Second New Book Excerpt: Species of Hell

Over the next few weeks I hope to be posting a number of short excerpts from the early chapters of That Damned Book (the philosophical critique of the doctrine of hell that John Kronen and I are co-authoring). The excerpt I post today comes from Chapter 2, our chapter in which we outline different species of both DH (the doctrine of eternal hell) and DU (the doctrine of universal salvation).

John and I actually revised and reshaped the first section of that chapter into a stand-alone article on species of hell, adding a section in which we identify the main hurdles than each species we identify would need to overcome in order to be defensible within a broadly Christian context. That essay has now appeared in the just-published anthology, The Problem of Hell: A Philosophical Anthology, edited by Joel Buenting and published by Ashgate. It's a lovely book, comprised of more than a dozen articles requisitioned specifically for the anthology and written by the some of the top philosophers working on the philosophical problem of hell. For those who want a foretaste of some of the main lines of argument we'll be developing in our book, take a look at our contribution to The Problem of Hell (titled "Species of Hell").

The excerpt reproduced here lays out what all species of DH have in common, and then sets the stage for distinguishing different species according to a pair of parameters. The first part of the excerpt (the part before the ellipses) is almost identical to a parallel passage in our essay for this anthology. The second part (after the ellipses) is unique to the book manuscript, although the ideas expressed in it are expressed in different terms in our essay for the anthology. Without further ado, here's the excerpt:

For Christianity, God is taken to be the highest good. This is a claim about what is objectively valuable, and as such imposes an obligation on our subjective values: if we fail to value God above all things, our subjective values are defective—and our moral character is more broadly compromised. When we fail to order our values appropriately, we inevitably fail to behave in ways that display appropriate respect for the inherent worth of things.

On traditional Christian moral theology, then, rational creatures are fully moral only when they make God the object of their highest devotion—in other words, only when they love God above all else. Loving God above all else completes the moral nature of rational creatures. By clinging to God—the sovereign good—and loving Him because of His perfection, creatures are perfected in both intellect and will, so that all their inclinations and actions are in accord with right reason.

But the traditional view here is that this kind of rightly-ordered love of God can only be fully achieved by a direct vision of the divine essence. Thus, Melanchthon asserts that “although the law points out what God is like, such righteousness cannot be in anyone unless God himself dwells in him and gives him his light and glory. Thus the law is entirely fulfilled in us only in eternal life, in eternal righteousness, when we have eternal joy in God, and God has become all in all.”

In sum, salvation in the Christian tradition means a spiritual union with God that brings about both eternal moral perfection and perfect happiness. With this notion of salvation in mind, it should be clear what it means to say that some created persons are never saved. It means that some are never granted the beatific vision, which is the only thing that will fully complete them as rational creatures. Their intellects are thus eternally darkened by false notions of what is true and good, leading to disordered desires that overvalue some things and undervalue others. Not only will they never love God with their whole hearts, they will never properly love their neighbors or themselves…

…the core of DH in all its forms can thus be taken to consist in the everlasting deprivation of the beatific vision and the unending moral and spiritual vitiation which necessarily attends it.

But if this is common to all species of DH, we can see immediately why there is something controversial about DH. To put the point simply, permitting or imposing damnation amounts to either allowing or causing some persons to be eternally confirmed in two evils: not only or even primarily the loss of the joys of heaven, but also, and more significantly, eternal moral wickedness. To be deprived of the beatific vision is to be deprived of the only thing that can wash away sin.

And so the question immediately becomes: Why would a perfect God, a God Who is not only benevolent in his love for His creatures but who hates sin, permit (or bring it about) that some of his creatures are eternally marred by both misery and sinfulness, and so fall eternally short of the end for which He made them? Why would a perfect God allow sin to reign forever victorious over His divine purposes in creation, at least in the souls of the damned?

If God is morally perfect and omnipotent (conceived in the sense of being capable of doing whatever is logically possible), then there must be either (a) some morally sufficient justification for permitting or inflicting these evils or (b) some logical impossibility associated with saving the damned from these evils. Given God’s omnipotence, (a) seems more plausible than (b). Of course, it might be logically impossible for God both to save the damned and to meet some further demand of moral perfection. But in that case, meeting the relevant demand of moral perfection would operate as the morally sufficient reason for God’s permitting (or causing) damnation, and so we have a species of (a).

Nevertheless, we don’t want to rule out (b) in advance. In either case, (a) or (b), there is a sense in which God would be justified in not saving all—either because he has a morally sufficient reason not to do so or because he cannot do so (and so cannot be morally required to do so). In either case, God’s failure to save all would be shown not to be wrong, and so we would have what might be called a “God-justifying reason” for eternal damnation.

As one might expect, hellists have historically proposed a variety of “God-justifying reasons” for damnation, and these alternatives correlate with different species of DH, especially in two key areas: the nature of the evils endured by the damned, and the causes of damnation. In effect, God’s reasons for permitting or imposing damnation will lead to different ideas about what the damned endure. If, for example, one thinks that God is justified in imposing damnation because of the demands of retributive justice, then one will be likely to think that the damned suffer from an array of torments inflicted by God as a punishment for sin. If, by contrast, one thinks that God is justified in permitting damnation out of respect for the free choices of the damned, one will be less inclined to think that the damned have suffering heaped upon them by God and more inclined to think that the suffering is nothing more than what in some way naturally accompanies alienation from God.

Likewise, alternative views about God’s justifying reasons for damnation will generate different accounts of its causes. If one thinks God’s justifying reason for permitting damnation is respect for the free choices of the damned, one will think that hell is a kind of self-imposed prison, that damnation’s “impelling cause” is the free choices of the damned. If, however, on thinks God is justified in imposing damnation for retributive reasons, one will think that damnation’s impelling cause is God’s choice to righteously smite evildoers.

