Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 10 – Why Care About Rational Reinterpretation?

Many recent Christian philosophers have offered what I call Rational Reconstructions of apparently contradictory doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation. Though I’m presently exploring criticisms of such views, let me emphasize that I don’t see anything wrong with what they’re doing, and I think that people with philosophical skills who are Christians ought to use them in any way which is helpful to the Christian community. At bare minimum, these folks are exploring possible views, possible ways to understand the Trinity (etc.). Getting clear about what the options are, and the costs and benefits of each, is an important kind of theoretical progress. Moreover, it shows intellectual integrity and courage, and concern for the truth.

At the end of my last post in the series, I noted that Rational Reconstructors often don’t believe their new version of the Doctrine. In any case, I’ve never seen one that insists that their version is the one which all Christians ought to believe. This latter isn’t surprising – we professors simply don’t have any authority to lay down a theory as required by any Christian community. But it is surprising that these folks are exercising some immense intellectual energy, and writing very involved and difficult pieces expounding views to which they do not commit? What is going on?

Short answer: apologetics. They’re deflecting bullets, as it were, with the theoretical equivalent of Wonder Woman’s super-duper bracelets. They have in mind an opponent of (small-c catholic, orthodox, or “historic”) Christianity who holds that the Doctrine in question is obviously contradictory, or even demonstrably contradictory.

They’re arguing like this:

We can’t rule out that the Doctrine ought to be understood as X.
X might be thought weird, but
X isn’t obviously contradictory, and
X isn’t demonstrably contradictory. (i.e. There’s no argument that X is contradictory such that any sane adult human will regard it as obviously valid and sound.)

Notice, they’re not telling you what the Doctrine means, or what the best way to interpret it is. In a sense, they’re not even, necessarily, revealing what they think this great and true Doctrine is. Rather, they’re showing that the traditional formulas which are taken to express the doctrine can be understood in at least one consistent way, which way they have carefully, with a Philosopher’s skill and precision, laid out, perhaps for the first time.

There are a couple of unsatisfying things about this genre of writing.

1. For one thing, they’re often mere defense. (Not always – sometimes the author does hold forth his new-fangled theory as something we ought to believe.) They just don’t give the inquiring mind anywhere to rest.

2. The opponents are largely imaginary or uninteresting, or they wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be satisfied with the above style of argument. Permit me to belabor this point (which applies more to non-philosophical apologetics than to the work of philosophical theologians).

• Atheists don’t generally think much about the Trinity or the Incarnation. Why should they? They don’t even believe in theism, and they certainly don’t accept the Bible (or the Church) as an instrument of divine revelation.
• Other supposed opponents are “cultists” and “rationalists”. Now sure, sometimes Jehovah’s Witness or whoever lob an accusation that some Doctrine is patently contradictory. But it’s rare to find a careful thinker or scholar from said group who can make a case for this, a case worth rebutting. The “Rationalist” is a sort of bogeyman who appears in some apologetic and theological writing, who proudly refuses to submit his reason to divine Revelation, and so consequently rejects the Trinity or Incarnation, etc. This generic term is probably meant to cover three kinds of people who engage in theology: the Liberal theologian, the Unitarian, and the Deist. But the first and last simply don’t believe that the Bible (and/or the Church) is (or is a means of) divine revelation. So they just aren’t concerned about doctrines allegedly based on those sources, and pay little attention to the Doctrine. Besides, there basically never has been a sizable Deist movement.
• If “Unitarians” means Unitarian Universalists, they are simply not a Christian movement, and so pay little attention to questions of Christian theology. So, who cares what they think about, say, the Trinity? If this means other (non-UU) unitarians (i.e. people who identify God with the Father) there were, in the 17th to the first half of the 19th c. many sophisticated unitarian Christians, some of whom argued that the Trinity (etc.) is contradictory, but these have fallen almost entirely off the map of current Christian theologians, philosophers, and apologists, basically because there are no large (non-UU) unitarian groups nowadays, in contrast with the late 18th-early 19th centuries, and in any case, these unitarians, just like contemporary “biblical unitarians”, emphasized the (alleged) lack of biblical support for the Trinity and Incarnation doctrines, rather than their (alleged) inconsistency. Note that they hold out for biblical support – they reject appeals to ecumenical councils, or the teaching magisterium, etc. So, their objections aren’t primarily “rationalistic” – but rather exegetical and methodological. But apologetics judo doesn’t and can’t help with those sorts of difficulties. In my scheme of R’s I classify them as Revisers.

3. The biggest limitation, to my mind, is this: It is no great victory if some belief of mine fails to be obviously or demonstrably contradictory. Call this sort of unfortunate claim a Whopper of a Contradiction.

• For one thing, a potential belief may not be a Whopper Contradiction, but there is little to no reason to believe it, or some reason to believe it, but more to disbelieve it.
• Again, a belief may be apparently contradictory to me without being a Whopper of a Contradiction. It may be that every time I carefully consider it, it seems this way. Still, it may not be an obvious or demonstrable contradiction. But it seems I ought not believe it.
• Again, if a say words that are unintelligible, or have a vague belief, what I say can’t be a Whopper of a Contradiction.
• Arguably, no substantial religious beliefs turn out to be a Whopper. If something was obviously contradictory, few intelligent people would believe it. And philosophers know that few things are demonstrable (provable) – when we keep in mind the technical sense of “demonstrable” explained above. Usually, the argument won’t get very far before there’s a premise which a reasonable person could deny.

In sum, these arguments (that said Doctrine is not a Whopper Contradiction) are generally pretty effective, because they aim so low, but they are not terribly helpful to the thinking Christian trying to decide what to think of the Doctrine, i.e. to decide on its proper meaning and justification. At the end we’re left with only a possible contender for a way to understand the Doctrine in question (if you can get your head around it).

Next time: one last problem with Resolution through Rational Reinterpretation.