Communion With The Infinite
Rod:
I think a useful distinction between progressive and traditionalist religionists and their approach to religious truth is as follows. Progressives think that religious truth is indefinite and subjective, and can change according to the perceived needs of people in a given time and place. Traditionalists believe that religious truth is definite and objective, and can be known with some degree of certainty.
Put another way, progressives tend to think that religious truth claims are statements of an individual’s thoughts and emotional state; trads tend to think that religious truth claims are statements about metaphysical reality.
Rod is right to put it in this other way, as there is something potentially very misleading in speaking in terms of subjectivity and objectivity. In Orthodox theology, and most specifically in the modern Orthodox neo-patristic theology of Lossky drawing on the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, knowledge of God is experiential. Truth claims about God arise out of real experience (“he that saw it bare record, and his record is true”), which the faithful verify through their life in the Church and whose verification they also find in the written and unwritten Tradition of the Church and the lives of the saints. Indeed, if we had to choose between defining our knowledge of God as subjective or objective, we should probably prefer to say that it is subjective (or as some our colleagues might put it, intersubjective), but neither part of this opposition states things correctly. At least for man, objectivity is a myth, and objectivity here presupposes a weak or non-existent personal relationship man and God. God is radically Other in nature, but He is self-revealing and desires communion with His creatures, and His inner Life is characterized by communion and a relationship of perfect unity, which tells us that He is not an Object to be perceived, but a Person to be known and loved.
There is another difficulty here. Truth is not definite, because ultimately God is the Truth, and He is incomprehensible and ineffable. Our statements about God, both positive and negative, are definite because of the finite capacity of our mind and our language to conceive and to express the truths that God has revealed to us in a manner befitting our understanding. Doctrinal definitions are true and meaningful, and they point accurately to reality, but they are necessarily inadequate to express the fullness of Divine Life. The certainty of the faithful, or the certainty that the faithful can find in the teachings of the Church, is the certainty that the Spirit of Truth (Jn. 15:26) continues to guide and instruct the Church, and it is the certainty that these teachings derive from the real experience of members of the Church recorded in Scripture and explained by the generations of the faithful who have handed down the Faith in practice and devotion to us.
16 Responses to “Communion With The Infinite”
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I like reading your blog because, despite being your political opposite, I respect the intellectual rigour.
You are a fearless intellectual six days a week. But what goes so wrong on the seventh? If I proposed some welfare or warfare scheme, and held up as evidence of its truth and goodness some “Jn. 15:26″, you’d laugh it out of the building.
The last paragraph is pure Sarah Palin. You’re better than her, Daniel!
The relationship between the lack of certainty expressed in this post and the certainty with which pro-lifers find legal personhood existing in a single-cell fertilized egg … is left to the reader to figure out. Because I can’t.
This is a very important post. One of your best.
“knowledge of God is experiential.”
I think Cardinal Newman makes a similar argument. Great post.
“The relationship between the lack of certainty expressed in this post and the certainty with which pro-lifers find legal personhood existing in a single-cell fertilized egg … is left to the reader to figure out. Because I can’t.”
Not to put words into anyone’s mouth, but this post is about the incomprehensibility of God and not the incomprehensibility of man or his biological existence.
As for the original post, isn’t it odd how many would-be traditionalists sound so much like Allan Bloom? There are only so many ways to rewrite the anti-relativism passages from his The Closing of the American Mind.
It’s fine enough to denounce an incoherent intellectual position, but the problem may rest in the individual will, not in the intellect.
Dreher’s talk about “religious truth claims” is also awkward, as it implies Christianity is about information. Faith is a habit, a virtue, and its expression in the creeds presupposes that virtue.
I think the opposition between objectivity and relationship is a false one, and unnecessary. This is not to say that most attempts at “objectivity” are puerile in their appreciation for human knowing and what exactly is involved in warrant and assent. St. Thomas Aquinas has a much better way of explaining faith I think: it is a dark knowledge because of its material object, but in virtue of its formal object, its certainty is guaranteed. In fact, by definition, faith attains to First Truth itself, and cannot err, even if it remains in the via positiva, via negativa, via emmenentia procession, leaving the believer certain that he knows THAT the propositions of the faith are true, but not knowing HOW. And of course mystical knowledge attains a kind of experience with the truth that mere assent to propositions does not provide: but it never surpasses them either, which is why mysticism never threatens to go beyond the bounds of what has been revealed, and what is assented to in the act of faith, which remains as through a glass darkly for all believers, even mystics.
In other words: an orthodox Christian assents to all the truths of the faith (inasmuch as he is able to identify them) because he first assents to God as First Truth, God who has spoken through Jesus Christ and his Church: insofar as the believer is aware of what exactly has been revealed (the material content), he always assents because of his formal reason, God who does not deceive nor can be deceived has revealed it. It is faith, traditionally conceived, that identifies the orthodox Christian, which is an intellectual assent moved by the will from love, and so in a way, “objective”.
The theological liberal (heterodox) believes because he thinks it makes sense to him, and only believes (or does not) inasmuch as the doctrines make sense to him. The virtue of faith, at least in the Thomistic sense, is absent, since the formal reason for belief for the liberal is these doctrines making sense to his mind.
And of course, America is a liberal Christian nation, founded by radical Protestants for the most part, re-conceived by even more liberal Protestants under the Second Great Awakening and the Civil War. Contrast this to Pre-Communist Russia, which it times may have been despotic (as we also have been in different ways) but nonetheless made room for and embraced orthodox Christianity in the sense I outlined above.
Well, this is why Daniel will never have an op-ed column or a book deal with Regnery. I had to read his passage twice to understand it. Whereas Rod came up with a simple, false dichotomy, calling liberals nefarious relativists, that a 10-year-old could understand.