A Prayer for Our Times

Introductory Remark: There is, of course, much that can be said for and against the details of the recently passed health care legislation. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that by trying to “patch up” the current system rather than overhaul it more thoroughly, and by making key concessions to the beneficiaries of the existing system, the real gains in coverage are weighed down by inefficient bureaucratic complexities and pointless “appendixes” which can only serve as a source of infection. I remain hopeful that despite this Rube-Goldberg-like clunkiness, it will offer more benefits than costs in terms of social justice…but I don’t know. Only time will tell.

But, of course, my concerns are trivial, since the real problem—as we all know thanks to FOX News—lies with the fact that the new legislation is socialist, that socialism is by definition un-American, and that this health care legislation will therefore ruin the American way of life.

And so, for all my friends who have digested the teachings of FOX News, I offer the following prayer.

Heavenly Father,

In this time of unprecedented national crisis, when the Democrats in Congress have brought the nation to the very brink of national catastrophe—nay, Armageddon itself—by passing socialist health care reform legislation, remind me of those things about our nation for which I can still be grateful.

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for the fact that the Socialists who are running this country haven’t messed with our nation’s system for building and maintaining its infrastructure. Thank you that it is still entirely in the hands of for-profit private enterprise, without government regulations restricting private industries from doing what they please with the bridges over which I drive. Thank you that none of my tax dollars are being spent to maintain roads I don’t personally…Oh wait. Scratch that one. Back up. Try again.

Thank you, gracious God, that our nation’s defense isn’t controlled by big government bureaucracies (which would likely be housed in some large hexagonal or octagonal structure) or paid for with my tax dollars, since that would be Godless socialism, and therefore evil and un-American. Thank you that we have seen fit to entrust our national security to privately-run for-profit mercenary firms…Oh wait. No, no, no. I didn’t mean to call our U.S. military un-American just because it happens to be entirely run by the government and therefore qualifies as socialism under the loose definition I’ve inherited from FOX News. All socialism is evil except the military. Alright. Deep breath. Let’s try again.

Thank you, Lord, that the reach of un-American socialist ideology hasn’t infected the way in which we educate our children. Thank you that no one has had the gall to propose a “public option” in education, since that would be evil commie stuff and…Oh wait. Crud. Um…Lord, thank you that at least the post-secondary education system remains outside the intrusive reach of state-run…Oh, crap. I teach at a state university. Forgot about that.

Okay, try again. Thank you, Heavenly Father, that at the very least our domestic safety is preserved by private security firms rather than some shamefully socialist public police force paid for through tax dollars, since we all know the government cannot be trusted with something as important as…Oh wait. No, no, no. Police are our friends. Love the police. Technically socialist, yes, but police are an exception like the military. Okay. Good. Try again.

Thank you, Lord of Life, that we’ve seen fit to ensure that fire safety in this country is overseen by unregulated, privately-run, for-profit fire protection businesses that charge clients a fee and only respond to fire emergencies affecting their paying clients. After all, public fire departments paid for through taxes would amount to socialism and therefore would destroy the American way of life. Thank you that our Founding Fathers, people like Ben Franklin, had the wisdom to set up safeguards against such…Oh wait. Dang.

Thank you, God, that the financial industry remains blessedly unregulated by the government, since innovation and greatness is achieved not through regulating American entrepreneurs but by giving them full freedom to pursue wealth in a competitive marketplace. Unregulated free enterprise, without the meddling of heavy-handed government bureaucracies, has made and continues to make the financial industry an ongoing engine of economic prosperity. Nothing can go wrong so long as the government stays out of…Oh, crud.

Never mind.

Podcast Interview at "Common Sense Atheism"

For those interested, Luke Muehlhauser over at "Common Sense Atheism" recently interviewed me about my book for his "Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot" podcast series. The interview itself lasted for more than two-and-a-half hours, but Luke was able to edit it down to just about an hour. A few things had to be left out, of course--including a lengthy discussion about a Hegelian approach to developing and refining our worldviews, some not-very-well-worked-out reflections on a Schleiermacherian approach to ethics, etc. But what remains is an excellently edited presentation of the substance of the interview. Check it out here.

Take Two: Ariel Sightings and Atheist Faith

Reposted here is one of my earliest blog posts, from back in October 2008. It's worth revisiting for the "Ariel Sighting" alone, I think. Enjoy!

A few days ago, as my family was getting loaded into the car for a thrilling afternoon of shopping, we all noticed a bird dropping on the rear driver’s side window—a mostly white SPLAT with, of course, the requisite dribbles (now dry).

Actually, I should say that my wife and I noticed it, as did our five-year-old son. My daughter, who is two, didn’t notice it until a little while later, as we were driving away from a visit to Goody’s Department Store.We were pulling out of our parking space when my daughter shouted out, “Ariel!”

I glanced around and saw no obvious images of the Little Mermaid, but my daughter is good at spotting them even when I don’t. A few months ago, at the airport, her Ariel radar proved to be especially keen, and whenever she cried out “Ariel!” or “Mermaid!” I would eventually (after looking around for a few minutes), find some tiny Little Mermaid bookmark in a shop window or an Ariel backpack disappearing around a corner (attached to the back of a flouncy five-year-old with pigtails).

But this time I could see nothing of the sort. “Where?” I asked.

She pointed insistently out her brother’s window. I looked out across the parking lot, in the direction she had indicated, but saw nothing…until I abruptly realized she was pointing at the window.

