1.2 Is philosophy Christian?

I didn't have my normal Thursday night philosophy class, but I'll use the gap to fill in a topic we usually disucss in our first live session. See series at bottom.
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1. Philosophy can have a fairly bad reputation in some contexts among Christians. A few years ago, there was even a movie called God's Not Dead where the antagonist was a philosophy professor who was strongly hostile to Christian faith. Although the character was quite flat, there is probably some truth hiding in the presentation. [1]

Philosophy classes aren't always known for being friendly to faith. After all, if philosophy is about asking questions, then it's going to have a natural tendency to expose blind spots in the way you think. As such, it can have a tendency to facilitate changes in perspective. Since the very existence of Christian colleges often centered on providing an environment that protects the traditions of a sponsoring church, you can see the potential for tension here! 

Accordingly, philosophy is sometimes taught as more of a worldview class. Rather than raise questions, philosophy becomes about giving the right answers. It becomes a preparation for thought war. It leans heavily into apologetics or the defense of the faith. "Here's why the skeptic is wrong."

2. I would argue that, whichever approach you take, philosophy at least can be approached Christianly. I am quite fond of the motto, "faith seeking understanding." [2] The idea is that we start our pursuit of truth with faith. We "believe in order to understand" [3] 

Decades ago, I had a philosophy student come to my office, stimulated by some of the things we were talking about in philosophy. He said, "I'm going to throw out everything I believe and start from scratch." I urged him not to do it. For one, it's not practical. But it also risks throwing the baby out with the bath water. And there are all sorts of cliffs to fall off of in the process. Few of us are geniuses and, even if you are, geniuses can easily lack perspective.

No, it's best to stand on the shoulders of thousands of years of thinking. You won't live long enough to reconstruct all that! If you want to climb down a little or change some shoulders, it's best to do that on a journey that is more careful in its questioning. There's too much to know, too many different options. "Start with the faith you have." Or as the father of the possessed son put it, "I believe. Help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24).

3. Just in case, Colossians 2:8 wasn't talking about what we're talking about. "Look that there will not be someone taking you hostage by philosophy and empty deception." In fact, even translating this verse with the word philosophy is misleading. As you continue to read, it is clear that it is a religious option that Colossians has in view, not a philosophical one. It involves the observance of certain festivals and abstaining from certain foods (2:16). It involves worshiping with angels (2:18). In short, it refers to a Jewish sect, not a philosophy as we think of one.

4. So, what kind of approach to philosophy might assure us that it is done Christianly? Here we get into some questions that we will explore in more detail soon enough. Good thinking is largly structured with two key elements -- assumptions and logic. 

Logic has rules that have been thoroughly explored for over two thousand years. There are no exceptions to them working! This is an important fact to point out. In the history of the world, the rules of logic are as certain as math. They have never failed -- not even once. This may seem like a crazy claim, but it is true. I personally have to think that God has built the rules of logic into the structure of the universe.

Then why is there so much disagreement? Let's assume that two people who disagree are both using logic. Why would they then disagree?

First, they may not have structured their logic quite right. For logic to work, each assumption or "premise" needs to connect to the next and to the conclusion in a tight, crisp way. 

Even more likely, they may differ in their assumptions and premises. We might connect these premises also back to more fundamental "presuppositions." Presuppositions are your fundamental assumptions. They are the assumptions that stand behind the premises that logic works with.

So I would argue that it is in the domain of assumptions that philosophy either is or is not Christian. For example, if our logic assumes the claims of the Nicene Creed and core biblical claims, then you could argue that philosophical argument stands squarely without the domains of Christian faith.

There is also, however, an approach that sees faith and reason sufficiently in harmony that it focuses on the heart of faith in pursuit of truth. The heart of this philosopher "wants" Christian faith to be true, "expects" Christian faith to be vindicated. All options are on the table in full expectation that good reason and evidence will point in the direction of faith -- or at least allow for faith. It is not afraid of asking questions, convinced that the answers will cohere with faith or leave space for faith.

5. Accordingly, what are some ways in which philosophy might not cohere with Christian faith. Here are some ways:

• When a person asks questions with a heart that wants to undermine faith. The goal is not truth or faith but is antifaith.
• When a person rejects out of hand the presuppositions or assumptions of faith. If faith is not even an option, then it will difficult to arrive at faith conclusions. It is possible -- if you end up with non sequiturs in your other reasonings.
• When you are not equipped to think philosophically. Not everyone is wired to do philosophy in a "meta" kind of way. Some who fear that they will only be easily misled may opt for blind faith on their part. This is a coherent choice too.

So, yes, philosophy can be Christian! If it is done in a way that is open to faith and allows faith assumptions into the conversation. 

[1] In literature, a flat character is one that is fairly stereotypical and predictable rather than dynamic the way most human beings are. Most real world villains are complex, as are most real world heroes.

[2] The saying goes back to Anselm (ca 1033-1109), building on an idea that was also expressed by Augustine (354-430).

[3] Also from Anselm in his Proslogion.

1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Is philosophy Christian? (this post)
1.3 Unexamined assumptions
1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life

2.1 The Structure of Thinking?
2.2 Three Tests for Truth

3.1 Faith and Reason

7.1 Beyond Binary Thinking
7.2 Plato's Allegory of the Cave
7.3 Reason vs. Experience
7.4 Kant Breaks the Tie.
7.5 The Bible as Object of Knowledge
7.6 Wittgenstein and Language
7.7 Kuhn and Paradigms
7.8 Foucault and Power
7.9 A Pragmatic Epistemology

Augustine's De doctrina Christiana: My Take-Aways

I wanted to bring closer to this walk through Augustine's book with some final notes.

