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Conversations With Augustine: Commentary on Dagle’s Essay
Published by Cynthia R. Nielsen August 16th, 2008 in Alvin Plantinga, Augustine, Faith and Reason
Commentary on Dagle’s Essay, “Augustine and Plantinga: The Civitas Dei, the Civitas Mundi and the task of Ecclesial Philosophy”
By James Gibson, Western Michigan University
Mike Dagle describes the influence of Augustine’s motif on Plantinga’s conception of Christian philosophy (Dagle’s essay). The motif is one of two cities fundamentally at odds: “they are fundamentally different things (or places) with different values, concepts, and ideas… within the current context they have different philosophies.” The denizens of the Civitas Dei seek to perceive themselves and all things in relation to God. On Plantinga’s view (c.f. WCB), characteristic Christian doctrines may be known in a basic way, which is to say that they are not necessarily grounded on the basis of further reasons or beliefs but reasonably held because of the work of the Holy Spirit. Compare other perceptual beliefs, e.g. that a tree is before me, held not on the basis of inference from other beliefs, but epistemically grounded by the fact that a tree is directly perceived. If Christian doctrines are grounded in this (basic) way, the Christian is within her epistemic rights to employ everything in her epistemic arsenal to answer philosophical questions, especially (or exclusively?) when directed for the good of the church. The Christian philosopher has unique resources, i.e., those Christian doctrines known in a basic way, as well as the tools philosophy brings, to aid the church in developing a view of how God relates to all things.
As Dagle notes, the Augustinian view blurs the distinction between philosophy and theology. How so? If philosophy is supposed to be the domain of reason alone, then by using premises, which employ content typically consigned to the realm of faith, it looks as if one is doing theology and not philosophy. Perhaps this is appropriate, however, if all philosophical musing is religious in nature.
I must admit that the Augustinian picture of merging philosophy and theology is appealing. Still, I have some questions about what Augustinian philosophy amounts to, particularly with respect to the role of the Christian philosopher and the Civitas Dei. One way of understanding the City of God is by the telos of its philosophical inquiry. Recall, the job of the Christian philosopher is to bring her skills to relate all things to God. So should the Christian philosopher, on the picture presented, focus exclusively on these sorts of issues? I can put this more forcefully: is the Christian philosopher making a moral mistake by engaging in philosophical questions like, “are there sets?” or “did Kripke misunderstand Wittgenstein?” when the answer to these questions are not obviously relevant to the church? Aren’t there more pressing issues?[1]
Suppose it is morally permissible for the Christian philosopher to ask such questions. If so, what is the distance between these two cities? Perhaps there’s a third alternative to the Augustinian and Thomist approaches, whereby the Christian philosopher is more of a traveler between the two cities than a permanent resident of only one of them. In this respect, I am regarding philosophy in the Civitas Mundi as one with distinct (or a smaller set of) concepts and ideas, excluding the Christian doctrines that permeate the premises of philosophical argument as found in the Civitas Dei. How might the Christian philosopher travel to the Civitas Mundi? Suppose the Christian philosopher might be among colleagues of the Quinean sort that advocate a principle like, every claim is revisable including this claim. The Christian philosopher may object to the principle with an argument, the premises of which have nothing to do with the distinctly Christian doctrines. After having presented such an argument, it might be argued that a Christian perspective has independent resources to think such a principle is false (if in fact the Christian perspective does suggest this). So the Christian philosopher travels by using what is accepted by members of both cities in order to persuade the citizens of the Civitas Mundi. It would also be significant for the Christian to find grounds outside of Christian doctrine to think such a principle is false.
Is the Christian philosopher in this instance merely articulating the Christian faith? Well, only if we understand the faith so broadly as to include any true propositions whatsoever. It is more appropriate, I take it, to describe her role as coming to see new explanatory relations within the created order which derive from a smaller set of facts than those that include the dogmas of the Christian faith. These explanatory relations may have indirect relevance to the faith, perhaps even yet unrealized relevance. It might even be that the Christian philosopher realized grounds from her faith which should lead her to reject the Quinean principle, and this would then lead to the search for dialectically useful grounds for the citizens of the Civitas Mundi. Still, the new grounds are informative for her.
But isn’t this just the Thomist view of engaging in philosophy by reason alone? Perhaps, if we think of the premises as lacking content that references revelation. However, on the Augustinian view, the Christian philosopher should use everything in her epistemic arsenal. So why shouldn’t she include “natural” facts as part of that arsenal? It seems as if the Thomist and Augustinian pictures collapse when philosophical argument is done in this way. Does the Thomist believe one can never use premises with faith-content for arguments and then call that “philosophy”? I do not know. But like many other philosophers, I’m not sure what philosophy is in the first place aside from thinking very hard about a topic, especially on “philosophically” paradigmatic topics. It would be very uninteresting if one objected that a view is not distinctly philosophical simply by stipulation of the meaning of the word - a word without a clearly shared meaning. In any event, I’m unclear on where the dispute between the Thomist and Augustinian lies.
