The role of personal commitments in moral dilemmas

I was explaining my cirriculum to my good friend and supervisor and was suprised by his apparently alarmed reaction. In turns he was wondering out loud whether I was advocating something like relativism, dogmatizing my students, or not teaching only possibilities without subtlty. I was suprised at his reaction which forced me to want to say more clearly what I wanted to say. He must of thought I turned into Richard Rorty. I was at a loss to know why he had such a bad take on my presentation.

Here goes. There are cases where we seem to confront situations where our moral convictions come into conflict forcing us to reflect more deeply on our moral reasoning and beliefs. One direction that often proves helpful when there does not appear to be a false dilemma or a lack of information relevent to the case is to examine and clarify our moral concepts. It is helpful here to have an understanding of various moral theories -- utilitarianism, deontology, justics as fairness, virtue ethics -- in order to understands better the moral terms and their possible exsception cases.

Now suppose that even after doing all that you still have conflicts remaining. This is probably because the competing alternatives represent incommensurable goods that cannot be both satisfied under the conditions of the choice being made. In such a case the choice is going to come down to us or even me and what we or I think is personally important. This presupposes that we or I have a set of personal commitments -- to self, certain others, certain communities, or ideals, or religious commentments -- that guide me in my choices. But then here is an argument, in order to be fully equiped to deal with situation of moral dilemmas, we ought to have some personal commitments, some vision of the good life.

Of course, this argument assumes that such cases are possible in the first place but it seems to me that one might be impressed about how common such cases really are even though most cases can be handled without resorting to personal commitments just by appealing to whatever other moral framework is most appropriate. Consider the following textbook case:

An engineer is invited to work with a company that is developing groundbreaking surface to ground automated tracking. It is a great opportunity for the engineer to be on the ground floor of cutting edge research, not to mention the extra money will make it more easy to meet his financial obligations. However, the technology is being developed for a missle guidance system. What should the engineer do? It is not clear that other moral theories will be of enough help to him once one goes into the details.

If the engineer is a pacifist, he certainly will refuse the option. But if the engineer is a "political realist" who favors developing the best national defence, he may be inclined to accept the offer. But neither decision seems to be right while the other is wrong. The realist cannot complain that the pacifist is morally warped for desiring a world without war and advocating universal disarmament, nor can the pacifist complain that realist is wrong to want the means of self-defense from possible attacks from others. They both express morally approbationary views. But one is going to have to decide based on their own beliefs and values.

Both options respect the libertarian rights and actual liberty duties of society. Both views have a pro-attitude to respect for their obligations to society whether properly moral, legal, or contractual. Both have varios virtues characteristicly related to them. But they both cannot be co-realized.

Such personal commitments are not mere desires but intelligible and sustained choices. They are not mere private sentiment but serve as a basis for the formation of communities or at least parties. And they both express good will and appeal to objective goods. So my view is not saying that all personal commitments are acceptible, only those that exhibit certain good making features: they have to be rational preferences that express a systematicly ordered set of values that are consistent with basic duties, rights, and fairness to others and with respect for keeping promises, etc.

Such a personal commitment is necessary in order for moral people to act as autonomous rational agents in cases of moral indecision where common frameworks prove insufficient. Rather than ceasing to be moral because it goes out of bounds of the legitmate demands of society on us, not only does it motivate action in accord with those moral demands (because ex hypothesi all availble options are consistent with keeping such demands) but it assures that such demands will be met no matter what. Consequently, we have a moral imperitive to stand for something.

This view is not relativistic but admits the possibility of an objective plurality of goods that cannot all be realized. One way to say it is that there is more than one legitmate version of a good life and we have to decide which one is most appropriate for us. Nor then does tis view advocate dogmatic absolutism, the claim that there is one and only one way of living or doing well.

Finally I am not doing anything more than stating the view. Perhaps there is good reason not to expect exception cases for the sake of holding a good theory or perhaps the idea of incomensurable goods is somehow incoherent. But by making such a view available to my students, it seems to me that I am fulfilling a public trust not just by informing my students of all the possibilities but also going the extra step to make sure my students are exposed to all the resources available to them to make sure they have all they need to make good moral decisions in real life.

Datrina and the Liche Lord explained (finally)

Some were a bit mystified as to the point of the "Datrina and the Liche Lord" story experiment (see link). After giving a more than adequate amount of time for everyone to puzzle over it and then lose interest, I now offer an explanation.

Here's the point. Many people think that the case for intellegent design is inconclusive. The reason is that there are evolutionary stories that explain the phenonema picked out for design as well as the design inference and since that is true there is no basis for prefering one view over the other.

More specificly, the necessary conditions for any kind of life on any planet in the universe are extremely narrow; life contains vastly more information in it than is constained in the universe itself. Accordingly, it seems that life is a significant outcome and thus the best explanation is that it came about by intelligent design. However, it may be that this universe is but one of an infinite many universes expressing all the possible original conditions. Consequently most of them have no life in them and we happen to be in the one that does. Of course by hypothesis we have no contact with other such universes experimentally but we cannot rule out the possibility that such is the case.

Or can we? Can we at least come up with some reason or another that gives us a rational basis for prefering the intelligent design scenario to the multiple universe scenario?

Some philosophers think that we can based on the following analogy. Suppose an all powerful god exists. This god calls into his presence two angels, call them Gabe and Mike. To both angels he says the following: "I'm going to flip a coin. If it lands on heads, I will create one world. Then I will roll a ten-sided die and if it lands on a '1', then I will create life on that world. However, if the coin lands on tails, I will create ten worlds. Then I will roll a ten-sided die once for each world until I roll a '1' and for that world and no other of the ten I will create life." Then he sends Gabe and Mike away to go about their business telling them nothing more. The two go their seperate ways.

Later, a reliable messenger comes to Gabe and tells him, "There is a world with life on it." Suppose Gabe asks himself whether the coin toss came out heads or tails. He will reasonably conclude that it is more likely that it came out to be tails since the tails procedure was more likely to produce a world with life on it then the heads procedure.

However, instead of being told anything, Mike is put to sleep. When Mike comes to, he wakes up on the surface of a world with life on it. Suppose Mike asks himself whether the coin landed heads or tails. He will reasonably conclude that it is more likely that it came out to be heads since if it were tails, it is more likely that Mike would have come to on a planet without life on it.

Of course, the heads result is analogous to the intelligent design hypothesis and the tails result is analogous to the multiple universe hypothesis. The a priori plausibility of both hypotheses is analogous to the condition of being informed of two possibilities equally likely (that is, having no other evidence besides conceivability for their plausibility). The critic assumes that all we have to work with is the mere fact of life and thus thinks that our situation is most similar to Gabe's in the story and thus concludes that the the multiple worlds hypothesis is more reasonable to hold. But the intelligent design theorist responds that it is just as important how we come to the fact that life exists as the fact itself. And the fact is something we discover by being there to discover it. So our situation is more analogous to Mike's situation in the story than it is to Gabe's. Consequently, we ought to think that the intelligent design hypothesis is more reasonable. So in spite of belief otherwise, we do have a reason to prefer intelligent design to the multiple worlds hypothesis.

What the story does is it gives us an analogy like the Mike and Gabe analogy and seeks to pump people's intuitions about this. If there are several fights going on, its no suprise if one of them has a fighter with a bad ticker and thus no reason to think that there was any design behind it. But if there is only one contest and the fighter collapses from a heart attack, it is more reasonable to think there had been some design in bringing that about. But the dwarf's only evidence was that she was there when it happened. If you thank then that this is a reason for thinking that there was to be only one contest and that thus the Liche Lord assisted in the escape, you would also think that this is a reason to think that the sword had been taken in payment by the Liche Lord and further that the sword that appeared in the grotto was not really the Sword of Shanana but most likely the Liche Lord himself up to his old polymorhing tricks. Thus, Datrina shouldn't take the sword.

(Of course, one could not mistake the reference to the "Invisible Gardner", a classic case in the literature on intelligent design and verifiability.)

I don't have an original bone in my body. Thanks to Dr. Dean Zimmerman for introducing and explaining this to me though the errors in presentation are mine.

What is lacking in Presuppositionalism

Philosophaster, a sincerely inquiring non-Christian, asked me (the Gnu) why I didn't accept the Protestant form of apologetics known as Van Tillianism or presuppositionalism. Since I amaze myself so easily I thought that others might be interested in this response. One can find the full context and a presuppositonalists reply at the link in the title.

Here are some things I find lacking in presuppositional apologetics. I have some historical objections such as that I don't think presuppositionalist expositions of either the Bible or the history of theology in general of of the Reformation era in particular avoids special pleading. But setting those sorts of objections aside, I think that I can defer to your post for some of the main ones.

Presuppositionalism is meant to be understood as a substantive ideology of how to argue, rather than just an introduction of perhaps new or underconsidered types of arguments. You are not merely logically or evidentially mistaken if you neglect the presuppositionalist argument (also known as the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God, or TAG for short), you are morally wrong (you are starting a tleast tacitly with an affirmation of your self-sufficiency without God) and it is not clear why this is so. Presuppostionalists claim that previous approaches to theistic proofs (such as Aquinas, Descartes, or Paley) reflect this moral error and the TAG does not, but is seems clear that TAG is not really different from arguments like the cosmological argument. (E.g A frequent illustration that Van Til uses to illustrate the difference between TAGs and traditonal arguments is this: The presuppositonalist does not argue for the existence of floorboards under the floor by compiling facts about furniture in the room. The presupposionalist notes that the very existence of furniture in the room presupposes the existence of floorboards in the floor. But this exactly illustrates a causal argument as one finds in traditional proofs.) If it were just about identifying another type of argument such as TAG, there would be no in principle debate between presuppositonalists and evidentialists. Any good argument is a good argument.

