Theology and source critical analysis

There is reason to think that a number of biblical texts—paradigmatically, the Pentateuch—were redacted from multiple sources that scholars have worked to tease apart and separately analyze. This is very interesting from a scholarly point of view. But I do not know that it is that interesting from the theological point of view.

Vatican II, in Dei Verbum, famously teaches:

since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. … However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.

Presumably many other Christian groups hold something similar.

Now, in the case of a text put together from multiple sources, the question is who the “sacred writers” are. I want to suggest that in the case of such a text, the relevant “sacred writers” are the editors who put the texts together, and especially the ones responsible for a final (though this is a somewhat difficult to apply concept) version, and the intentions relevant to figuring out “What God wanted to communicate to us” are the intentions of the final layer of editing. The books in question, such as Genesis, are not anthologies. In an anthology, an editor has some purposes in mind for the anthologized texts, but the texts belong, often in a more or less acknowledged fashion, to the individual authors. The editorial work in putting the Biblical works together from source material is much more creative—it is genuine form of authorship—which is obvious from how much back-and-forth movement there is. Like in an anthology, we should not take the editor’s intentions to align with the intentions of the source material authors, but unlike in an anthology, the final work comes with the editor’s authority, and counts as the assertion of the editor, with the editor’s intentions being the ones that determine the meaning of the work.

If this is right, then I think we can only be fully confident of dealing with inspired teaching in the case of what the editors intend to assert through the final works. Writers typically draw on a multiplicity of sources, and need not be asserting what these sources meant in their original context—think of the ways in which a writer often repurposes a quote from another. Think here of how Homer draws upon a rich variety of fictional and nonfictional source material, but when he adapts them for inclusion in his work, the intentions relevant to “What the Iliad and Odyssey say” are Homer’s intentions.

If what we want to be sure of is “what God wanted to communicate to us”, then we should focus on the redactors’ intentions. In particular, when there is a tension in text between two pieces of source material, exegetically we should focus on what the editor meant to communicate to us by the choice to include material from both sources. (In a text without divine inspiration, we might in the end attribute a tension to editorial carelessness, but in fact scholars rarely make use of “carelessness” as an explanation for phenomena in great works of secular literature.) I think we should be open even to the logical possibility that the editor misunderstood what the source material meant to communicate, but it is the editor’s understanding that is normative for the interpretation of what the text as a whole is saying.

From a scholarly point of view, earlier layers in the composition process are more interesting. But I think that from a theological point of view, it is what the editor wanted to communicate that matters.

I don’t want to be too dogmatic about this, for three reasons. First, it is possible that the source material is an inspired text in its own right. But, I think, we typically don’t know that it is (though in a Christian context, an obvious exception is where the New Testament quotes Jesus’ inspired teaching). Second, it is possible for a writer or editor who has a deep respect for a piece of source material to include the text with the intention that the text be understood in the sense in which the original authors intended it to be understood, in which case the intentions of the authors of the source material may well be relevant. Third, this is not my field—I could be really badly confused.

Three levels of theological models

There are three kinds of metaphysical models of a theological mystery—say, Trinity, Incarnation or Transubstantiation:

• realistic model: a metaphysical story that is meant to be a true account of what makes the mysterious doctrine be true

• potential model: a metaphysical story that is meant to be an epistemically possible account of what makes the mysterious doctrine be true

• analogical model: a story that is meant to be an epistemically possible account of what makes something analogous to the mysterious doctrine be true.

For instance, Aquinas’s accounts of the Trinity, Incarnation and Transubstantiation are realistic models: they are meant to be accounts of what indeed makes the doctrines true. Van Inwagen’s relative identity account of the Trinity or his body-snatching account of the resurrection, on the other hand, are only potential models: van Inwagen does not affirm they are true. And the history of the Church is filled with analogical models.

A crucial test of any of these models is this: Imagine that you believe the story to be true, and see if the traditional things that one says about the mystery (in the case of a realistic or potential model), or analogues of them (in the case of an analogical model), sound like reasonable things to say given what one believes.