Notes
[1] A recent look at this issue is raised in Paul Moser (2005), Jesus and philosophy: on the questions we ask, Faith and Philosophy 22 (3), 261-283.
Nice essays from both participants!
My first reaction about Plantinga’s stance is that it is very appealing to speak about the Christian philosopher’s role as not simply a philosopher who happens to be Christian, but someone who serves the Church, that is, by answering the challenges of the world to the Church. Granted, this is true. I wonder, however, that a philosopher is less Christian and does less service to the Church by simply spending his academic career working on the sorites paradox, existence of gunk, and sleeping beauty. A person serves the Church by following his vocation, that is, that unique talent and desire he has given by God. A person is called to be a teacher because teaching corresponds to his desires, to what he is made for. That person ought to be a teacher. Doing what one is called to do is service to the Church. This is why a janitor who works passionately as a janitor does more service to the Church than trying to convert other janitors. A Christian is not dominated by preconceptions or his thoughts but by reality, by the path God has called him to. So a person who works all of his academic life on the existence of gunk because he has a particular talent for it, a talent God gave him, is doing service to the Church. We should not have a preconception on what serving the Church means. There are many ways one can serve the Church. So too if we conceive of a Christian philosopher who discovered that knowledge is not simply justified true belief, he is doing more for the Church than defeating the problem of evil. What is important is staying on the path God gave you. Even in philosophy we are to do God’s will.
In other words, a philosopher is living in the city of God as a philosopher even if he is simply working on the existence of gunk. The philosopher may even have to give up trying to defend the Church against the world so that he can do God’s will for him, that is, working on the topic of gunk.
Second, I am having a hard time trying to understand what it exactly means to have “Christian premises” or Christian values. I know Plantinga, in his critique of the Pope’s encyclical, speaks about how worldly philosophers are not “confused Catholics,” but are directly against the Church. He mentions philosophers like Rorty. This is a bit too general. Exactly what makes a certain paradigm Christian? Is a person who works within Fregean logic rather Aristotelian less Christian? Or, what about Christians like Peter van Inwagen who believe that persons are simply material beings? Is Peter van Inwagen working within the civitas Mundi or civitas Dei? I do not know whether the disagreements between Christian philosophers themselves are less of a divide than Christian philosophers and non-Christian philosophers. Christian philosophers themselves proceed from different premises. Which premise is Christian?
Finally, there is the question of whether because of the Paschal Mystery cognitive repair is possible without the help of revelation. In other words, grace may still repair our cognitive faculties outside of Christian philosophy. It may repair our faculties to the point of accepting, say, that knowledge is not simply true justified belief. This will not grant him salvation, but I wonder whether philosophy is different now because of grace. To put it in another way, that Frege saw the limitations of Aristotelian logic and gave us predicate logic may be a work of grace. If this is so, then it seems Plantinga emphasizes too much on the divide rather than unity of grace and nature.
Hi James - Thanks for taking the time to respond to my mini-essay. Here are a few thoughts that I’ve got from reading your response.
You say: “I can put this more forcefully: is the Christian philosopher making a moral mistake by engaging in philosophical questions like, “are there sets?” or “did Kripke misunderstand Wittgenstein?” when the answer to these questions are not obviously relevant to the church? Aren’t there more pressing issues?”
I think the answer to this question has to be no - it is certainly not a moral mistake to pursue philosophical questions that are not directly related to pressing Church questions. Think of philosophy as a vocation that a Christian can pursue. We can then think of the question this way; “is it a moral mistake for a Christian to pursue vocational subjects that are not directly related to Church/faith issues”. It seems to me the answer to this question is obviously no (Apolonio gives us some reasons why in his comment - he echoes Col 3:23). The Christian plumber is not making a moral mistake in working on the pipes of whomever instead of only working on church plumbing issues. Any form of Christian ethics has plenty of room for goods that are not directly related to Church/faith issues; knowledge of general philosophical truth certainly being on of them (the old quip ‘all truth is God’s truth’ I guess). I know you weren’t advocating such a view - I take it that you were presenting what might be a moral consequence to the view that I was advocating. I don’t see that to be the case. A fuller account of Plantinga and the broader Reformed tradition that he (sometimes) draws on would certainly involve an account of non-salvific goods (I’m thinking of theories of common grace) that are perfectly appropriate for a philosopher or anyone else to pursue. However, given that the philosophical vocation is so closely related to doctrinal questions a Christian philosopher who never pays mind to how his vocation relates to his faith directly is much closer to moral lapse on my view (though I’m still not sure that’s necessarily the case - again Apolonio is helpful here).