Another set of problems are the claims that there is no nuetrality between the believer and the unbeliever and that all reasoning is circular reasoning. This thesis is typically understood in terms of a strong holism about the meanings of concepts in propositions, a kind of uber-Quineanism. Another example from Van Til's writing is his claim that the non-believer takes the evidences offered by the theist and throws them on top of his own presupposition of the ultimacy of chance and concludes that evidence for the ressurection only shows that wierd things happen from time to time. If this claim is to be sufficiently weighty and merely trivially obvious, there must be some strong basis for asserting that itr leads to the claim that there is no nuetrality. Since claims are thrown back upon different presupposed worldviews, their interpretation in one worldview is incomensurable with the interpretation of the same clain in another worldview and so the appearance of identical claims being made is false. This incomensuarbility extends even to claims about the canons of logic and evidence so that what counts as logical and evident to one does not count as such to another. Consequently, there is no common ground whatsoever between the believer and the unbeliever.

This creates a problem for presentations of TAG which assume a common agreement about the premises and the validity of the conclusion that comes from them. The sincere offering of TAG as an argument is just as problematic as offering a deductive cosmological or Baysean argument. So it seems that the approach itself contradicts its supposed foundations.

It turns out then that the real approach of presuppostionalism is to push each divergent system of thought to its fullest logical implication, and then ask each reasoner to adopt all of them as holistic webs of belief for the sake of argument, and argue that only the Christian web of belief does not run into self-defeat. Now this proposal seems to assume that there is a higher order neutrality; we cannot be neutral about beliefs within webs but we can be neutral about the webs. But this seems arbirary to me, why is there not a higher order web about webs of belief and if so does not that mean that the nuetrality problem reiterate itself? Secondly, the approach is not in principle unavailable to traditional ways of understanding Christian argument. The impossibility of the contrary argument, if sound, is yet another available candidate to the traditional theist, so the approach does not add to the case for presuppositionalism as an argumentative ideology. This is bolstered by the many instances of non-presuppositonalists employing this kind of reasoning, like CS Lewis in his book on miracles. Thirdly, the task seems infinite, since besides looking at the the concretely available worldviews, we need also to look at all the logically possible worldviews and that seems to be an unfinishable task for people who need to argue today for the Christian worldview claim. Christians will have to be happy for a "Christianity is true as far as we can tell but the inquiry remains open" result, which may not be such a bad thing (e.g. Nuerath's ship). But finally, I think we already know enough to realize that the argument is not sound. The main rival that this argument attacks is philosophical naturalism but as Elizibeth Anscombe demonstrated in her debate with CS Lewis about the afore mentioned book, the claim that naturalism is self-defeating is false, and therefore the impossibility of the contrary argument is unsound (in spite of whatever existential difficulties naturalists might run into in ordinary life, such us worries that they might be making love to a zombie).

Finally, the final metaphysical view of presuppositonalism is a version of objective Idealism, which in itself I am not too uncomfortable with. But it seems to me that the presuppositionalist position is logically unstable between the metaphysical objective idealism that Van Til really wants and a kind of ontological relativism that some of his followers have drifted into. My theory is that the development of presuppositonalism from Van Til on parallels the development of 19th century German Idealism from Hegel into both right wing uber-reichtists and left wing relativists in history, which may point to a concrete expression of that instability. This also raises the question of whether or not Van Til qua ontological relativist who insists on his own version of ontology isn't just a fideist after all.

Perhaps a more charitiable way of thinking of the claim that all reasoning is circular reasoning is to say that this is drawing attention to commonly observed philosophical problem, namely it seems that in questioning about the issues that seem most important to us, the best we have been able to do is come up with deductive arguments that are valid and may be sound but which remain unconvincing since eventhough they are not explicitly circular they still beg the question by posing a premise which is just as controverted by the opponant as the conclusion is, or with inductive arguments where one of the canons of "best explanation" or "relevant analogy" or "prior probability" is just as controverted by the opponant as the conclusion is. In fact, this seems to be the actual reason qua philosophy that some people give for being attracted to Van Til as offering a way to negotiate this deadlock. Unfortunately, Van Til explains this deadlock as being due to sin, but none of the features described seem to have much to do with morality and seem to have more to do with the common features of thought whether of the believer or of the unbeliever. One possible way of relating the two is to say that it is precisely our morally qualified dispositions that make us reject the premises or canons because we refuse to accept the conclusion and reasoning permits this. For example, Thomas Nagel suggests in his book "The Last Word" that one reason philosophers generally reason as the do is that they succumb to much to a fear of religion and he admits that he too is afraid and even troubled by his brilliant colleagues who remian faithful to some religious tradition or another. He says its not just that he thinks that theistic proofs are unconvincing, the thought that there exists an absolute being that may legitimately dictate to him what he must and must not do is postively abhorent to him. So moral dispositions may explain utlimately why some people embrace some pictures or the world and not others and why it remains true that some are wrong and some are right. So rather than being a gateway to metaphysical relativism it might be the only alternative to it. But this suggestion works for unbeliever as well as the believer since it could well be the willful ignorance and self-imposed blindness of the beliver or his fear that life is ultimately meaningless without God that makes him resist the truth. As a Christian, I may accept such a radical view as consistent with my account of depravity and to preserve the metaphysical realism my view needs, but I admit that it is not philosophically satisfying. So I keep looking for more.

So my conclusion is that presuppostionalism claims way too much for itself and may in fact prove too much for itself. I tend to think of it in the same way as the comment a professor might make on a student's paper; "What you have written is both good and original, but what is good is not original and what is original is not good."

Eschatology and Thanatology

In a sermon series I gave a message in recently, I was assigned to preach on "life" and the other on "death". His sermon was outstanding (based on the texts Ecclesiates 12 and Psalm 90). One of the things that was very clear in it was that the Bible has a rich and clear view of death, that is, there is a biblical thanatology.

Just as man has a basic dignity being made in the image of God, it is precisely that dignity which obliges his final end, since he has failed the duty to image God from the very begining (the Fall) and consequently has made his own death just.

In the case of individuals, that mean that each individual is not just going to die but that each individual is divinely appointed to die. What this means of course for end-of-life situations is that one thing we cannot do is resist death at any cost as if to defeat God's divine appointment. So when it is clear that the patient is dying (a matter of judgement), one is in no position to try to resist it.

Not even Christians are delivered from this appointment in every sense. As Romans 8 makes clear, our bodies are dead because of sin and we must experince death in order to be free and must receive new bodies to be saved. Even if we are not dead when Christ appears, we must "die" right then, that it, we must be transformed in a twinkling of an eye so that the perishable will put on the imperishable.

One can see a little bit then how thanatology relates to individual eschatology. But this judgement false not just on individuals but on the race as a whole. Man must die because man sinned. There is thus an appointment with death for the whole race. That means that in some sense mankind is appointed to extinction. And this suggests the view that just as individuals (Eccles. 12) will face a rime when death is progressively taking hold of them draining them of their youthful powers and cognitive abilities until it finally becomes irresistable, so to the human race faces a collective malaise of death to which it will ultimately succumb.

Certain deathlike symptoms already may be apparent in the autistic character of the western worldview since the Enlightenment. Also the demands on human responsibility created by the rapid development of technology have radically increased and require a huge investment in creative attention in order to cope. But the shriviling up of moral understanding secures a multiplcataion of means and an Alzheimer's symptoms about ends. Mankind seems on the verge of pushing the button that activates the dynamite it's sitting on.

I suspect that the deterioration toward death will be coordinate to "Satan's little season", when humanity is running amok with impatience with God and rampant hubris. The manifestation of end of life features will be prevelant throughout existing humanity when Jesus returns. The Christian Church will appear to be in eclipse in a sense just as the best features of a human life are hard to see in someone who is close to death. So even when Christ claims the whole world substantially the light of this will fade from view as death makes its appointed approach to all humanity.

It would be difficult to call such a view pessimistic, since death serves God's appointed purpose, and its success in time means God's will is being accomplished. it also effects are attitude toward the difficulties we must face in the future as Christians by understanding why these things must take place and why there taking place will keep us from being afraid or fealing as if God has been defeated.

So based on the analogy between individual and universal eschatoogy already present in systematic theology, it seems reasonable to conclude that the analogy also extends to include an analogy between the death of individuals and the death of the race. The value of this conclusion is that it seems to makes sense of and to intergrate the various "amil" and "postmil" features of realized eschatology. God's will is going to succeed on both fronts, both on the front of seeing the judgement of death served on all humanity and on the front of all of humanity being redeemed representatively by Christ.

The Fourth of July and Christian Apologetics

Moosebugs and I were discussing the Declaration of Independence over a couple of Yuenglings. ("He was killing off Yuenglings!") I don't know if many actually read this document but I want to argue that Jefferson's argument for independence for the American British colonies as free and independent states is a model example of a cummulative case approach to Christian apologetics.