For instance, consider a time-travel model of the Incarnation. Alice, currently a successful ultramarathoner and brilliant geologist, will live a long and fruitful life. Near the end of her life, she has lost most of her physical and mental powers, and all her knowledge of geology. She uses a time machine to go back to 2020 when she is in her prime. If we thought this story was true, it would be reasonable to find ourselves saying things like:

• Alice is a successful ultramarathoner and barely able to walk

• Alice understands continental drift and does not not know what magma is

• Alice is young and old

• Alice is in the pink of health and dying.

These things would sound like a contradiction, but the time-travel story shows they are not. However, these claims are also analogous to claims that constitute an especially mysterious part of the mystery of the Incarnation (and I suppose a mysterious part of a mystery is itself a mystery): Christ suffers and is impassible; Christ is omniscient and does not know everything; Christ is timeless and born around 4 BC.

Of course nobody should think that it’s literally true that the Incarnation is to be accounted for in terms of time travel. But what the analogical model does show is that there are contexts in which it is reasonable to describe a non-contradictory reality in terms that are very similar to the apparently contradictory incarnational claims.

Eternal pleasure

Suppose the minute of the greatest earthly pleasure you’ve ever tasted was repeated, over and over, for eternity, with your memory reset before each repeat. If hedonism were true, this would be a truly wonderful life, much better than your actual life. But it seems to be a pretty rotten life. So hedonism seems quite far from the truth.

But could there, perhaps, be a pleasure such that eternal repetition of it, in and of itself, would be worth having? It would have to be a pleasure that carries its meaningfulness in itself, one whose quale itself is deeply meaningful. It would have to have be an experience of infinite depth. Could we have such an experience? With Aquinas, I think philosophy cannot answer this question, though theology can.

The possibility of multiple incarnations

A classic theological question is whether it was possible for one person of the Trinity to be simultaneously multiply incarnate. The question is particularly important if it turns out that there are other non-human rational animals--namely, aliens--in need of redemption.

Here is an argument for this possibility:

1. An incarnation of a divine person is possible.
2. If an incarnation of a divine person is possible, multiple sequential incarnations of one divine person are possible.
3. If multiple sequential incarnations of one divine person are possible, multiple simultaneous incarnations of one divine person are possible.
4. So, multiple simultaneous incarnations of one divine person are possible.

Premise (1) is this: according to revelation an incarnation is actual, hence it is possible. Premise (2) is, I think, quite plausible. After all, if an incarnation is possible, it would also be possible for this incarnation to come to an end--a divine person could become incarnate as a mortal being, which perishes qua that kind of mortal being. But then it is very plausible that another incarnation could follow. And so on.

That leaves premise (3). Here I have two lines of thought. The first is the intuition that since God is outside of time, it really shouldn't matter with respect to possibility whether multiple incarnations are in sequence or simultaneous--in each case, the multiple incarnations create a relationship between a timeless being and several locations of spacetime. The second involves time travel. Suppose that there are two sequential incarnations. Then the rational animal that results from the second incarnation could travel back in time and meet the rational animal that results from the first incarnation, and then there would be two simultaneous incarnations.

Two thoughts on theologians who say "God does not exist"

Some theologians like to say that God does not exist. They say this to mark the radical difference between God and creatures.

1. If one is going to say such things, a more helpful way to speak would be: "God exists but we don't." For that would still get across the radical difference between God and creatures, but get right the fact that God is the one who is the more real. Compared to God's reality, we are but shadows. It is said that God said to St Catherine of Siena: "I am who I am, and you are she who is not." This poetically conveys a deep truth. We are but shadows, and "shadow" is often an overstatement.

2. There are many metaphysicians who like to say that complex artifacts like tables, chairs and blowguns don't exist. But many of them say this only in philosophical contexts and not in "ordinary" contexts, or they qualify the "don't exist" with a "really". They may or may not be misguided in the form of their odd denial, but what they (we!) are getting at is plausible: There is a deep difference between the kind of being that a table, chair or blowgun has, and the kind of being that a horse or a photon have (some of these philosophers will class the horse with the chair; that's mistaken, but the basic point I am making isn't affected). The ordinary language sentences "The pig exists" and "The car exists" have very different (nonpropositional) grounds: the former is grounded in a single thing while the latter is grounded in the arrangement of many things. Well, these theologians, like these metaphysicians, are also impressed by a deep ontological difference (a deeper one, perhaps). But like the metaphysician who is willing to speak with nonphilosophers in ordinary ways, these theologians should be willing to say "God exists" in contexts of ordinary worship. Or like the metaphysician who says that computers don't really exist, she could simply make a qualification: "God doesn't exist in the shadowy way." Or, more perspicuously?, she could say: "We don't really exist, but God does." (Though I think that if one does that, one should also distinguish us from artifacts. Perhaps the distinction could be marked with "really" and "really really"!)