Book 1
"Anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them" (86).

This concept would seem to me to be the most important one in Book 1. All the ethical requirements of God for humanity are summed up in "love God, love neighbor." If we truly understood this double love command, then we would not even need the Scriptures to know how to live in this world, for everything the Scriptures command us are summed up in them.

Where I would critique Augustine is that he does not have a firm sense of historical meaning. Although we do not have full access to the original meanings of the books of the Bible, the most likely method to know them is not theological but historical-cultural. Augustine advocates a method that fiddles with the meanings of the biblical texts if they do not fit with the love of God or orthodoxy (the rule of faith). He is right about appropriation, but not about interpretation.

The texts meant what they meant in history. We can't change that. From a standpoint of truth, we best let them mean what they seem to have meant and then live in that tension. Augustine basically advocates a method of retrofitting the original meaning to suit his theology.

But Augustine is completely sound when it comes to appropriating the biblical texts. We must always appropriate them through the filter of Jesus' double love command.

Book 2
"A person who is good and a true Christian should realize that truth belongs to the Lord, wherever it is found." (72)

Augustine deals with the clear passages of Scripture in Book 2. There is much that I believe needs critiqued in Book 2. He has an inferior understanding of how language works ("picture theory"). He will develop his method of "fiddling" with the interpretation of texts in Books 2 and 3. Book 2 deals with signs of which we are ignorant, Book 3 with signs that are ambiguous.

I have quoted above a theme that he follows through much of Book 2, namely, that there is validity in much study outside of the Bible, including knowledge gained from logic, history, and science. In the end of the Book, however, I think he approaches taking it away: "What a person learns independently of scripture is condemned there if it is harmful, but found there if it is useful" (151).

There are all sorts of caveats to the notion that "All truth is God's truth." But the basic principle is sound, even if the application is complicated. (Another key element in this Book, BTW, is Augustine's canon list, from the 390s before the Lateran Council of Carthage that set that NT canon for the West.)

Book 3
First we must consult “the rule of faith, as it is perceived through the plainer passages of the scriptures and the authority of the church.” (3)

Book 3 deals with ambiguous texts in Scripture. Here we find the principle to let the clear passages interpret the unclear ones. From the standpoint of historical consciousness, again, this approach is pre-reflective. The texts meant what they meant in history. You cannot change the meaning of a text from one period by a text from another.

However, in the age of hermeneutics, we shift the principle to our appropriation of Scripture. We focus on texts that are "clear" in the light of Christian consensus.

It is more difficult to identify exactly how we can identify exactly what the contents of the "rule of faith" are. Augustine seems to follow a principle that looked to the most prominent churches of his day in Book 1. Someone might say, "the Bible is the rule of faith," but the function of the rule of faith is to help us know how to prioritize biblical material. So do we go with frequency, trajectory, centrality of the biblical teaching? How would we establish centrality?

Orthodoxy seems to require some sense of trajectory, especially on issues like the Trinity or the nature of Christ. The consensus of Christendom is a possible move here--what have the majority of Christians believed throughout the centuries? Formulating a biblical theology is a corporate, spiritual art that resists any easy or straightforward formula.

Book 4
Book 4 is about the delivery of the word of God in preaching.

"It is the duty, then, of the interpreter and teacher of Holy Scripture, the defender of the true faith and the opponent of error, both to teach what is right and to refute what is wrong, and in the performance of this task to conciliate the hostile, to rouse the careless, and to tell the ignorant both what is occurring at present and what is probable in the future."

Clearly Augustine thinks that substance--both in content and in the person of the preacher--is more important than the style or form of delivery. But having said that, Augustine fully supports the use of good rhetoric in presentation. In keeping with the three forms of ancient rhetoric (forensic, epideictic, and deliberative), Augustine sees the three different goals of speech as to teach, to give pleasure, and persuasiveness. Good speaking in each case respectively are clarity, beauty, and persuasiveness.

Wisdom, he says, is more important than eloquence. He urges prayer before speaking, and indicates that the character of the preacher is important if there is hope for the audience to heed the words.

Perhaps the most controversial point he argues is that some biblical passages shouldn't be preached because they are difficult. This flies in the face of current thinking, but I think he has more of a case than you might think at first. For example, imprecatory psalms may show us that it is okay to be angry and I could see myself preaching from one, but the law of Christ suggests we should not dwell on them.

Augustine's "On Teaching" 2:73-152

I have been working through Augustine's De doctrina christiana again. Here are my posts so far:

Preface and Book I
Book II, first post

Now here is the rest of Book II.
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1. Two kinds of learning in pagan society: 1) human made, 2) divine made. He then spends some time talking about human superstition, which is quite fun, for we catch a glimpse of superstitions in Roman culture in Augustine's day. He also includes some of what we might call astrology today.

He talks about how the fifth and sixth months (their year started in March) could be renamed after Julius and Augustus Caesar by imperial decree because there was no real god to offend. He disproves the validity of astrology by pointing out how completely different twins can be, even though they come out of the womb one right after the other without any significant interval. They are both born under the same constellations, but can be quite different in their life's outcome.

