I recently talked to someone who observed that Eastern Orthodox apologists have, in the past decade or so, been more apt to try appropriating Reformed apologetics. I've witnessed the same tendency in the likes of Jay Dyer, Joshua Schooping (before he became disillusioned regarding Eastern Orthodoxy), and others I've happened across now and then.
Truth is attractive; hence, many of these Eastern Orthodox apologists once nominally identified as Reformed Christians. As for what reason those who identify as formerly Reformed fall away from the truth, I give some possible reasons here. Regardless, on one level, that such persons retain some truths they learned even after public deconversion is unsurprising. On another level, it is surprising that such apologists have not, by and large, critically self-reflected on whether a fundamentally Reformed apologetic can makes sense within the context of a non-Reformed faith.
For example, I was recently linked to this article by an Eastern Orthodox philosopher name Erik Sorem. A glaring omission in it - and in Eastern Orthodox apologetics in general - is the connection between apologetics and anthropology. For the Reformed presuppositionalist, one practical purpose for apologetics may be to undermine the false confidence of unbelievers. However, the Reformed Christian acknowledges that man's sinful rebelliousness to God cannot solely be overcome by argumentation. Because of the extent of man's sinfulness, the Holy Spirit must graciously change the mind of the rebellious apart from the help of the rebellious. There is no synergy in regeneration.
Eastern orthodoxy stresses the rational nature of man and insists that man remains man after the fall. So far, so good. But the value of this sound position is vitiated by the Eastern churches' failure to recognize the extent of the fall and therefore their inability to see the full need of grace. Some of their theologians toy with a verbally pleasing analogy: as God became man, so man will become God. This is similar to the Gnostic notion that salvation is deification. Partly because of this, some very conservative Protestants have reacted against the identification of the image as reason, believing that this identification implies a superficial view of sin. The implication, however, is fallacious and the reaction extreme. (link)Speaking of Clark, in my experience, most Eastern Orthodox apologists find their roots in other presuppositionalists such as Bahnsen, Frame, or Van Til (cf. Sorem's article above). Thus, some Eastern Orthodox apologists are unaware that grounding one's justification for belief in the Trinity in Scripture makes more sense than grounding one's justification for belief in Scripture in the Trinity (link; cf. my discussion of transcendental argumentation here and here).
Of course, there is no question that the Trinity ontologically precede the Scriptures, but I have never witnessed one who takes the Trinity as his epistemic foundation be able to deduce, say, the canon of Scripture. On the other hand, one who takes Scripture as his epistemic foundation may be able to deduce the doctrine of the Trinity. The upshot of this is that presuppositionalism is tied to the doctrines of sola scriptura, perspicuity, self-authenticity, etc. As with the anthropological objection, this epistemic foundations objection is fatal to Eastern Orthodox apologetics and the epistemology its apologists try to defend.
Such are the general problems with Eastern Orthodox persons who attempt to co-opt presuppositionalism. There are more particular problems I've observed, ones which stem from attempting to follow the Van Tilian brand of presuppositionalism (as all the Eastern Orthodox apologists I have in mind tend to do).
For instance, I don't know to what extent Eastern Orthodox apologists are familiar with contemporary epistemology - in some cases, self-admittedly not (see Jay Dyer at minute mark 2:03:00 here, for example) - but what I tend to read or hear basic mistakes such as what the meaning of classical foundationalism even is!
Classical foundationalism is a theory regarding the structure of epistemic justification. In contrast to Sorem's apparent misunderstanding (in which he writes, "Presuppositional apologetics, first and foremost rejected... classical foundationalism"; see pg. 12ff of his article), foundationalism as such says nothing about whether such justificatory foundations are or must be "autonomous" or "theonomous." Sorem uses the guilt by association fallacy and/or genetic fallacy when he dismisses classical foundationalism seemingly for no other reason than that Aristotle accepted natural theology, that empiricism is flawed, etc. It is painfully apparent Sorem is unaware of theistic foundationalists such as Gordon Clark.
Ironically, the sort of coherentism Sorem goes on to espouse (see footnote 28) itself collapses into foundationalism, as epistemologists such as Peter Klein have noted:
The function of the type of reasoning we are considering is to enhance the epistemic status of our belief-states with their propositional contents, and circular reasoning cannot do that. It might appear that some progress has been made when a reason for y, namely x, is offered, but when it turns out that the reason for x is nothing other than y, it is pyrrhic progress.