Jefferson argues:

(1) The Crown has denied to American British citizens there basic human rights endowed to them by their Creator (God) and thus have failed to fulfil its purpose in governing and its contracted mandate to its citizens.

(2) Such violations of rights are frequent enough, egregious enough, and regular enough such that no population can both be prudent and continue to tolerate them without response.

(3) All other peaceful attempts to preserve the bond of citizenship (such as appealing to the crown and the British citizens in England) have been attempted and have not rectified the situation.

(4) Therefore, the American Colonists have the tright and duty to desolve the bond of citizenship and declare themselves to be free and independent states (possessing to themselves the right of states to wage war in their own defense).

Various objections can be raised to this argument (e.g. Divine Right Theorists will reject (1) and political conservatives will reject the social contract element of (1) is illegitimate but unnecessary since the Crown's failure to fulfil its purpose is sufficient to meet the condition that (1) claims to satisfy. Also, the argument assumes that it addresses all the necessary and suffcient conditions to legitimate independence and that there are contrary to argument other such conditions), but let us go ahead and grant that it is at least a valid argument, that is that if the premises were true the conclusion must be also.

I want to focus on the way Jefferson argues for premise (2). This takes up most of the Declaration. Jefferson proceeds by itemizing a long list of abuses, increasing in severity as the list goes on, to justify the claim that even a prudent person would not tolerate all this without action. Jefferson makes explicit that, even though a violation of any one natural right would constitute a failure of a government to live up to its natural and contractual mandate, to react to any one violation and throw off a government rather than tolerate the violation and preserve the bond would be imprudent. A decent population will not be hasty in trying to get rod of government since such governments are important to us and none of them are perfect in fulfilling their duties.

So Jefferson wants to show that the pattern of abuses by the crown is not a drop in the bucket but significant enough to make a prudent person act to declare his independence. But how many of what sort of rights violations should count as enough reason to break the bond of citizenship? The question suggests that there is a definite line that must be crossed before such action is considered prudent. But therein lies the rub -- there is no such definite line that can be specified independently of the issue and verifibly determined when it is crossed. However, Jeffeson need not rely on the ability to specify what the line is. He can at least attempt to show to a watching world that the amount and natures off the abuses are such as constitute a paradigm case of a situation where the line has definitely been crossed. In other words, where the list of the crown's abuses leads judgenment is well beyond the murky shadowland of what is not clearly prudent or imprudent but is well within the area of clearly prudent to disolve the bond. We may well wonder if Don Johnson on 'Miami Vice' had a beard but it is clear that Charles Darwin had a beard.

All this is tacit in Jefferson's argument. He simply proves his point by listing the abuses of the crown, confident that tthe world will judge that so many of such abuses are a clear case of an unjust government. Consequently, Jefferson is confident that he has provided an adequate account to justify the action of the Declaration.

What I want to say is that Jefferson's support for (2) is a good example of what we (or at least I) mean by a cummulative case argument. A cummulative case argument is not a demonstration that independently absolutely proves that a claim is true. It is rather an accumulation of evidences the combined weight of which provides sufficient warrant to justify acting in a specific way rather than another from the point of view of some agent. How much weight is necessary cannot be specified beforehand. But that does not mean that there is no fact of the matter about whether or not a certain amount of weight is sufficient to justify an action for an agent. Further, cummulative case arguments are not immune to sceptical doubts. The sceptic can give philosophically interesting reasons for the view that what a person does on the basis a cummulative case is based on an illusion. However, in the practical sphere, these sceptical reasons have no point. (A person can philosophically doubt whether he really sees a door in front of him but he will still open the door before he leaves the room.) Further, sceptical reasons do not show that we do not or cannot know.

The way I have characterized cummulative case arguments, they are clearly arguments in the sphere of practical reason, not theoretical reason -- the give sufficient weight for actions, not theories. But Christianity is at least necessarily a belief in a set of doctrines. So how does a cummulative case argument help it? The answer is that Christianity requires that it's doctrines are to be accepted on the by faith in a credible testimony. This shows that the idea of 'belief' in Christianity is such a notion that believing is subject to choice. We are commended to believe the gospel, which is to say that we are required to commit ourselves to a lifetime of acting on the basis of the gospel being held true. The evidence for such a belief is the evidence that supports the credibility and authority of those who attest to it for us and such evidence is the sort that it might be a satisfactory incidence of a cummulative case argument.

Now I want to go further and argue that this is not only the case in a reasonable faith in special revelation but also in natural revelation. The evidences that are called upon to support a cummulative case argument for the authority of the gospel message may in turn depend in part for their credibility on other propositons held to be true or 'believed' in the same sense that the gospel is to be believed. More specificly, the plausibility if miracle accounts may depend on the prior plausibility of a theistic interpretation of life. The usual response to this sensed need is to appeal to natural theology and theistic arguments. But often these arguments are appealed to as philosophical and theoretical demonstrations. But as such they fail to demostrate that God exists and leave the question moot. We wind up with a scepticism about the God question that is more philosophically interesting and philosophically satisfying than the arguments for God's existence.

But the tradition that introduces us to theistic arguments, introduces them as vias or ways to God. They are formalized recipes that reconstruct the natural ways our intellegence is led to think about God and show that we can and do think about him. While as proofs, the theitic arguments can be abstracted to form absolute metaphysical hypothesis of merit (although inconclusive), as vias they bear on the personal commitments an agent makes from an agent's point of view. They show how from the point of view of what is subjectively intelligent to us, nature has wired us necessarily to think of God. Granting that we are such creatures as essentially cannot know if God exists by philosophical demonstration (and therefore God is not to faulted, pace Russell, for not providing such evidence as He cannot provide) God may provide such evidence to an agent making personal commitments to warrant "Christian style" belief in Him, even to the point that should the agent refuse such evidence, he is thus held accountable. This conceives the theistic arguments not as theoretical demonstrations of the claim "God exists" but as cummulative case practical arguments that conclude that God is making Himself known to me, the agent, in nature and in my mind (and thus I must suppose that He exists).

This seems to be supported by Paul's account in Romans 1, that the eternal power and divine nature a clearly known through the things that are made so that they are without excuse. This cannot mean that all men are accountable for failing to be sophisticated enough philosophers to complete a formal demonstration, since clearly only a few meet that description, but rather that humans failed to believe in God based on the "testimony" of nature and as a result of choosing not to believe God (aknowledging Him) they were given up to immorality. In this sense, their sin is similar to the sin of the first couple, whose disobedience was a form of unbelief in what God told them (both about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but also about the tree of life). The sin of humanity is their rejection of the goodness of God by their unbelief, first in natural revelation, then in special revelation. This is also illustrated repeatedly in the Psalms, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'". That is the fool -- the vain and futile person, from the center of his agency and self-consciousness as an agent -- his heart -- chooses to believe that God does not exist rather than to believ e that He does. The fool could be either an atheist, an agnostic, or a professing theist and still satisfy this discription. He does this in the face of the fact that everyday the heavens pour forth speech of the goodness and glory of God. Natural revelation supports the faith in the joint conjunction that God exists and is the rewarder of those who seek Him, even if it cannot tell us if God has in fact so rewarded that search.

Another comment to make is that we see this emphasis on the agent's point of view clearly implied in just about any formulation of classical apologetics you can think of. In the old Princeton method, it is called "common sense", in Gerstner, it is called "self-consciousness", in Geisler it is called the (non-analytically) undeniable and the (non-analytically) unaffirmable. While not denying the role of logic and philosophy, all thes approaches make the agent's point of view an essential starting point and precisely because the arguments for God's existence are inconclusive and without grip without this. The starting point of classical apologetics essentially intergrates the obligation of personal commitment, the agent's point of view, logical consistency, and the necessary features of thought as the testimony of nature.

Consequently, natural theology is continuous with sacred theology and provide converging lines of evidence within a cummulative case for Christian Theism, when so conceived as guiding the personally commited agent to faith. This makes faith and reason less distinct (if reason is construed as resorting to good cummulative case arguments). Christian faith is an instance of practical reasoning. It also argues that our "must" in being a Christian is the "must" of being obliged to be personally commited in life in a practical enviroment and confronted with theistic and Christian evidences. This also makes clear that Christian apologetics is apologetics and not philosophy but also not bad. And it shows in what sense we can have a "positive" as well as a negative apologetic.

Datrina and the Return of the Liche Lord

After the mysterious disappearance of her intrepid cousin, Thurvan, the call to retrieve the sword of his clan of dwarves, the singing sword of Shanana, has fallen on the thick shoulders of Datrina, the she-warrior of the hill clans. Following a reliable lead that the sword had been removed to the Grotto of Gambari'ith, Datrina makes her journey through the plains of the City-States of the Seafaring Men.

While passing through the capital city of Lorinthania, she observes the display of the royal crown and scepter of his majesty, Regent Billiar, on public display to commemorate the Holiday of Champions. The sight of the fine craftmanship of such precious jewels and minerals has overwhelmed Datrina's mission and inflamed the natural greediness of her tribe. However, it proves to be too much of a risk as her late night heist attempt is foiled by the City Watch. Given the vanity of the City Dwellers, their general disaffection with dwarves, and the special occasion, the verdict is swift and without appeal -- death by mortal combat.