To be precise, she was pointing at the bird poop. And as I looked at it, the splat of excrement took on a new meaning. I could see Ariel rising in the water, her hair streaming behind her, her fish tail lost in a roiling swirl, clearly about to be transformed into legs. The poop bore a remarkable resemblance to the scene from Disney’s The Little Mermaid in which Ariel is rising to the surface of the ocean just after visiting with the sea witch, as her wish for human legs is in the process of coming true.

And I thought to myself: “Too bad it doesn’t look like Our Lady of Guadalupe. Then I could remove the window, laminate it, and sell it on e-Bay for $28,000.”

Instead, when we stopped to fill gas, I went after the Ariel image with the blue window washing liquid and squeegee courteously supplied by the gas station. In moments, Ariel was no more.

The lesson, of course, is this: bird poop is always forming patterns. Most of the time these patterns don’t match any to which we’ve attached special significance. Sometimes they match ones that are deeply important only to two-year-olds. And, every once in awhile, they’re going to match images that someone, somewhere, invests with religious meaning. The same is true, of course, of patterns in toast and chocolate drippings.

And so, when it just so happens that an image imprinted in toast looks like the Blessed Virgin, it really doesn’t make any more sense to view this as a sign from God than it does to view Ariel-in-bird-poop as a sign from Triton the Sea King.

But many religious people are hungry for signs of this sort—tangible images which we can see or touch or (God forbid) taste. They long for a world in which God shows up not just as a quiet presence in a moment of meditative prayer, but in more straightforwardly empirical ways.

Of course, there is a long theological tradition which claims that God does show up in the empirical world all the time because the very existence of the empirical world in all its wonder and mystery is a constant manifestation of the divine. Such a theological view has no need for Virgin Mary sightings, because the entire created world in every aspect is a constant testament to the glory of God. (I should note that this tradition of thought, although it needn't exclude talk of miracles, is very different from the tradition of religious thought which is fixated on miraculous suspensions of natural laws).

But this idea that the empirical world is an ongoing manifestation of the divine is a WAY of seeing the world—and there are other ways to see it, too. A religious worldview offers one set of glasses through which to interpret and understand the meaning of our ordinary experience. But there are non-religious worldviews that do this, too. So long as these worldviews do not call upon us to reject or deny empirical facts or the best understandings of the patterns by which the material world works (in the way that, say, Young Earth Creationists do), there is nothing in the empirical evidence that will force us to prefer one such worldview to another. There may be more broadly philosophical reasons to favor one general worldview over another, but the empirical data by itself is “polysemitic”—that is, able to be invested with alternative fundamental meanings.

And this means that the embrace of a broadly religious worldview will always be a matter of choice and hope, not a matter of certainty. But many are uncomfortable with living in hope. For a variety of reasons they long for a certainty that is impossible to have, at least in this world we live in.

We see this hunger for certainty not just among the religious, but also among many atheists, who insist that their naturalistic worldview—according to which the world we encounter through our senses and through scientific investigation constitutes all that there is—is an incontrovertible truth established by the empirical evidence. But it should be plain that the question, “Is there more to reality than meets the eye?”, will not be answered by pointing out that I cannot see more to reality than meets my eye. Empirical evidence cannot settle the question of whether there are orders of reality beyond the empirical one.

But the hunger for certainty leads many to look for empirical evidence that confirms in some way their worldview. And this is why so many cling to Virgin Mary sightings. They want something in the empirical world that settles the question of what, if anything, lies beyond the world. The problem, of course, is that nothing will really do this trick. Even if the heavens parted tomorrow and a booming voice declared to the entire planet, “I AM,” it would still be possible to be an atheist. After all, the manifestation might be the work of space aliens (or the result of a freakishly rare confluence of natural events that produced a sonic boom which, by virtue of our tendency to discern anthropomorphic patterns in natural events, we interpreted as the words “I AM”).

In short, to look for proof that your way of seeing the world is the right one by pointing to images of the Blessed Virgin in a grilled cheese sandwich is just shifting the problem of interpretation down one level. The image in the grilled cheese is itself polysemitic, and to treat that image as the deliberate product of a transcendent God is to offer one possible interpretation among many.

In the words of the theologian John Hick, “the true character of the universe does not force itself upon us, and we are left with an important element of freedom and responsibility in response to it…I would suggest that this element of uncompelled interpretation in our experience of life is to be identified with faith in the most fundamental sense of that word.”

If there is a God, he hasn’t created a universe in which His presence is unambuously attested to, perhaps because such an uncompromising testament to His presence would stifle our development as autonomous selves. And if there is no God, then nothing in the universe cares enough about us to make the fundamental nature of reality manifest to us. And so we are left with the “element of uncompelled interpretation” that Hick identifies with faith.

In other words, even the atheist has faith when we get to the most basic level of interpretation. I would argue that even agnostics have faith in this sense, insofar as some kind of implicit worldview is needed in order to live one’s life in any kind of coherent way. At least on an implicit or practical level, we make a decision about what the world is like at its root. And it’s just that, inescapably that: a decision. It's a decision that ought to pay attention to the facts. That is, we should make sure as best we can that our interpretation fits with the facts.

But I am sceptical of anyone who claims that only one worldview, or one kind of worldview, will offer such a fit.

New Book Excerpt: The Possibility of Christian Universalism

As I mentioned in my last post, I will occasionally be posting some very brief excerpts from the book on hell I'm working on with John Kronen (hereafter referred to simply as That Damned Book), if and when they work as blog posts. I offer the first of these today.

First, some context: "Christian universalism" refers to a version of Christianity which rejects the doctrine of hell (DH) in favor of the doctrine of universalism (DU)--the view that ultimately all created persons are saved--but which, in other ways, preserves core Christian teachings. Some critics of this view argue that the doctrine of hell is so bound up with core Christian teachings that it would be impossible to be a universalist AND a Christian.