The second, more plausible form of coherentism - emergent of holistic coherentism - holds that when our reasons have a reciprocal structure they are all at least prima facie justified. The epistemic status of all members of the coherent set is determined by the degree to which the propositions in the set are R-related plus, perhaps, some other properties obtaining. If x and y are members of the coherent set {x, y, ...} and xRy and yRx, it is not x that makes y justified and it is not y that makes x justified, rather what contributes to making each of them justified is that they are members of a coherent set. Being a member of such a set makes them prima facie justified, or, at least contributes significantly to each being prima facie justified (see BonJour 1989). I will not contest that in this paper. What is important to see here is that emergent coherentism, as Ernest Sosa has shown, is a form of foundationalism (Sosa, 1980). The foundational property is being a member of a coherent set of propositions. This form of coherentism is just as much a foundationalist account as, say, an account that takes all believed propositions which represent my conscious mental states as (at least) prima facie justified. Thus, any rapprochement with foundationalism is applicable to emergent coherentism as well." (Klein, Ad Infinitum, pgs. 110-111)
Likewise, Jay Dyer also misunderstands this (see ~minute mark 1:43:00 in the aforementioned video). This is especially inexcusable in that both Dyer and Sorem are aware of and have approvingly cited a paper that makes the same point Klein does above! Both of the apologists recommend Russell Manion's "The Contingency of Knowledge and Revelatory Theism," in which he writes:
Circularity is also not satisfactory, but it is much more interesting. Advocates of a philosophical position called coherentism think they have beaten the foundation dilemma. They point out that beliefs do not neatly divide into the categories of foundational beliefs and justified beliefs. All our beliefs are related to one another in the form of a coherent web. Some subset of our beliefs may be more important and juridical than other beliefs, but all beliefs hang on all other beliefs, and nothing is foundational.
But as Michael Depaul in his article “Coherentism” points out, coherentism really doesn’t escape the foundational problem at all. It is simply another “version of foundationalism that holds all beliefs to be foundational.” (link)
Further, Dyer and Sorem also miss the important difference between one's having noninferential knowledge and one's defending said knowledge (link, link, link). The structure of one's knowledge - assuming one has "knowledge" (and here I am speaking of "knowledge" about which one may have infallible assurance) - must be founded on divine revelation.
Now, any defense of our knowledge will of course presuppose that we do indeed have knowledge, but this just means that our defenses or articulations of of our epistemology will ultimately derive from our said foundation, our belief in which is intrinsically justified and meaningful.
So even if circularity appears in one's apologetic argumentation - as Clark might put it, axioms leads to certain theorems, and theorems can help inform whether an axiom has confirmatory evidence or is disconfirmed (e.g. Clark and His Critics, 2007, pg. 53) - it is nevertheless true that we can know the epistemic foundation of revelation without requiring an argument for it. As I suggested earlier, Eastern Orthodox confusion on these points may stem from that they generally follow Van Tilian presuppositionalism, apologists who have discussed epistemic justification in terms of coherence or circularity (e.g. link).
A side point: contemporary epistemologists such as Richard Fumerton also make use of what are called "conceptual regress arguments" (which are distinct from justificatory regress arguments) to illustrate that the meaning of terms must be intrinsic:
Consider an analogy. One of the earliest distinctions made in ethics is the distinction between different ways in which something can be good. Some things, like taking blood-pressure medication, are good only as a means to something else that is good (perhaps health of the happiness that comes from being in good health). But, one might argue, it can't be the case the everything that is good is good only as means to something else that is good. While we can (partially) define being good as a means in terms of having good outcomes, we cannot complete our definition of goodness this way. To find, even in thought, the source of goodness, we need to form the thought of something that is good in itself (intrinsically good, good just in virtue of what it is).The suggestion here is that inferential justification stands to noninferential justification as being good as a means stands to being good in itself. (Foundationalism, Cambridge Elements in Epistemology, pg. 8)
Now, Clark and I might nuance where meaning is to be found (e.g. propositions vs. concepts) - and Fumerton in particular might not quarrel with this - but in any case, anyone who has read Clark's book on John Dewey (1963) will recognize Clark's critique of Instrumentalism to be essentially the same as what Fumerton here states. Fumerton also gives the helpful example on the same page of the above work of what it means to be a "descendant": it is to be a child of someone, or a child of a child of someone, or a child of a child of a child of someone, etc. At some point, the ancestor has to make an appearance for it to be meaningful to call a person a "descendant." Recursion eventually bottoms out in foundations.
I'll add to what Fumerton says against an implicitly infinitist view of meaning. When we ask someone to explain what they mean by something like "goodness," we tend to have the expectation that the definiendum won't occur in any attempted definition. If I ask, "what is free choice?" and an Arminian responds, "the ability to choose" (which happened quite often when I used to dialogue with Arminians), I would have to point out that they are repeating what I am asking for them to define (the definiendum) in their attempted definition. That is, such an Arminian has not made any clearer what they mean by "free choice." Of course, I would not childishly ask them to define "free choice" ad infinitum, but the goal was, at some point, to consider a stated definition as symbolizing an intrinsically meaningful proposition... and this is a strike against a circularist view of meaning which, by analogy, helps argue a case for epistemic foundationalism over against epistemic coherentism.
