Two decreases in tension between faith and science

Over the past two hundred years or so, one new tension point arose for the relationship between Christianity and science due to scientific progress—namely, evolution. At the same time, several tension points disappeared due two other instances of scientific progress.

The first instance of this scientific progress was the general abandonment of the Aristotelian eternal world model of the universe with Big Bang cosmology. In the middle ages, Jewish, Islamic and Christian thinkers struggled with the tension between the science/philosophy of the day strongly tending towards a universe that always existed and the theological commitment to a creation a finite amount of time ago. That problem is gone.

The second instance is our scientific understanding of the continuity of organic development from zygote to embryo to infant to adult, which has made quite implausible the old view of discontinuous transition in utero from vegetable to animal to human. This old view was the dominant scientific view of human origins until fairly recently, and it had serious tensions with Christian theology.

The first of these embryological tensions was with Christian moral views about abortion. While traditionally Christians opposed both contraception and abortion, abortion was morally seen as a form of homicide. But on the discontinuous transition view, abortion prior to human ensoulment would only be contraception.

The second embryological tension was a technical problem in Christology. Suppose that in the Incarnation we have the vegetable, mere animal and rational animal sequence. Then Aquinas observes there are two possibilities, neither of which is theologically appealing.

First, it could be that God becomes incarnate as a vegetable or a mere animal. But this seems, as Aquinas says, “unbecoming”. And he seem to be right. The Incarnation reveals to us the person of the Logos, and it would be unbecoming that the Logos become a non-personal being.

Second, it could be that the Incarnation happens only at the beginning of the third stage of development, namely once everything is ready for a rational animal. But then Aquinas says “the whole conception could not be attributed to the Son of God”. Indeed, don’t we even have a tension with the Apostles’ Creed line that Christ “was conceived by the Holy Spirit”? For on this option, Christ was not conceived at all. What was conceived was a vegetable, not Christ. (Indeed, none of us were conceived on this view.) Moreover, one might worry that then there would be a sense in which the flesh of Christ would pre-exist the Incarnation. And that makes it difficult to say that the Word became flesh—for the flesh that Scripture says he “became” would already in a sense have been there, and one can’t become this flesh, since this flesh already has its own identity. (Granted, there may well be some Aristotelian metaphysics one can do to lessen this last worry.)

Aquinas solves the problem by supposing that Christ is conceived fully formed in Mary’s womb, and hence has the rational soul from the first moment of his existence. But this solution is itself problematic. Absent gradual development from a zygote, is this conception at all? If God were to create an adult human either ex nihilo or out of some pre-existing matter, we would not consider that a conception. But neither should we then consider it a conception if God creates a fully-formed fetus, even if he does that out of the pre-existing matter of Mary. So we still have a problem with the Apostles’ creed’s “was conceived by the Holy Spirit”. Moreover, it seems that this deprives Mary of a significant chunk of her motherhood.

But the problem entirely disappears once we think that the human beings begin their existence at conception. Christ is conceived by the Holy Spirit, presumably in that Mary’s ovum is transformed into a zygote by the infinite power of the Holy Spirit, which zygote is the Christ who then grows in utero like we all do.

(Catholics also note that the new scientific understanding of human embryonic development also helps with the doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception—for only a rational being can be immaculately conceived, since original sin or freedom from it can only apply to a rational being.)

Mononoetism

Every so often I come against someone who is defending a Christological view I want to call “mononoetism”: that Christ has only one mind. While the Third Council of Constantinople condemned the errors that Christ has only one will (monothelitism) or only one natural operation (monoenergism), I do not know of any conciliar condemnation of mononoetism. Nonetheless, I think the reasoning behind the condemnations of monothelitism applies to mononoetism.

Mononoetism could in principle come in three sorts: Christ has only one mind and it’s a human mind; Christ has only one mind and it’s a divine mind; Christ has one hybrid human-divine mind. I think the first and second options are non-starters. If Christ has only a human mind, he’s not consubstantial with the Father. If Christ has only a divine mind, he has not taken on the human nature. So we should only consider the hybrid human-divine mind view.

But a hybrid human-divine mind view seems to be the kind of “confusion and mixture” between human and divine natures that the Council of Chalcedon objects to. Indeed, the letter of Pope Agatho, approved by the Council, shows that the opposition to monothelitism is just a working out of the teaching of earlier Councils, and Agatho’s reasoning applies just as much to the mind. Just replace “will” with “mind” here:

While if it is asserted that there is but one will in him (which is absurd), those who make this assertion must needs say that that will is either human or divine, or else composite from both, mixed and confused, or (according to the teaching of all heretics) that Christ has one will and one operation, proceeding from his one composite nature (as they hold). And thus, without any doubt, the difference of nature is destroyed, which the holy synods declared to be preserved in all respects even after the admirable union. Because, though they taught that Christ was one, his person and substance one, yet on account of the union of the natures which was made hypostatically, they likewise decreed that we should clearly acknowledge and teach the difference of those natures which were united in him, after the admirable union. Therefore if the proprieties of the natures in the same our one Lord Jesus Christ were preserved on account of the difference [of the natures], it is congruous that we should with full faith confess also the difference of his natural wills and operations, in order that we may be shown to have followed in all respects their doctrine, and may admit into the Church of Christ no heretical novelty.

Next, let’s think about the Trinity, and ask if there are three minds or one in the Trinity. On the mononoetism under consideration, Christ has to have the hybrid mind without also having a divine mind (or else he would have two minds: a hybrid one and a divine one). Then if all three Persons have one mind, it follows that the Father and Holy Spirit also have a hybrid human-divine mind, which is plainly absurd—it implies a partial Incarnation by the Father and by the Holy Spirit. So the mononoetist has to hold that each Person of the Trinity has a distinct mind. Mononoetism about Christ implies trinoetism about God.

