Throwback post from April 3, 2014
The entire discussion of sanctification brought up a number of issues. Chief among them is my use of speech-act theory, as well as my use of categories of thought taken from relational and ecstatic metaphysics to explicate my views of sanctification. When I pointed out the advantage of these ways of speaking to give an account of and to conceptually preserve biblical and confessional commitments (as well as their precedent in Luther’s own ways of speaking and conceptualizing theology), it was charged that I rejected the substance ontology of the early Lutheran dogmaticians, and that I was therefore out of accordance with the historic tradition. As much as I tried to explain in a few short sentences to point out that my position was being distorted, such a response was generally speaking ignored. Below, I would like to clarify my position on the metaphysical question in light of my biblical and confessional commitments to God’s truth. Regarding Lutheran theology and the need to speak in terms of philosophical ontology, I would make the following observations:
1. One cannot canonize any one ontological scheme. There are a couple reasons for this. First of all, the great weakness of Catholic and Reformed theology is that they have more or less canonized a particular metaphysical scheme and allowed it to determine their theology. This can be seen in the Catholic commitment to things like Transubstantiation and the doctrine of created grace. In the case of the Reformed, they enter into their discussion of the two natures in Christ and the sacraments with philosophical presuppositions about what divinity and humanity are (non capax, etc.), and what God would do and what he would not do . And so, ultimately they ignore or obfuscate what Scripture says about these things. Secondly, Lutheranism (or perhaps more accurately, people who define themselves as Lutheran!) has functioned with a number of different philosophical traditions: Nominalism, Scotism, Aristotelianism, Leibnizianism, Kantianism, Hegalianism, and Existentialism. Many of these philosophical schemes have had unfortunately distorting effects on the teaching of biblical truth. My opponents tend to think the Aristotelian one was pretty good. In some respects, this was true. Nevertheless, this too also created any number of problems. One example might be the false teaching of “receptionism,” that is largely a function of the Melanchthonian appropriation of Aristotle’s casual scheme. All causes must be in place (including reception) to actualize a reality. This distorts the gospel-promise of the Supper by effectively claiming that my action of reception is a contributing cause of the body and blood of Christ being present, rather than the sole cause lying in the promissory and consecratory word. The third reason that we cannot canonize any one metaphysical scheme is that as Oswald Bayer has pointed out, this would be the theology of glory. To know a universal scheme within which we can relate the ontic reality of God to all beings in an absolutely consistent way would in fact to suggest that we could know God’s being in itself, and how all of God’s works (which, often seems contrary) are coordinated with one another. This is a problem because we know that the theology of glory always leads to conceit and self-justification. Such a knowledge of God is not proper to this life, but the next life. In this life, an attempt at such a knowledge leads to creatures believing in God as a transparent ideal, rather than a savior. From this, theology and ethics becomes structured around trying to be conformed to that ideal. Such knowledge will only be possible and helpful to us in the next life when God purifies us and conforms us to his ideal reality.
2. If metaphysical and ontological terminology and schemes have historically distorted aspects of biblical teaching, then why bother with them at all? One has heard this argument from Lutherans often enough, and indeed to some extent in the history of Protestant theology. The young Luther was contemptuous of philosophical terminology borrowed from Aristotle. Of course, he never completely rejected philosophical learning (he has very nice things to say about Plato in the Heidelberg Disputation, as he trashes Aristotle). Moreover, many of the presuppositions he used to attack philosophical reason were in fact borrowed from Nominalist philosophy (this is particularly the case in his arguments against Zwingli). Finally, he ultimately did acquiesced to Melanchthon’s revival of a purified Aristotelianism in the curriculum of Wittenberg by the 1530s. Moreover, we find of course a similar rejection of philosophical metaphysics in the considerably less orthodox theology of 19th century Liberal Protestantism. Schleiermacher and Ritschl in particular rejected philosophical tradition as a basis or in some case, even a tool, for theological discourse. Adolf Harnack built an entire theory of the fall of the Church around it in his History of Dogma by positing that Christian theology had gradually been corrupted by Greek philosophy (his famous “Hellenization Thesis”). Unfortunately for the coherent of their argument, they attacked philosophical reason on the basis of Kantian presuppositions, thereby revealing that they were unable to escape philosophical schemes themselves!