Finally, suppose an Eastern Orthodox apologist were to attempt to reformulate presuppositionalism to be more in line with Clark's view. If they're willing to copy one Reformed view, why not a better one? If one monkey sees another swinging like an Olympic gymnast from one branch of philosophy, he might think to try to graft that branch onto his own tree. Well, because philosophy is interconnected, the monkey's attempt to graft the good branch onto a rotten tree won't take. How much less successful the subsequent mental gymnastics will be as the monkey tries and fails to swing from that branch!
That is, I've already outlined tensions regarding the anthropology and the doctrine of Scripture of Eastern orthodoxy and its presuppositionalist embezzelment. But an Eastern Orthodox apologist has further problems given their theology proper, some of which I've already outlined here and will continue to build a case against now. For instance, take a look at what Eastern Orthodox apologist Perry Robinson admits:
For my part, I affirm rather that God is more than his revelation to put it in biblical terms. Contrary to the Reformed (and the Lutherans) and Rome, metaphysics applies to everything except God ad intra, which is why for them theology is a science and for us it is about the spiritual life in Christ. (link)
This is quite similar to what Eduard Borysov says in "The Doctrine of Deification in the Works of Pavel Florensky and John Meyendorff: A Critical Examination" (Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 2011):
Palamas's theology of energies, according to Meyendorff, has no philosophical rationale behind it. However, one should not forget that the philosophical notions of hypostasis, nature, and energies played a key role in the Christological controversies and had become the basic principles for Palamas's theology proper as well as his soteriology. God is, by definition, unrelated to and above any essence, hence he is unknown by any essence. (Gregory Palamas, Gregory Palamas: The Triads, § 3.2.24, ed. John Meyendorff, trans. Nicholas Gendle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983), 95)
Borysov extends the logic of Robinson's statement: insofar as metaphysics and epistemology are intertwined, to say that there can be no divine metaphysics means there can be no knowledge of God. Now compare these statements to what Eastern Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky says:
All the Fathers of the Church, both of East and of West, are agreed in seeing a certain co-ordination, a primordial correspondence between the being of man and the being of God in the fact of the creation of man in the image and likeness of God. (The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, pg. 114)
Robinson and Borysov's statements on metaphysics and epistemology logically extend to anthropology. If metaphysics don't apply to God such that He is unrelated to and above mankind, then there is no "correspondence," "image," or "likeness" of God in man. Considering the emphases Eastern Orthodox apologists tend to put on the early church fathers, it is almost as if the Eastern Orthodox position doesn't cohere at all! Now, where does this finally lead? Palamas says:
...God is not only beyond knowledge, but also beyond unknowing; His revelation itself is also truly a mystery of a most divine and extraordinary kind, since the divine manifestations, even if symbolic, remain unknowable by reason of their transcendence. They appear, in fact, according to a law which is not appropriate to either human or divine nature - being, as it were, for us yet beyond us - so that no name can properly describe them. (The Triads, pg. 32)
Following the logic all the way down, the doctrine of Scripture (and divine revelation) is also destructed. The disharmony of Eastern Orthodoxy leads its apologists to defend they know not what. What one needs for a coherent worldview is not Neo-Orthodoxy or Eastern Orthodoxy but Scriptural orthodoxy:
In reaction against the optimistic modernism of the nineteenth century, contemporary neo-orthodoxy (q.v.) has insisted on the transcendence of God. But it has distorted the biblical concept of transcendence to the degree of making God completely unknowable. Some of their phraseology may be repeated as examples. God has been called the Wholly-Other. Brunner writes, “God can, when he wants to, speak his word even through false doctrine.” Another author denies that a proposition can have the same meaning for man as it does for God. Several theologians collaborated to say that “we dare not maintain that his (God’s) knowledge and our knowledge coincide at any single point.”Now, it seems obvious that if a man knows any truth at all, he must know a truth that God knows, for God knows all truths. A sentence must mean to a man who knows its meaning precisely what it means to God; for if the man does not know God’s meaning, he does not know the meaning of the sentence. Hence, if man is to know anything, it cannot be denied that there are points of coincidence between human and divine knowledge. Similarly God cannot be Wholly-Other, for this would deny that man was created in the image of God. (link)
For those interested in further reading, I recommend Steve Hays's interactions with EO apologists; e.g. on the issue of divine transcendence, see here.
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