He also relays the notion that we find in some Jewish writings and that I think is reflected at some points in the NT that the wicked angels inhabit the lowest sky or heaven. Thus in the NT, Satan is called the "ruler and power of the air" (Eph. 2:2).

I suspect we see the antecedent of some twentieth century views on words as signs in Augustine, and hear I am thinking especially of de Saussure. Augustine indicates that many words have meaning because of agreed convention (that is the signs have no intrinsic meaning). He mentions lege, which means "read" in Latin but "speak" in Greek (93).

2. Having covered human learning that is superstitious, he turns to human learning that is not superstitious.

• "Everyone aims at some degree of similarity when they use signs, making signs as similar as possible to the things which are signified" (98).
• "Nothing should be thought more peculiar to mankind than lies and falsehoods" (99).

There's a helpful section here where he speaks of valid human learning. The sense is similar to "all truth is God's truth" although Augustine is unreflective about presuppositions and such. History is history and can be used to correct faulty interpretations of the Bible. He does not see himself of course as correcting the Bible but of correcting interpretations of the Bible with secular history.

• "For what has already gone into the past and cannot be undone must be considered part of the history of time, whose creator and controller is God" (56).

BTW, he gets the relative timing of Plato and Jeremiah wrong in this section, something he corrects in City of God.

Medicine is different from superstition and is valid as a source of knowledge. Astronomy as it comes to the predictable motions of the planets and stars is valid, although it can be a waste of time. :-) Logic and arithmetic are valid sources of knowledge, including arguments like syllogisms and non sequitur arguments.

• "The validity of syllogisms is not something instituted by humans, but observed and recorded by them, so that the subject may be taught or learnt. It is built into the permanent and divinely instituted system of things" (121).

There's some good basic logic in these sections.

3. "Falsehood is the description of something which is not actually in the state in which it is asserted to be" (130). "There are two kinds of falsehood, one consisting of things which cannot possibly be true, another of things which are not true, but could be."

Here's a good quote: "The pleasure derived from the open display of truth is greater than the assistance gained from discussing or examining it, though indeed these things can sharpen the intellect, which is a good thing provided that they do not also make people more mischievous or conceited or, in other words, more inclined to deceive others by plausible talk and questioning, or to think that by learning these things they have done something marvelous or which entitles them to consider themselves superior to ordinary unsophisticated people" (135).

As he approaches the end of Book II, Augustine suggests that secular studies that do not contribute to our understanding of Scripture are more or less useless (140). Nothing in excess. However, he finds great use in Platonism (surprise).

Basically, pagan knowledge is like all the gold taken from Egypt in contrast to all the gold of Solomon's kingdom. "What a person learns independently of scripture is condemned there if it is harmful, but found there if it is useful" (151).

Of course, since he interprets much of Scripture figurally, he is wrong. He thinks he sees all truths in Scripture, but many he brings to the Scriptures. Scripture tells us all things necessary for life and salvation. It doesn't tell us how to build a watch. And that's okay.

Augustine's "On Teaching" 2.1-72

I'm working through Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana again as I teach an Honor's College class this fall called, "Foundations of Christian Tradition." I have already blogged through Book 3 on an earlier occasion. Thanks to those who gave feedback on Book I. By the way, here is an excellent version of this work online.

1. Augustine begins by giving the background to his sense that words are signs that point to things. This is what signs are--signifiers of things. Some signs are natural, like smoke that points to fire. But some signs are people made, including both non-verbal and verbal signs.

Some signs are natural--smoke points to fire. But others are "given" or "conventional." These are signs that human beings give to things. There are different ways that humans signify meanings to each other. Some are sounds. Some are picked up by the eyes. The most significant, perhaps, are words.

Scripture gives remedy to many diseases of the human will (9). Augustine believes that the human authors followed the will of God as they wrote. So by figuring out what these authors were trying to say, we can find out the will of God.

2. I don't want to get too far before I do some reflection. Augustine is often connected with what has been called a "picture theory" of language. Words are signs that point to things. The general sense is similar to Gottlob Frege's idea that words have a sense and a reference. The reference is what words point to.

It's true that things and references are often involved in language. But the notion of words as tools seems to express more closely how words work. "Words do stuff" (Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle) expresses how words work far more closely than "Words point to things."

I will have reason to consider Augustine unreflective in his sense that what he is doing in his interpretation is finding out what the human authors were saying. There's too much fiddling with the meaning to make it come out right for this sentiment to be a good description of what Augustine does. I have the same critique of some evangelical interpretation. When the text doesn't say what it needs to say, we downshift into reinterpretation.

3. Augustine speaks of men coming to the font of baptism, rising born again with the Holy Spirit, and then living with the double love of God and neighbor (11). His point is not this statement in itself but that it's much more pleasing to hear about this type of thing in the symbolic imagery of the Song of Songs. But the insight into his theology and the practice of the church in his day is interesting.

He speaks of a process toward knowing God's will. It starts with the fear of God (16), proceeds to holiness, then moves to knowledge. This is knowledge of our own need, of our own lack of love for God and neighbor. This knowledge leads to a fourth stage--fortitude or endurance, which leads to compassion. You wonder if Wesley was impacted by this section. Augustine speaks of becoming perfect in love (21). The sixth stage is a purified eye, which finally leads to wisdom.

