Why is "classical theism" in scare quotes? Is there some other beef with that camp or do you just belive they cannot do good justice to certain texts? Genuinely curious, not a gotcha. Wondering if there is some other divergence I'm missing.
Fair question! :) I tend to dislike the lable, as I feel that more often than not, people who are (self)identified as CT assent to traditional position(s) in name only. But I don't dislike lables themselves and recognize their use; most everyone would identify me as CT.
Makes sense. When I was in seminary I studied under Matthew Barrett. At the time the label was new and seemed to express the encouraging wave of scholarship happening. But I totally get how those kinds of distinctions blur over time as people self identify. For my part I've seen how teaching theology proper from a classical perspective in the local church is far more accessible than some think. But even if we are reading Anselm and Aquinas I probably won't be calling my Sunday School class: "how to become a assical theist."
Yes, it's never wise to war about words. But I do try to resist the label given that, in my estimation, its referrants today I would disagree with about the same as I disagree with "biblicists" (also a squishy label, as you know). The traditional position(s) are complex and technical, and often operating at the level of gestures will not represent them adequately and defaults to errant presentations.
I was always taught that passability language is analogical but not metaphorical. Is that different than the position you attribute to classical theism?
Depending upon what is meant, yes this would be different. Usually, the proposition God is love is understood to predicate love analogically: roughly, the predicate is put in God properly and formally, but what it signifies is had by God more eminently, so that this predication as a whole is analogical. By contrast, the proposition God is angered does not predicate analogically, but only metaphorically: anger is not put in God at all, but rather something else is put in God properly and formally, e.g., a relation to concrete works of punishment.
Yes. But you would likely profit from my upcoming course on divine emotions (marketing for divine **passions). I try to be really open and frank in recommending courses (including my own), as to whether they would actually be profitable for the individual person--and often that's not the case. But from what you've said, I think you would significantly gain from the course. Email me if you have further questions (or here too is fine). https://davenanthall.com/course/emotions-of-god/
From my own perspective, I would be curious why you say: “I am also forced to concede the point that saying e.g., ‘anger of God is just a metaphor for e.g., our being punished’ has not done justice to the sacred page”?
I do not usually allow for any literal language of God actively punishing in the same manner as I do not allow literal passibility language for God, so I’m curious how you get there and then also find the biblicist critique against you there to be valid.
I by no means want to be a tease, but I'll be trying to unpack this very point in the Fellows Lecture in a couple weeks. The main thrust of that position will be that these propositions, although indeed mere metaphor, were ALSO intended dialectically and as true according to common opinion, which holds them as proper/formal.
So it is not really adjusting e.g., anger of God as mere metaphor, just saying MORE than that, IOW.
I would expect there would be a set of positions from some biblicists (especially of the charismatic evangelical variety) that would argue primarily on an inspiration-inerrancy basis. Sort’ve a perfectly elected words model that would resist even moderate forms of accommodation theories:
“If 2 Pet 1:21 is true (For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. ESV), then there is a spiritual solidification of the letter (at least cataphatic propositions) because it was inspired and has God for its primary author, such that any language of divine passions is divinely chosen and is therefore not to be subjected to rhetorical evaluation in the same manner as non-inspired writings. To say propositions on God’s anger or God’s enacted/promised punishments are anything other than perspicuous explanations of past and future events—as literally depicted—is to deny scripture and so to deny God.”
One one side of biblicists who take this approach would be those for whom passibility is merely one of many literal-narrative elements which must not be figural if they are true, (ie a literal heavenly throne with an embodied Father next to a separately embodied Jesus, the massive new Jerusalem, hades being under the earth, etc.). Many of these folks are likely open theists.
On the other side it could look like what Vanhoozer has just done with “transfigural” readings of the letter, which do not go up and on from the letter (in any historical classical theist pattern) but loops back onto the letter.
I'm struggling I think to understand your main point here, and/or how it really differs from and/or does not reduce to one of the six arguments I identified above. Is this, roughly, just giving a unique ontological/epistemological status to the propositions of holy Scripture given that they are enclosed therein? A higher revelation which therefore must trump e.g., natural revelaiton, which can demonstrate no passions?--paradoxes or contradictions notwithstanding?
Sorry I think I somewhat combined two different points that share a similar frame.
The first is folks, arising from evangelicals among whom I was raised, who would say loudly that any thinking into Biblical teaching beyond following the letter as simplistically as possible is human sophistry rather than submitting to God. So maybe call it an anti-intellectual appeal to inspiration and perspicuity. #4 is similar in result but would itself be guilty of sophistry in form.
The second, arising more from non-classical but educated evangelicals, is much more like what you’ve just distilled in your reply. But with an added emphasis on illumination which allow simultaneously for an explicit external compliance element to reading scripture properly (relating to this or that denominational position and/or specific epistemology) along with the claim that they are reading scripture rightly without recourse to extra-biblical systems (including natural revelation and especially natural theology). I may have to think about this one more to communicate it clearly.
Why is "classical theism" in scare quotes? Is there some other beef with that camp or do you just belive they cannot do good justice to certain texts? Genuinely curious, not a gotcha. Wondering if there is some other divergence I'm missing.