Exegesis of Scripture

It is standard in interpreting Scripture to ask questions like: "What did the Paul hope to accomplish by this passage?" or "What motivated the prophet to write this verse?" or "What must the p been thinking given that he wrote this?" These questions are interesting to ask and the answers seem to illuminate our understanding of Scripture. We investigate secular texts in exactly the same way. It potentially illuminates our understanding of Aristotle's thought to ask why he waited until Met. H.6 to give a solution to the problems of Met. Z.

But there is a crucial difference between the secular case and Scripture: Scripture is authoritative. But, I think, what is authoritative is the text that the human author wrote, rather than the human author's motivations and thinking behind that text. The inferred motivations and thinking of the human author give us insight into what the text means (more strongly, I think that speaker-meaning is the relevant kind of meaning for Scripture, but the point remains even if one denies this), and hence help us know what is being taught. But the human author's motivations and thinking, in and of themselves, are quite fallible, while, in the words of the Vatican II ecumenical council, "everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit" (Dei Verbum 11, emphasis added) and hence is true.

Let me argue for the claim that the author's motivations and thinking are not in and of themselves authoritative, though I may need to qualify it. Suppose we infer from internal and external evidence that an author wrote the text to a particular audience with the confident belief that the text would convince the audience of some proposition. Can we conclude that it is authoritatively taught that the audience was in fact convinced of that proposition? Surely not. We gain an insight into the intentions of the author, and this helps us understand what the text means, but the author's motivating belief is not authoritative. Or for an even more obvious example, from the fact that a sacred author writes a sentence s we can typically infer that he thought s was orthographically and grammatically correct and stylistically good Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. But this claim about grammar and spelling is not authoritative. Scripture is not to be taken as an authoritative examplar of style—that would be like the confusion of apostle and genius that Kierkegaard inveighs against (this is probably a point at which Christian attitudes to Scripture differ from Islamic ones).

It is sometimes possible to infer from the fact that the author wrote a sentence s that asserts the proposition p that there is some other proposition, q, which he also believed. For instance, suppose the author writes with great emphasis that anyone who does A will be doomed for eternity. We might be able infer from the emphasis that the author believes that some people do A, or at least that it is quite possible to do A. This belief, however, is not asserted by the author and need not be authoritative. However, the belief does help us with the interpretation of what the author meant. For instance, suppose we have two ways of interpreting "A": A₁ and A₂. Suppose, further, that internal and/or external evidence shows that the author probably would not have believed that anybody does A₁ but would have thought that some people do A₂. This now gives us strong evidence for the claim that the author meant A₂ by "A". Thus, probably, we are being authoritatively taught that those who do A₂ are doomed for eternity. But it does not follow from this that we are being authoritatively taught that anybody actually does A₂, even though our exegesis depended on attributing that belief to the author.

However, the above needs to be qualified. We must avoid the serious theological mistake of limiting the inspiration of Scripture to the inerrance of its assertions—the inerrance of assertions is a consequence of inspiration, but does not exhaust inspiration. There are large chunks of Scripture—much of the Psalms, for instance—where the illocutionary act is not assertion, but, say, prayer. Those parts are inspired as well, but the doctrine of the inerrance of Scriptural assertions says nothing about them. Similarly, even in the parts where assertion is the (primary?) illocutionary act, we should be open to the idea that something more is going on than inerrance. (Besides, inerrance is something basically negative—a preventing of error—while inspiration is a positive thing.) Thus, while what should be open to the idea that it does not exhaust the authority of an assertion of Scripture to say that we need to believe its content.

