got the dynamite from the ship and the black smoke monster tried to pull Locke down a hole, Locke's belief that he is being tested by the island comes back to the fore in a conversation with Jack.

"I believe that I was being tested. I think that's why you and I don't see eye to eye sometimes, Jack, because you're a man of science."
"Yeah, and what does that make you?"
"Me? Well, I'm a man of faith. Do you really think all of this is an accident? Do you think we crashed in this place by coincidence? In this place? We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason, all of us. Each one of us was brought here for a reason."
"And who brought us here, John?"
"The island. This is no ordinary place. The island chose you, too, Jack. It's destiny."
"Did you talk with Boone about destiny, John?"
"Boone was the sacrifice that the island demanded. What happened with him in that plane was part of a chain of events that led us here, that led us down the path, that led you and me to this day, to right now."
"And where does that path end, John?"
"The path ends at the hatch. All of it happens so that we can open the hatch."
"I don't believe in destiny."
"Yes, you do. You just don't know it yet."

For Locke, everything has led up to the hatch. Yet, fake Henry introduces doubt in the grand purpose of their being in the hatch, of pushing the button. Locke begins to lose his faith in what they are doing, in a sense of purpose and meaning to his and their actions. When people call in "your hatch" in addressing him, he corrects them: "It's not my hatch."

Enter Ecko. He, like Locke, has dreams that he feels led by. Building the church is due to a dream. He dreams that he must help Locke rekindle his faith: both dead AL and dead Yemi say he must help Locke. Interestingly, Yemi also tells Ecko that "the work being done in this hatch is of great importance and it is in danger." This would lead one to think that it's not just one big experiment after all but that it has a real purpose. Yet when they get to the plane and find The Pearl station, they see that what is going on in The Swan is an experiment after all. There is no grand purpose or meaning behind it. Just at the time when Locke's faith seems to come back, when he excitedly asks Ecko if he can do the honors of opening the new-found hatch door, this breaks him.

There is an interesting reversal of roles between Locke and Ecko.

1. In their hatch conversation when Ecko mentions Boone, Locke repeats his phrase, "The sacrifice demanded by the island" as if it no longer had the meaning attached to it when he first uttered it, as if it is something long ago that he used to believe but no longer does. He says it without feeling, without life. Before Ecko got on the Oceanic flight, he pretended to be a priest, repeating phrases in the confessional that a priest is supposed to say. He said them without feeling, without meaning. But now, on the island, they mean something to him. He once was not a man of faith; now he is.
   
2. In the conversation where he mentions Boone, Ecko is reviewing a number of events that, taken together, point to some meaning beyond mere coincidence. That a plane from Nigeria ended up on an island in the South Pacific, that the plane contained his brother, that Ecko and Locke were on the same flight that crashed on that same island, that Ecko and Locke are now together in that hatch. Ecko's beliefs reflect what Locke used to believe: "We are being tested. The reason to do it, push the button, is not because we were told to do so in a film. We do it because we believe we are meant to." Locke, however, seems to have lost his faith in the island. "It's a joke, rats in a maze...without the cheese." "I was never meant to do anything! Every single second of my pathetic little life is as useless as that button.... It's nothing. It's meaningless. And who are you to tell me that it's not?" The path to the hatch is truly, as Boone said, a dead end for Locke.
   

What strikes me as interesting about Ecko's faith in what they are doing is that it seems stronger even after the realization that pushing the button has no purpose. At least, it does not have the purpose that they were led to believe (by Desmond) that it had. After viewing the orientation film, Ecko says to John: "I believe that the work you have been doing [i.e., pushing the button] is more important than ever." This just seems incredible. Locke had a faith in the unknown and thought that all would be revealed in the hatch. Now that this isn't the case, now that the veil has been pulled back to reveal nothing but a human experiment, now that the unknown is known to be nothing, Locke crumbles.

But, for some reason, Ecko is all the more excited. "We do it because we believe we are meant to." Like Locke asks Ecko on the way to the plane, I want to ask him, "Are you seeing something I'm not?" What is Ecko's faith in? Faith in the power of a sense of purpose, even when that purpose is not efficacious, when it is ineffectual? Ecko seems to be saying that the sense of purpose is even more important when the actions performed don't really accomplish anything - at least not what they are primarily meant to accomplish. I suspect Ecko's point is that some things are accomplished by our actions and our sense of purpose in those actions other than what we think the actions are supposed to accomplish. Sometimes our actions accomplish things we do not expect or are not looking for, things that are unknown to us. Ecko seems to be getting Locke to look even further beyond where his sights were once set. What happens when our sense of purpose and meaning leaves us? We cease to live. "Every single second of my pathetic little life is as useless as that button." We no longer care about living. Perhaps that is the danger that Yemi warned Ecko about - not an immediate danger, like the world will blow up if the button isn't pushed, but a less tangible but more deep-seated danger of losing hope.

