Very careful and helpful work here! I guess to put some flesh on my suggestion on Facebook the other day that the Thomist need not concede their rereading is more radical *relative to any other attempt to interpret scripture systematically about God*, I would note that scripture itself gives warrant for the view common to patristic and medieval authors that God's wisdom, power, goodness, being, etc. are not just quantitatively greater but qualitatively different from creaturely wisdom etc., and so we need to undergo intellectual purification including unlearning some of the positive predications we've habitually made about God before we can know how to make them rightly. So the classical theist project with respect to the Bible really is an attempt to read these attributions *in the way scripture itself teaches us to do.* Granted, scripture doesn't spell this specific strategy out, but the basic motivation, I think, arises out of these thinkers' meditation on scripture with all the intellectual tools they had available, not, I think, a separate and prior philosophical project. So from the classical theist perspective, Craig et. al will have to find a different way to let this biblical motivate play out and bear on their reception of the "letter" which says God is wise, etc. (and granted, today attempting to do this, not just with a non-classical theistic frame, but non-Trinitarian ones too).
I would also question a bit, from a Thomist perspective, your characterization of the "ad litteram" sense. Maybe it's just on my part and you are perfectly clear about this, but I detect some possible ambiguity there for readers; one might take it to mean the primary/historical sense, but it can't be that for Thomas because he insists that that sense is always true. So what you're conceding to include false propositions (from a Thomist point of view) can't be *that* but instead must be something like what we might call in English a "flatly literal" reading, making, ultimately, the same kind of mistake (albeit an easier one to make) as taking "God is my rock" to mean that God is a hard piece of mineral onto which I could physically climb to escape danger. Thomas would say, I think, that neither that nor "God is wise by participating in wisdom just like I do, albeit to a greater degree" nor "God has wisdom as a quality that is really distinct in him from his power or goodness" are the true primary/historical sense of texts that attribute wisdom to God.
I guess for both of those reasons, I still think that a Thomist or other Christian classical theist might reasonably worry that you've asked them to concede too much. But maybe not. In any case I will say also I think you've done a really effective job of tracing the cognitive work involved in the Thomist interpretation of such texts, which perhaps Thomists are so habituated to that they may forget how significant they are.
Thanks David for your quite thoughtful and truly contributive comment here.
1. Re the ad litteram snese: Yes, you are right to point out that I am speaking of the patristic ad litteram sense, not the Thomist literal sense--which are not the same. The Thomist would never concede that the literal sense includes a false judgmnet assented to, not to mention that Thomas says that it doesn't explicitely: thus e.g., for this prop God being a rock, the literal sense is e.g., that God supports. Indeed, Thomas notes that it doesn't even include the figure (=the imagination of a rock), but only the figured (=the judgmnet that God supports), together with (I'd add) a grasp of the parallel relationships which these have (=analogy of proportionality), all of which is "in mind" (understood loosely) as behind the utterance God being a rock. By contrast, the patristic ad litteram sense is much more flexible, is an artificial creation on the part of the reader, and (to bypass a full exposition) is about what we mean today by the prima facie reading...which obvioulsy can be manifold, and which abstracts from being inherently assertive, and therefore technically from thequestion of the truth value of the prop (=dependent upon the judgment actually signified by such). There is a lot more here to say, but it is VERY important to keep clear that these are two different things, and that only the ad litteram sense is being spoken of (at least by me) in this discussion.
2. Re: the letter giving warrant to or indeed forcing one to transcend its surface and interpret holy Scripture in line with judgments held as true, esp those demonstrated philosophically and/or found within the rule of faith, YES, absolutely. There are all sorts of rather obvious incongruieties and impossibilities in the ad litteram sense (<--note this: the ad litteram sense, the facial reading) which inherently render any sort of biblicism impossible. All parties are therefore forced to read holy Scripture in line with their philosophical/theological precommitments. And it would be an important question how much e.g., Thomist precommitments can be and are "cued" by precisely these pitfalls in the letter which you advert to. I think that I would heartily agree with what you're gesturing to, and also underline that it too is an important point.