Early in That Damned Book, John and I briefly touch on this subject in the wake of pointing out that a number of our arguments for universalism are based on premises likely to be shared by a number of theistic religious traditions. In other words, we offer arguments for universalism that do not invoke or make use of any distinctively Christian teachings. Here's what we go on to say:

This last fact might cause some Christians to worry—perhaps sharing C. F. W. Walther’s view that one cannot be a universalist without denying the necessity, if not the fact, of Christ’s Atonement. But this worry is unwarranted. One may be convinced that a good God wants to save all, can do so, and hence will, without so much as considering the specific steps God might take or need to take in order to do so—and hence without considering whether the means He used (or had to use) are those Christians affirm.

As such, an argument for universalism that makes no reference to the Incarnation or Atonement does not thereby rule out the belief that universal salvation is achieved (indeed, can only be achieved) through the Incarnation, life, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. Such arguments may still be compatible with the Christian doctrine that every human being is saved through Christ’s redemptive work.

Of course, not everyone embraces Christ in this life, even in the implicit sense of placing their trust in an “anonymous” Christ. Hence, universalists cannot hold (as so many conservative Christians do) that sinners need to perform the subjective act of placing their trust in Christ before death in order to be saved. But this does not mean that universalists have to deny the role of Christ’s Atonement in human salvation. First of all, one might take it that we are saved by what God does for us through the Atonement, regardless of what we subjectively do in response. But it is even possible for universalists to treat subjective faith in Christ as necessary for salvation so long as they hold that there is no time limit for performing this act of faith, such that it could emerge for the first time after death. This possibility is central to several key arguments we develop here.

Admittedly, the idea that one can be converted after death is contrary to what most of Christianity taught up until about the 18th century. But the discovery of the New World and the vast empires of India and China produced a gradual shift in the Church’s thinking. Beginning, arguably, with certain 17th century Jesuits, Christian intellectuals began to hold that those who had no way of knowing Christ during their lives could be saved as long as they did not reject the grace given them. And many otherwise conservative Christian thinkers now hold that all will be given an adequate revelation of Christ, at least at death if not before.

But Walther’s worry that universalists must deny the necessity of Christ’s saving work is related to another worry, expressed by Jerry Walls, that also deserves preliminary mention. Walls worries, in effect, that if the doctrine of hell is set aside, Christianity becomes trivialized. He claims that, in traditional Christian theology, hell “is the alternative to salvation,” a fact that lends “a sense of urgency and moral seriousness to the quest for salvation” and also highlights “the majesty and glory of God’s work to save his fallen children.”

But it is entirely compatible with DU to hold that, apart from God’s saving work, our fate would be horrific. That is, universalists can agree with Walls that the alternative to salvation is hell—that eternal anguish is what we would endure but for God’s saving work—even if they think no one actually endures this alternative. Furthermore, many universalists hold that there are those who do endure this alternative, although not eternally: while all are ultimately saved, some of the most recalcitrant sinners actively resist God’s saving grace for an extended time, enduring a finite “hell”—that is, an immediate experience of what it means to exist in the “outer darkness” apart from God—the experience of which ultimately breaks down their recalcitrance.

On this view of things, none of the “urgency and moral seriousness” attached to the quest for salvation needs to be set aside, let alone any sense of “the majesty and glory” of God’s saving work. A rescue boat that comes to the scene of a shipwreck is no less worthy of praise because it succeeds in saving all the passengers rather than only some. It is what they are saved from, not how many of them are saved, that determines the relative importance or triviality of the saving work.

Launching "Take Two"

I have just been cast in the play/musical, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" (based on the books of Robert Fulghum)--a fact that has at least four significant implications for my life.

First, since I was cast to play the youngest male role, I will need to shave my facial hair to achieve a more "youthful" look. The first stage of this transformation is complete as of last night, and I now sport a dashing goatee. Since everyone says it makes me look younger, a part of me secretly hopes the director will say it's enough and allow the remaining facial hair to remain--but I'm not optimistic.

Second, I will be called upon to do something I haven't needed to do since college: memorize stuff. More specifically, a whole bunch of lines. The play is a series of vignettes and extended storytelling monologues. One of the monologues I'll be doing (an exhuberant oration on the transformative power of Beethoven's 9th), is probably the longest thing I've ever been called upon to memorize (the second-longest being Mr. Lundy's monologue from the musical Brigadoon, which my high school put on my senior year; the third-longest being the first simile from The Illiad, which I chose to memorize in high school for its perceived seminality).

Third, I will be missing my kids' bedtime for evening rehearsals five nights a week. And yes, this bothers me more than losing the beard I've sported for two decades.

Finally, I will be losing a big chunk of my free time. This fact, combined with my renewed commitment to getting serious about finishing the manuscript for my next book (a co-authored critique of the doctrine of hell that I've been working on with a colleague for several years), has forced a monumental decision. For the next two months I will be featuring only two things on this blog: (1) reruns of some of my favorite posts from early in my (short) blogging career--that is, from before most current readers knew that this blog existed (such posts will be marked with the "Take Two" moniker in the title); and (2) key passages from the book-on-hell-in-progress ("That Damned Book"), but only if and when I find excepts that are brief enough and clear enough on their own to work as blog posts, and which I think might either stimulate useful discussion or benefit from the kind of critique a blog post is likely to inspire.