On some level, however, this conclusion seems to me too froo-froo and rather objectionable. Is faith in God simply an illusion of meaning and purpose that we impose upon an otherwise meaningless existence, as Camus claims? Is religion, as a defender of faith, really just the opiate of the masses, something to keep us happy in an otherwise unhappy existence, as Freud claimed? Is having a sense of purpose, no matter what that purpose is, what is ultimately important? I would have to say No to all of these questions. And the curious thing is that I would expect Ecko to give the same response. Unlike Locke, who has/had faith in the island, Ecko is always talking about God; he quotes Scripture; he carves it on his whoop stick. His faith orientation (how cheesy! but the phrase works) is very different from that of Locke. Yet he seems, in his belief about the importance of pushing the button, to be going further down the unorthodox path than Locke did. Is this new revelation in The Pearl station fitting in to Ecko's master plan? He's building a church for a reason, or so I assume. (But given that he has a penchant for doing things without knowing their consequences or ultimate goal, that probably is the wrong assumption to make.) I wonder what Ecko's got up his clerical sleeve here.

Lord and Servant: Intro, Chapter 1

Having sat on Michael Horton's Lord and Servant for too long now, I'm going back to refresh my every-failing memory on what he's said for the first 150 pages. I figured I might as well write it down somewhere, and where better than on a blog? Expect future installments.

Introduction

Lord and Servant is the second in my three-volume project whose principal burden is to take up some critical questions in contemporary systematic theology with the concrete covenantal structure of the Creator-creature relationship serving as a hermeneutical guide. (vii)

As I have argued in the introductory volume (Covenant and Eschatology), drama is the genre best suited to such a project and analogy is the appropriate epistemological corollary. Throughout this book, I will work out these assumptions. My goal in this project, stretched over three volumes, is to appeal to Scripture as a script for the divine drama and to take up crucial topics and debates in contemporary theology with covenant and eschatology as hermeneutical guides. (xiii)

In Covenant and Eschatology, Horton argued for a way of approaching contemporary theological and philosophical issues, topics, and debates that has a covenantal framework as its locus. Two of the principal assumptions of this framework, as he mentions above, are understanding God and his work in history in terms of drama and analogy. Among the consequences of his dramatic focus is a focus upon the acts of the characters and not just on the script/text that is acted out. Part of his reason for this is to counter the hyper-textual emphasis of postmodern philosophy and theology - the emphasis on meta-narratives that marginalize, on understanding one's relation to anything as an interaction of reader and text, on the indeterminacy of interpretation, on the primacy of visual metaphors (e.g., seeing as knowing). Drama, in contrast, brings in to play much more than just visual and textual elements (although those remain): personal relationship/interaction, emphasis on acts/actions, temporal/historical flow as context of (understanding) actions. For Horton, this is much better suited to understanding God and his redemptive work. We don't just emphasize the script (Scripture), but also God's and our actions in light of that script.

Horton also spent a good deal of time and space arguing that analogy was the best way of describing our knowledge of God. He is not so different from us that we cannot understand him, but then again he is not so like us that there is no difference. As in any analogy, there is both similarity and difference. As Dorothy Sayers attempts to do in her The Mind of the Maker, we can know something about God by looking at ourselves. But such an approach does not exhaust who God is; we cannot know completely who God is or come to a full understanding of his essential nature. Yet insofar as he as revealed himself to us, we can come to some understanding, some true understanding, of who he is.

In this book, Lord and Servant, Horton engages in more straightforward application of the approach argued for in Covenant and Eschatology.

Chapter 1: Meeting A Stranger

In this chapter Horton considers three scenarios about how we encounter God, if we do at all: overcoming estrangement, the stranger we never meet, and meeting a stranger.

Overcoming estrangement
God is a stranger, an other-than-ourselves. One way of thinking about how we might encounter God - about how we might know him - is to see the encounter as one of erasing the estrangement that is present. In this scenario, meeting God amounts to his no longer being a stranger at all. God becomes an expression or manifestation of ourselves and our nature. Encountering God is more like an awareness of something that has always been immanent; it's just that now we are clued in to what was previously hidden but there (in us) all along. This is a scenario of hyper-immanence. There is no transcendence. God is not wholly other after all.