In the city gaols, Datrina is brought before the Commander in charge of the dungeons and pits. "You look hardy enough to be entertained by your fate, sow. Apparently, the Regent is particularly upset with any attempt at touching the royal emblems, so much so that he wants to have your combat staged as the only show of the day. We normally finish off riff raff like you en masse, holding combat in all fifty pits at once and clearing out as many prisoners as possible. As far as the Captain of the Watch is concerned, you would just be slain along with many, many other prisoners on that schedule, given the inconvenience of staging shows and keeping prisoners alive longer than necessary. But as I understand it, both being sporting and callous men, they settled the issue on the mere toss of a coin."

"And then what was the outcome?", Datrina clipped, letting the 'sow' comment bounce of her beard.

"Not your concern really," the officer replied listlessly, "your end is the same either way. Only I am obliged to tell you that you have a chance" (and here the man snickered) "to go free by defeating your opponent. Just know that the match ups for prisoners tend to be severely disproportionate."

Back in her stinking cell and shackled, Datrina had been cursing herself and her goddess for letting her nature up-end her mission, when the room became even more dark than it was and a cold chill and sulfuric stench filled the air. Before her amazed eyes appeared the the visage of Abinidaz, the terrible Liche Lord, as if woven out of the very fumes of dust in the air and his laugh was terrible and made her beard bristle.

"So your greed has ensnared yet another of the dwarven clan," laughed the undead nightmare, "and yet again provided me with entertainment to quench my eternal boredom. For all my power, I cannot produce on my own any relief from my ennui, nor resist the sweet amusement when it inadvertently comes my way. Your clan is my grave enemy (as well as my nourishment), and yet how can I fail to provide the means for more of such folly."

"So I am undecided about what to do, to either watch as you greet your inescapable doom or release you to possibly entertain me another day. But to sweeten my enjoyment, I will let the controllers of the games fix my decision. If they decide to have a special show featuring just you, I will let you escape. But if they have several executions as they normally do, I will not interfere with what happens. I will also tell you that if I do decide to facilitate your escape, my price will be the sword of Shanana. If I assist you, you will not find the sword in the Grotto of Gambari'ith." And with that and a final laugh, the Liche Lord melts into the brick walls of the cell.

As Datrina pondered her evening visit, she thought, "Whether he assists me or I escape on my own, I cannot turn away any opportunity to recover the clan-sword. I must do it if I can, both to redeem my foolishness and to free our clan from dishonor."

Soon enough, the day came when Datrina was to face her sentence. Since each cell was individually linked to its out arena by a tunnel, Datrina could in no way tell if many were to face death that day or just herself. She was no further helped to tell from the features of the open arena itself or from manner of dress and customs of the spectators. Being no aficionado of human culture, there might as well be princes or paupers in that audience. The only thing that she could see all too clearly was a giant half-ogre, four times tall as she, and armed like a full gladiator, with a clean battle axe in one hand and a 'cat-o'-nine tails' in the other, while she had been 'armed' with nothing but papyrus armor and a piece of dowelling. No sooner had she a chance to take in the situation when the gong blared indicating the commencing of the 'contest'.

Twirling the whips over his head and swinging the axe skillfully, the gladiator-beast howled, "Bother not to think of the non-existent chance of getting by me to that narrow exit portal behind me and freedom. Better to just surrender yourself to me and receive a quick and painless death!" With that, the wickedly grinning creature shouted out his bone chilling battle cry -- "Hoody Hooooooo!" -- and lunged forward toward the helpless Datrina.

But as the creature came to her, his cry was cut off in mid "Hoo" and his face suddenly went sour. His skin began to pale (as much as an ogre's skin can pale) and he stopped in his tracks. He immediately dropped his weapons and tried to grab his chest under his breast plate. The creature was in clear pain as his heart clearly seized up on him. In another moment, the creature fell forward, writhing on the ground, and became for all practical purposes paralyzed. As suddenly, the crowd was on its feet, boo-ing, catcalling, and stomping their boots. But Datrina did not bother to wait or respond. She immediately leaped over the ill-fated gladiator's body, ran through the exit portal, and escaped the city through its underground sewer lines. She was not about to give the Watch the opportunity to back away from their promise when her 'victory' might be a matter of interpretation.

After assuring herself that she was not being pursued by the constabulary, Datrina returned to her original course. Following the way into the ancient ruins in the woods on the far side of the City-States, she eventually came to a pavilion of magnificent and mysterious beauty. No one knew how it was that the arrangement flowers and shrubs were so well maintained since no gardener was ever detected, yet the rosetta design left the strong impression some invisible intelligence maintained the wonderful site. And surely enough on the edge of the garden where it meet the hillside, an ivory and mahogany structure, carved with the symbols of the Forgotten Lords of the Earth, was inset into the terrain. Surely, this was the Grotto of Gambari'ith. And looking inside, resting on top of a raised ivory tablet, was what could only be the sword of Shanana!

Question: Should Datrina take the sword?

Support our "Support our troops" troops!

I am starting to hear more and more of my friends in the academy expressing suspicions and reservations about the exhortation emblemed on every bumper that they should support our troops. Their argument is something like this. The bumper sticker makes a moralistic appeal to all citizens to support our troops in Iraq. But that could only mean that we should support our troops doing what they are doing in Iraq. But we have conscientious objections to what our soldiers are doing in Iraq and we cannot conscientiously support them. We have arguably good reasons for our objections. Therefore posting the injunction to support our troops is just a way short circuit the debate and bring an unjustified and sophistic sense of disapprobation on dissenters of our Iraq policy. However, this conclusion is not necessary and uncharitable.

"You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." This texts illustrates that there are level distinctions to be made when evaluating the acts of agents which are in behalf of other agents. In this case, Joseph's brothers intended something evil by selling Joseph into slavery, But while God intended that Joseph's brothers sell Joseph into slavery, His intention was for good and not evil. Jonathan Edwards distinguishes here between intending sin as sin and intending sin but not as sin.

By the same token, a soldier may intend his own actions for good but his king may intend the soldier's actions for evil. Therefore, faulting the king is compatible with praising the soldier. Consequently, treating the soldier as one who is blameless and worthy of praise is independent of the evaluation of the King's policy. If someone is worthy of praise and gratitude, we ought to support them, to encourage their morale and show them respect, especially since it helps them to act with integrity, prudence, and justice in the face of life threatening situations.

It is especially necessary of the office of soldier, that one put a strong basic faith in one's own command and place the burden of proof on making a case against the legitimacy of his orders, if the military is to function with sufficient efficiency, obtaining effective goals with the fewest casualties. Because this is true the command is especially responsible to not take advantage of the basic trust of the troops not just with their lives but also with the moral legitimacy of their combat. Soldiers cannot defer action until they are completely satisfied about the mission and this is understood as belonging to the necessary function of the military.

Therefore, being encouraged to support our troops does not entail being encouraged to support the president's Iraq policy. No one is being exhorted to Neoconservative Republicanism in virtue of being encouraged to support the troops. Of course, one could be a pacifist and think that nothing a soldier could do as a soldier in morally acceptable. In such a case, "support our troops" is objecting to pacifism necessarily. But no one has a problem with straightforwardly objecting both intellectually and morally to pacifism being basically illegitimate except unreasonable pacifists. At any rate, I don't assume that everyone who makes the original objection is a pacifist or against the use of the military per se.

If that is right, what is the point of so many bumper stickers? In a way, this question reminds me of the cold husband who complains that he doesn't understand why his wife insists on hearing him say "I love you" often when he told her that twenty years ago and she should just know it. The husband just assumes that there is nothing more to an assertion than whether or not its true but this is evidently false. While the distinction between levels of description of acts among different agents is clear to thought, life does not just follow the intellect and we are not merely logical processors. Seeing the distinction is intellectually smart but letting that be sufficient is emotionally stupid. Soldiers are effected by assurances of support, respect, and appreciation and this makes a big difference in there character and performance. Furthermore, humans show a distinct proclivity to judge themselves by their intentions while judging others by their actions. Being satisfied that they meant well and that they feel that they do respect a soldier's sacrifice will not encourage them to act to show their support and appreciation. But a soldier will take the absence of action as a sign that they are not appreciated after all. Consequently, as humans, we need to be exhorted to do the right thing in spite of already knowing what the right thing to do is and that applies with special urgency to supporting our troops who in harm's way need to know now that their fellow citizens are supporting them as far as their own work is concerned.

People who oppose our presence in Iraq on policy grounds are especially to be exhorted to support our troops since their is a bit of cognitive-like dissonance for them in their attitude toward the troops which may make it difficult for them to follow through. Even when this is not the case, the opponent of the policy who must necessarily raise objections to it must also be careful to make clear that raising such objections does not mean that they do not support the troops, precisely because it is likely that the troops and their families will misconstrue them in this and effectively be discouraged. The fact that it comes much more easily to those who do support the president's policy to exhort others to support the troops takes nothing away from the appropriateness of the exhortation itself. But in fact, given this one should actually be impressed that people generally have been careful not to identify supporting the troops with supporting Bush or his policies. It is just this absence that has provoked the suspicions of my colleagues that they are advocating support for the troops as a kind of cryptic way of raising doubts about ones lack of support for Bush. But why this instead of the more charitable and natural supposition that people are being careful not to identify supporting the troops with support for Bush.