In particular, this raises the question of whether what is implicated by a text of Scripture is also authoritative. Here I will be entirely speculative. I think we need to distinguish between two kinds of implicatures. The first kind is where we can infer from some hypotheses about the text, such as that it tends to obeys Gricean maxims, that the author believed something, but the author does not intend for us to make that inference. The second is where the author intends for us to make some such inference. In the case where the author does not intend the inference, but we can make it nonetheless because we're clever, the inferred belief is not authoritative. In the case where the author intends for us to make the inference, we still need to distinguish between cases. The author may just want us to infer an autobiographical fact about him, that he happens to believe p. (For instance, maybe by a particular way of phrasing a question, the author wants to indicate to the reader which theological faction in Jerusalem he belongs to, and membership in the theological faction may be defined by believing p.) In that case, p need not be authoritatively taught. But the author may intend for us to learn that p from the text. In that case, p is authoritatively taught. Though maybe then p was in fact asserted?

In any case, in untangling these issues there is material for someone who is both interested in Biblical exegesis and philosophy of language for years of fruitful research. I am hoping that these reflections also show the necessity of a deep familiarity (greater than my passing acquaintance) with contemporary analytic philosophy of language to serious work on the theology of biblical inspiration.

Bringing theology into metaphysical discussions

As readers of this blog know, I am not a big fan of the compartmentalization of knowledge, and specifically of a compertmentalization on which theological knowlege does not affect one's philosophical beliefs. Here I just want to note one thing. A lot of contemporary metaphysical arguments have some form rather like this:

Here's a phenomenon F. Look, it's puzzling. Here are three accounts of F. Look, they all fail. Here's a fourth account of F. Look, it doesn't fail for the reasons for which the three fail.

We're then supposed to accept the fourth account.

But of course such arguments are weak (there is nothing wrong with weak arguments, except that strong ones are preferable). Unless there is a further argument that any account must be one of the four, while such argument provides evidence for the fourth account, it should not give one very strong confidence in the fourth account. And at least in such a case, if the theology has a rational basis (e.g., in apologetic arguments), it seems clearly unproblematic to say, e.g., "Ah, but the fourth account fails, too, because it contradicts transubstantiation."

After all, if the fourth account of F contradicts transubstantiation, then the philosopher who accepts the fourth account and accepts transubstantiation needs to revise her beliefs. She could do so by rejecting transubstantiation. But assuming there is the kind of rational basis for her acceptance of transubstantiation that we might expect an intelligent Catholic to have (e.g., she is appropriately convinced by the apologetic arguments that show that Christ founded a Church whose basic beliefs would always be true and by the historical evidence that transubstantiation was, at least at one point in history, one of the basic beliefs of the Church), wouldn't it be silly for her to reject transubstantiation merely on the grounds of the fact that we have not yet found a satisfactory account of F that coheres with transubstantiation, but we have so far found an otherwise satisfactory account of F that does not cohere with transubstantiation? The confidence engendered by arguments of the form that was given for the fourth account of F is just too low to make it rational to reject transubstantiation.

Consider, too, that the revision to her web of beliefs in rejecting the fourth account of F is likely to be much smaller than the revision in rejecting transubstantiation if she is Catholic. (If she rejects transubstantiation, she will need to reject conciliar infallibility or else go Orthodox and deny that Trent was an ecumenical council. In either case, a lot of other beliefs would likely have to change.) It would be strange indeed if such significant transformation of one's belief system were to be made rational merely by the fact that three accounts of F are unsatisfactory and the only one we know of that doesn't fail in this way contradicts transubstantiation.

What is further typically true of these kinds of metaphysical arguments is that the fourth account, while not subject to the deficiencies of the first three, has some implausible consequences, too, which the author finesses. Even if in fact the author of the argument is right that these implausible consequences are less problematic than those of the first three accounts of F, it seems really clear that at least in such a case bringing in the theological consequences is entirely appropriate.

(I sometimes argue for a significantly weaker conclusion than the one I hold. This is certainly true in this post.)

Is Intelligent Design theologically shallow?

Occasionally, one hears Intelligent Design (ID) accused of being theologically shallow. Now, no doubt, many of the advocates of ID are theologically shallow, as are many of the opponents of ID. But the question is whether there is anything theologically shallow about holding ID to be true. As far as I can tell, ID is something like the following two-part thesis:

(a) Some of the biological features of organisms are designed by non-human intelligent agency; and (b) this fact can be known on the basis of biological study of these features (together with the application of mathematical, conceptual and/or other tools).

The reason for the "non-human" qualifier is that otherwise (a) would be uninterestingly satisfied by artificially selected features in domesticated animals.