4. Now Augustine returns to the third stage--knowledge--which leads him to think more about the Scriptures. A person seeking knowledge should have a knowledge of the content of the canonical Scriptures. And here Augustine gives us a helpful glimpse of the canon as it existed in the late 390s. There are two striking features.

The first is that the New Testament book list is exactly the same as our current one. This is striking because that precise list is no where listed until AD367 in a letter Athanasius sent out at Easter. It would be ratified in the West at the Council of Carthage in 398. But it is not yet official when Augustine was writing. Interestingly, he also says to go with what the "big churches" say on this matter, the renowned ones.

The second is the fact that he considers the Apocrypha to be part of the canon. Jerome at about the same time would put them in something like a second level canon (deuterocanonical). This speaks to my general claim that, in the Reformation, Luther downgraded the Apocrypha from their original status for Christianity, while the Council of Trent upgraded them then.

5. So the first rule of knowledge is to know these books and commit them to memory. Next, examine those matters that are clearly stated in them. You can find everything necessary for faith and the moral life in those parts that are clearly stated, and the greater a person's intellectual capacity, the more of these he or she will find.

I wonder if this paragraph is behind the notion of the perspicuity of Scripture, as well as the idea that the Scriptures contain "all things necessary for life and salvation."

Finally, from the clear passages, one should proceed to interpret the unclear ones.

Of course this is a pre-historical approach. Passages meant what they meant. Sometimes their original meaning is unclear. But Augustine as much refers to passages whose theology doesn't seem to fit, and he espouses a method of fiddling with those sorts of passages on the level of meaning, not on the level of application. This simply isn't appropriate from a historical perspective.

6. Passages can be unclear for two reasons--either the "thing" to which the sign points can be unknown or it can be ambiguous (32).

But Augustine steps back for a second as he builds a theory of language. Signs can either be literal or metaphorical. They are literal when "they signify the things for which they were invented." They are metaphorical when they are used to signify something else.

Augustine mentions some causes of ambiguity. Lack of knowledge of original languages, for example (he indicates that the first translations into Latin were pretty rough). Here's Augustine's position on proper Latin grammar, by the way: "What, then, is correctness of speech but the maintenance of the practice of others, as established by the authority of ancient speakers?" (45).

Then Augustine suggests that weak men are preoccupied with such things. "Their weakness stems from a desire to appear learned, not with a knowledge of things, by which we are edified, but with a knowledge of signs" (46). I completely agree. Shallow people are preoccupied with form rather than substance.

7. Augustine suggests we use multiple translations when we do not know the original languages of the Bible, as well as that we use multiple manuscripts--a sign of his time. Interestingly, he considers the Septuagint to be authoritative over the Hebrew Old Testament (53). This is because of a quasi-inspiration that many afforded to its translation. I believe the Greek Orthodox Church still holds to something similar. When manuscripts differ, he defers to the "more learned and diligent churches" (56).

He certainly believes in hidden, metaphorical meanings (57). He spends several paragraphs talking about such meanings in numbers and such. Ignorance of music can also be a hindrance to understanding.

I close with this quote from 72: "A person who is good and a true Christian should realize that truth belongs to the Lord, wherever it is found." So truth can be found even in pagan literature.

Monday Philosophy: Augustine's On Christian Teaching 1

I'm teaching two sections of "Foundations of Christian Doctrine" for the IWU Honors College this fall. Last year, Steve Lennox had his students read On Christian Teaching. This is a classic work on hermeneutics.

I'm not sure yet, but I thought I'd read through it again these next two or three Mondays to figure out how I want to use it. I know I lose points for not being a "Go ad fontes kind of guy." Don't get me wrong, the master will have read them.

But which is ultimately more central, the form or the substance? The focus on primary sources inevitably involves an intrinsic focus on form, since the most enduring elements of a text can almost always be re-presented in a more communicative form for a beginner (say, in a blog ;-). Original forms are usually a mixture of counterproductive elements mixed in with the enduring reason we are reading the source.

For example, it is counterproductive for a beginner to read Newton's Principia Mathematica when you can read the best, recent presentation of its basic truths in a physics textbook, with much improved notation, pedagogical sequencing, and updated information. I wonder if even Einstein ever read it. Enduring truths are best presented, especially for the first time, in a form best suited to communicate to the person trying to understand them, not in their original form. Leave the original sources for the more advanced student or the historian of ideas.

In the vast majority of cases, the original form of a text, written as it was in a particular setting for a particular context, simply cannot hope to communicate as well as well as a re-presented version of its most transcendent ideas.

Preface
My first thought on the Preface is that it is bound to turn a student off to Augustine. He begins by more or less suggesting that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong. Those who disagree either 1) don't understand what he's saying, 2) haven't been illuminated by the Holy Spirit, or 3) they think they receive their revelation directly from God, not from the teaching of others.

The rest of the Preface is then him explaining why those who think they have received their understanding directly from God should listen to him. He gives several examples of how God has used others in Scripture to unfold various things they did not understand (e.g., the Ethiopian eunuch). And even those who think they have this understanding still try to explain it to others.

Nope, I'm not going to require the students read the Preface.