But isn't there something to the perception that most people who do have a support our troops sign also elected Bush? We have to distinguish the policy wonking and sophisticated versions of Bush's neoconservative theoreticians from the run of the mill, non-reflective, commonsense intuition based conservatism of the the average voter. As an episode of "Law and Order" observed, the majority of those who respond to the call to jury duty, also respond to the call of active duty. The common conservative is such in part because he thinks that significant civil duties are not to be avoided but to be duly observed and appreciated. It is out of that basic appreciation and respect for national service that leads most ordinary conservatives to respect service persons and advocate public support for them. It is not really surprising that such grass roots conservatives prefer ed Bush to Kerry, in spite of the fact that Bush never served in action but Kerry did because while Bush never served he openly and convincingly communicated a positive attitude toward military service, while Kerry threw away "his" medals. In their eyes, when Kerry appeared saying he was reporting for duty, he was still breaking the "funny hat" rule.

Now of course such conservatives could be said to only support Bush naively, not really taking the time to consider his policies and no doubt this is likely to have been the case. It is also likely that they naively perceive criticism of the administration's Iraq policy as necessarily failing to support our troops. But what isn't surprising is that such a conservative who has a basic zeal for national duties would also prefer Bush and that this does not involve a conscious agreement with Bush's Iraq policy as such but does agree with a basic insistence on supporting our troops.

While suspicious motives are not absolutely ruled out, I think the cost of removing all those signs and bumper stickers is higher than letting people have them and use them. While it is a source of suspicion for the president's opponents, it means a lot to all of us and our troops who see it as being for them. It would be a kind of cruelty to take them down.

In conclusion, support our troops! Send them cookies. Send them letters. Pray for them and let them know it. Thank you, troops, for your labor and sacrifice on behalf of our country and Iraq.

New Tool for Evangelism

The Four Spiritual Pints

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Pint #1: Bass Ale

God is holy, just, and good and he originally made us good, with a fresh clean taste and hearty flavor.

Pint#2: Guiness Stout

But we through Adam fell into sin and our hearts became darkened and we became full of bitterness.

Pint#3: Killian's Red

But though we could nothing of ourselves to make ourselves right and acceptible to God, Christ came and interposed his preciou blood on our behalf.

Pint#4: Bavarian Weiss

Thus having been saved by his blood we are now as if white as snow by the imputation of Christ's righteousness and the gift of the Holy Spirit, having turned from our sin and put our trust in him.

Could we go over that again?

Faith as responsible choice: An objection

Roadster raises the following relevent objection to my account of faith as a responsible choice, namely that it does not square with the paradigm cases of faith we see exhibited in the Bible.

On the ABC forum, R says, "The only question this raises in my mind is; in noting that Scripture doesn't seem to endorse the idea that one's decision to believe in Christ is a complex one drawn from multiple considerations.

Now as far as the strength of conviction of the original proponents of Christianity is concerned, I think we can allow them their radical certainty, because their certainty is part of what we're considering buying into when we consider whether Christianity is credible. But their converts, as recorded in Scripture, we should expect to resemble more your formula, yet they don't seem to lend themselves to such an interpretation.

Or are we merely acknowledging that one's reasons for believing that Christianity is true today are necessarily going to be both more complex and less coercive in any particular than were those for even the first few generations of believers?"

My response:

"The only question this raises in my mind is; in noting that Scripture doesn't seem to endorse the idea that one's decision to believe in Christ is a complex one drawn from multiple considerations."

I think the reason for this is that the Scriptures presuppose an extensive background of common presuppositions which vastly pre-narrows the field of interpretations. Of course this reply has to be re-described at each period of biblical history under discussion but in general I think the Bible takes an uncritical view of the natural assumptions of common sense which have come into question. This does not mean that I think that the Scriptures are not sufficient to deal with modern reasons for criticism but I rather think that this fact about the Scriptures (if it is a fact) is diclosed whenthe decision is treated as based on a balance of considerations.

"Now as far as the strength of conviction of the original proponents of Christianity is concerned, I think we can allow them their radical certainty, because their certainty is part of what we're considering buying into when we consider whether Christianity is credible. But their converts, as recorded in Scripture, we should expect to resemble more your formula, yet they don't seem to lend themselves to such an interpretation."

I agree with you that 'certainty is part of what we're considering buying into when we consider whether Christianity is credible'. I am planning a post some time based on the notion that one can only be reasonably sceptical, not about whether you know but only about whether you know that you know. (And I would argue that it is not necessarily true that if you know something then you know that you know it, in the sesne of knowledge that the sceptic requires.) By embracing Christianity we embrace the real possibility that we can be convinced that it is true and we may experince through our active reasoning that conviction of it being true. I also tend to think that when the Bible appeals to reason, such as Luke's documentation of the facts for the benefit of Theophilus or John's display of Jesus' signs in his Gospel, they are going after such a conviction or firm persuasion of the mind. But the Bible seems also to be aware that such a process can be short circuited through being wrongly disposed, such as the fool saying in his heart that there is no God or the Pharisees refusing to acknowledge Jesus' works because of their unbelief in the Old Testament or the Greeks rejection of Paul because of their attraction to disputing and love of novel ideas. In these sorts of cases its clear that the Bible holds the client responsible for their unbelief and their rejection of the evidence presented as something other than God's glory revealed (as a coincidence or whatever) but that the only thing that can be done here is to present the OT/NT story side be side with their own account of things and force them to make a choice and this seems to be where the responsible choice account is supported by Scripture, because in these cases no explict evidence is there to decide the matter (evidence played down) but people fail on the grounds of morally based failure to judge properly (ethics played up).

"Or are we merely acknowledging that one's reasons for believing that Christianity is true today are necessarily going to be both more complex and less coercive in any particular than were those for even the first few generations of believers?"

Maybe, if "we" means you and me because another objection to my view is that it may not seem to be standard among average Christians who rely simply but not inappropriately on their basic conviction of the truth of Christianity from their own experience, their reading of the text of Scripture and the many odd apologetics writings they have encountered. But I think it is possible to argue that it is not the case that the church ever in its history -- one you look among the works of the significant figures -- ever thought that they could compel Christian faith as a rational necessity produced by sufficiently available evidence. I am including even Eusibius, Origen, Augustine, Anslem, and Aquinas here. The more I read of these authors, the more I am convinced that to be well versed in philsophy in the west meant in part to be well versed with the problems of scepticism and the necessarily circular character of dialectic and analysis and of the ability of pagans to use this as an avenue of justification for their unbelief. It seems that Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas in particular were aware that their attempts at demonstration were successful only if one grant's with either Plato, Plotinus, or Aristotle certain assumptions of the argument so as to argue that if you were a good Platonist or Neoplatonist or Aristotelian, you should also be a theist. So in one sense these theologians were arguing in a legitimate ad hominem way. But they also seem to be aware that one has to be careful to argue with a sceptic with whom they share no common assumptions and that the best that can be done dialectically is to show that Christianity is not inconsistent and not false to any known fact.

But we also see this awareness among contemporary apologists no matter what the stripe of them. We see it especially among presuppositionalists like Van Til, Schaeffer, and Clark. We certainly see it in liberal apologists. We see it in cummulative case evidentialists and transcendental arguments used by classical apologists. We certainly see it in the apologetic moonlighting done by Christians in the academy. When modern as well as classical apologists cry out so hard against the blight of scepticism not by refuting it but by asserting the adequacy of available approaches. (One of the reasons I like Ravi Zacharias so much is that he is such a popular apologist but he is also one who is keenly aware of these issues and makes this plain in his writings.)

It would be difficult to say that the greats among the earliest church had no awareness of this issue and as I suggest they may be well aware of it while at the same time being appropriately impatient with it, especially Paul on Mars' Hill and the first four chapters of First Corinthians.

Which is not to say that there has been no changes in history or that there are not substantial disagreements among various apologists throughout history. But there may be more in common between them and between them and non-Christian philosophers than one would expect from the public screeds. I think the real sense of why things seem to have changed is not based on changes in time as it is on our personal experience of changes in stages of cognative development. Sceptical issues do not play the same role in the various stages of intellectual developement and not all the stages are reached by all people. Early stages of development are more accepting of the common sense assumptions that encourage belief in God. Sceptical concerns are much more fascinating and appealing at an adolescent period of development which some never grow out of. But eventually the observations that motivate scepticism become successfully intergrated into a persons overall perspective and no longer dominate and overcome the regular cognitive activies of the mind. Unfortunately, academic philosophers are professionally committed to remaining in a sceptical adolescent frame of mind the way the discipline is currently set up and this is a historically contingent fact about the way things are now, but this was not always true. We need to approach our understanding of the phenomenology of Scripture with a sensativity to this.

I should add that I do take your question seriously and agree that an important desiderata of an account of religious persuasion is that it should be consistent with the positive teachings and paradigm examples of Scripture. My account may not be but it's not clear that it isn't.

Prefered Mystery Writers

Anne Ivy, the Clinging Vine asks "Who are your preferred mystery authors? You do HAVE preferred mystery authors, don't you?"

After A. Conan Doyle, my prefered mystery writers are Gilbert Chesterton (Father Brown) and Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsy), but mostly for the other things I've read by them rather than their mysteries. I guess I would have to add one playwrite, Neil Simon, for his spoof on mystery writers "Murder by Death". Basicly, it's like pulling teeth to get me to read a sustained piece of fiction, which brings me to the most appealing feature of Father Brown stories -- they're short.