Oh, and just in case anyone was in doubt, I still remember that first simile from The Illiad. It goes as follows (and no, I didn't look it up; and no, I can't guarantee that my recall is perfect):

"Like the swarms of clustering bees that issue forever in fresh bursts from the hollow in the stone and hang like bunched grapes beneath the flowers in springtime, fluttering is swarms together this way and that way, so the many nations of men, along the front of the deep sea beach, marched in order by companies to the assembly; and rumor walked blazing among them, Zeus's messenger, to hasten them along."

The Obligatory Jesus Mythicism Post

A couple of weeks ago I waded into an ongoing discussion on James McGrath’s blog concerning “Jesus mythicism”—a topic I know next to nothing about. But a comment I made on one of McGrath's posts on the topic has since been reposted (in whole or in part) on several other blogs (for example, here), and so it seemed appropriate to reproduce that comment here, along with further reflections and elaborations.

For those unfamiliar with the topic, “Jesus mythicism” refers to the Christ myth theory that's currently enjoying a fair bit of popularity among web pundits (especially those hostile to Christianity)—the theory, roughly, that Jesus is a mythical figure constructed by the early church for its own purposes, and that there really was no "historical Jesus" at all.

As someone who isn’t an historian, and hence not schooled in the academic standards of that discipline, I’m not at all qualified to speak to the merits of the arguments put forward by some of the more prominent contemporary mythicists, such as Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle ). But one thing philosophers do for a living is make distinctions, and as I was reading some of the conversations on this topic it seemed to me that it might be helpful to clearly lay out a range of alternative views concerning how the Jesus Christ represented in Church teachings and scriptures is correlated with an historical figure.

One commentator on McGrath's post suggested to me a strategy for laying out such alternatives when he asked, “If it could be shown that there was an actual historical person named Arthur Pendragon, wouldn’t we still think of King Arthur of Camelot as a myth?” Here’s what I said in my comment:

Contrast the following claims:

(1) There was an historic king of the Britons named Arthur, and his life was exactly as described by Sir Thomas Malory in _Le Morte d’Arthur_.

(2) There was an historic king of the Britons named Artur whose impact was sufficiently great that, after being slain by a usurper, those loyal to him would gather secretly to swear allegiance to his bloodline and share stories about him—stories said to come from Artur’s closest thanes. The earliest writings from these communities are by a priest more interested in the meaning of Artur’s life than the details of it. But after a few decades, several followers attempted to write accounts of Artur’s life and sayings based on what their respective communities had preserved. While not historically accurate, they offer clues for anyone wanting to understanding the historic King Arthur.

(3) There was an historic king of the Britons named Artur whose impact was sufficiently great to prompt storytelling about him. This storytelling became quickly severed from actual historic events, becoming interwoven with the creative fancies of bards whose interest lay more in telling colorful tales than in preserving history. Eventually these stories evolved into the legendary figure we now know as King Arthur. But the King Arthur we encounter in the inherited legends has little similarity to the historic figure that inspired the original storytelling.

(4) There was no historic king of the Britons who gave rise to the King Arthur legends. Instead, this figure was wholly an invention of bards interested in creating colorful tales—although the first bard to invent the first King Arthur story borrowed a few of his plotlines from divergent bits of recent events he’d witnessed in his travels, and decided to name his hero “Artur” because he had some vague memory that there was some king by that name who’d lived a generation ago.

Your question gestures to claim (3). As I understand it, Earl Doherty and his followers are making a claim akin to (4) with respect to Jesus. Fundamentalists embrace something akin to (1). Most biblical scholars I know are closer to (2) but allow for elements of (3). The case of (3) is interesting. If we accept it, is there a sense in which there is an “historic Arthur”? I’d say yes, but only in the sense that there is an historic figure who prompted the storytelling—and I’d be quick to add that the character in the stories bears little resemblance to the historic figure. (2) offers more room for dispute about which details are historical.

In subsequent commentary on this set of alternatives, one blogger took issue with positioning biblical scholars in the intellectual space between (2) and (3), saying that the biblical scholars he finds most reliable fall somewhere between (1) and (2). Again, not being an historian versed in the merits of scholars who work in this area, I cannot speak to what view dominates among the best scholars in this area—but as far as my lay impression goes, it appears to fall in the rough vicinity of (2). (I should also note that, in my original comment, I wasn't attempting to make an authoritative pronouncement about where most biblical scholars fall on this issue, but was, rather, simply offering my anecdotal experience with respect to biblical scholars I know).

On another discussion thread, only part of my taxonomy was reproduced—the articulation of (3) and my comment to the effect that if (3) were correct, then the Jesus of the stories would have little resemblance to the historical figure. The discussion that followed seemed to take me as endorsing (3) and therefore as arguing for the conclusion that we can’t learn much about the historical Jesus by studying the Bible.

But this was not my intent. So, in order to help fend off confusion or misunderstanding, let me share a bit about my own view, for what it’s worth. Let me stress again, however, that I am not an historian. I have not systematically evaluated the arguments of Jesus mythicists, nor do I have the credentials to do so. My own view is thus based on impressions that are far less scientific. As such, it is a very tentative position at best.

In outline, my view is that the stories in the gospels have an origin that falls somewhere in a range between (2) and (3). Now both (2) and (3) make room for narratives that are of dubious historicity. The difference is that in the case of (2), the community is intending to preserve stories about a real person that they think are true because those stories are meaningful to them, and there is at least an intent to faithfully pass them on. In the case of (3), something else has come into play--a set of interests that go beyond preserving and perpetuating received stories. In the case of the King Arthur analogy, it's the bards' "interest in telling colorful tales." In the case of gospel writers, it would likely be the interest in making a theological point.