The rest of what you have to say I think I’m in general agreement with. You’ve begun to flesh out the two cities motif and expose some of the intricacies of holding that image together. So here a few qualifications that I did not mention in my mini-essay that might be relevant to some of your points:
- I’m dubious about the possibilty to be a full citizen in the Civitas Dei this side of the new creation. So partial membership in the Civitas Mundi is a reality that all Christians must realize. Within each city there is of course also a wide diversity of perspectives.
- As I already mentioned I don’t mean to imply that the only task of the philosopher is to pursue questions that the Church needs answers to.
- I didn’t mention commonalities between the two cities. But I think Plantinga, and again the broader Reformed tradition, has the resources to account for commanalities between the cities not just antithesis. Such as in Calvin: “in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears.”
- I think Plantinga understands that not every topic of consideration will fit nicely within one of the two cities. He gets around this by making the simpler claim that “reasonably complete and full orbed scholarship and science–not just philosophy–inevitably in the service of one city or the other.” What counts as full orbed? I don’t really have any principles to point to to parse that out every time. But individual cases will help us out. Somewhere someone is researching PVC pipe engineering for better durability and flexibility. Is this research in service to one city or the other? There’s a good chance its not even if its author is. But the philosophical study of meta-ethics probably has a home in one of the two cities.
- I think Plantinga agrees with your weak defintition of philosophy - as do I. In God, Freedom, and Evil he states in passing “Philosophical reflection (which is not much different from just thinking hard)”. The lack of a precise definition is a topic, however, that should be pursued by Thomists who are more at home parsing out theology from philosophy with a certain amount of clarity - I claim no such clarity.
Apolonio thanks for taking the time to comment. I’ve run out of time so I’ll have post some comments on your thoughts another time, which will be worth doing you’ve brought up some interesting points.
Mike and Apolonio,
Thanks for engaging this material. I’ve been out of town until today and hence the reason I did not engage the comment earlier. OK. A couple brief points.
Re Moser’s view: I don’t think that I agree with it. I have not thought out a full response to his view though. The reason I raised him is, as you said, it might be thought to be a consequence of your view. I raised the Moser piece for another reason as well: if Plantinga’s piece, “Advice to Christian Philosophers”, is a tempered advice to Christian philosophers, Moser’s piece is (as a friend of mine put it) advice from the megaphone.
The main of my comments is that the Augustinian motif is actually not that helpful in getting a Christian philosopher, like myself, to begin thinking about how to do philosophy. I can understand how it might be helpful if the Thomist/Augustinian dispute is a substantive one - in the way in which you outlined it - but I’ve otherwise argued that it is not substantive. The sort of arguments that are wielded in philosophy, even by Christians, does not nicely fit into either city. Perhaps if there is a distinction to be made, it might be the *motivations* that go into working on philosophical problems - this connects up with the Moser reference. But even still, the arguments need not be any different.
Re using “Christian premises”: the only sense I can make of this is to cite Christian doctrines as evidence for a position in a substantive philosophical dispute. For instance, the doctrine of the incarnation is appealed to by both physicalists and dualists as evidence of their respective positions. I myself see nothing wrong with making this appeal to other members of the faculty who may not believe in the incarnation. One must simply realize that any such arguments will be only *conditionally* convincing, i.e., if the incarnation happened, then the substance dualists (or physicalists) would be right. Whether these arguments are useful or appropriate will depend on the context.
Last thing. Mike: you said that for Plantinga, all philosophy is the articulation of the Christian faith, or something along those lines. Do you have a reference for this?
Thanks for having me to discuss some of these points.
James Gibson
Hi James,
Thanks again for the interaction - hopefully it’s been (and will continue to be) fruitful.
I disagree that Augustine’s motif is not helpful for the Christian philosopher. As I mentioned in the essay the Church often needs its philosophers to deploy their skills to answer questions and help us understand what the Christian perspective is on topics that are characteristically asked by philosophers (this kind of example is what Plantinga is most aiming at). An example might be the growing field of environmental philosophy. A Christian philosopher might want to develop a distinctly Christian approach to interact with the literature on environmental philosophy. Augustine’s motif says that what she is doing is building her scholarship in the service of the Civitas Dei. I find the motif instructive here. The Christian philosopher may have heard the line that her philosophizing is something separate from her faith; that she must find alternative grounds to articulate her (and so she hopes the Christian) perspective on these matters. The motif says not so; that all (relatively full orbed – whatever that is) philosophizing is the articulation of a faith. The Christian faith or one of its rivals. Again commonalities help us temper this idea of stark contrast; maybe she attempts to proceed purely on common concepts shared in both cities. Plantinga’s perspective doesn’t say that’s ruled out. He can’t it accounts for most of his career! The motif doesn’t say that the only thing a Christian philosopher may do is start from specifically faith premises. Plantinga’s claim is just that when the Christian does this they are doing philosophy not that this is only what philosophy is for the Christian.