One mystery/detective show that I do follow on a regular basis is "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" because while realistic, the show tries to incorporate the flavor of a sophisticated mystery story. I don't watch "Monk" only because I don't have cable.

CLICK THIS TEXT TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE "GET THE GNU CABLE SO HE CAN WATCH 'MONK' RELIEF FUND"!

Wittgenstein and Clinton

Joesnuff asks "If Wittgenstein were still alive today and a guest commentator on CNN during Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, what would Ludwig's comments be after seeing the video of Clinton parsing meanings on the word "is" like he did?"

Two remarks: (1) I am not a Ludwig Wittgenstein nor even a Norman Malcom or an Elizibeth Anscombe, so I would not have any real insight into what he would say. But no doubt that in examining the total phenomenology of the Clinton hearings, LW would have been able to see most any striking characteristic displayed in Clinton's or the questioner's use of language. (2) I will venture to say that in the situation there may be nothing remarkable in the analysis of language games provided by LW's Philosophical Investigations exhibited in the dialogue. At first it seem that Clinton is trying to cash out an ambiguity in the meaning of the word is that is relevent to clarifying the discussion but on my reading of the transcript it is not clear at all which previous use of the word is he is refering to. What does seem clear enough from the transcript is that he is distinguishing saying that he was not having sex with ML at the time of the hearings from saying that he never had sex with ML at all and that if what was said was the former then that statement was true at the time it was made. Clinton also stated that it was a statement, which ever it was, made by his attorney, and that his mind was pre-occupied with his own testimony to know exactly what was being claimed. I don't see anything here that would be more illuminated by the concept of language games.

On the other hand, thinking about the recent special report by Katie Couric on NBC about sex mores among teenagers, I was impressed that today's teenagers do understand oral sex to be sex, perhaps not even an instance of sex of any kind. If Mr. Clinton was working within the same language game as teenagers, then that lawyer's statement comes out true no matter which meaning was intended. Obviously Ms. Couric saw the connection also because she kept asking the teens whether the Clinton hearings had any influence on them. There seemed to be no evidence of this however.

In spite of all this, I don't think Clinton can really hide behind the lines of distinction between meanings of statements and language games. He seemed reluctant to come out and admit that he had sex of some kind with ML at some point while being aware that this is what the commitee was looking for. I also think his reluctance was more than just an attempt to avoid entrapment by some rabid political enemies over what to most people is an inconsequential matter. It is very dubious that as a young political intern serving a president in a working relationship with a huge differential of power and authority that her consent to submit in that way should be properly considered to be rational. ML was being used as a mere means to an end and not seen as an end in herself.

Faith as a responsible choice

Reproduced from ABC Forum

One of the things I am teaching my ethics students is how to face moral dilemmas using ethical theory. A moral dilemma is a case where one is faced with a decision where none of the options seem to be morally acceptable and yet the choice cannot be avoided, such as cases where a person is an agent for a client but his responsibility to respect his client's confidentiality comes in conflict with his responsibilities to protect the public's safety. Moral conceptual clarification, more information, and/or discovering other options are often helpful but not always. One may approach the question by examining it in the light of various frameworks of moral justification; will it bring about the greatest good to the greatest number of stakeholders, will it violate anyone's rights negatively or positively, will it satisfy or fail to satisfy any relevant duties, will it be fair or unfair to all concerned, will it contribute to one's own or another's flourishing, will it express love toward God and toward others, is it something a virtuous person would do, etc. One often discovers that the results of various frameworks of consideration will conflict but in the course of consideration one discovers reasons why some accounts are ultimately the most relevant and decisive about the issue, which I call trumping reasons, which turn out to be the ultimate grounds for deciding to do what you do. Consequently, since no one account is always proven adequate, one demonstrates moral responsibility by considering all the possibilities and hearing all sides before deciding. If someone has done that, their decision cannot be morally faulted.

Given the close tie between morality and religion, especially as understood by the Christian Faith, I suggest that a similar story can be used to defend one's faith. In the case of faith, one can distinguish what in faith is not subject to moral choice (the production of belief as a result of applying rational norms) and what is (the ethics of belief as acceptance). One can be specific about the criterion relied on from each perspective (naturalism, scepticism, idealism, theism) in determining theory choice in connection with one's own moral and existential situation in life. In considering all the perspectives (empiricism, evidentialism, rationalism, mysticism, experimentalism, pragmatism, classical metaphysical reasoning, naturalized epistemology, intellectual virtues, scientism, postmodernism, fideism), one can decide that faith in Christ is the right choice on the balance of considerations. Then one can present her decision as satisfying the responsibility of considering the matter from all perspectives and stating what was finally decisive and why.

According to this model, we defend our faith the same way we defend any other important decision we make by showing that we have given a fair hearing to all sides and stating what grounds finally settled the matter. This pushes the ethical aspect of faith to the center and avoids the rationalistic fallacy of typical apologetics without caving in necessarily to relativism or scepticism or arbitrary leaps of faith. Our audience may continue to disagree with our conclusions and final decision but the cannot complain about the irresponsibility or indefensibility of it.

A Question on Reformedom and Bureaucracy

Craigellachie from ABC writes "Dear Dr. Gnu, Please define the word "bureaucracy" in your own words and then give us your thoughts on how it relates to Christianity in general and Reformedom in particular."

This is a huge question requiring an essay or a book to answer fully, so I won't do that. But I do have few thoughts about some immediate concerns about the impact of bureaucracy in the wing of Christianity and Reformedom in particular; American Presbyterianism.

Let me define bureaucracy as any organization that is specificly structured and staffed in order to reliably and efficiently accomplish a clearly defined purpose. Accordingly, the guiding logic of bureaucratic design is instrumental or "means to ends" reasoning and the guiding principle of personel selection is their qualification and effectiveness in fulfilling roles within the organization. Such design is best accomplished by those with a certain expertise in doing this. Typically, since people are valued with respect to performing in a certain way and not primarily as persons, they are often treated as means to an end and they are not elected leaders in any broad sense; features which give bureaucracy a strongly negative conotation.

We tend to think of "the (paradigmatic) Bureaucracy" as consisting of the unelected government of a nation (what the British sitcom "Yes, Minister" refers to as the "civil service"). But when it comes to the church, the ethical problem of bureaucracy comes up in several ways: (1) the relation between the church and the "parachurch", (2) the relation between Church Courts and Church Boards, and (3) the difference between the "community-based" church and the "mega-church".

Before those problems can be discussed, we need to say a little about what constitutes church polity. Much of what makes Reformedom what it is is a necessary reaction to the accumulation of bureaucracy in the earlier Roman Church and the problems that it created and perpetuated. The common principle of all Christian views of polity is that Christ alone is the head of the Church. But the church, like all self-governing bodies, has a legislative function to determine by what laws the community shall be governed, an executive function that governs and enforces the laws, and a judicial function which determines when the laws are broken. Episcopal forms of church polity feature a heirarchy of rulers in the church who serve in behalf of Christ. This is traditional for Christian churches but rejected by non-conformist Protestants as presupposing an unwarranted distinction among elders in the church as well as an unwarranted succession of authority from bishop to bishop that claims to be from the apostles themselves but which is not a necessary nor a sufficient mark of an acceptible church. According to non-conformists Christ is the only ruler of the church and the only mediator between her and the Father and no succession or heirarchy of bishops was necessary. Christ rules through the proclaimation of the Word and the power of the Holy Spirit working immediately in each Christian. No legislative function was needed since that same Word was meant to be the Law to the church. The only polity function that the elders were needed for then is the judicial function. It was their business to identify what was Scriptural and to see to it that what the church did was in accordance with the Scriptures, the Law of Christ to the church. Consequently, the basic term for a body of elders is church court. This does not preclude the adopting of documents to facititate this application such as a list of books recognized as canonical Scripture, a statement of recognizied teaching (confession) in Scripture, and/or a constitution determining proper procedures in conformity with Scripture and the principles of general equity presupposed by it (a Book of Discipline or Church Order).

A real source of tension among all Christians but especially Protestant Non-Conformists is the balance between what is explicit and what is implicit in the Scriptures and how much liberty they permit in the framing of Church polity by prudent means. In presbyterianism, the argument is that the church polity must submit to only what is mandated by Scripture for it as God's Law for the church, as opposed to the view that God is primarily indifferent to matters of polity and leaves them to the autonomous common sense and prudence of church leaders. Obviously a middle view is possible, that God is not indifferent and has spoken with respect to how he wants his church governed but all that he needs is to provide a framework of instructions not made fully exhaustive or explicit within which the faithful elder can safely apply according to the assumptions of general equity and benevolence presupposed by what is instructed through the use of his own spiritually enlightened reflection.

So we have two views; (A) a strict rule that says that only what is explicit in Scripture is acceptible in church and (B) a more liberal view that says what is explicit and implicit in Scripture and what may be necessarily inferred from it is the rule of the church. Even though it seems that historic standards of the Reformation seem to hold (B), the fact is that various branches of Reformedom osscillate between (A) and (B). The Gnu rejects (A) and holds to (B). (A) leads to a narrow literalism in the approach to the text that is inconsistent with the paradigm ways the biblical text interprets itself and results in an unacceptible positivism and Phariseeism that is incompatible with Christian faith in general. However, the debate between holders of (A) and (B) is crucial with respect to the question of bureaucracy in the church. The holder of (B) will not in principle be opposed to the use of bureaucracy while the holder of (A) will absolutely forbid it as we shall see.