Fair question! :) I tend to dislike the lable, as I feel that more often than not, people who are (self)identified as CT assent to traditional position(s) in name only. But I don't dislike lables themselves and recognize their use; most everyone would identify me as CT.
Admittedly, plenty of people would say I'm just being grouchy on this point--and that's probably fair :)
Makes sense. When I was in seminary I studied under Matthew Barrett. At the time the label was new and seemed to express the encouraging wave of scholarship happening. But I totally get how those kinds of distinctions blur over time as people self identify. For my part I've seen how teaching theology proper from a classical perspective in the local church is far more accessible than some think. But even if we are reading Anselm and Aquinas I probably won't be calling my Sunday School class: "how to become a assical theist."
Yes, it's never wise to war about words. But I do try to resist the label given that, in my estimation, its referrants today I would disagree with about the same as I disagree with "biblicists" (also a squishy label, as you know). The traditional position(s) are complex and technical, and often operating at the level of gestures will not represent them adequately and defaults to errant presentations.
I was always taught that passability language is analogical but not metaphorical. Is that different than the position you attribute to classical theism?
Depending upon what is meant, yes this would be different. Usually, the proposition God is love is understood to predicate love analogically: roughly, the predicate is put in God properly and formally, but what it signifies is had by God more eminently, so that this predication as a whole is analogical. By contrast, the proposition God is angered does not predicate analogically, but only metaphorically: anger is not put in God at all, but rather something else is put in God properly and formally, e.g., a relation to concrete works of punishment.
I got a bit lost there but am interested - thanks for the reply! Will the lecture be available after the fact?
Yes. But you would likely profit from my upcoming course on divine emotions (marketing for divine **passions). I try to be really open and frank in recommending courses (including my own), as to whether they would actually be profitable for the individual person--and often that's not the case. But from what you've said, I think you would significantly gain from the course. Email me if you have further questions (or here too is fine). https://davenanthall.com/course/emotions-of-god/
From my own perspective, I would be curious why you say: “I am also forced to concede the point that saying e.g., ‘anger of God is just a metaphor for e.g., our being punished’ has not done justice to the sacred page”?
I do not usually allow for any literal language of God actively punishing in the same manner as I do not allow literal passibility language for God, so I’m curious how you get there and then also find the biblicist critique against you there to be valid.
I by no means want to be a tease, but I'll be trying to unpack this very point in the Fellows Lecture in a couple weeks. The main thrust of that position will be that these propositions, although indeed mere metaphor, were ALSO intended dialectically and as true according to common opinion, which holds them as proper/formal.
So it is not really adjusting e.g., anger of God as mere metaphor, just saying MORE than that, IOW.
I would expect there would be a set of positions from some biblicists (especially of the charismatic evangelical variety) that would argue primarily on an inspiration-inerrancy basis. Sort’ve a perfectly elected words model that would resist even moderate forms of accommodation theories:
“If 2 Pet 1:21 is true (For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. ESV), then there is a spiritual solidification of the letter (at least cataphatic propositions) because it was inspired and has God for its primary author, such that any language of divine passions is divinely chosen and is therefore not to be subjected to rhetorical evaluation in the same manner as non-inspired writings. To say propositions on God’s anger or God’s enacted/promised punishments are anything other than perspicuous explanations of past and future events—as literally depicted—is to deny scripture and so to deny God.”
One one side of biblicists who take this approach would be those for whom passibility is merely one of many literal-narrative elements which must not be figural if they are true, (ie a literal heavenly throne with an embodied Father next to a separately embodied Jesus, the massive new Jerusalem, hades being under the earth, etc.). Many of these folks are likely open theists.
On the other side it could look like what Vanhoozer has just done with “transfigural” readings of the letter, which do not go up and on from the letter (in any historical classical theist pattern) but loops back onto the letter.
I'm struggling I think to understand your main point here, and/or how it really differs from and/or does not reduce to one of the six arguments I identified above. Is this, roughly, just giving a unique ontological/epistemological status to the propositions of holy Scripture given that they are enclosed therein? A higher revelation which therefore must trump e.g., natural revelaiton, which can demonstrate no passions?--paradoxes or contradictions notwithstanding?
Sorry I think I somewhat combined two different points that share a similar frame.
The first is folks, arising from evangelicals among whom I was raised, who would say loudly that any thinking into Biblical teaching beyond following the letter as simplistically as possible is human sophistry rather than submitting to God. So maybe call it an anti-intellectual appeal to inspiration and perspicuity. #4 is similar in result but would itself be guilty of sophistry in form.
The second, arising more from non-classical but educated evangelicals, is much more like what you’ve just distilled in your reply. But with an added emphasis on illumination which allow simultaneously for an explicit external compliance element to reading scripture properly (relating to this or that denominational position and/or specific epistemology) along with the claim that they are reading scripture rightly without recourse to extra-biblical systems (including natural revelation and especially natural theology). I may have to think about this one more to communicate it clearly.
I definitely get it--my own background would be a mixture of both these two.