Book 1
There are several very good quotes in Book 1:

• "God is unspeakable. But what I have spoken would not have been spoken if it were unspeakable. For this reason God should not even be called unspeakable, because even when this word is spoken, something is spoken" (13).
• "God gave keys to his church so that whatever it loosed on earth should also be loosed in heaven, and whatever is bound on earth should also be bound in heaven" (35).
• "The divinely established rule of love says, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself' but God 'with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind... when it says 'all your heart, all your soul, all your mind,' it leaves no part of our life free from this obligation, no part free as it were to back out and enjoy some other thing... loving his neighbor as he would himself, he relates his love of himself and his neighbor entirely to the love of God" (42-43).
• "Anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them" (86).
• "Every human being qua human being should be loved on God's account... All people should be loved equally" (59, 61).
• "Who can fail to see that there is no exception to this, nobody to whom compassion is not due" (69).
• "The chief purpose of all that we have been saying in our discussion of things is to make it understood that the fulfillment and end of the law and all the divine scriptures is to love the thing which must be enjoyed [God] and the thing which together with us can enjoy that thing [our neighbor].
• "There are three things which all knowledge and prophecy serve: faith, hope, and love... Therefore a person strengthened by faith, hope, and love, and who steadfastly holds on to them, has no need of the scriptures except to instruct others" (90, 93).

Critique
1. Most of these statements are quite significant, worth discussion at some point. Of course there is much in this book that probably isn't helpful. Augustine labors over the difference between intrinsic and instrumental goods. God is the only intrinsic good who is to be enjoyed. All other goods are instrumental, to be used to point toward God as the only thing to be enjoyed.

I don't find that line of argument very useful. :-) What if God, as I believe, has created many things to be enjoyed in themselves, even though enjoying them also indirectly gives glory to him?

2. I do not find his analysis of lying convincing (86-88). Nor do I find his Neoplatonist "evil is the absence of good" convincing. Clearly he did not know of people who are suicidal either, since he cannot believe that anyone would not love himself.

3. The pre-modern Augustine also does what no one with a solid historical consciousness can do today. "It often happens that by thoughtlessly asserting something that the author did not mean an interpreter runs up against other things which cannot be reconciled with that original idea. If he agrees that these things are true and certain, his original interpretation could not possibly be true" (89).

In short, if your interpretation does not fit with faith, hope, and love, it is a false interpretation. Change it to fit. Augustine could do such because he saw allegorical and figural interpretation as valid. I also do not have a problem with figural interpretation guided by Christian orthodoxy.

But it is not healthy, in the long term, to let our theology dictate our interpretations. It is best to let historical and literary context rule in interpretation and then to bring those seemingly most likely outcomes into dialog with a theological perspective.

History is history. The text meant something in its historical context. Later Christian theology cannot change the original meaning of a text. It can give another meaning that is valid in its own right. It can change the application. But it is safest to let each text mean what it seemed to mean, then to process its application in the light of faith, hope, and love.

4. So Book 1 might be worth having students read, or at least to read selections. I'll keep reading and see how my thoughts develop.

The Flexibility of a Christian Worldview

I'm reading The Unintended Reformation with the Monday reading group and will probably post about it regularly for the next month or so.  I came across a good point today that I wanted to emphasize:

"Because the central claims of Christianity were not based or dependent on any philosophy but rather on God's putative actions in history, inherited assumptions and practices provided a framework for the testing, debate, and discriminating assimilation of philosophical ideas compatible with the faith" (39-40).

Brad Gregory is talking about the late Middle Ages here and about how Christian thinkers could appropriate elements from Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, even Epicureanism without also adopting their clearly non-Christian elements.  It is also true that "inherited assumptions and practices" at that time would have included a good deal of Roman Catholic ritual and tradition.  One of the reasons the Anglican church can house such a diversity of belief (from charismatic to evangelical to Anglo-Catholic to Sea of Faith non-literalists) is because they all share the liturgy in common.

All of that is introduction. What I want to jump on is the "because" part.  The central claims of Christianity are based in God's actions in history, not on a philosophical system.  This fact has historically made it possible--and I believe continues to make it possible--for there to be some flexibility in the philosophical framework within which Christian faith is housed.

Are there some basics to a Christian worldview?  Yes, I believe there are.  For example, a Christian worldview believes in a God that literally exists, created the world, and acts in the world.  But the basics are event-focused and a relatively short list.

What this means is that those who talk extensively in terms of biblical or Christian worldview are really doing what Augustine did with Platonism or Thomas did with Aristotelianism or Luther or Calvin or Van Til have done.  They are not presenting the biblical or Christian worldview but presenting a Christian worldview that places the core events into some philosophical framework that is not actually part of the core.

Augustine's On Christian Doctrine (Part 2)

I began this evaluative summary Monday.  For the full text of Augustine's On Christian Doctrine, see here.
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Augustine goes on to discuss how to resolve ambiguities of pronunciation or of syllabification (since the words were run together).  Some can be resolved by the rule of faith, in other cases one can consult the original Greek.

In chapter 5 of Part 2, Augustine gets into the more difficult question of the metaphorical. He sets down this rule: "We must beware of taking a figurative expression literally."  In retrospect, it seems fairly obvious that Augustine often blurred that which was actually intended literally in the biblical text with his figurative or figural interpretations of them. As it were, he adopts a God-like perspective to determine what was figurative and what was literal, rather than following the literary clues of the texts themselves inductively.