But such an interest can come in degrees. In some cases it is relatively minor, so that the narrative is to a great extent an attempt to faithfully retell an inherited anecdote about the life of one's hero, but there are flourishes of detail that are added (perhaps unwittingly) to emphasize one's theological position. As Bart Ehrman has argued more than once (in my judgment rather convincingly), the portrait we get of Jesus in Mark is decidedly different from the one we get in Luke. Luke's Jesus endures His crucifixion and the time leading up to it with something like serenity, whereas Mark's Jesus seems instead to face it with anguish, even despair. Luke's Jesus models how someone assured of God's providence faces the worst conceivable trials and tribulations (Luke 23:46: "Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit"). Mark's Jesus stands in solidarity with our suffering, even experiencing that pervasive sense of being abandoned by God (Mark 15:34: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?").

But while I get the clear sense that both are theological storytellers, telling the story in ways intended to make their own distinctive theological points, I also get the sense that (at least much of the time) they mean to be weaving together an overall portrait of Jesus that relies heavily on "true stories" about Him preserved by the early church--stories that they wanted to put into their narratives in part so that they could be preserved in that form.

Let me clarify what I mean with another analogy. I'm part of the community of AVP (Alternatives to Violence Project) facilitators. AVP organizes and runs nonviolence workshops in prisons and a range of community settings all over the world, and one of our organizing philosophical concepts is something called "transforming power" (or "TP"--a non-coercive power that can transform negative personal and interpersonal dynamics into positive ones, and which feels less like a power that we exercise and more like one that works through us). Facilitators have their own "TP raps," talks about transforming power and their own understanding of it, informed by stories of TP at work.

There's one particular story that's well known in the AVP community because it so beautifully exemplifies what TP is about...and because it appears in the manual which facilitators use to put together "basic" level workshops. The manual includes several examples of TP raps from some of AVP's pioneers, including that of Fred Feucht. And his rap contains a story about a woman named Marge Swan. According to Feucht, Marge Swan was heading home from the library one evening, walking through Central Park with an arm load of books, when a man approached her aggressively. She turned to him and dumped her books in his arms, expressing gratitude for his timely arrival. He proceeded to walk her home, carrying her books for her. When they got to her building she took her books back from him, thanking him again for his help, and he said something like, "Lady, that's not what I meant to do."

This story was told by one of the facilitators in my basic workshop, and it made such an impression that I've been telling it ever since (meaning for the last twenty years). But although I've been aware that the story comes to AVP largely through Fred Feucht's TP rap in the AVP Basic Manual, I never looked carefully at Fred Feucht's seminal account...until today, when I dug out my basic manual to see what Fred's version looked like.

In the version I've been telling, Marge Swan and her would-be attacker chat as he carries her books for her. That detail isn't in Feucht's account. But it's a good fit with the broader themes of my TP rap. Chatting symbolizes a non-threatening human connection and a mutual recognition of fellow humanity. It's a way of turning the nameless stranger behind you in the grocery line into something more than that. And so, without even realizing I was making it up, I added in that little detail.

But it's quite possible that others add conflicting details. Because of its history, there are many Quakers involved with AVP. Quaker worship is characterized by silence, and there's a strong sense of the transforming power that silence can have. I've heard TP raps that dwell on this point--including discussions of how silence can be a way to clear away the crud that separates us from one another. And I could certainly imagine an AVP facilitator introducing the Marge Swan story into a TP rap in which "the power of silent presence" has been an important theme. Maybe the facilitator envisions Swan and her would-be attacker walking together in silence, simply aware of each other as fellow human beings. And this imagined detail, because it symbolically expresses a point about TP that the facilitator wants to communicate, works its way into the story.

Now I've never met Fred Feucht, let alone Marge Swan. I have no idea how Fred Feucht knows of Marge Swan's story. Did she tell it to him herself, or did he get it second-hand? What details, if any, did he get wrong? Did Marge Swan chat with her would-be attacker, or did they walk together in silence?

I don't know. But when I share Marge Swan's story during AVP workshops and elsewhere, my intention is to pass on a true story--not one I know first-hand, but one that's been preserved within the AVP community, in part because of its capacity to exemplify an important idea that unites members of that community. And the story's truth matters, because a common charge leveled against advocates of nonviolence is that it doesn't work. Here, in the story of Marge Swan, is a case in which it did. The story is preserved in part because here is a real live case of nonviolent methods actually working in the real world to transform a potential crime into a positive human exchange. That's a major reason why this story was preserved within the AVP community. But, as with all such stories, the details vary with the storytellers...sometimes because of simple errors, sometimes because of the broader philosophical or theoretical purposes that motivate the storytelling.

When I read the Synoptic Gospels, many of the stories within them read like that, at least to me. Many don't, but many do. And that's why I'm inclined to treat many of the stories told in the Synoptic Gospels as primarily stories whose origins are of type (2), with elements of (3) creeping in when the theological aims of the authors are particularly at stake.

The Gospel of John is a more complex case, insofar as John’s project seems to be primarily theological. As I read John, his aim is to develop a theology of Jesus by using the “gospel” literary genre, and this theological aim is far more significant to him than the aim of recounting the events of Jesus’ life as accurately as he can. As such, for example, he happily puts into Jesus’ mouth extended theological interpretations of the significance of Jesus’ life and ministry—things it would be hard to imagine being said by the Jesus we encounter in Mark.

This is not to say that the events recounted by John are all or even primarily fabrications—but it does mean, for example, that where John differs from the Synoptics on historic details (such as the timing of the crucifixion relative to Passover), the explanation may lie in John’s theological objectives and the symbolic resonance he achieves by telling the story as he does.

The result is a Jesus who is “mythologized,” not in the sense that John’s Jesus has no foundation in an historical individual whose story parallels the one John tells, but in the sense that John’s narrative is more concerned with theological symbolism than with factual details. As such, my view is that John's Gospel falls more in the vicinity of (3) than (2). That said, I must confess that it's my favorite gospel, precisely because it is the most theological. It may not be good history, but that's not its aim.