There is no "neutral" reading; and the reading which springs off the page requires one to then fashion it after the image of one's own theological system.
In this piece and in other talks and substacks you have written when you detail the Thomistic way of negating false predication of God and then affirming true predicates of the same form but purified in content it really just seems like you're faithfully following the second commandment.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. -Exodus 20:4
By stripping away the false and creaturely content that creeps into our thoughts about God we are just ensuring that we worship the one true and living God as he really is. I also really liked the way you put it in one of your interviews, either in one of the Davenant podcasts or the classical theist podcast that simplicity is not a hollowing out or stripping away from God, it's essentially removing arbitrary limits (to use the nomenclature of Joshua Rasmussen).
I really do think the distinction between biblical teaching vs biblical text is important. In fact, it is precisely what gives Craig's critique teeth: that the biblical text is the biblical teaching (i.e., the surface readings of the letters are the inerrant judgments of Scripture). I do have one question.
Prima facie doesn't seem to me to be entirely the same as ad litteram. I get the sense from Craig that the prima facie reading does include the literary and linguistic conventions (as it does for most readers of scripture today) of the original languages. Whereas ad litteram doesn't seem to do so for the fathers (or is maybe not entirely consistent among them). Perhaps I am wrong about this?
My impression is that the ambiguities in what is meant by the prima facie reading are really about the same as the ambiguities in what is meant by the ad litteram reading.
If one were a follower of a different God from a tradition alien to the Bible — say Marduk or Zeus — and nonetheless wanted to claim that the Bible, rightly interpreted, is compatible with that preferred god, it is hard to imagine a more perfect way of coping with the inevitable contraditions that the Bible would pose to belief in such a god than the very method that you and other Thomists adopt.
Very careful and helpful work here! I guess to put some flesh on my suggestion on Facebook the other day that the Thomist need not concede their rereading is more radical *relative to any other attempt to interpret scripture systematically about God*, I would note that scripture itself gives warrant for the view common to patristic and medieval authors that God's wisdom, power, goodness, being, etc. are not just quantitatively greater but qualitatively different from creaturely wisdom etc., and so we need to undergo intellectual purification including unlearning some of the positive predications we've habitually made about God before we can know how to make them rightly. So the classical theist project with respect to the Bible really is an attempt to read these attributions *in the way scripture itself teaches us to do.* Granted, scripture doesn't spell this specific strategy out, but the basic motivation, I think, arises out of these thinkers' meditation on scripture with all the intellectual tools they had available, not, I think, a separate and prior philosophical project. So from the classical theist perspective, Craig et. al will have to find a different way to let this biblical motivate play out and bear on their reception of the "letter" which says God is wise, etc. (and granted, today attempting to do this, not just with a non-classical theistic frame, but non-Trinitarian ones too).
I would also question a bit, from a Thomist perspective, your characterization of the "ad litteram" sense. Maybe it's just on my part and you are perfectly clear about this, but I detect some possible ambiguity there for readers; one might take it to mean the primary/historical sense, but it can't be that for Thomas because he insists that that sense is always true. So what you're conceding to include false propositions (from a Thomist point of view) can't be *that* but instead must be something like what we might call in English a "flatly literal" reading, making, ultimately, the same kind of mistake (albeit an easier one to make) as taking "God is my rock" to mean that God is a hard piece of mineral onto which I could physically climb to escape danger. Thomas would say, I think, that neither that nor "God is wise by participating in wisdom just like I do, albeit to a greater degree" nor "God has wisdom as a quality that is really distinct in him from his power or goodness" are the true primary/historical sense of texts that attribute wisdom to God.
I guess for both of those reasons, I still think that a Thomist or other Christian classical theist might reasonably worry that you've asked them to concede too much. But maybe not. In any case I will say also I think you've done a really effective job of tracing the cognitive work involved in the Thomist interpretation of such texts, which perhaps Thomists are so habituated to that they may forget how significant they are.