Trinoetism about God seems to violate divine simplicity, but a trinoetist about God is likely to deny that, holding that mind does not go with the single divine substance or ousia but with the three Persons or hypostases. But let’s think this through. The argument from mononoetism about Christ to trinoetism about God is a special case of a general principle that what there is one of in Christ there is three of in God and vice versa. If the general principle holds, then we have to hold that there is one will in God. For if there were three wills in God, we would have one will in Christ, and that’s the condemned heresy of monothelitsm about Christ. Furhermore, the idea of three wills in God requires a story about why it is metaphysically impossible for these wills to disagree (for if they could disagree, then the three persons couldn’t each be omnipotent!). The best story would be a subordinationist one—the Son and Holy Spirit’s wills are obedient to the Father. But this seems contrary to the equality of the Trinity.

So let’s take it that God has but one will. Mononoetism about Christ has, however, led us to the idea that God has three minds. How does one will in three minds work? A will decides between options presented by a mind. But now things start to fall apart again. Even if the contents of the allegedly distinct minds of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same, there is still the question of which mind is the one that is informing the one divine will. If only one or two minds are informing the divine will, we lose the equality of Persons in the Trinity—one or two Persons are partly left out of decisions. So probably one has to say that the one divine will, uniquely, is equally and overdeterminately informed by three minds. This doesn’t seem right. For a person’s will looks to the person’s own mind. (Objection: If Alice loves Bob, she looks to Bob’s mind in her decisions. Response: Yes, but only indirectly by mirroring the contents of Bob’s mind in her mind.) And, besides this, it seems that divine simplicity requires that the divine will and the divine mind are the same thing, which completely rules out the idea of one will with three minds.

We can repeat the argument of the previous paragraph with operations or energeiai. Monoenergism about Christ is condemned. Christ has two operations. On general principles, then, we would expect one operation in the Trinity, just as one will. But if there are three minds, it seems there are three operations, since a mind operates (its operation grounds the thinking of the person or persons who with the mind).

Next, let’s think about the alleged hybrid human-divine mind of Christ. In forming this hybrid mind, the divine mind of Christ seems to have changed—it has hybridized. For if it has not changed, then we still have the divine mind in addition to the hybrid one. But divine minds cannot change, since God cannot change! Indeed, the divine mind is presumably timeless. If it is timeless, it eternally exists. Thus it seems that on mononoetism Christ does have two minds after all, and so we do not have mononoetism: he has the hybrid mind and the eternally existing divine mind. This is, however, a kind of difficult argument to run. Can one not make the exact same objection to the Incarnation? How can the divine Person not change in the Incarnation? Well, orthodoxy says that the divine Person remains a divine Person. But on the hybrid human-divine mononoetism, the divine mind does not remain a divine mind, or else Christ would have two minds.

Perhaps, though, the mononoetist can try for a “smaller” version of the Incarnation: just as the divine Person comes to take on humanity, so we have one Person with two personal natures, human and divine, the divine mind comes to take on human mentality, so we have one Mind with two mental natures, human and divine. Perhaps ths would allow one to avoid the rather monstrous sounding “hybridization” that I have been assuming earlier. But here is a problem. By divine simplicity, the only distinctions in God are relational distinctions between the Persons. If God has one mind, that mind is identical to God. As argued earlier, if there is one mind in Christ, there are three in God, one per Person. But by the only-relational-distinctions principle, the mind of each person must be identical to the Person. If then the divine mind of the Logos comes to take on human mentality, so that it is both a human mind and a divine mind, like the Logos taking on humanity so that the Logos is both human and divine, then since the divine mind is identical with the Person, the Logos, it follows that the Person also takes on human mentality. Thus, the Logos is now three things: God, human and a human mind. We can say that the Logos became man, but we can also the Logos became a man’s mind. This requires a kind of inhuman relationship between the man and the man’s human mind: Jesus is Jesus’s human mind (which on this version of mononoetism is also identical with Jesus’s divine mind). Of course, Cartesians who think you are your mind won’t think there is anything strange about that. But they are wrong! And it would be very odd if Cartesianism were true about Jesus but about no one else. That would seem to undercut the idea that Jesus is like us in all human things but sin.

It is thus quite difficult to hold to mononoetism about Christ while rejecting monothelitism and monoenergism. And in any case there is a neat inductive argument: two wills, two operations, so probably two minds.

Open theism and the Incarnation

Here is a very plausible pair of claims:

1. The Son could have become incarnate as a different human being.

2. God foreknew many centuries ahead of time which human being the Son would become incarnate as.

Regarding 1, of course, the Son could not have been a different person—the person the Son is and was and ever shall be is the second person of the Trinity. But Son could have been a different human being.

Here is a sketch of an argument for 1:

1. If the identity of a human being depends on the body, then if the Son became incarnate as a 3rd century BC woman in India, this would be a different human being from Jesus (albeit the same person).

2. If the identity of a human being depends on the soul, then God could have created a different soul for the Son’s incarnation.

3. The identity of a human being depends on either the body or the soul.

I don’t have as good an argument for 2 as I do for 1, but I think 2 is quite plausible given what Scripture says about God’s having planned out the mission of Jesus from of old.

Now add:

3. If the Son could have become incarnate as a different human being, which human being he became incarnate as depends on a number of free human choices in the century preceding the incarnation.

Now, 1, 2 and 3 leads to an immediate problem for an open theist Christian (my thinking on this is inspired by a paper of David Alexander, though his argument is different) who thinks God doesn’t foreknow human free choices.