But what goes so wrong on the seventh? If I proposed some welfare or warfare scheme, and held up as evidence of its truth and goodness some “Jn. 15:26″, you’d laugh it out of the building.
Public policy proposals are different from private belief.
I guess this is an example of Christian exceptionalism, becuase as far as I can tell, all religions make exactly the same claim (the objective truth of their god), while disagreeing vehemently, and often violently, with all the other religions.
There is no objective experience of God (of whatever brand of religion). If there were, we wouldn’t be discussing the reality of her existence here or anywhere else.
“Truth is not definite, because ultimately God is the Truth…” If the truth is not definite, and God is the truth, then God is not definite? I’ll buy that for a $. Or a Euro, whichever.
“If the truth is not definite, and God is the truth, then God is not definite? I’ll buy that for a $. Or a Euro, whichever.”
Know your Latin roots. The infinite cannot be definite. To be defined is to have limits. To define God in the same way one would define one of His creatures is the height of illogical pride.
I make no assumptions about God at all, Kevin. I am simply pointing out a logical inconsistency in Daniel’s rhetoric. If God is not definite, she certainly can’t be considered objectively known, in the personal sense or any other.
As for infinite vs definite, Daniel’s phrase specifically says that truth is not definite. If the truth is not definite, and God is truth and also infinite and ineffable, then by your logic, truth is infinite and ineffable. Somehow I think that truth is more specific than that. If it isn’t more specific, then the word is meaningless.
If the truth is not definite, and God is truth and also infinite and ineffable, then by your logic, truth is infinite and ineffable. Somehow I think that truth is more specific than that.
But the word is being used here equivocally of God and of propositions/statements.
ted,
MW on “equivocally”:
equivocally
One entry found.
Main Entry:
equiv·o·cal
Pronunciation:
\i-ˈkwi-və-kəl\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Late Latin aequivocus, from aequi- equi- + voc-, vox voice — more at voice
Date:
1599
1 a: subject to two or more interpretations and usually used to mislead or confuse b: uncertain as an indication or sign
2 a: of uncertain nature or classification b: of uncertain disposition toward a person or thing : undecided c: of doubtful advantage, genuineness, or moral rectitude
Are you saying that Daniel is trying to mislead us, or that Daniel is uncertain of the nature of God (I know I am uncertain)?
If I take you to mean equivalently, then I agree, and you make my argument for me. “God is truth” and “truth is indefinite” become equivalent statements in Daniel’s logic. Either we are talking about different kinds of truth, or truth, whether big or small, is not definite.
I suspect that Daniel is just attempting to disagree with Rod. Rod does say that before now (or whenever post-modernism debuted) progressive religionists and traditional religionists could agree that religious truths are eternal, but not any more. Personally, I think that it is a tempest in a teacup thing. Rod’s discussion was about “Does religious orthodoxy matter?” and how the discussion about whether or not Obama is a Christian. Obama says he is. And no, religious orthodoxy doesn’t matter. Whatever truth lies in any religion, orthodoxy is a man-made artifact and subject to all the failings of anything man-made.
When I say equivocally I mean it as it is used in Aristotelian logic:
“Things are said to be named ‘equivocally’ when, though they have a common name, the definition corresponding with the name differs for each.”
It seems to me that Mr. Larison does make a distinction in his post between Truth (= God) and dogmatic statements (which can be taken as the equivalent of religious “truths”). It also seems to me that what he says in the second paragraph is tied to his attempt to go beyond what he sees is an unhelpful distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. Certain Orthodox writers seem to avoid the use of equivocal naming, insisting on limiting the use of a name to only one thing, and it seems that Mr. Larison is doing that with respect to the word truth. I think he is not disagreeing with Mr. Dreher for the sake of disagreeing, but it is tied to two different ways of speaking about God.
As for religious orthodoxy: if God has revealed Himself, it does matter. The notion of orthodox is tied to the authority, and to say that it is always a man-made artifact is to deny that God could ever present Himself as an authority for human beings.
ted,
So we are talking about different kinds of truth. Some overarching but indefinite truth (God) and the other kind of truth that is specific and definite.
And I didn’t think Daniel was disagreeing for disagreement’s sake – only that he disagreed with Rod’s proposition (I disagree with both of them, and with you as well).
If God reveals himself, she does it one being at a time. Orthodoxy is agreement between individuals about what God revealed to them individually. Therefore, orthodoxy is as prone to error as any other man-made thing.
Thank you for the link. The description more or less fits def 1 from MW.
re: kinds of truth — Since the true, or truth is a transcendental as is being, there really aren’t different ‘kinds’ of truth.
If God reveals himself, she does it one being at a time.
And why would you impose this limitation upon God? What about God makes it necessary that this is the case?
Orthodoxy is agreement between individuals about what God revealed to them individually.
Except that Christ taught the Apostles collectively.
I haven’t read every word of the original posting or of the comments, so I have have missed something, but would someone care to explain how this Orthodox understanding of religious knowledge is different from that of Pentecostalism? My Pentecostal former friend said that, for him, theology IS experience. Of course, Pentecostalism generally rejects Holy Baptism and Holy Communion as sacraments, affects to live without creeds, and would be opposed to sacraments, veneration of relics, and so on. Their experience validates all this, for them. While Orthodoxy might look to the experience of saints throughout the ages, Pentecostalism will look to the experience of Pentecostals all over the world. Either way it is experiential — yes?
Personally, I think the chief thing is the prophetic and apostolic witness as transmitted in the Church as the Holy Scriptures. My “experience” cannot really validate the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the Two Natures in Christ, etc.
Thoughts?