So he places much of the Jewish Law into the category of figurative, using the example of opposition to Jesus healing on the Sabbath in chapter 6. The Jewish leaders take the figurative Sabbath law literally.  Perhaps he is correct about God's mind here (the problem is always how we can know this), but he is wrong about the texts themselves.  Nothing in the Old Testament texts themselves would lead a person to take them figuratively, and even Jesus himself in Mark 2 only claims an exception to the Sabbath law, he does not make an allegory out of it.

The problem, Augustine asserts, is that people mistake the sign, the symbolic cue, for the thing itself to which it points. They mistake the sign for the thing signified. The thing signified is spiritual, and it must be our focus.  Jesus and the apostles have handed down very few rites, baptism and communion for example. Augustine considered the spiritual meaning of these fairly obvious.

Chapter 10 then addresses the opposite situation where a person takes a literal form of speech as if it were figurative. Here Augustine sets: down a fundamental rule: "Whatever there is in the word of God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as figurative."  What you must take literally in Scripture, therefore, is any instruction relating to the love of God and one's neighbor (purity of life), and you must take literally any teaching relating to the catholic faith (soundness of doctrine). On the negative side, we must take literally any instruction in Scripture that tells us to avoid lust.

So any biblical teaching that seems to ascribe some sinful action to God must be taken figuratively, just as any teaching ascribing holiness to humanity.  Augustine also shows some awareness of the importance of context and intention when assessing morality. What is appropriate for one time may not be at another, and the same action can be either virtuous or sinful depending on the intention of the person doing it. Blindness to our own context can also hinder us from seeing points where our own customs are out of sync with love of God and neighbor.  Meanwhile, others can fall into a sort of relativism because they are aware of how culture affects what one considers right and wrong.

But the rule to "do to others as you would have them do to you" is universal.  It cannot be altered by the customs of one's people. So here is the rule again: "carefully turn over in our minds and meditate upon what we read till an interpretation be found that tends to establish the reign of love. Now, if when taken literally it at once gives a meaning of this kind, the expression is not to be considered figurative" (chap. 15).  Or again, "If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative" (chap. 16).

From our standpoint today, we can see that Augustine blurs together interpretation and appropriation. Whether a text is figurative or literal, in the first instance, depends on whether the author was using words in their normal senses for the time and place when he or she was writing, not on whether its content suits our theology. However, we as Christians, on the other hand, rightly make decisions on how to appropriate texts by their relation to the law of love or the rule of faith, both of which we believe are literally instructed and taught in various places in Scripture.

The symbolism of some passages can be clarified by those same symbols elsewhere.  So a passage where the symbolic meaning of a shield is unclear can be clarified by another passage where it is.  It is also not problematic if a person gives an interpretation to one Scripture that fits with a clear interpretation elsewhere.  Once again, Augustine here is reading texts theologically rather than in terms of what they originally meant. The original meaning of a passage is a function of its individual context, not of meanings of other passages written in quite different contexts.

Knowledge of tropes or literary devices helps clarify meaning. These are numerous and learned in school, things like allegory, parable, metaphor, and irony.  Augustine ends Book 3 of On Christian Doctrine with seven rules found in the works of someone called Tichonius relating to finding allegorical meanings in Scripture.

Augustine's On Christian Doctrine Book 3 (Part 1)

What follows is the first part of a summary and comment on this classic hermeneutical work by Augustine.  If you want to read this classic Christian (and philosophical) piece, you will find it here.
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In Book 2 of On Christian Doctrine, produced in AD397, Augustine set out his understanding of how words indicate meaning.  Words are "signs" that point to meanings.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, a twentieth century philosopher, called this the "picture theory" of language.  You might think of it like a cartoon.  When I read a word, a picture that is the meaning for the word appears in the bubble above my head.

This only works some of the time. Wittgenstein pointed out that the meanings of a lot of words and "signs" can't be pictured.  For example, you can picture a rude gesture but you can't picture its meaning. Other examples I might give include the word "is" or the word "righteousness." I personally do not even picture a "wild goose chase" and yet understand the phrase perfectly well all the same.

Wittgenstein much more soundly proposed that the meaning of words is not in some pictured definition but rather in the way we use them in certain contexts. In certain contexts or "forms of life," as he called them, we play certain "language games" with words.  If I yell "fire" in a crowded room, you know that what I have really said is to leave the room as quickly as possible if you don't want to burn to death.  If I yell "fire" as the commander of a group of men with rifles pointing at a blindfolded criminal, I'm probably telling you to shoot the person to death.  More examples could be provided.

By the way, it is in Book 2 of Augustine's On Christian Doctrine that he gives what was no doubt becoming the consensus of Christians at that time concerning the books of the Old and New Testament. The canon of the Old Testament, as it is called, included the so called apocryphal books that Martin Luther would later remove from the Protestant canon. The canon of the New Testament corresponds to the list of books that had first appeared only three decades previously in the 367 Easter letter of Athanasius.

Book 3 deals with the question of Scripture's ambiguity and especially when we should read the Bible literally and when we should read the Bible figuratively. Some ambiguity can come from matters of punctuation (chap. 2). Here we need to keep in mind that texts of Augustine's day (and this was true of the original biblical texts as well) largely did not use punctuation to separate words from each other, let alone one sentence from another (it's called "continuous script," or scriptio continua in Latin). All the punctuation in our Bibles is a matter of interpretation.