Why is 3 true? Well, if the identity of a human being even partly depends on the body (as is plausible), given that (plausibly) Mary was truly a biological mother of Jesus, then if Mary’s parents had not had any children, the body that Jesus actually had would not have existed, and an incarnation would have happened with a different body and hence a different human being.

Objection: God could have created Mary—or the body for the incarnation—directly ex nihilo in such a case, or God could have overridden human free will if some human were about to make a decision that would lead to Mary not existing.

Response: If essentiality of origins is true, then it is logically impossible for the same body to be created ex nihilo as actually had a partial non-divine cause. But I don’t want the argument to depend on essentiality of origins. Instead, I want to argue as follows. Both of the solutions in the objection require God to foreknow that he would in fact engage in such intervention if human free choices didn’t cooperate with his plan. God’s own interventions would be free choices, and so on open theism God wouldn’t know that he would thus intervene. One might respond that God could resolve to ensure that a certain body would become available, and a morally perfect being always keeps his resolutions. But while perhaps a morally perfect being always keeps his promises, I think it is false that a morally perfect being always keeps his resolutions. Unless one is resolving to do something that one is already obligated to do, it is not wrong to change one’s mind in a revolution. I suppose God could have promised someone that he would ensure the existence of a certain specific body, but we have no evidence of such a specific promise in Scripture, and it seems an odd maneouver for God to have to make in order to know ahead of time who the human that would save the world is.

What if the identity of a human depends solely on the soul? But then the identity of the human being that the Son would become incarnate as would depend on God’s free decision which soul to create for that human being, and the same remarks as I made about resolutions in the previous paragraph would apply.

Sexual symmetry and asymmetry

I want to think a bit about conservative Christian views of sex and gender, but before that I want to offer two stories to motivate a crucial distinction.

Electrons and Positrons

Electrons and positrons (a positron is a positively charged anti-particle to the electron) are very different in one way but not so much in another. If you take some system of electrons and positrons, and swap in a positron for an electron, the system will behave very differently—it will be attracted to the things that the electron was repelled by and vice versa. But if you replace all the electrons by positrons and all the positrons by electrons, it won’t make a significant difference (technically, there may be some difference due to the weak force, but that’s dominated by electromagnetic interaction). Similarly, a cloud of electrons behaves pretty much like a cloud of positrons, but a mixed cloud of electrons and positrons will behave very differently (electrons and positrons will collide releasing energy).

Electrons and positrons are significantly pairwise non-interchangeable, but globally approximately interchangeable.

We might conclude: electrons and positrons significantly differ relationally but do not differ much intrinsically.

On the other hand, if you have a system made of photons and electrons, and you swap out a photon and replace it by an electron, it will make a significant difference, but likewise typically if you swap out all the photons and electrons, it will also make a significant difference (unless the system was in a rare symmetric configuration). Thus, photons and electrons are significantly pairwise and globally interchangeable, and hence significantly differ both relationally and intrinsically.

Heterothallic Isogamous Organisms

Isogamous sexually-reproducing organisms have equally sized gametes among their sexes, and hence cannot be labeled as “female” and “male” (biologists define “female” and “male” in terms of larger and smaller gametes, respectively). Instead these sexes get arbitrarily labeled as plus and minus (I will assume there are only two mating types for simplicity). In heterothallic organisms, the sexes are located in different individuals, so two are needed for reproduction. Humans are heterothallic but not isogamous. But there are many species (mostly unicellular, I believe) that are heterothallic and isogamous.

We can now suppose a heterothallic and isogamous species with pretty symmetric mating roles. In such a species, again, we have significant individual non-interchangeability in a system. If Alice is a plus and Bob is a minus, they can reproduce, but if you swap out Bob for a plus, you get a non-reproductive pair. But if the mating roles are sufficiently similar, you can have global approximate interchangeability: if in some system you put pluses for the minuses and minuses for the pluses, things could go on much as before. A group of pluses may behave very much like a group of minuses (namely, over time the population will decrease to zero), but a mixed group of pluses and minuses is apt to behave very differently. We thus have pairwise non-interchangeability but approximate global interchangeability.

We might similarly say: pluses and minuses in our heterothallic and isogamous species significantly differ relationally but do not differ much intrinsically. On the other hand, cats and dogs significantly differ both relationally and intrinsically.

The Distinction

We thus have a distinction between two kinds of differences, which we can label as relational and intrinsic. I am not happy with the labels, but when I use them, please think of my two examples: particles and isogamous organisms. These two kinds of differences can be thought of as denying different symmetries: intrinsic differences are opposed to global interchange of the types of all individuals; relational differences are opposed to pairwise interchange of the types of a pair of individuals.

Conservative Christian Views of Sex and Gender

Conservative Christians tend to think that there are significant differences between men and women. In addition to cultural traits, there are two main theological reasons for thinking this:

1. Marriage asymmetry: Men and women can marry, but men cannot marry men and women cannot marry women.

2. Liturgical asymmetry: Only men can serve in certain liturgical “clerical” roles.

Of these, the marriage asymmetry is probably a bit more widely accepted than the liturgical asymmetry. (Some also think there is an authority asymmetry in the family where husbands have a special authority over wives. This is even more controversial among conservative Christians than the liturgical asymmetry, so I won’t say more about it.)

We could suppose an arbitrary divine rule behind both asymmetries. But this is theologically problematic: a really plausible way of reading the difference between the Law of Moses and the Law of the Gospel is at that in the Law of the Gospel, we no longer have arbitrary rules whose primary benefit is obedience, such as the prohibition on eating pork.