Concerning (1): A parachurch is a voluntary association of Christians from various backgrounds and denominations formed to acheive some common purpose, usually charity or missions. Some missionary theorists (e.g. Ralph Winter) think that the church necessarily and always exists in two forms; the established body fixed in a certain location and as a pilgrim movement moving from place to place. On this view, the parachurch is a normal expression of the church. But other missiologists (e.g. the late Orlando Costas) think that the parachurch only comes into existence when the church fails to perform its mission, which description seems to fit the boom of parachurch organizations in the mid-twentieth century. On this view, the existence of parachurch movements is abnormal and an indictment to the church. On the plus side, parachurch organizations allow the scattered church to function apostolicly as a united body accross denominational lines where there remain unresolved issues between mutually recognized believers. This allows them to fellowship in common endeavors and experince evangelical unity. It also tends to create problems by cultivating indifference to secondary matters and traditioned judgements and leads to a minimalism about doctrine and liturgy. It seems possible to explain the recent movement of many parachurch leaders to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as an action on the assumption of theolological indifference even toward Protestant distinctives and a reaction to the paucity of tradition in the parachurch movement.

Charles Hodge, the great leader of the old Presbyterian Orthodoxy in the 19th Century experiemented with supporting parachurch organizations in his own time (at which they were refered to as "Voluntary Societies"). However, because of problems similar to those just mentioned, especially a problem with a certain arrogance and indifference to Church authority in the parachurch volunters from the Presbyterian church, he finally decided that it was no longer spiritually expedient to support them.

Concerning (2): However, Charles Hodge (a holder of view (B)) still fought hard in behalf of Church boards. A Church board is an executive commitee of churchmen who have been assigned the responsibility of making sure a certain task gets done. Typical Church boards are the Board of (domestic, foreign) Missions, the Board of Christian Education, the Board of Accounting and Church Finance, and so on. The justification for boards is that they take on tasks that require a certain expertise within the church and they can do a far more effective job than individual congregations within the denomination can do by themselves. However, Hodge's defence of boards was opposed by a fellow theologian Dr. Thornwell on the simple argument that Boards (executive commitees) are not courts, they were not mandated explicitly by Scripture, and therefore their existence was a corporate act of unfaith in the sufficiency of the polity determined by God in the Scripture. Hodge tried to argue that the argument was rediculous and had no precedent in Reformed theology. Unfortunately for Hodge (a biblical and exegetical theologian first and foremost), his ignorance of Reformed thought on the matter was made evident by Thornwell citing instance after instance of precedents for his position, mostly from the English Puritans, who like Thornwell were typically advocates of view (A).

Nonetheless, I think Hodge was right and the Puritans wrong and would site other precedents in Scottish and Dutch theologians to support him. But even a defender of (B) will still be cautious. Church boards inherit some of the difficulties that afflict parachurch organizations and which Hodge recognized. This is especially apparant when the calender of disciplinary cases in a church (and remember that biblical church discipline is arguable a mark of the church) is given to the control of a board (like a Standing Judiciary Commitee), then that board can be come a priviledged class within the denominations polity like a star chamber. Every conservative remembers how the program of scepticism was institutionalized into the old church by its own SJC counterpart. One recalls the problems created for teh church court system by failures to manage things within commitees like those for World Missions and for Inter Church Relations and the Standing Judiciary Commitee in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) over the last few years.

Concerning (3): Finally there is the problem of mega-churches which I will define as local churches that are practically all board and no court. Some experiments with this have been very successful, the most famous case of this is the Salvation Army, but see also Volunteers of a America, and the Christian Missionary Alliance. But in the local church we see the drive to develope more by means of boards in response the church growth movement and seeker sensitive services in which everything is adapted to the specific purpose of increasing church membership. In this sense, it seems at times that bureaucracy has overtaken theology and we are back to the days of Finney. But this is not necessarily the case. Some big churches are well run and are a blessing to the denomination, for example Dr. Kennedy's church in the PCA. But they do create similar hubristic problems, usually in the form of conflicts of jurisdiction such as between the college outreach ministry of the PCA and the college outreach ministry of Briarwood Presbyterian Church, a PCA church. There is something odd about the idea of a denomination having to form a comity agreement with one of its own members.

The related effect of the churches willingness to accept uses of bureaucracy like parachurches, boards, and mega-churches is that it creates factional tensions within the church, similar to those faced by Charles Hodge in his own time. On the one side is the defenders of (A) who usually represent small uber-traditional churches with a significant deficit of power other than unprincipled scrupulousity in their appeal to the past and the text to their own detrement inveighing against bureaucratic pragmatists who slip into indifference about tradition and doctrine but who have a surfeit of material resources and political savy which they are tempted to use time and again to circumvent the slower and cautious procedures established by due process of Church polity because of their impatience. Each of these sides continuously eggs the other on. Meanwhile the minority handful of supporters of (B), clinging to the tertiary church document, try to mediate between the court-o-centric and the board-o-centric.

In conclusion, I claim that (B) is the right view to have since we are obliged not only to follow the explicit obligations of scripture but also what obligations are necessarily implied by Scripture and since the Bible mandates certain positive duties for the church as ends, and since ends ential whatever means are necesary (and appropriate) for accomplishing them, and since some form bureaucracy or another in necessary to coordinate means, therefore the Bible does not forbid but in fact requires bureaucracy in principle. But a church board has to be responsible to all its stakeholders just as any secular bureaucracy and some of those stakeholders are the church courts.

Question from BadgerMum: "Dear Dr. Gnu"

The BadgerMum asks: " You spend time in role-playing games. Would you ever consider acting as a career?"

Actually, roleplaying has revealed to me that one of my weakest traits as a roleplayer is getting into character. So I think that one of the excellent opportunities that RPGs provide me is a chance to roleplay more convincingly. So far though, my style seems to me to be quite wooden.

I think I sometimes display some good qualities of acting in serendipitous and spontaneous moments -- the same as when I write. But the difficulty is doing so soberly and on command. That's what is hard. I have some skill at imitation and the use of alternate voices -- which serves well when I tell certain jokes or read stories to kids.

Would I consider acting as a career? I think that would be wonderful. I'm such a big consummer of movies and there are certain actors who inspire me. I am particularly impressed with James Fox, who played the victemized royal in "Patriot Games" but had a more substantial role in "Passage to India". Here is a person who was an actor and when he became a Christian, he quit acting to do missionary service. But in his Christian convictions, he decided to return to acting, knowing full well the pressures he woyuld be under. He wrote a book about this called "Comeback".

Acting would definitely be fun but what I would really have hoped to do is writie and direct.

The "Story" Story

(Reposted from ABC forum)

You might want to take a look at Ladd's NT theology book at his discussion of the Christian life in John's Gospel. He brings out that in John 'gnosko' in relation to 'pisteo' functions differently from typical theological concepts of knowledge and faith. For example, for Aquinas, knowledge and faith are mutually exclusive such that you cannot believe that p and know that p at the same time. You believe in order to know but once you do know you no longer believe. But in John it is often the case that knowledge is a prerequisite to faith. This is connected with the signs in the book of John which function both as signs attesting to the credibility of the messager and as works which disclose the glory of character of God. Christ's testimony to his messiahship and deity is both based on the creative power of the signs such that only God could do them but also in what the signs do such as messianic works like restoring sight to the blind and life to the dead. As signs, the works can be placed neatly in a logical syllogism and their credit is more discursive as in the reasoning displayed by the man born blind in John 9. But as displaying the glory of God the judgement is that there is, as a matter of fact, some way such that it is what it is like for God to be that way, which is known more connaturally and non-discursively but with appropriate and immediate certainty. The second is more valuable than the first because not every demand for a sign is considered appropriate and the way God is to us can be seen apart from special signs. Another way that this value is made clear to us is the fact that we can be more certain of what God is like toward us than we can of God's existence. (Further, we can entertain some doubts about God's existence in an academic sense but we can in no way entertain any practical doubts about his great compassion and grace toward us that we see all around us. This is the ground of our certainty and what constrains our obligation to respond in faith and repentence. I'm mixing in a little CS Lewis and Basil Mitchel here with my Ladd at the end.)

I think that the problem of verification is best understood as attaching itself to "stories" or "accounts" rather than to propositions. In a necessarily rough description, a story is a set of propostions of various levels of abstraction whose relationship is strongly coherent and conceptually contigous and which is put to gether to serve various functions. So a story is a set of propositions but not merely so -- not every set of propositions counts as a story. Propositions can be either analytic or synthetic but stories are neither. Stories try to describe the way the world is to our perception and sense-making faculties, to try to show the connection between outward states and events and our inner lived experience. Stories can be reliably remembered and shared and transmitted. They have both canonical and noncanonical aspects such that a retelling of the story is identifiable with a previous telling of it even though it may alter or vary in the telling, so that the same story may have several versions.