What, then, is theologically shallow about ID? Part (a) has always been accepted by Jewish and Christian theists, and does not appear at all shallow—indeed, it is connected with a depth of reflection on providential divine involvement in the world, creation, the problem of evil, and so on. Unless the claim is the implausible one that Judaism and Christianity are at root theologically shallow, the theological problem would seem to have to be not with part (a), but with part (b).

Now, if one has a strongly anti-rational theological stance, one might think that any attempt to argue to a conclusion about divine activity on the basis of empirical data is reflective of a shallow rationalism. If so, then one will think that (b) is indicative of a theological shallowness. But I do not think (b) is indicative of a theological shallowness. In fact, it seems to me to be a deeper view to say with Aquinas that God is both an unfathomable mystery and yet his existence and the fact of his creating the world can be known on the basis of observed data. (I am not saying Aquinas advocated ID—he did not—but he did think that we could get to the existence of God, and to some facts about God's creative activity, on the basis of philosophical reflection on things we have observed.) Maybe there is something particularly shallow in holding that science should be a part of one of the routes to knowledge about God's creative activity, but I do not see it. Indeed, it seems to me to be a rather deep view to think that God is imaged in our world in all kinds of ways, and since science tells us about our world, it is relevant to knowing about God.

Perhaps, though, it is not the bare statement of ID that is theologically shallow, but what is shallow is something else. Two options come to mind. One is that the motivations of ID proponents are shallow. Perhaps, ID proponents think that the only way to justify belief in God is through scientific data. That is, indeed, a shallow view. Or maybe they think that only by positing scientifically discernible divine involvement can one save the doctrine that God designed human beings. That might be a shallow view, unless there are some deep arguments behind it. But it does not seem to me to be right to call a view shallow just because the proponents of it are motivated by another view which is shallow.

The second option is that what is shallow is not so much the two-part claim of ID, but the way that ID proponents flesh out the claim, e.g., by asserting that there is evidence of miraculous divine interventions. Again, even if this fleshing out were shallow, it would not follow that ID itself is a shallow doctrine, but that it is fleshed out in a shallow way.

But I want to consider the latter criticism a bit further. Why would it be shallow to say that God created some organisms through miraculous interventions? Now, if one thinks that all claims of miraculous interventions are theologically shallow, one will say this. But that is a sweeping generalization that seems hard to justify. There does not appear to be anything particularly shallow to the idea that God's ways of manifesting his love in creation are not bounded by the laws of nature. Now, it might be shallow to claim that God could not do such-and-such non-miraculously. But it does not seem shallow to claim that he could do such-and-such miraculously, nor that he did. Granted, this view may be unattractive to those like Leibniz who think a good designer always makes something that runs just fine without him. But is denying this standoffish view of divine activity shallow? If anything, positing a world where God sometimes works in and through natural causes, and sometimes beyond them, seems to lead to a richer view.

None of this is an argument for ID. In an earlier post, I have argued that at least the Dembskian variety of ID fails, and I do not know any variety of ID to succeed. But it is important not to criticize views on spurious grounds, such as the accusations of theological shallowness.

In any case, I am not even sure that p's being is "deep" is any evidence for p, or that p's being "shallow" is any evidence against p.

Science and theology

It is sometimes said that when science and theology conflict, this is because we are dealing with bad science or bad theology or both bad science and bad theology. This may be in fact true of a number of apparent conflicts between science and theology.

But even if this is in fact true, one shouldn't elevate such an observation into a necessarily true principle. Here is one reason to think this. We learn from history that good science is often wrong. (Can one say the same about theology? That may depend on whether one restricts to the theology of a true religion, and on how speculative one allows theology to be and still count as "good".) Unless science and theology have completely logically disjoint subject matter, so that no proposition of science can possibly entail or be incompatible with a proposition of theology, it seems quite possible to have a case where a proposition p is such that (a) p is good science, (b) p is false, and (c) not-p is good theology.

Objection 1: Science and theology have completely logically disjoint subject matter, and hence it is impossible for a coherent proposition from one field to entail or be incompatible with a proposition from the other.