Thanks David for your quite thoughtful and truly contributive comment here.
1. Re the ad litteram snese: Yes, you are right to point out that I am speaking of the patristic ad litteram sense, not the Thomist literal sense--which are not the same. The Thomist would never concede that the literal sense includes a false judgmnet assented to, not to mention that Thomas says that it doesn't explicitely: thus e.g., for this prop God being a rock, the literal sense is e.g., that God supports. Indeed, Thomas notes that it doesn't even include the figure (=the imagination of a rock), but only the figured (=the judgmnet that God supports), together with (I'd add) a grasp of the parallel relationships which these have (=analogy of proportionality), all of which is "in mind" (understood loosely) as behind the utterance God being a rock. By contrast, the patristic ad litteram sense is much more flexible, is an artificial creation on the part of the reader, and (to bypass a full exposition) is about what we mean today by the prima facie reading...which obvioulsy can be manifold, and which abstracts from being inherently assertive, and therefore technically from thequestion of the truth value of the prop (=dependent upon the judgment actually signified by such). There is a lot more here to say, but it is VERY important to keep clear that these are two different things, and that only the ad litteram sense is being spoken of (at least by me) in this discussion.
This is helpful; I've been working through your posts recently and thinking I should ask precisely this question about the literal sense.
it is an extremely central point!
2. Re: the letter giving warrant to or indeed forcing one to transcend its surface and interpret holy Scripture in line with judgments held as true, esp those demonstrated philosophically and/or found within the rule of faith, YES, absolutely. There are all sorts of rather obvious incongruieties and impossibilities in the ad litteram sense (<--note this: the ad litteram sense, the facial reading) which inherently render any sort of biblicism impossible. All parties are therefore forced to read holy Scripture in line with their philosophical/theological precommitments. And it would be an important question how much e.g., Thomist precommitments can be and are "cued" by precisely these pitfalls in the letter which you advert to. I think that I would heartily agree with what you're gesturing to, and also underline that it too is an important point.
There is no "neutral" reading; and the reading which springs off the page requires one to then fashion it after the image of one's own theological system.
In this piece and in other talks and substacks you have written when you detail the Thomistic way of negating false predication of God and then affirming true predicates of the same form but purified in content it really just seems like you're faithfully following the second commandment.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. -Exodus 20:4
By stripping away the false and creaturely content that creeps into our thoughts about God we are just ensuring that we worship the one true and living God as he really is. I also really liked the way you put it in one of your interviews, either in one of the Davenant podcasts or the classical theist podcast that simplicity is not a hollowing out or stripping away from God, it's essentially removing arbitrary limits (to use the nomenclature of Joshua Rasmussen).
Thanks Jacob. I believe Kate Sonderregger said something like simplicity is the scholastic way of doing the holiness of God. I think that's right :)
I really do think the distinction between biblical teaching vs biblical text is important. In fact, it is precisely what gives Craig's critique teeth: that the biblical text is the biblical teaching (i.e., the surface readings of the letters are the inerrant judgments of Scripture). I do have one question.
Prima facie doesn't seem to me to be entirely the same as ad litteram. I get the sense from Craig that the prima facie reading does include the literary and linguistic conventions (as it does for most readers of scripture today) of the original languages. Whereas ad litteram doesn't seem to do so for the fathers (or is maybe not entirely consistent among them). Perhaps I am wrong about this?
My impression is that the ambiguities in what is meant by the prima facie reading are really about the same as the ambiguities in what is meant by the ad litteram reading.
If one were a follower of a different God from a tradition alien to the Bible — say Marduk or Zeus — and nonetheless wanted to claim that the Bible, rightly interpreted, is compatible with that preferred god, it is hard to imagine a more perfect way of coping with the inevitable contraditions that the Bible would pose to belief in such a god than the very method that you and other Thomists adopt.