If we are to avoid supposing an arbitrary divine rule, we need to suppose differences between men and women to explain the theologically grounded asymmetries. And this is apt to lead conservative Christians to philosophical and theological theorizing about normative differences such as women being called more to “receptivity” and men more to “givingness”, or searching through sociological, psychological and biological data for relevant differences between the behavior and abilities of men and women. The empirical differences tend to lie on continua with wide areas of overlap between the sexes, however, and the normative differences are either implausible or likewise involve continua with wide areas of overlap (men, too, are called to receptivity).

But I think we are now in a position to see that there is a logical shortcoming behind the focus of this search. For differences between men and women can be relational or intrinsic, and the search has tended to focus on the intrinsic.

However, I submit, purely relational differences are sufficient to explain both the marriage and liturgical asymmetries. One way to see this is to pretend that we are a heterothallic isogamous species (rather than heterothallic anisogamous species that we actually are), consisting of pluses and minuses rather than females and males.

Then, if marriage has an ordering to procreation, that would neatly explain why pluses and minuses can marry each other, but pluses can’t marry pluses and minuses can’t marry minuses. No intrinsic difference between pluses and minuses is needed to explain this. Thus, as soon as we accept that marriage has an ordering to procreation, we have a way to explain the marriage asymmetry without any supposition of intrinsic differences.

Likewise, if there is going to be an incarnation, and only one, and the incarnate God is going to be incarnate as a typical organism of our species, then this incarnation must happen as a plus or a minus. And if married love is a deep and passionate love that is a wonderful symbol for the love between God and God’s people, then if the incarnation is as an individual of one of the sexes, God’s Church would then symbolically have the opposite sex. And then those whose liturgical role it is to stand in for the incarnate God in the marriage-like relationship to the Church would most fittingly have the sex opposite to that of the Church. Thus, if the incarnate God is incarnate as a plus, the Church would be figured as a minus, one can explain why it is fitting that the clergy in the relevant liturgical roles would be pluses; if the incarnate God is incarnate as a minus, we have an explanation of why the clergy in these roles would be minuses as well. (Interestingly, on this story, it’s not that the clergy are directly supposed to be like the incarnate God in respect of sex, but that their sex is supposed to be the opposite to that of the Church, and given that in the species there are only two sexes, this forces them to have the same sex as the incarnate God: the clergy need to have a sex opposed to the sex opposed to that of the incarnate God.)

Now, we are not isogamous, and we have female and male, not plus and minus. But we can still give exactly the same explanations. Even though in an anisogamous species there are significant intrinsic biological differences between the sexes, we need not advert to any of them to explain either the marriage or the liturgical asymmetry. The marriage asymmetry is tied to the pairwise non-interchangeability of the sexes and explained by the procreative role of marriage. The liturgical asymemtry is tied to the marriage asymmetry together with the symmetry-breaking event of God becoming incarnate in one of the sexes.

As far as this story goes, there need not be any morally significant intrinsic differences between male and female to explain the marital and liturgical asymmetries. The relational difference, that you need male and female for a mating pair, is morally significant on this story, but in a way that is entirely symmetric between male and female. And then we have one symmetry-breaking event: God becomes incarnate as a male. We need not think that there is any special reason why God becomes incarnate as a male or a female—it could equally well have been as a female. The decision whether to become incarnate as a male or a female could be as arbitrary as the decision about the exact eye color of the incarnate God (though, of course, eye color does not ground either significant intrinsic or significant relational differences). But if it were an incarnation as a female, other changes would be fitting: the clergy who symbolize the nuptial role of the incarnate God would fitting be female, in the exodus story it would fitting be female lambs and goats that would be sacrificed, and it would be fitting that Sarah be asked to sacrifice her first-born daughter.

I am not saying that there are no morally significant intrinsic differences between male and female. There may be. We are, after all, not only heterothallic but also anisogamous, and so there could turn out to be such intrinsic differences. But we need not suppose any such to explain the two asymmetries, and it is safer to be agnostic on the existence of these intrinsic differences.

Nothing in this post is meant as an argument for either the marriage asymmetry and the liturgical asymmetry. I have argued for the marriage asymmetry elsewhere, but here I am just saying that it could be explained if we grant the procreative ordering of marriage. And my arguments for the liturgical asymmetry are based on fittingness. But fittingness considerations do not constrain God. While we can explain why the clergy are of the same sex as the incarnate God by the nuptial imagery story that I gave above, God could instead have chosen to make the clergy be of the opposite sex as the incarnate God, in order to nuptially signify the people with the clergy, or God could chosen to make the clergy be of both sexes, to emphasize the fact that salvation is tied to the humanity (see St. Athanasius on this) and not the sex of the incarnate God. But when many things are fitting, God can choose one, and we can then cite its fittingness as a non-deterministic explanation.

Though, I suppose, I have at least refuted this argument:

3. The only way to explain the marriage and liturgical asymmetries is by supposing morally significant intrinsic differences between female and male.

4. There are no such intrinsic differences.

5. So, probably, the asymmetries don’t exist either.

I have refuted it by showing that (3) is false.

The Incarnation and unity of consciousness

A number of people find the following thesis plausible:

1. Necessarily, the conscious states hosted in a single person at one time are unified in a single conscious state that includes them.

But now consider Christ crucified.

2. Christ has conscious pain states in his human mind.

3. Christ has no conscious pain states in his divine mind.

4. Christ has a conscious divine comprehension state in his divine mind.

5. Christ has no conscious divine comprehension state in his human mind.

6. Any conscious state is in a mind.

7. Christ has no minds other than a human and a divine one.

It seems that (2)–(7) contradict (1). For by (1), (2) and (4) it seems there is a conscious state in Christ that includes both Christ’s pain and Christ’s divine comprehension. But that state wouldn’t be in the divine mind because of (3) and wouldn’t be in the human mind because of (5). But it would have to be in a mind, and Christ has no other minds.