Response: This is false. For instance, Christian theology holds that the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth does not contain the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This proposition and its negation are certainly the sorts of propositions with which historical sciences like archaeology deal. For another example, Jewish and Christian theology holds that the cosmos was created a finite amount of time ago. This theological proposition entails the claim that the cosmos has only finite age, a claim within the competency of cosmology (Aristotelian cosmology denied the claim; Big Bang cosmology affirmed the claim; some recent cosmologies deny the claim again).

Objection 2: Only true conclusions of science count as good science.

Response: This is implausible. Newtonian physics was good science par excellence, but false. Relativity theory and quantum mechanics were (are?) both good science, but we now know that they are not both true, since they conflict. But if this is true, then by the same token we should stipulate that only true conclusions of theology count as good theology, and then the claim that there can be no conflict between good science and good theology becomes tautologous. That said, it may be that some who make the no-conflict claim do mean it to be tautologous. Tautologies can still be useful at highlighting things—and, besides, one can't dispute them, which is certain a good thing.

Theology versus philosophical theology

When I was a mathematics graduate student, a mathematical physicist described to me the difference between mathematical physics and theoretical physics roughly as follows. The mathematical physicist is a mathematician who re-does the work of the theoretical physicist, about 10-15 years later, but with full mathematical rigor. So, wanting to make sure that all the mathematics is precise and right comes at the cost of being behind the state of the art. The theoretical physicist, typically, does not worry about rigor. She makes approximations as needed, assumes as needed that differential equations have solutions (after all, if they describe a physical situation, how can they not, she might—fallaciously[note 1]—ask?), and so on. The mathematical physicist is worried about all the assumptions, wanting them all to be laid out on the table. The physicist does not worry. And typically the physicist is right not to worry—her physicist's intuition, or whatever, is sufficiently reliable in the appropriate area, and she knows what area is appropriate.

I wonder if there isn't a similar relationship between the theologian and the philosophical theologian (at least of the analytic variety). For instance, the theologian may not worry about cashing out details of metaphors. She might talk about the Church as the body of Christ without wondering whether this means that the Church is a substance. She can talk about forgiveness without wondering about its metaphysics (a fascinating question for a later post). Of course, she also can ask whether the Church is a substance, and wonder about the metaphysics of forgiveness. But the point is that she doesn't have to. Likewise, the theoretical physicist presumably can stop and be utterly rigorous, and sometimes she does, but much of the time she doesn't and doesn't have to. But the philosophical theologian wants to get as clear as we can on what is behind the metaphor, eschewing metaphorical language as much as possible. She wants to be able to formulate the theological theses as rigorously as possible. And there is a price to be paid for this rigor, much higher than the price for mathematical physics which was just being behind. Many aspects of Revelation are, likely, essentially metaphorical in the sense that there is no non-metaphorical way of putting them without loss. So insisting on putting things more rigorously, she is not able to say much of what her theologian colleague can. But the work of the philosophical theologian is valuable, just like that of the mathematical physicist.

Liberal theology

Consider a revealed religion, say Christianity. I will use "the Sources" for the locus or loci where revelation is believed to be discursively embodied. In the case of Catholic Christianity, the Sources are Scripture and Tradition, in the case of Protestant Christianity, the Sources might be just Scripture, and in the case of Islam, the Sources will be the Qur'an and various traditions. The liberal theologian does not believe that any part of the Sources is infallible in matters of faith or morals. I will take this to be part of the definition of a liberal theologian, and will argue that liberal theology is untenable.

As an adherent of a revealed religion, the liberal theologian has to accord some authority to the Sources. And so she has to decide when to follow the Sources and when not to. Since no part of the Sources is taken by her to be infallible, she has to make that decision by the light of her reason.

Thus we get our first conclusion: The liberal theologian, to be consistent, must have a high view of reason. I suspect that some liberal theologians, in the thrall of postmodern thought, do not have a high view of reason. But then they are inconsistent. For there to be any hope of a liberal theology, reason has to be capable of trumping the Sources.