The Stranger We Never Meet
Just as we were faced with hyper-immanence above, here we have a hyper-transcendence - God cannot be encountered. Horton brings in the notion from Derrida that hyper-immanence does a certain violence to the other. In that scenario, the self's and God's being are compared, rendered the same, which is how we can overcome estrangement (through an ontological connection). The violence is that the other is no longer the other but is tantamount to something in ourselves, something that is us. The other is murdered in overcoming estrangement. Derrida rightly finds this distasteful, but opts for the complete avoidance of presence altogether, so as not to risk the violence that presence would bring. God's presence, meeting God, is forever postponed. God is wholly other and not to be encountered.

Meeting A Stranger
Horton argues for something of a middle ground between these two scenarios, one in which God remains a stranger but one who we can meaningfully encounter. His two assumptions - drama and analogy - come into play in this scenario. God is a stranger, an other, in the sense that his being is not our own; he is qualitatively ontologically different from us. We do not meet God by seeing him as a manifestation of our nature, yet we must acknowledge that we meet him and know him as he reveals himself to us. This is the analogical account of the epistemological situation.

Horton's dramatic emphasis brings out the relational aspect of meeting God. Recognizing God is an ethical and relational enterprise rather than an ontological or metaphysical or epistemological one. God's essence, his being, is hidden from us. We cannot know it. Does that mean that we cannot know God? Absolutely not. We know him by his acts, by the drama he has been and is even now unfolding in redemptive history. He is the primary actor as well as creator of the story that is played out. We know God insofar as he has revealed himself to us. It is not a matter of ascending to God but of his descending to us.

Where does the covenantal framework fit in? The context of such a meeting, of this knowledge of God, is the covenant. The way in which God makes himself known is in terms of creating relationships through a union based on oaths and a relationship based on sanctions. Thus,

one implication of a covenantal approach is that divine "presence" and "absence" are ethical and relational rather than ontological categories. (12)

Immanence, God's presence, is not in and of itself a good thing. The question of its goodness or badness is connected to our ethical relationship to him. Given the encounter, given that God reveals himself to us, how are we to respond? Having been summoned, the Word having been proclaimed, do we then call on him for salvation and redemption, thereby receiving his favor? Or do we turn our heads, close our eyes, and cover our ears, thereby receiving just judgment? How we think about God's presence (and absence), the categories we put this in, should be primarily ethical and relational. In Scripture, and for the federal theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, God's presence signified his actions within a covenantal framework and our ethical response to them; it does not primarily signify a set of characteristics ascribed to God's being. The attributes of God in Scripture are intimately tied to concrete, historical covenant and not to some abstract essence. This also is the way in which we need to understand him.

In the next chapter, Horton deals with what are traditionally regarded as the incommunicable and the communicable attributes of God, placing their understanding within the covenantal framework he defends.

Meeting A Stranger

Existentialist thought is very much concerned with the existing individual. Heck, the existing individual (as opposed, say, to the abstract, metaphysical, or theoretical individual) is absolutely central to existentialist thought, as it is that around which existentialist themes and issues revolve. The center of the existentialist solar system. The music in the Sartrean iPod. The creamy nougat center of...well, maybe not that, but for an atheistic existentialists like Sartre the absolute freedom and complete autonomy of this creamy nougat center is jeapordized by the Other, by the outsider, the not-I who imposes limitations on the self. What others think of me limits the possibility open to me as to how I not only could imagine but also could create myself to be. And if I'm interested in keeping hold of my absolute freedom and complete autonomy, others are my existential enemies. They put me in a box, but I cannot be caged. They see what I am not; they perceive an illusion, that I am "this way" or "that way," that I have this essence or that essence. There is no essential nature that I fall into in my existing; rather, it is my existing, my making the choices that I make, that creates whatever responsibility-inducing "essence" I may have.

As Jules in Pulp Fiction says: "I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth." It strokes my ego. It tickles my pride. It romps around with my fancy. But it is I who perceive the illusion. The heart is deceitful above all else. Sartre was particularly concerned about the essence-existence relationship in light of God's existence: if God exists, then there is an essential nature that we have according to which we should (but might not) conform in our existing. This creates ethical obligations for us as existing individuals, and obligations get in the way of our freedom and autonomy, which is bad, so let's do away with God's existence--at the very least, let's say that "Christian existentialism" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