There is a nitpicky objection that (7) might be false for all we know—maybe Christ has some other incarnation on another planet. But that is a mere complication to the argument, given that none of these other incarnations could host the divine comprehension in the created mind.

But the argument I gave above fails if God is outside time. For then the “has” in (4) is compatible with the divine comprehension being atemporal, then it does not follow from (2) and (4) that the divine comprehension and the pain happen at the same time, as is required to contradict (1).

In other words, we have an argument from the Incarnation to God’s atemporality, assuming the unity of consciousness thesis (1).

That said, while I welcome arguments for divine atemporality, I am not convinced of (1).

Humanity and humans

From childhood, I remember the Polish Christmas carol “Amidst the Silence of Night” from around the beginning of the 19th century, and I remember being particularly impressed by the lines:

Ahh, welcome, Savior, longed for of old,
four thousand years awaited.
For you, kings, prophets waited,
and you this night to us appeared.

I have lately found troubling the question: Why did God wait over a hundred thousand years from the beginning of the human race to send us his Son and give us the Gospel?

The standard answer is that God needed to prepare humankind. The carol’s version of this answer suggests that this preparation intensified our longings for salvation through millenia of waiting. A variant is that we need a lot of time to fully realize our moral depravity in the absence of God. Or one might emphasize that moral teaching is a slow and gradual process, and millenia are needed to make us ready to receive the Gospel.

I think there is something to all the answers, but they do not fully satisfy as they stand. After all, a human child from 100,000 years ago is presumably roughly as capable of moral development as a modern child. If we had time travel, it seems plausible that missionaries would be just as effective 100,000 years ago as they were 1000 years ago. The intensification of longings and the realization of social moral depravity are, indeed, important considerations, but human memory, even aided by writing, only goes back a few thousand years. Thus, two thousand years of waiting and learning about moral depravity would likely have had basically the same result for the individuals in the time of the Incarnation as a hundred thousand years did.

I am starting to think that this problem cannot be fully resolved simply by considering individual goods. It is important, I think, to consider humankind as a whole, with goods attached to the human community as a whole. The good of moral development can be considered on an individual level, and that good needs a few decade rather than millenia. But the good of moral development can also be considered on the level of humankind as well, and there millenia are fitting for the development not to ride roughshod over nature. Similarly, the good of longing for and anticipation of a great good only needs at most a few decades in an individual, but there is a value in humankind as a whole longing for and anticipating on a species timescale rather an individual timescale.

In other words, reflection on the waiting for Christ pushes us away from an overly individualistic view. As do, of course, other aspects of Christian theology, such as reflection on the Fall, the Church, the atonement, etc.

Am I fully satisfied? Not quite. Is the value of humankind’s more organic development worth sacrificing the goods of thousands of generations of ordinary humans who did not hear the Gospel? God seems to think so, and I am willing to trust him. There is doubtless a lot more to be said. But it helps me to think that this is yet another one of those many things where one needs to view a community (broadly understood) as having a moral significance going beyond the provision of more individualistic goods.

Two more remarks. First, a graduate student pointed out to me (if I understood them right) that perhaps we should measure individual moral achievement relative to the state of social development. If so, then perhaps there was not so great a loss to individuals, since what might matter for their moral wellbeing is this relative moral achievement.

Second, the specifically Christian theological problem that this post addresses has an analogue to a subspecies of the problem of evil that somehow has particularly bothered me for a long time: the evils caused by lack of knowledge, and especially lack of medical knowledge. Think of the millenia of people suffering and dying of in ways that could have been averted had people only known more, say, about boiling water, washing hands or making vaccines. I think there is a value in humankind’s organic epistemic development. But to employ that as an answer one has to be willing to say that such global goods of humankind as a whole can trump individual goods.

(Note that all that I say is meant to be compatible with a metaphysics of value on which the loci of value are always individuals. For an individual’s well-being can include external facts about humankind. Thus the good of humankind as a whole might be metaphysically housed in the members. The important thing, however, is that these goods are goods the human has qua part of humanity.)

The Theotokos and personhood

Catholics and the Orthodox insist that Mary is the Theotokos—the Godbearer. The child in her womb was God.

It follows that this child she bore in her womb was a person. For the child was God by virtue of the Incarnation, and the Incarnation consists precisely of the union of two natures in one person. Moreover, the Incarnation is a process of God becoming a human being. So that person in her womb was also a human being.

Thus, the human being Jesus, while in Mary’s womb, was a person. Now, Jesus is like us in all things but sin. So, while we are in our mothers’ wombs, we already are persons.

A theory of personhood or personal identity that requires human persons to have developed human mental functioning—like Warren’s theory of personhood or Locke’s theory of personal identity—conflicts with the Catholic and Orthodox teaching on Mary the Mother of God.

A Christian argument against divine suffering

Some Christians think that God changes and is capable of changing emotions such as suffering. Now, if God is capable of suffering, then God feels empathetic suffering whenever an evil befalls us, and does so to the extent of how bad he understand the evil to be.

The worst evil that can happen to us is to sin. God knows how bad our sin is better than any human being can. Thus, if God can suffer, he suffers compassionately for our sins. He suffers this qua God and independently of any Incarnation, more intensely than any human being can.

But if so, that undercuts one of the central points of the Incarnation, which is to allow the Second Person of the Trinity to suffer for our sins.

A view on which God is capable of emotions such as suffering makes the Incarnation and Christ’s sacrifice of the Cross rather underwhelming: God’s divine suffering would be greater than Christ’s suffering on the Cross. This is theologically unacceptable.