Augustine of course teaches that decisions about punctuation should be guided by the "rule of faith" when one cannot resolve an issue on the basis of context.  For the Christians of the earliest centuries, the rule of faith was that sense of basic Christian beliefs, core Christian thinking, the "deposit" of faith left by the earliest apostles. For Augustine, it was this basic Christian theology that resolved issues of ambiguity.  We might put it this way: when in doubt, go with an interpretation that results in an "orthodox" meaning.

This approach brings out a crucial issue. It seems beyond question that the original meaning a biblical text had was a function of its historical and literary context. That is to say, the meaning a biblical author or a biblical audience would have understood by the words of a biblical text is a function of how words were being used at that point in time and place and that they would have understood the words of one verse in the light of the words that had come just previously.

What we will find repeatedly in Book 3 of On Christian Doctrine is that Augustine's decisions on the meaning of a text follow context unless that meaning bumps up against the rule of faith.  In that case, he will shift into a figurative meaning that fits with the rule of faith and consider that the meaning God intends the text to have. He is by no means unique in this approach. We can easily find it in other interpreters of the time (e.g., the first century Jewish writer Philo), not least the New Testament authors themselves.

Since the Protestant Reformation, there has been reluctance to interpret biblical texts figuratively unless it was clear that the biblical authors themselves were being figurative originally. For example, we can interpret the story of Sarah and Hagar allegorically in Galatians 4 because that is the way Paul takes the story there. An allegory is where someone interprets the characters or various elements of a story as representations of something else that is unrelated to the original sense.

So Sarah in Paul's interpretation becomes a symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem, while Hagar symbolizes the earthly Jerusalem. This interpretation has nothing to do with the original story of Sarah and Hagar, which was about two women who fought over their children.  Paul's interpretation is allegorical.

Evangelicals of the twentieth century have arguably tended to modify Augustine's approach. Follow what seems to be the most likely contextual meaning of the biblical text unless it comes into conflict with the rule of faith (that is, the "orthodoxies" of the evangelical tradition or the particular faith community of which one is a part). If they conflict, then find other possible ways to read the text in context such that it fits with the rule of faith. In this way, evangelical hermeneutics (the study of how to interpret texts) has avoided the kinds of non-literal interpretations of pre-Reformation interpretation while still trying to read the biblical texts in context. One of the purposes of this summary is to help us wrestle with these questions of hermeneutics.

Interestingly, Augustine considers some ambiguities of punctuation to be relatively unimportant.  If context is not clear, if the rule of faith does not dictate a particular interpretation, he leaves it up to the individual.  Punctuate however you like if neither the context nor the rule of faith give you a clear sense of how to punctuate...

The rest tomorrow

Augustine on when to go non-literal

Do you agree with this comment I made somewhere?
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Augustine is a good pre-modern interpreter, in my opinion. If the literal meaning of a text (as he perceived it) did not fit with his theology, he shifted into a non-literal interpretation.

Since one of the ways Protestantism argued against Roman Catholicism was by pushing the literal interpretation and since the modern era honed our skills at reading texts in their historical and literary contexts, we have found ourselves increasingly in a conundrum. Here are some of the strategies that have resulted:

• Fundamentalism--act like you're following the rules for reading in context, but find a possible way to interpret the evidence to make it come out your way. 
• Evangelicalism at its best--highlight the distinction between "that time" and "our time," so that you can let the text mean what it meant, but then adjust the application for a different context. Deal with potential issues in your theology rather than playing games with the original meaning of the text. 
• "Liberalism"--let the text say what it said and then dismiss it as wrong 
• Theological interpretation--let the text say what it said literally but reopen the door for more than literal interpretations 

Is the world getting better and better?

I think Chris Bounds twice has corrected me on Augustine here... hopefully I've got it right the third time ;-)  Thanks, Chris!
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The first individual we know to formulate an extensive, linear philosophy of history was St. Augustine (354-430).  His work called, The City of God, addressed accusations that the gods had allowed Rome to be sacked by the Goths in AD410 because Rome had become an exclusively Christian nation. [1] Rather, Augustine claimed, what society was witnessing was the ongoing conflict between two cities that existed side by side in the world.  The one was the “city of God,” a city of heaven made up of the righteous angels as well as the “elect,” those whom God has chosen to be saved.  While the city of God has a special connection to the “visible church” (the people who gather together and call themselves “Christians”) you cannot see clearly who is truly a citizen of the city of God and who is not.  The visible church is like the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13—the wheat and the weeds are mixed together in this world, and we cannot know definitively which is which until the judgment.

The other city mixed together with the “city of God” is thus the “city of humanity,” a city of earth made up of fallen angels and the majority of condemned humanity.  Those who ultimately belong to this city are oriented around themselves and their own pleasure, rather than God.  These two cities are in constant conflict in this age until Christ finally returns, but the trajectory of history is toward the definitive separation of the two at the final judgment.  A significant portion of Augustine’s work goes through biblical and secular history to demonstrate the progress of the two cities throughout history.   The implication is that we should not be surprised when earthly cities like Rome fall, especially when they are associated with the city of earth.

Augustine’s approach to history is sometimes called amillennial, because he does not associate the thousand year period in Revelation 20:4 with a literal thousand year period.  For him the number is symbolic and refers to the entire period between Christ and the final judgment.  Augustine thus has a linear view of history—he sees it headed toward a particular destination.  But he does not have a clear sense that things will develop in a certain way in the intervening time.  He does not clearly indicate that the city of God will increasingly overcome the city of earth or the contrary.