This idea that God as Creator and us as creation creates ethical obligations upon us is something that Horton focuses on in Lord and Servant. Horton even talks about our being in the image of God in covenantal-ethical terms rather than in terms of essence or ontology. Horton puts the relationship between God and man in terms of meeting a stranger. While some (like Tillich) would say that in meeting God we meet some aspect of ourselves that once remained hidden but now is revealed, while others (like Derrida) would say that we cannot meet God because is being is simply unavailable to us, Horton strikes a middle ground in saying that, yes, we actually meet God, there is a relationship to be had, but we do not meet God as He is in Himself or to Himself. He is still a stranger to us in the sense that his being is undisclosed, it is forever veiled from our mind's eye. But this ontological (regarding God's being) and epistemological (regarding our knowledge of God's being) situation is not a problem, for our relationship to God is essentially ethical (and personal) in its being covenantal. We don't need to know God in the fullness of His being in order to know Him or have a relationship with Him. We need only know Him in the ways in which He reveals Himself, ways that truly reflect who He is, ways that force a response on our part--to heed the call or to reject it.

Sartre was right that God as Creator creates ethical obligations for humanity. Sartre was right that we, in our self-righteous, rebellious autonomy, don't like it. It's tough to be told that you are breaking rules imposed by an Other, rules that you neither agreed to nor desire to follow. That's what really rankles someone like Sartre. That's what really rankles us. But we are either covenant breakers or covenant keepers. That is what essentially defines us, whether we like it or not.

Mortality Before The Fall

Although this is one of those enduring questions that people ask, it is not one that I have thought about that much: Would Adam and Eve would have lived forever if they had not sinned? When God commanded Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He said that when they ate of it they "shall surely die." But when they ate of it, they didn't die--at least not on the spot. None of the curses of the fall mention death as a consequence but only pain, hard toil, and enmity. Yet, when Paul discusses the fall in Romans 5, he says that "through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all me, because all sinned" (v. 12). So, the fall resulted in some sort of death. The question is, What kind of death did it bring about? Spiritual? Physical? Both? In Romans 5, Paul is contrasting Adam and Christ.

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of the grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men (vv. 17-18).

Do those who are justified in Christ still die a physical death? Absolutely. And yet Christ conquered death and sin, so that those who are justified in Him will yet live with Him after death. Of course, those who are not justified in Him will also live after death, but apart from Him. So what kind of death did Christ conquer? What kind of life did Christ bring?

In Lord and Servant, Michael Horton spends about a page or so discussing aspects of this issue. It is something of an aside in the book, so he doesn't spend much time on it; but I found what he says there quite instructive and interesting. One way to think about the question of whether A&E would have lived forever if they had not sinned is to consider their created nature. This is an ontological question, one concerned with the kind of being (onto- = being) with which they were created. So, if we thought of A&E being created as immortal beings, it would make sense to think of the Fall as bringing about a change in human nature, from immortal beings to mortal beings. However, if A&E were created as finite beings, then they would have died anyway whether or not they sinned.

Horton introduces another context in which to think about this. In his works Covenant and Eschatology and Lord and Servant, he is trying to work out a distinctively covenantal approach to philosophical and theological issues.

The notions of covenant and eschatology are closely intertwined in biblical theology. Both are oriented toward promise and fulfillment. Furthermore, both eschew any ontological dualism. As the covenant idea in Scripture excludes a nature-grace antithesis by emphasizing instead the ethical antithesis (sin-grace), biblical eschatology similarly concentrates its antithesis between "flesh" and "Spirit" in terms of "this present aeon [age]" and "the aeon [age] to come," respectively. It is this world in its ethical rebellion that is under divine judgment. . . . (Lord and Servant, 94)

His concern here is to introduce the ethical orientation of thinking covenantally about these things. Regarding pre-fall creation (the "nature" in the "nature-grace" antithesis), we should not see it as something whose being (think ontology here) has no purpose beyond it. That is, we should not see it as the end of God's work, even before the fall, but as a beginning with a goal-directed future. (Eschatology is concerned with "end-times" and is thus future oriented.)

Even prior to the narrative of fall and redemption, there is the narrative of cration and consummation: the goal of creation as confirmation in righteousness and participation in the everlasting shalom, God's own justice and peace. . . . [A]ccording to the biblical drama, it is not a return to Eden and a lifting of the curse that eschatology announces but a welcome into the royal sabbath of God's reign in history and nature. (80)

As Geerhardus Vos reminds us, the particular covenantal and eschatological orientation found in Scripture is thoroughly concerned with the ethical and personal sphere, not with abstract metaphysics and ontology. "The universe, as created, was only a beginning, the meaning of which was not perpetuation, but attainment." Thus eschatology is prior to soteriology: creation began with a greater destiny lying before it. (95)

Creation, even being "very good," was not the end-all but had a purpose beyond itself. The goal of creation is ethical in the sense that its purpose was to attain "the royal sabbath of God's reign," to participate "in the everlasting shalom" of God, to be "confirmed in righteousness." Horton then goes on to apply this thought to human immortality.