The memory theory of personal identity and the Incarnation

Memory theories of personal identity don’t work for the Incarnation. For Christ’s human mind cannot remember what Christ’s divine mind thought, as it infinitely exceeds the capacity of a human mind.

Objection 1: The Catholic tradition holds that Christ always had the beatific vision. In the beatific vision, the simple God becomes the object of contemplation, and since the simple God is identical with his thoughts, God’s thoughts become the object of contemplation as well.

Response: That’s not memory. And if it were, then memory theories would imply that the blessed in heaven are one person with Christ.

Objection 2: It is not necessary that Christ as human remember Christ’s divine thoughts, but only that Christ as divine see Christ’s human thoughts.

Response: If Christ’s divinely seeing Christ’s thoughts makes for an identity of persons, then absurdly God is also identical with all of us, since God sees all our thoughts.

Objection 3: Memory theories concern identity across time. But Christ’s human and divine natures exist at the same time, if God is omnitemporally eternal, or Christ’s human nature exists in time and the divine nature exists outside of time. In neither case does we have identity across time, and so the memory theory of diachronic identity is unaffected.

Response: If God is omnitemporally eternal, we have another counterexample. Orthodox theology holds that there is one divine mind. Thus, the Son’s thoughts at t₁ the Father’s thoughts at t₁, and hence what the Father remembers at t₂ of what he had thought at t₁ is just as much a memory of what the Son had thought at t₁, which implies the heretical conclusion that the Father at t₂ is identical with the Son at t₁. So, the suggestion in the objection only has a hope if God is outside of time.

Next observe Christ is like us in all things but sin. In particular, he is as capable of amnesia as we are. Suppose Christ suffered amnesia at t₂, so that at at a later time t₃ he did not remember what he thought at an earlier time t₁. But the metaphysical bond between the divine nature and the human nature would surely not be broken by amnesia. So the human being named “Jesus” at t₃ would be the same person as the Second Person of the Trinity, and the human being named “Jesus” at t₁ would also be the same person as the Second Person of the Trinity. Thus, by symmetry and transitivity of identity, the human being named “Jesus” at t₃ would be the same person as the human being named “Jesus” at t₁, despite there being no memory connection, and hence contradicting the memory theory of personal identity.

Perhaps, though, it can be claimed that the Incarnation would of logical necessity be terminated by amnesia. But surely if the Incarnation were terminated, the Second Person of the Trinity could become incarnate once again. In this subsequent incarnation there need be no memories of the first incarnation. Yet if the first-incarnate Son were the same person as the Second Person of the Trinity, and the second-incarnate Son were the same person as the Second Person of the Trinity, it would follow that the first-incarnate Son would be the same person as the second-incarnate Son, once again leading to a case of diachronic identity that contradicts the memory theory of personal identity.

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.

Reality is strange

The doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation and transubstantiation initially seem contradictory. Elaborate theological/philosophical accounts of the doctrines are available (e.g., from St. Thomas Aquinas), and given these, there is no overt contradiction. But the doctrines still seem very strange and they feel like they border on contradiction, with the accounts that remove contradiction sometimes looking like they are ad hoc designed to remove the contradiction from the doctrine. This may seem like a good reason to reject the doctrines.

But to reject the doctrines for this reason alone would be mistaken. For similar points can be made about Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. To say that simultaneity is relative or that a physical object has no position but rather a probability distribution over positions borders on contradiction, and the philosophical moves needed to defend these seem ad hoc designed to save the theories. If we’ve learned one thing from physics in the 20th century, it is that the true physics of the world is very strange indeed.

Nor are theology and science the only places where things are strange. Similar things can be said about the mathematics of infinity, or even just common sense claims such as that there is change (think of Zeno’s paradoxes) or that material objects persist over time (think of the Ship of Theseus and the paradoxes of material composition).

We can, thus, be very confident that created reality is very strange indeed. And hence, shouldn’t we expect similar strangeness—indeed, mystery—in the Creator and his relationship to us?

The Incarnation and timelessness

Consider the standard argument against the Incarnation:

1. Everything that is God is F (omnipotent, omniscient, impassible, etc.).

2. Everything that is human is non-F.

3. Christ is God and human.

4. So, Christ is F and non-F.

5. Contradiction!

But it is only a contradiction to be F and non-F at the same time: we’ve known this since Aristotle.
Thus the kenotic theologian gets out of the argument by holding that Christ was F prior to the Incarnation and wasn’t F after the Incarnation. (A difficult question for the kenoticist: is he now F?) But that’s contrary to the teaching of the Councils.

However, the “at the same time” observation does not need to lead to kenoticism. In fact, the Christian who is a classical theist should deny that Christ is F and non-F at the same time. For it is strictly false to say that Christ is F at t for any divine attribute F and any time time t, since God has the divine attributes timelessly rather than at a time.

This is not kenoticism. Rather, the view is that Christ is F timelessly eternally and non-F at t (for any t after the beginning of the Incarnation). Kenoticism on this view is metaphysically absurd, because God cannot cease to be F: one can only cease to be something that one used to be, and there is no “used to be” where there is no temporality.

But we sometimes say things like:

• While he was suffering on the cross, Christ was upholding the existence of the universe.

I think there are two ways of make sense of such statements. First, maybe, things that happen timelessly count honorifically as holding at all times. (Compare David Lewis’s idea that abstract objects count as existing in all his worlds.) Second, the statement can be understood as follows:

• While he was suffering on the cross, the following proposition was true: Christ is upholding the existence of the universe.

So, orthodox Christians do not actually need to talk of natures to get out of (1)-(5). Of course, if we want to allow—as I think we should—for the logical possibility of multiple simultaneous incarnations, then the temporal qualification way out won’t help. (Nor will the kenotic solution help in that case, either.)

Note, by the way, that once we realize that there can be timelessly eternal existence, we need to modify Aristotle’s temporal qualification to the law of non-contradiction:

• it is impossible to be F and non-F in the same respect at the same time or both eternally.

Yet another theory of ineffability

There is a long-standing tradition of trying to explain (!) the attribute of divine ineffability. Theories that are metaphysical in flavor rule the roost:

1. The only true assertions we can make about God are negative. (Eastern tradition)

2. The only true assertions we can make about God are analogical. (Aquinas)

3. The only true assertions we can make about God are non-fundamental. (Jacobs)

I want to add one more theory to the mix, one that can either be stand-alone or a complement to (1)–(3). This one is more epistemological:

4. The only assertions we can make about God are misleading.

One can illustrate the misleadingness of true, and even literally true, statements by examples.

• “Alice did not treat minorities as badly as Hitler” (when Alice was in fact an exemplary promoter of social justice).

• “Bob is somewhere in this building” (when he is standing right behind you).

• “I saw Carl in a car on I-35 this morning” (but the car was being towed by a truck).

• “Davita passed some of her exams” (when she passed all of them).

• “On a good day, Roger Bannister could run an 8 minute mile.”

Note that while (1)–(3) are limited to true statements, (4) does not have this restriction. After all, all false statements are misleading.

For concrete theological examples, think of how the doctrine of the Trinity shows that the doctrine of the unity of God is misleading, or the doctrine of the Incarnation shows that the doctrine of the transcendence of God is misleading. In a similar same way, when the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation are taught apart from the doctrines of unity and transcendence, they are misleading. But by (4) something more pessimistic is true: even when we teach Trinity and unity (or Incarnation and transcendence) together, we still mislead. I suspect that in heaven we will learn something that changes our understanding of unity and Trinity at least as much as the doctrine of the Trinity changed our understanding of unity.

Alvin Plantinga gives this counterexample to the thesis that we cannot say anything literally true of God: “God is not a bicycle.” If (4) is true, even this statement is misleading. In what way? Well, maybe it leads us to forget the intimate link between all reality and God: that all the reality in a bicycle is a participation in God.

Note that if (4) is true, then it is misleading. But that’s not a refutation.

One could also restrict (4) if one wanted to. For instance, one could restrict (4) to non-negative statements, or to non-analogical ones, or to non-fundamental ones.

I don’t know if (4) is true.

Faith and belief

Christians are called to have faith in Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament, however, is big on not putting our faith in anything other than God.

Thus, someone who has faith in Jesus Christ but does not believe that Jesus Christ is God is risking violating a central principle of the Old Testament.

Moreover, faith in Jesus requires submission to Jesus. But Jesus wants his followers to obey the central principles of the Old Testament.

Thus, for someone aware of these observations, it is not possible to have faith in Jesus Christ without believing that he is God. This is a serious problem for accounts of faith that claim that a Christian need not have any doctrinal beliefs.

Beliefless Christianity

A number of authors have claimed that it is possible to practice the Christian faith without assigning a high epistemic probability to central doctrines of Christianity. Here is an interesting problem with such a practice. A central part of Christian practice is to worship Jesus Christ as God. Now, Jesus Christ is uncontroversially a man. Christianity adds that he is also God. If that additional belief is false, then we who worship Jesus Christ as God are idolaters. But it is wrong to undertake a serious risk of idolatry. Thus, it is only permissible to practice the Christian faith if by one's lights the risk of idolatry is not serious. And the only way that can be is if one assigns a high epistemic probability to the doctrine that Jesus Christ is God. Thus, it seems, at least this central doctrine of the Incarnation needs to have a high epistemic probability if one is to be morally justified in practicing the Christian faith.

There is, however, a hole in the argument. Idolatry is only a great evil if God exists. Now imagine someone who assigns a high conditional probability to the Incarnation on the condition that God exists, but who assigns a low unconditional probability to both the Incarnation and the existence of God. Such a person can reason as follows. Either God exists or not. If God does not exist, there is not much evil in idolatry, and so not much harm in worshiping Jesus as God. If God does exist, however, then probably the Incarnation is true, and the value of worshiping Jesus outweighs the risks, since the risks are small.

So, what I think my overall argument shows is that it is wrong to practice the Christian faith without assigning a high epistemic probability to the doctrine of the Incarnation if one assigns a significantly higher epistemic probability to theism. Thus, someone who comes to be convinced that theism is true but assigns a low epistemic probability to Christianity should not practice Christianity.

Objection: Perhaps it is just as morally evil to fail to worship as God someone who is in fact God as it is to worship as God someone who is not. In that case, by not practicing Christianity, one also takes on a great moral risk, and perhaps the risks cancel out.

Response: I think it not just as morally evil to fail to worship as God someone who is in fact God. As far as we know, John the Baptist did not worship Jesus as God, but we have no reason to think that this was a great evil, on the par of idolatry.

Essences

Some properties that a thing has partially or wholly explain other properties the thing has or doesn’t have. For instance, my having a body partially explains my being in Waco and wholly explains my having a body or horns. Some properties that a thing has do not explain, even partially, what other properties the thing has or doesn’t have. Call such properties “explanatorily fundamental”.

So, here’s a theory. The primary essential properties of a thing are the explanatorily fundamental properties of the thing. The primary essential properties are both essential in the medieval explanatory sense and the contemporary modal sense (properties a thing cannot exist without).

What about the case of Christ, who is essentially divine and essentially human, and yet prior (in the order of explanation) to the incarnation was not human? Here’s what we could say: Divinity is the one and only primary essential property of Christ. But humanity is a secondary essential property. A secondary essential property of a thing is the sort of property that (a) is not a primary essential property of that thing, but (b) normally is the primary essential property of its possessor. In the case of Christ, his divinity is explanatorily prior to his humanity, but normally a thing’s humanity does not have any property of that thing explanatorily prior to it.

Does Christianity require a belief in matter?

The doctrines of incarnation, resurrection and real presence certainly require us to believe ordinary language existence claims about bodies, bread and wine. It's hard to take Scripture to be inspired without believing ordinary language existence claims about plants, animals, mountains, seas, etc. But do we need to believe that there is matter?

A search of the Church Councils up to and including the First Vatican Council turns up nothing dogmatic about "matter" in the relevant sense of the word (I am not including the technical sense of "matter of a sacrament" in sacramental theology). Searching for "material" finds some talk of material weapons, material flesh, and material food and drink. But I think that it would seem to me to be an overreach to take the Councils to be dogmatically teaching that weapons, flesh and food and drink are material. Rather, the relevant distinction seems to be between the spiritual weapons, spiritual flesh and spiritual food and drink and their ordinary earthly versions, rather than teach something about the nature of the ordinary versions, except that they differ from the spiritual.

I used to think that we need to believe hylomorphism. After all, the Fifth Lateran Council teaches that the soul is the form of the body. But while this gives us the morphê (form) part of hylomorphism, it doesn't give use the hyle (matter) part. We need to believe that the soul is the form of the body; not that it is the form of the matter.

If this reading of the Tradition is right, then Christian philosophers do not need to try to figure out the knotty question of what constitutes materiality. We have to accept, in some way, the existence of bodies, bread and wine, but we don't have to say that these things fall into some philosophically important kind like "matter". The handful of statements about "material" things we can simply understand in the vague way as about "things relevantly like ordinary things around us", without thinking that matter is any kind of metaphysically or physically important kind. We don't have to worry that if it turns out on our best science that physical reality is constituted by fields rather than particles, then we will have a conflict between faith and science. We still would have to find a way of locating bodies, bread and wine within physical reality, but we would not have to identify them with bits of matter.

Of course, it may turn out that the concept of matter has philosophical or scientific use apart from the needs of faith. But I have a suspicion that thinking about the nature of the body may be more promising than thinking about the nature of matter.

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.

Relational gender essentialism

It might turn out to be like this: There is no significant difference between matter and antimatter, except insofar as they are related to one another. A proton is attracted to antiproton, while each is repelled by its own kind. Our universe, as a contingent matter of fact, has more matter than antimatter. But, perhaps, if one swapped the matter and antimatter, the resulting universe wouldn't be different in any significant way. If we this is true, we might say that there is a relational matter-antimatter essentialism. It is of great importance to matter and to antimatter that they are matter and antimatter, respectively, but it is important only because of the relation between the two, not because of intrinsic differences.

I don't know if it's like that with matter and antimatter, but I do know that it's like that with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The only important non-contingent differences are those constituted by the relationships between them. (There are also contingent extrinsic differences.)

Could it be like that with men and women? The special relation between men and women--say, that man is for woman and woman for man, or that one of each is needed for procreation--is essential and important to men and women. But there are no important non-contingent intrinsic differences on this theory.

There might, however, be important contingent theological differences due to some symmetry-breaking contingent event or events. Maybe, when the Logos became one human being, the Logos had to become either a man or a woman. If the relation between men and women is important, the decision whether to become a man or to become a woman, might have been a kind of symmetry-breaking, with other differences in salvation history following on it. In itself, that decision could have been unimportant. If the Logos had become a woman, we would have a salvation history that was very much alike, except now Sarah would have been asked to sacrifice a daughter, we would have had an all-female priesthood, and so on.

Or perhaps the symmetry-breaking came from the contingent structure of our sinfulness. Perhaps the contingent fact that men tended to oppress women more than the other way around made it appropriate for the Logos to become a man, so as to provide the more sorely needed example of a man becoming the servant of all and sacrificing himself for all, and in turn followed the other differences.

I don't know if relational gender essentialism is the right picture. But it's a picture worth thinking about.

Christianity and paradox

Suppose we have a religion whose central tenets are paradoxical, verging on the contradictory. What would we expect? We might predict that the religion would be unsuccessful. But that would be too quick. The religion could be successful by adopting strategies like the following:

1. Hiding the central tenets from the bulk of the members.
2. Obscuring the paradoxical nature of the central tenets from the bulk of the members.
3. Downplaying the central tenets as unimportant.
4. Appealing almost only to the uneducated and ignorant.
5. Denigrating reason, and thus appealing to anti-intellectual impulses among uneducated and anti-rational impulses among the educated.

But now consider Christianity. It has central paradoxical doctrines, including Trinity, Incarnation and Real Presence. It does not hide them from the members. Nor is there any attempt to hide the paradoxical nature of these doctrines: that paradoxicality is plain to see, and if anything it is gloried in. Through much of the history of Christianity, the central tenets have been insisted on very publicly and are central to the liturgy. While Christianity has always had a special love for the downtrodden, its appeal has always also included many men and women of very high intellectual stature. Finally, while there are occasional instances of Christians denigrating reasons in history, the main thread of Christianity has been a defender of the importance of reason, even to the point of a significant part of the tradition embracing the Greek idea of humans as distinctively rational animals. How did it do it? Well, in addition to the five strategies above (and perhaps some others) there is also a sixth possibility:

6. Having true central tenets and having God work in the hearts and minds of members and nonmembers.