For the historian who is concerned with factual details, the question then becomes a matter of sifting through the theological and political aims of the writers, as well as getting past the simple errors that accrue when a narrative is passed down orally within a community for a generation before it’s first committed to paper. While that is going to be hard work, and while that work may very well lead to an understanding of the historical Jesus that differs in many ways from the gospel portraits, I find myself highly skeptical of those who think that once this work is done they’ll find that there’s no historical figure there at all. Once again, however, I must stress that I'm no historian, and these are merely intuitive impressions.

IS GOD A DELUSION? Named Outstanding Academic Title for 2009

In today’s post, I’d like to take a break from my usual efforts in philosophical theology to…well, toot my own horn. This morning I received an e-mail from OSU’s Associate Dean of Research and Instructional Services congratulating me on having my book, Is God a Delusion? named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 by Choice Reviews.

This was the first I’d heard of it—although several months back my editor at Wiley-Blackwell forwarded me a strong review that had been published in Choice—a magazine widely used by academic librarians throughout the US for collection development (touted on its website as “the premier source for reviews of academic books, electronic media, and Internet resources of interest to those in higher education”).

The reviewer said that “Reitan’s execution is truly remarkable” and then listed the book as “highly recommended”—apparently something that is relatively infrequent in Choice, so my editor was pleased (as was I). But I wasn’t sure what it meant to be named an Outstanding Academic Title, so I went to the magazine’s website to find out.

Here’s what it said: “Every year in the January issue, Choice publishes a list of Outstanding Academic Titles that were reviewed during the previous calendar year. This prestigious list reflects the best in scholarly titles reviewed by Choice and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community.”

In short, academic librarians of the world love me. I guess they can tell I’m a fellow introvert.

Religion as a "Bifurcated Essentially Contested Concept": Part II

In a comment on my last post, about the “bifurcated essential contestability” of religion, Burk wrote: “So what’s the point? The fact that some concepts are slippery enough to be re-defined to one’s taste, or one’s argumentative predilection, hardly speaks well of the original referent, does it?”

This betrays a misunderstanding, insofar as essential contestability is not merely a matter of a concept being slippery enough to allow one to define it as one pleases or to serve one's argumentative agenda. But I suspect the misunderstanding here is likely to be sufficiently widespread that I want to have another go at the idea of essential contestability. However, so as to avoid having to repeat what I’ve already said, I invite you to read or reread the previous post—as well as my clarifying comments offered as comments to it—before digging into this one.

First of all, essential contestability does offer parameters for the proper use of a term (one can’t simply define it however one pleases). But these parameters are looser than those offered by a strict definition in terms of genus and difference. The purpose of that looseness is to facilitate an ongoing normative dispute--to prevent those who, say, want to apply the term "terrorism" to domestic battery from being shut down by "definitional fiat", without having the chance to make their case for why domestic battery deserves to receive the same sort of condemnation that we attach to, say, the Oklahoma City bombing.

The worry here is this. Suppose someone tries to make the point that domestic battery is a species of terrorism, and thereby argue that the public moral outcry against terrorism (and concomitant political capital and economic resources devoted to its prevention) should extend with equal force to domestic battery, inspiring a comparable devotion of public resources. The worry is that this essentially moral argument will be unfairly silenced by essentially ad hoc definitional conventions. Someone will say, “That’s not terrorism, so shut up and go back to your NOW meeting.” The essential contestability of “terrorism” aims to prevent the invocation of such conversation-stoppers.

Some concepts have a precisely defined set of referents. Some admit of grey areas ("vague concepts")--and as I've argued elsewhere (in an article on the essential contestability of "rape"), essential contestability offers a useful way of understanding what can make a concept vague. Whether a concept has a precise meaning or is vague/contested tells us something about the function that the concept serves in the language. If the function is to regulate a certain kind of descriptive project, then it will have a precise meaning. If its function is to regulate an ongoing normative dispute, then it will be essentially contested.

But here's the thing. There would be little point in making linguistic space for normative disagreement if normativity were conceived reductionistically in terms of nothing but subjective attitudes. If the distinctive wrong of rape were just a matter of taste or nothing but a projection of psychological predilitions ("a rorsach blot," as Burk puts it in his comment), then there'd really be nothing to disagree about between those who say that a husband's cavalier disregard for his wife's disinclination to have sex makes his act rape (even though she's been socialized to quietly submit to his demands), and those who deny this. There'd be no disagreement between them because the former would be simply saying something about their tastes (they just happen to have a certain kind of distaste towards the husband’s behavior) and the latter would be simply saying something about their tastes (they lack the relevant negative attitude). But varied tastes towards the same phenomenon do not constitute disagreement. A disagreement is possible only if both parties mean to say something about the husband's behavior--the former is asserting something about it that the latter denies.

In short, real normative disagreement is possible only if there is more to the normative status of activities, projects, etc., than just the diverse attitudinal projections of different individuals.

It follows that, in order for the essential contestability of concepts to serve the function it is supposed to serve, there must be something more to normative discourse than just expressions of taste and projections of preferences onto the range of entities to which the contested concept actually or potentially refers.

The precise character of the "something more" is going to be a matter of some debate, but at the very least it will require that normative judgments be such that it is possible to offer legitimate reasons in their favor--legitimate in the sense of rendering it rationally fitting for someone to change their mind in the light of it.

Since I am convinced that there is something more to normative judgments than mere expressions of subjective preference, I am likewise convinced that essentially contested concepts serve an important linguistic function.