Consequently, stories have both an a priori like and and an empirical like aspect to them. The sense of a story may have an immediately intelligible sense to them which makes them intrinsicly plausible and credible as a true story to any potential audience member such that their imediate certainty to the truth of it based on a sufficient justification for believing it, if the world exists in a certain way. However, this "a priori"-esque respect does not logically rule out empirical testing and critical analysis. A story may be confirmed or disconfirmed by the evidence and by testing for consistancy and coherance. But applying these tests to particular propositions is insufficient, they must be applied to the story as a whole. It is the story as a whole which is either confirmed or disconfirmed. Thus the parts of the story which by themselves may be considered as evidence transcending are evaluated by the parts of the story which explicates them in terms of what is visible and testable but what is visible and testible may resist apparent disconfirmation in light of the overall intelligibility of the story. The rules of verification cannot be spelled out in advance but that does not mean that stories are vulnerable to assessment by evidence. But neither does this mean that a person could not already have good reason for accepting the story prior to critical testing based on its intrinsic intelligibility.

The sceptic could raise her doubts about this account but she could necver establish them. She is exposed as someone who instead of trying to evaluate our stories by critical means is rather trying to replace story with criticism. Story-forming is a result of our natural causal interacting with the world, with thought, and with language. The sceptics view if taken seriously would cut us off from natural belief forming for the sake of something else wholly spun from our own idling thoughts. We are better off preserving our primary story-forming capacities unless giving them up is absolutely necessary.

Applying this to natural revelation and natural theology, story-making is closer to the former and criticism is closer to the latter as traditionally conceived, because story-forming is capturing our primary processing of thought while theistic proofs are higher order reflections on that thought. On this account then, theistic proofs do not stand alone as the foundations of natural theology but rather presuppose an original story which serves as a basis for them as reflections. This suggests that we are immediately aware of an original experience that could be captured in a story which provides the grist or intellectual matter of theistic proofs. I suggest that this is the story of the absolute dependence of natural beings on independent existence; we sense that the world of natural things is a world of vitalness, emergentness, contingency, spontenaity, dynamism -- a world rising above absolutely nothing which points back to an absolute fountain of contingent beings and which is wholey different from that fountain -- in short we sense the world is a continued creation ex nihilo and something that makes us wonder why it exists rather than otherwise. This is best told in the story of the Creator/creature relation. (A story may not necessarily be in the form of a progressive narrative which why I also offered the word "account" instead -- although when we truly attempt to describe concretely and specificly the dynamics of actual existence, we wind up with a chronological account.) The creation story also brings us closer to John in that by the same story we see displayed the glory of God in creation as an expression of his greatness and goodness.

Both kinds of theistic proofs, a priori and a posteriori, try to make explicit the rational grounds embedded in the story and show that the story can be expressed in part as potentially successful proofs and which confirm that the story survives and thrives under analytic criticism thus failing to be disconfirmed by it. But if the proofs are offered in place of the story as the official grounds of belief in God they ultimately fail because they remain open to objections from opponants of question begging and failing to prove the existence of the God intended and because they do not actually serve as the real reason the theist believes in God which is the intrinsic intelligibility of the creation story.

This "story" story (note that the account is self-referentially coherent) illustrates an apologetic approach which is consistent with John's account of how faith depends on knowledge.

How I spent D & D Day

Last Saturday was a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the making of Dungeons and Dragons, the flagship of fantasy roleplaying games. Our FLGS had all sorts of activities to honor the occasion, including a campaign tournament in the store manager's homebrewed campaign setting. Calling it "homebrewed', belies the excellent quality of the adventures. However. The campaign used D&D 3.5e rules.

The contest had two rounds and cost five dollars to enter. In the first round, the same one-shot adventure was conducted by five tables with five PCs and one DM each, using the same pre-generated characters at each table. After a four hour session, the DM had to decide on which player was the best role-player during the game (as well as an alternate choice). The five best players from each table (or their seconds if the first choice could not continue) would meet at one table with the team of DMs and the main DMM to do another final one-shot with a new set of characters. The best role-player from this round won the tournament and $70 worth of RPG swag from the store.

I thought it was a great opportunity to finally get a real taste of convention style roleplay with competent gamers, but I almost missed the whole thing. When I got to the store, it seemed like all the seats were full. Disappointed, I thought I would wait for one of the "baby" intro games that were running every couple of hours, just to get more experience with D20. Being a HackMaster devotee, I'm not too familiar with the system.

Providentially, one of the scheduled contestants was a no-show and one of my buddies on the store staff got me that person's seat. I managed to get the alternate's prize for that round and the primary couldn't stay to continue. So I got to be in the big final game. I didn't make the top three in the final round but I did get to go the distance. One of the reasons, that I didn't get into the winners circle is that before the final round was because the DMs required a D20 3.5 Rules Quiz, the results of which would be used if the final accounting was too close to call. As I said, I am not very familiar with the system -- I only got 3 out of 10 right. According to the DMs of both rounds, everyone played so well that it was really too close to call.

Everyone indeed played very well and the DMs had prepared some really fun adventures.. I realized that one of my weak areas was getting into character. It turns out, dear readers, that while I am a real ham in print, it is really hard for me just to produce character flavor on demand. I really have to be inspired to do it and I was pretty nervous at the time. So both my characters were rather recalcitrant and task-focused no matter what the character sheet said.

In the main event, all the PCs were men from mid-twenties to mid-forties, but two of us had to play female characters. My character was a gorgeous elven female rogue (thief for all you HM folks), not more than a century old which like a teenager for elves. It seemed like my character was the designated jailbait for the adventure but she was aligned NG and was given a full covering adventure uniform, which I appreciated (modest fellow that I am -- as a Christian, I'm the sort of guy that likes to go the beach and dress up women with my mind). The real spice to this character was that she was equipped with psionic powers that were to be kept a secret from the other players. To use them, I send to send the DM team instructions by secret notes, which proved to be tremendous fun for both me and the DMs, who scurried like excited squirrels around anything I sent their way. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed playing a thief and one with secret psionics. My next character will be a thief type female elf character, maybe a Bard to get the special goodie powers. Also, I enjoyed the D20 system itself a lot more than I thought. The rules set made the action proceed smoothly and didn't stick out much to interfere with play. Fortunately, the DMs did not feel absolutely bound to the rules but made accommodations to what they thought was creative roleplaying.

Tolkein wrote fantasy to be adapted to the great traditions of Scandinavian Mythoi that formed the culture of the ancient British. The head DM formed the last adventure to be adapted to Chris Carter's 'X-files'. All the characters were recruited by an official special investigations arm of the kingdom, including receiving special uniforms and badges. We were the kingdom's MIB (Munchkins in Black), whose purpose was to investigate strange phenomena. We were sent out on a case that involved investigating dissected livestock and strange crop circles. There was even a player character who kept insisting that we faced proof positive of "extraplanar" forces and who had the nickname "Spooky" and another player character who was a former constable and who was constantly raising skeptical questions about such creatures.

There were, to be honest, some real "Kodak moments" which are bound to give some moral pause. At one point, our team was trying to rescue a family trapped in a dungeon that was scheduled to by tortured for some purpose or another. While setting the mother and daughter free we were interrupted by screaming and the sudden appearance of a beautiful naked women from the room where the screaming was coming from. She was so striking, that every character had to make a saving throw to resist the magic of being charmed including the female characters. One of our comrades was seduced, and lost a level of experience being kissed by the creature. At this time, my character psionic projected a charm person effect that made the creature break off her seduction and turn to free the father who was being tortured on a rack. One free, the man and his family escaped and the naked woman displayed her true nature by unfolding her leather-like bat wings of a demon succubus (as I suspected). This lead to a melee with all the characters. My character tried to tumble into a sneak attack position and wound tangled up on the floor between the monster's legs. Fortunately for her, the demon focused all her energies on attacking the other characters in the room so that my elf remained undisturbed until her next initiative round. On my next turn then, my character jumped up with a dagger and performed a "C-section" on the creature (which I said in part to avoid peoples" imaginations from speculating on other even worse prospects). This turned out to be a decisive blow as I rolled a Nat 20 twice and maxxed my two allowed hit diced. This caused her to give up the fight and disappear. The DM bent the rules both in allowing the charm effect to work and not penalizing me from attacking from a prove position from the floor.

As I recall, I did the most logical thing I thought to do under the circumstances but there is no doubt the whole thing presents an image both titillating and disturbing, an image I had to concentrate hard to set aside during worship the next day. It seems to me that such moments are almost inevitable if a Christian plays with the average roleplayer. This remains controversial but not in the sense that I case think of any necessary defeaters for participating in general with roleplaying games. Another aspect though is that there were many other things I could think of doing on a Saturday that would have been far better than killing an afternoon in fantasy land, even though there was a lot of fun to be had in the trip.

One thing I did do was try to bring Jesus into the game with me, not in the sense of anything explicitly Christian, like telling a goblin about the "four spiritual laws", but just in the sense that I was being conscious of my identification with Christ and the trust in the real effect on the Holy Spirit in my life, my character, and my consciousness, hoping in trust that the fruit of the Spirit would be palpable to the other players through their characters' interactions with my character. I asked God before each game, almost spontaneously, to simply help me to play well, a prayer which He seemed to answer without magic.

Dungeons and Dragons day served to give a real paradigm experience of roleplaying games at their very best, which will be very useful grist for my further reflection about the hobby.

The Gnu