While human death should not be regarded merely as "a characteristic of frail, temporal creation," Moltmann is nevertheless right to point out, on the basis of God's command to be fruitful and multiply, "that human beings were mortal from the beginning". . . . [B]y recognizing that creation even before the fall was awaiting its completion under Adamic dominion, and that this consummation included the conferral of immortality. . ., death did not come as a consequence of mere human finitude nor was immortality a human possession from the beginning (especially not in virtue of the immortal soul). Immortality was a goal, not an origin; the tree of life was a prospect, not a presupposition, of human existence. Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve lived between the two trees: entering everlasting Sabbath (the blessing of the consummation) and everlasting death (the curse of sin). (95)

In the context of the goal-orientation of creation, that it "was awaiting its completion under Adamic dominion," we can understand Adam and Eve in the same way. Although created without sin, they were always capable of sin. Although death was not simply a consequence of their being finite beings, immortality was not part of their being, either. Rather, immortality was a goal toward which they were to strive, a completion that they didn't reach. They were supposed to attain the royal sabbath of God's reign, to participate in the everlasting shalom of God, and to be confirmed in righteousness. But they didn't. They fell short of this consummation. As a consequence of their ethical rebellion, they didn't attain the goal of immortality.

So, in this ethical sense, their sin brought a death that kept them from immortality. But this wasn't because their sin somehow changed their immortal nature into a mortal nature. Their nature, as is ours, was to obey God. In this way Horton is attempting to resituate our perspective, to lead us away from thinking ontologically about human immortality and towards thinking ethically/covenantally about it. Interestingly, this is also how he conceives man as the image of God:

[H]uman beings are those who reflect God's image not chiefly in who they are essentially but in how they reply ethically. Though determined as human persons by the mere fact of their creation as God's image, their realization of the purpose of their personhood depends on whether they correspond to God's intentions. (97)

So, bringing back a question asked earlier in the context of the fall, "What kind of life did Christ bring?", I think Horton would have us answer it with his eschatological and covenantal framework in mind. The life Christ brings is the life that Adam should have completed but failed to attain: obedience to God, resting in God's everlasting Sabbath, and being confirmed in righteousness. These are not ontological categories, thinking about it in terms of physical versus spiritual death/life. Rather, these are covenantal categories, for they have to do with our relationship with God; they are ethical categories, for they have to do with how we reply to that relationship.

The original question of this post was whether A&E would have lived forever if they had not sinned. It seems that Horton would answer "Yes," but not because they were immortal to begin with. Rather, it would have been because they would have attained the goal of immortality in their obedience.

Christian Philosophers

The RUF at here at UGA began a Christian worldview series this past fall. The idea is to have Christians from different academic disciplines talk about how to approach and practice that discipline in a Christian manner. The first talk was on literature. I'll be giving the second one, on philosophy, in a few weeks. As I've been thinking and reading in preparation for it, I ran across this paper by Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. His main point in the paper is to offer some advice on how to approach philosophy in a distinctively Christian way. When I came across this statement, "Christian philosophers, however, are part of the Christian community; and it is part of their task as Christian philosophers to serve the Christian community," I was struck with shame. As much as I've attempted--and continue the essay--to approach philosophical issues in a Christian way (thanks to an early influence from Christian philosophers Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen), I have very nearly ignored the potential service I could bring to the Christian community. I have thought very little about what possible contributions I could make and even less about how to practically carry them through. I have used the word "could," but Plantinga goes further, saying that it is part of my task as a Christian philosopher. It is not just something I could do--it is something I should do.

In a similar vein, I've been reading a series by Michael S. Horton where he applies a covenantal framework to various theological and philosophical issues. (The first book, which I've read twice, is Covenant and Eschatology, the second is Lord and Servant, and the third will be coming out sometime in the near future.) I've never read anything by Horton, mainly because I've known him for putting out books of popular theology and, for whatever reasons, have tended to steer clear of such reading. Generally, it just doesn't interest me much. This series, however, is some of the most serious academic and intellectual piece of scholarship I've seen in a while (not that I've seen a lot, mind you). Simply, it is a successful and stimulating attempt at developing and articulating a distinctively Christian (specifically, Reformed) approach to some very difficult and pressing contemporary theologico-philosophical problems. I have greatly benefitted from it, and it has spurred me to think more creatively and biblically about how to approach philosophy as a Christian philosopher. Highly recommended to those interested in biblical and philosophical theology.

New German Eucharist?

That Ratzinger's a sly one...



(Thanks for the pic, Thomas)