Two other Christian perspectives do.  Premillennialism is a Christian perspective on history that tends to take the thousand year period of Revelation 20 literally and believes that this millennium has not yet taken place.  Christ will reign on earth for a thousand years after he returns to earth in the future.  Generally, premillennialists tend to have a pessimistic view of the trajectory of history.  They tend to expect the forces of evil to fight harder and harder against God up until the time of the end.  Passages like Mark 13:19 are sometimes invoked: “in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be” (NRSV).

By contrast, postmillennialism agrees with Augustine that the millennial age has begun, but tends to see the city of God taking over the city of earth, as it were, as time progresses.  Christ will thus return after the millennium is over.  Since it has been over a thousand years since Christ, postmillennialists may not take the thousand year period literally either.  The main point that distinguishes them from Augustine is thus the sense that things will improve more and more leading up to Christ’s return.

It is perhaps not surprising to find that Christians in different periods of time have tended to lean in one direction or the other.  Prior to Augustine, many though not all Christians were “chiliasts,” individuals who looked for a literal thousand year reign of Christ after his return.  From Augustine to recent times, postmillennial and amillennial approaches tended to dominate.  It is perhaps not surprising to find that the same optimistic spirit of human progress in the days after the Renaissance and Reformation would find a postmillennial perspective attractive.

At the same time, we should not be surprised to find that premillennialism would rise again in popular circles in the uncertain times of the Industrial Revolution.  John Darby (1800-82) was an British evangelist who almost singlehandedly gave birth to dispensationalism, a Christian perspective that sees history divided up into a series of periods in which God had a unique relationship and expectations of his people.  The culmination is usually a seven year “tribulation” leading up to Christ’s return and judgment, followed by a literal thousand year reign of Christ on earth.

We thus cannot say that there is a distinctive Christian perspective on the direction history will take leading up to Christ’s return.  Each position has favorite passages in the Bible, and each position has explanations for the favorite passages of the other positions.  If we are good philosophers, we will be aware of the forces that have influenced us in the past and are influencing us in the present.  We will be aware of our own biases and do our best to be reflective about them. 

Perhaps most importantly, we will try not to let our biases become self-fulfilling prophecies.  A self-fulfilling prophecy is when our expectations come true not because they were inevitable, but because our own actions, perhaps inadvertently, made them come true.  If you expect things to get worse and worse, there is a fair chance you will do things that will make them get worse.  And if you expect things to get better and better, you probably will do things that move them in that direction.  Let God watch over history.  Let us work for good in the world.

[1] By decree of the Roman emperor Theodosius I in AD380.  Constantine had only made Christianity a legal religion in AD313.

Augustine Shifts 1

Now that I'm 40, I want to make this decade count as a scholar. I've piddled with topics here and there. It looks like my dissertation will be published with Cambridge on Hebrews. I'm in the proposal writing stage of what I hope will be my next book on a generally scholarly level.

So I need to get a little focused. In short, I may only post here once a week, usually on Mondays (sometimes sneaking it in on Sunday). Of course if the Spirit moves, I doubt I'll stop myself.

For the next few Mondays, I thought I'd mention a few shifts in our understanding of Paul that Augustine has contributed to us. The first--a shift from speaking of our flesh as the foothold of sin over us to the idea that we have a sinful nature.

The NIV regularly translates the Greek word flesh as "sinful nature." It is one of many, many rabbit trails of the NIV, in my opinion. For Paul the starting point for understanding flesh is, well, skin. There is a natural glide in his arguments in Romans from the flesh to our mortal bodies and our physical members.

"Do not let sin continue to reign in your mortal body" (6:12).

"nor continue to present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin" (6:13).

"for when we were in the flesh..." (6:5)

As usual, the good old NIV obscures Paul's logic.

At the same time, flesh easily becomes a metaphor for the part of us that sin holds power over. So just as we can die with Christ (and yet still be physically alive), we can get out of our flesh (even though we're still in our skin). "Those who are in the flesh are not able to please God" (8:8).

Paul can speak about sin dwelling in my flesh (7:18). But we should not take this as a statement of literal nature. Why? First, because flesh is not intrinsically sinful--Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh (8:3). Now it's not that Jesus' flesh was any different from ours literally. Sin just didn't have power over his flesh as it does ours. Secondly, because Paul indicates we can get out of this flesh in 8:8.

So what rabbit trails has Augustine sent us down in this instance. Questions of eradication or suppression are immediately seen to be arguments over a metaphor taken too literally. But eradication comes closest to what Paul does with the metaphor.

Is the sin nature passed down genetically? Is this why Jesus was born of a virgin? Paul knows nothing of these questions. It seems more likely that we should connect Paul's statement that the creation was subjected to futility (8:20) to this discussion. The entire creation is enslaved, and our physical bodies are a part of that creation. Sin is thus a power that holds over the physical realm in general, one for which Spirit is an antidote.

I think we should see this same general way of thinking behind Paul's enigmatic comments about the elements in Galatians 4:9: "now that you have known God (or rather are known by God) how are you turning again to the weak and impoverished elements, which you wish to serve again anew?" Colossians will develop this strange way of thinking that equates keeping certain parts of the Jewish law with enslavement to sin.

So we have no reason to think that the virgin birth had anything to do with Christ not having a sin nature. It's one of several rabbit trails of church history brought to you by Augustine.