Let us, then, suppose that our liberal theologian has a high view of reason. She rejects claims from the Sources when she takes them to conflict with reason. But what does it mean to conflict with reason? There are two kinds of deliverances of reason: (1) apodeictic ones are justified by a logically impeccable argument from self-evidently true premises, and (2) plausibilistic fall short of that, either by employing inductive or probabilistic argumentation, or by relying on premises that are not self-evidently true. Now I am not planning to offer any argument against in this post against being a liberal theologian in whose theological practice only the apodeictic deliverances of reason trump the Sources. But I just don't think there are any liberal theologians like that. The typical disagreements with the Sources rely on plausibilistic arguments. There are, for instance, no available apodeictic arguments for claims like:

• salvation apart from Christ is possible
• any non-reproductive role that a man can appropriately play, a woman can appropriately play as well
• same-sex sexual relations are permissible
• marital contraception is permissible
• miracles do not happen
• we are the product of a random, unguided, natural process
• everyone achieves salvation
• all the major religions tell us the same truth about God

While there certainly are arguments for these claims, these arguments either rely on premises that are plausible but not self-evident, or somewhere the argument makes a plausible and not logically strict step, or both. I do not think any self-conscious liberal theologian should deny that. Consider, for instance, the second example claim. That claim presumably has to rely on empirical data about men and women, as well as on a non-self-evident normative interpretation of that data. The liberal theologian should not be ashamed of using plausibilistic arguments--we use them all the time in our daily lives--but she should be aware that that is what is she is doing.

So our liberal theologian now not only has a high view of reason, but also believes that some merely plausibilistic arguments trump the Sources. But now we have a problem. Merely plausibilistic arguments can be wrong, no matter how strong they are. That is what distinguishes them from apodeictic ones. Now, if the Sources have some authority, it cannot be that every merely plausibilistic argument trumps the Sources.[note 1]

Thus, we get our second conclusion: The liberal theologian needs to distinguish between those plausibilistic arguments that are strong enough to trump the Sources and those that are not strong enough. (The degree of strength required may depend on which part of the Sources is contradicted by the argument.)

From this it follows: The liberal theologian's methodology closes the door to the possibility that we be corrected by divine revelation when there is a sufficiently strong plausibilistic argument for a false conclusion. After all, no matter how great a degree of strength we require in a plausibilistic argument, an argument could have that strength and still lead to a false conclusion. That is because it is plausibilistic and not apodeictic. And if the argument is strong enough, it will trump anything in the Sources. This is an unfortunate conclusion, and one that should worry the liberal theologian, given the possibility of very strong plausibilistic arguments for false conclusions.

On the other hand, revelation often concerns things beyond our experience and beyond the powers of our reason. If one takes somewhat seriously the authority of the Sources and the fallibility of reason, one will be very cautious about the idea of reason trumping the Sources. Thus: The liberal theologian needs to accept that the Sources trump reason in many of the areas of revelation, because these areas go beyond reason's competence. Thus a liberal theologian with a realistic view of reason's limitations cannot be too liberal. And, in fact, I think a realistic view of reason's limitations in regard to plausibilistic arguments makes the project of liberal theology implausible.

Let me end with what I think is one of the most serious in-practice objections to certain moral aspects of liberal theology. Many of the plausibilistic arguments in the liberal theologian's repertoire at most establish a presumption in favor of the conclusion, and thus have the form: "In light of such-and-such facts, there is a presumption in favor of claim p, absent considerations to the contrary." But surely arguments of that form should not trump the Sources--the Sources, after all, are a consideration to the contrary. Let me explain what I mean here by way of example, using an idea from this old post of mine. Take, for instance, a liberal Christian theologian who wants to argue that some form of sexual activity (e.g., same-sex sexual relations) that the Sources say is wrong is in fact acceptable. But in fact there really aren't any very strong positive arguments for the permissibility of a form of sexual activity apart from a presumption of permission, i.e., a view that if we can't find an argument against A, then we should assume A to be permissible. Granted, there might be some arguments based on considerations of autonomy, but Christians who believe that God is in charge of us--and it is hard not to believe that even if one is a liberal theologian--are surely going to be suspicious of that. Nor are there any very strong positive arguments against the claim that God in his omniscience might see some bad consequences of an activity that we do not see--this happens quite often. The most reason can say in favor of the form of activity is something like: "As far as we can tell by reason, there are no strong considerations to the contrary." Yes, but a judgment like that will certainly be trumped by the Sources, unless one has such a low view of the Sources that one is not really considering them to be Sources anymore.

This post is inspired by discussions with Trent Dougherty, but he should not be thought of as endorsing anything here.