I am less convinced, however, that the bifurcation of an essentially contested concept--of the sort I see occuring in the case of "religion"--is helpful. Rather, while I think it may be inescapable, it creates problems for clear communication and divides the normative discourse into two communities who then have difficulty communicating their respective normative insights to the other community without being consistently misunderstood.

So, with respect to such concepts, the task is to understand how they operate so that we can better transcend the impediments.

In sum, I think the essential contestability of the concept “religion” has value, but I think that the bifurcation of it limits that value by preventing the normative insights achieved in one linguistic community (which focuses on religion’s paradigms in a purely negative way so as to identify what it is about them that justifies the negative normative judgment) from being effectively communicated to the other linguistic community (which focuses on religion’s paradigms in a purely positive way so as to identify what it is about them that justifies the positive normative judgment).

Religion as a "Bifurcated Essentially Contested Concept"

It occured to me that at least a few readers of this blog might be interested in the core section of an e-mail that I recently sent to a philosophical colleague--in which I briefly describe the more technical philosophical idea that was percolating beneath the surface of my recent Religion Dispatches article reflecting on the Hitchens-Sewell interview. In briefest terms, I've become increasingly convinced that the concept of religion operates in a rather strange way in contemporary discourse. I've decided to call it a "Bifurcated Essentially Contested Concept."

In fact, the first draft of the RD article included a brief discussion of this more technical idea, but I decided that it didn't work for that venue. I'd either need to go into so much depth expositing the relevant ideas in the philosophy of language that the article would have this distractingly dry academic portion in the middle, or I'd end up underexplaining these ideas so much that they wouldn't be helpful.

But for those interested in the more academic side of my work, the note to my colleague is brief enough to fit in a blog but detailed enought to offer a sense of one of the philosophical projects I'm am developing. So here is what I wrote:

In brief, (the philosophical project) involves an analysis of the concept “religion” that makes use of W. B. Gallie’s notion of “essentially contested concepts.” In case you’re unfamiliar with Gallie, he understands essentially contested concepts to be characterized by (a) a shared set of complex paradigms, (b) a common appraisive meaning, and (c) disagreement over which features of the paradigms justify the appraisive judgment. Since the appraisal has become an ineradicable feature of the term’s use in ordinary language, any proposed definition takes sides in a moral dispute: by fixing the extension of the term, the definition makes a judgment about which entities should be subject to the normative appraisal that goes with the use of the term, and which shouldn’t. According to Gallie, preserving the essential contestability of a concept—that is, characterizing the “language game” of proper usage in terms of (a) and (b) and, arguably, paradigmatic examples of things that fall outside the extension of the term, rather than in terms of a conventional definition—prevents normative disputes from being ended by definitional fiat (and thereby having certain moral perspectives illegitimately silenced).

What I’ve been thinking as I get increasingly caught up in the current “God debates” is that “religion” operates today as an essentially contested concept with a twist. The twist is that, although there is a shared set of complex paradigms, there are two competing appraisive meanings—one positive and the other pejorative—and hence two communities of discourse—one disagreeing over which features of the paradigms justify the POSITIVE appraisal they attach to the term “religion,” the other disagreeing over which features of the paradigms justify the NEGATIVE appraisal they attach to the term. Thus conceived, Sewell is in the same community of discourse as, say, Pat Robertson, but fundamentally disagrees with him about which features of religious paradigms justify positive appraisal because they are operating from deeply opposed normative frameworks. Hitchens, by contrast, is in the opposing community of discourse, but is operating with very similar normative lenses as Sewell. The result is that her understanding of religion, derived from her culling from the paradigms that which justifies a positive judgment, falls entirely outside the scope of Hitchens’ definition of “religion” precisely BECAUSE it has been stripped of all the things that justify a NEGATIVE appraisal. But they agree about so many things that one might even start to think of Hitchens as a closet Unitarian.

Since this passage from my e-mail explicates Gallie's "essentially contested concepts" rather quickly, without the help of clarifying examples, let me just add two examples for the sake of my readers here. First, there is "work of art." We all agree that DaVinci's Mona Lisa is a work of art, and that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is a work of art, etc. That is, there is a shared set of paradigms that we can all agree fall within the extension of the term. And we all attach a positive appraisive sense to the term "work of art." That is, for something to be properly called a work of art, it needs to exemplify an achievement of a certain sort. So, we agree that the paradigms exemplify this achievement. But when it comes to, say, certain post-modern creations on display in modern art museums, some will call them works of art and others will vociferously disagree. Why? Because to call it a work of art is to say that it achieves something--something of the same sort that the Mona Lisa achieves. Perhaps not in the same measure, but enough so that they both deserved to be classed as works of art.

The result is that you have clear cases of works of art--in which there is general agreement that this or that is a work of art--and borderline cases (which some will call works of art and others won't). Gallie's point is that this is well and proper, because to insist upon a strict definition with precise boundaries would be to illegitimately shut down an ongoing normative disagreement about which features of the paradigms justify the positive appraisive judgment that attaches to the term "work of art."

Here's the second example: the concept "terrorism." This one works in very much the same way, except that the appraisal that goes along with the use of the term is strongly negative. There are, again, a bunch of agreed paradigms--the 9/11 attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing, etc.--as well as a range of contested cases. The disagreement turns on which features of the paradigms of terrorism justify the negative judgment that "terrorism" implies.

So anyway, my working theory, from my observation of the way "religion" has come to be used, is that it fits the model of essential contestability in a number of important ways--except that, crucially, some attach to the term a positive appraisive sense while others attach to it a negative one. This fact may imply other differences. Part of my current work is to tease out in a systematic way precisely WHAT other differences are entailed.