Vacation


Our scattered discussions during Christmas vacation with the family highlighted some key areas of tension, but also some areas of agreement. I’ve tried to sort things out into the major themes, beginning with the former:

Sources of meaning. S asserts that he still sees meaning as originating from himself as an individual. He does not believe there is any inherent meaning in the universe, outside of what an individual gives to it. I asked him if it was possible that someone could choose a wrong meaning, to which he replied yes. To me, that seems to suggest at least some external standard for meaning by which our “created” meanings are judged—which means there is meaning outside of one’s “created” meaning. The following day, when revisiting this topic, S backpedaled, and added a qualifier: “I would think it was wrong [for someone to choose/give the ‘wrong’ meaning].” For me, this raised again the question of what grounds S could have for urging his judgment on another person. What makes one person’s meaning superior to another, if we’re not judging by some common standard? Out of all the people and all the opinions in the world, why should anyone care what you think? “Quot homines, tot sententiae,” as the saying goes, roughly translated: “That’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

Foundations of moral discourse. Aside from appealing to his own conclusions as essentially self-justifying, S relies primarily on the claim that suffering is evil as the basis for his ethics. Yet so far I have not heard a clear argument for why all human suffering is equally bad vs., for example, only the suffering of me and my tribe (which was standard outside of Judaism and Christianity), or at all. So I remain unconvinced. Additionally, his position doesn’t yet appear to escape relativism and the attendant issues.

Despite S’s interest in non-cognitivism and anti-realism, I wonder if his position is not in fact a veiled cognitive realism. If suffering is a natural feature of the world, and any reasonable person should be able to see that suffering is evil, then morality is based in discernible features of the natural world. If this is actually his position, it might solve the relativism problem, but it would beg a whole bunch of other questions. It would undermine his existentialist/nihilist ontology. And neither view squares with materialism, which he has also espoused in the past.

Biblical interpretation. S made at least two dubious interpretive claims about the Bible: (1) that the Bible treats the suffering of the Israelites as more important/significant than the suffering of the rest of humanity; and (2) that the Bible justifies chattel slavery. To my knowledge both of these claims are patently false. In the case of (1), the narrative is clear that God plans to redeem all of humanity through the Israelite people. It is true that God commands the Israelites to attack and enslave the Canaanites, but it’s just as true that when a corrupt city repents (e.g., Nineveh), God happily relents, to the chagrin of his chosen people (e.g., Jonah). Another pertinent example is of Sodom and Gomorrah, where Abraham bargains with God that he should relent if only five righteous people are found in the city. It is clear from this and many other instances that God’s heart is inclined more toward compassion than judgment. As for (2), a number of books I have read, including Reading While Black, contradict this. As I understand it, Old Testament law explicitly forbids kidnapping and chattel slavery. The “slavery” it provides for is more along the lines of indentured servitude, with orders to treat one’s “slave” so well that they would be reluctant to leave. New Testament passages must be understood in their historical context; the arguments are too subtle for me to get into here.

Anyway, I challenged S to find an orthodox interpretation that contradicts what I’ve read. In doing so, I hope I’m not setting myself up to make a no-true-Scotsman rejection of whatever he comes up with (i.e., if I don’t agree with it, it must not be “orthodox”). But it is true that historically, the anti-slavery position won out through interpretive arguments, not merely ad hoc rationalizations to keep up with the times. These are tricky passages, and I’m not denying that. But my understanding is that the broad consensus disconfirms both views. And putting one’s own untutored opinion above the body of orthodox scholarship seems misguided.

Reconciling the omnis, and other issues with Calvinism. S still does not see the doctrine of double predestination as consistent with the idea of a loving God . Again we discussed human depravity, and here our disagreement seemed to come down to intuition/experience; S simply does not have as bleak a view of humanity as I do. I pointed to the reality of tragedy, that even when humanity seems like it’s on a good track, nature herself seems to push back. Even when humanity is (seemingly) at its best, the situation may not be as hopeful as we think.

In response to the accusation that predestination undermines human agency, I sketched a concept of layers of causation. It’s similar to the idea of brain chemistry or social conditioning. Did I fly off the handle because the chemicals in my brain were imbalanced, and/or because I’ve been taught that that’s how men process emotions? Yes. But at the same time, it was me who did it, and I bear responsibility for it. (Victim culture undermines this, though.) Predestination operates in the background, as it were, like brain chemistry—but it shouldn’t be made into an all-encompassing framework that collapses human experience. Hyper-calvinism can become yet another reductive lens, like materialism or evolutionary psychology, flattening the world to fit its claims, which one of the reasons why I reject it.

I also said that, logically, double predestination is the only way for “amazing grace” to work. It cannot be based in anything other than free grace, which in turn must occur against a background of sin. I mentioned, for example, my experience fathering my own children: I am most loving to them when I reach out to them in spite of whatever they’ve done, and not waiting for them to get their shit together.

S brought up the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus as an example of God’s ill will toward humans. I pointed out that Pharaoh was given many warnings, and that the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is meant to show how God uses wicked people and their evil deeds for his ultimately good purposes. S then changed the subject — either as a means of accepting the reply or as a distraction.

Sources of the self. The issue raised was the “innocent” Egyptian victims who suffered during the plagues. Why should they suffer for Pharaoh’s wickedness?

My response was that this question relies on contemporary Western hyper-individualism, which sees people as isolated atoms who essentially have nothing to do with the society they live in. I think this view is mistaken, both from a common-sense perspective (humanists are always quick to point out how all of us are socially conditioned) and from a whole gamut of philosophical viewpoints, from Aristotelianism to, obviously, Biblical narrative. MacIntyre and Taylor critique it as well. S was reluctant to relinquish his hyper-individualism despite the arguments against it. Which brings us to the last item:

Conditions of belief. Throughout these conversations, S has insisted that he does not accept Christian views on morality and/or religion because they have not been successfully demonstrated to be true. When I asked what a successful demonstration would look like, however, he was at a loss. He threw out “all theologians agreeing” as one criterion, though that seemed offhand and speculative. My challenge to him, then, was to uncover his own presuppositions about what would count as adequate demonstration/proof, and consider whether they are reasonable. The point is that we’re both working from the same data set but drawing different conclusions, which means that somebody’s method of interpreting the data is flawed. I don’t think it’s the case that one of us has more, less, or different data than the other.

Despite these and other disagreements that I’ve likely overlooked, we managed to find several points of agreement. These were:

The proper authority of science. We agree that the authority of science is sufficient to call into question young-earth interpretations of Genesis, but that it does not extend into non-scientific realms like psychology (as in, evolutionary psychology).

Human responsibility to alleviate suffering. For now, we agree that suffering is evil and humans have a responsibility to alleviate it. Our reasons differ, so there are probably differences in the ways this practically works out as well. I’d be curious to tease out definitions of suffering, and limiting cases where suffering is allowable or even desired.

Political woes. We both share apprehensions about the political far left, and polarized politics in general. It seems to us that politicians and news media cater to extreme viewpoints, but that probably most Americans are somewhere in the middle.

Homework for S: