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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
In at least two ways it can be sensible to ask about the responsibility of theology for something or other, not just the responsibility of individual theologians. They are rather like the ways in which we can ask about the responsibility of the engineering behind some dam, say, not just that of the individual engineers, for the safety of the dam. In one, we may ask about something in the abstract nature of engineering, its concepts or principles: Was it reliance on some daring new engineering concept that was responsible for the dam’s failure? In the other way, we may ask about the received practices of engineers generally, not just about the actual practice of the engineers involved on that occasion. Do they tend, for example, to double the theoretically necessary thickness of certain structural components, and is that practice responsible for their structures withstanding more than their due of wild weather and erratic maintenance? Or do they tend to pare things down to the point where only near-perfect workmanship and near-ideal materials can keep things safe?
I consider both kinds of question. But a recurring concern is one the President asked me to keep in mind, when inviting me to speak to the topic: the concern that there may be a ‘modern culture... in which the God-question is vitiated often right from the start in the way in which it is posed’.
1 From Tertullian's time theologians have commonly insisted that God's unity has to he understood so as to accommodate Trinitarian doctrine. At Prax XXXI, PL2, 194b he may he claiming innovation for the very language of Christians: Sic deus voluit novare sacramentum, ut nove unus crederetur [deus] per Filiwn et Spiriturn Sanctum. If I understand him, sacramentum needs to carry here a sense of symbolic expression. For pre-Nicene adumbrations of Trinitarian doctrine see Tertuilian op. cit., PL2, 196, and Epiphanius (Ancor 73, PG43, 153; Haer 74, PG42,493, cit J. Lebreton, Histoire du dogme de la Trinité des origines jusquau Concile de Nicée, t.1, Les origines, Paris 1927, xxiv 694pp., p.557).
2 See L. Moonan, Divine Power. The medieval Power Distinction up to its adoption by Albert, Bonaventure and Aquinas, Oxford U.P. 1994,267-68.
3 Lebreton, as at n.1 above, collects the evidence for pre-Nicene indications of Trinitarian doctrine; with commentary still worth reading. A stronger thesis, on an enduring legitimacy for binitarian formulas without further development, is entertained in J.Mackey, The Christian Experience of God as Trinity, [London 1983].
4 Existence-theism in the usage followed here implies:
1) Something exists, and not everything which exists exists in some or other determinate manner; and
2) If God, the divine nature etc. are to be used to serious purpose in worship or even broadly scientifically explanatory discourse, they are to be used to stand for the simply existent of 1), and not for any other existent.
Religious existence-theism here implies in addition:
3) God, the divine nature or the like are to be used to such serious purpose.
1) is a purely metaphysical position, identical with what I call Ontology 2, below. The conjunction of 1) and 2) is a position in philosophical theology; as also is the conjunction of 1), 2) and 3). See further Infinite God: the central issue dressed by existence-theism, forthcoming. By character-theism I understand any position in which it is implied that God has at least some determinate character, whether or not we can know anything of it. God there means something like (due, or supposed) object of worship. Character-theism is thus being taken to be of its nature a religious position; in line with how modem academic theists most often describe their own positions.
5 Interestingly, academic dialects used to emphasise the two (necessary) elements differently. Catholic dialects emphasised the doctrinal element (dogmatic theology), Protestant dialects the respectable-methods elemcnt (systematic theology).
6 Within either broad type, there is also room for contention on what particular kinds should be thought fundamental, either universally or as objects for science. Plato's Ideas, Empiricists impressions, Aristotelian (and other) substances have all been canvassed strongly, and disputed strongly. Working scientists have not always been deterred by seeming to have to refer to things lacking determinateness in kind. See E.Schrijedinger, What is an elementary particle? in Endeavour 9(1950)109-16, cit. P.Simns, Farewell to substance: a differentiated leave-taking, in Ratio n.s.11(1998)235-52, 247-48.) , where Prof. Simons is concerned to argue that substances (on his understanding of these) ought not to be taken as metaphysical ultimates.
7 In Shaftesbury we may read: to be a settled Christian, it is necessary to be first of all a good theist. Hume's Philo, rejecting the haughty Dogmatist, perswaded, that he can erect a compleat System of Theology by the mere help of Philosophy turns this ironically, saying: To be a philosophical Sceptic is, in a man of Letters, the first and most essential Step towards being a sound, believing Christian (Dialogues, ad fin., where Price at p.261 of his 1976 edn quotes Shaftesbury's remark.
8 B. Miller reviewing N.Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism 1997, at International Philosophical Quarterly 38 (1998) 462-43,463. Is it important that there is an almighty gap in the theists view of how things are? We are often slow to say so: There is a misplaced sense of loyalty which makes many Christians feel reluctant to come out in open opposition to anything that calls itself by the same name, or uses words like God or Christ . (J.Wren-Lewis, cit. Honest to God 1963, 42, from They became Anglicans 168f.) At the back of theism itself, may there not be a misplaced loyalty to pre-reflexively absorbed sources which have no nght to be taken as sources for serious doctrine? 1 recall a distinguished English novelist, when asked where she had found-in some conciliar or confessional source, for example-some particularly bizarre doctrine she had ascribed to Christianity, replying It's what one's nanny tells one, when one is little.
9 For Kenny's own estimate see A Path from Rome 1985, 210.
10 On the narrower uses of attribute see R.Camap, Introduction to Semantics, pp.17f. in the edition published along with Formalization of Logic in one volume, Cambridge, Mass. 1959.
11 I. Kant, Von der Freyheit, in Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen uber das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, ed. Kants Gesammelte Werke, Berlin 1900–, vol. 20. p.94, cit. I. Berlin in The Roots of Romuntickm, ed. H.Hardy 1999, 71.Wittgenstein put it: If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him (R.Rhees, Recollections of Wittgenstein, 1984, 107-8). Yet it is said that, from his recollections of Christian instruction, he had earlier received the impression that God should be thought of as another being like [Kerr: oneself] external to oneself and much more powerful (F.Kerr, Theology ajier Wittgenstein., 1997, 193). If he had, this impression of Wittgenstein's is not the most dramatic index that something was amiss in the metaphysics or view of the world behind the Christian instruction in his school. One of his fellow-pupils was a certain Adolf Hitler.
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