But you provided an example of the Christian philosopher proceeding on what seems to be reason alone to convince those in the Civitas Mundi (in this case that Quine was wrong). First I think it’s difficult to say exactly when philosophy is constituted by reason alone (all the way down so to speak). Reason is great for analysis, clarification, the search for coherence but as far as establishing things on the basis of reason alone this is where Plantinga (and I) would want to say that if your philosophizing is relatively full orbed that what you are doing is fundamentally religious in nature.
Leaving that aside however I don’t see what you described that as a strike against the two cities motif. Again I don’t say that philosophy needs to have a faith premise in it to be a part of the Civitas Dei. What successfully marks a piece of scholarship out as aligning with one city or the other? As I mentioned before I don’t know how to successfully parse that out - maybe as you say Moser suggests motivations can be a factor. That seems ok with me. Maybe also as you suggest, helpfully I think, there is plenty of middle ground between the two cities. The idea is primitive in Augustine there is plenty of room to fill it out.
So I don’t think I did say that for Plantinga “all philosophy is the articulation of the Christian faith” I hope I’ve begun to show why that’s not the case. Just the simpler claim that the Christian philosopher indeed has a role in the articulation of the Christian faith. I did say that in “regeneration all things are known in relation to God’s redemptive work in the world.” That might be a bit strong. I know I have some grapes in front of me right now but I don’t really understand that as it relates to God’s redemptive work in the world; but I do know about the grapes non-the less. However what I mean is that the fundamental way to understand just about everything will stem from God’s actions and specifically his plan of salvation.
You’re quite right that using a faith premise in a philosophical dispute with non-Christians would be at best only “*conditionally* convincing”. I certainly don’t claim otherwise. So as you eluded the best plan of action for convincing them of something might be to try to argue from concepts that you think on the whole they accept. For Plantinga’s Augustinian approach philosophy is a somewhat perspectival endeavor so those concepts, for him, will be more limited than for others who take a more objective approach.
Thanks again!
Apolonio,
Again I’ve run out time so this will be much too brief!
I think I pretty much agree with what you have to say about a philosopher building for the Civitas Dei even when they’re working on the existence of gunk. As I mentioned this certainly seems right in the light of Col 3:23.
You rightly point out that in many cases what counts as a Christian premise would be hard to pin down. This just seems right since we know there are plenty of disagreements among Christians. It doesn’t follow that there aren’t any Christian premises or that we can’t point out really obvious ones like trinity, incarnation, creation etc. When you ask what “makes a certain paradigm Christian”? I take it that ‘Christian’ has a fair amount of normativity that must include characteristic Christian doctrines. Is Fregean logic more or less Christian than Aristotelian? I don’t know that there’s an answer to that.
You ask “whether because of the Paschal Mystery cognitive repair is possible without the help of revelation.” I don’t know that coming to know a truth you didn’t know previously involves cognitive repair in the way I was using it. If so my coming to know that my car in fact gets 25 mpg rather than 27 mpg is a form of cognitive repair isn’t it? At any rate I would file what you describe under common or providential grace (or you might prefer nature) as distinguished from salvific grace (which is where I was locating cognitive repair).
Hope that move the discussion along a bit at least.
Mike,
Thanks for the response. The problem as I see it is this: by both characterizations of the two cities you’ve laid out in the essay - the first being by the distinct concepts, the second being by the ends of inquiry - don’t have a nice fit with how many philosophical arguments run. I have three things to raise about this and your comment to me.
(1) I tried to show that in the Quinean case, one is not articulating the faith unless the faith just is all true propositions. Regarding this case, you say
“First I think it’s difficult to say exactly when philosophy is constituted by reason alone (all the way down so to speak). Reason is great for analysis, clarification, the search for coherence but as far as establishing things on the basis of reason alone this is where Plantinga (and I) would want to say that if your philosophizing is relatively full orbed that what you are doing is fundamentally religious in nature.”
I’m not sure how to understand this. One establishes p if and only if ____what____?
(2) Again, I’ve been pressing you on making the distinction rigorous so that it nicely fits with how philosophical arguments run. You write,
“What successfully marks a piece of scholarship out as aligning with one city or the other? As I mentioned before I don’t know how to successfully parse that out - maybe as you say Moser suggests motivations can be a factor. That seems ok with me. Maybe also as you suggest, helpfully I think, there is plenty of middle ground between the two cities. The idea is primitive in Augustine there is plenty of room to fill it out.”
There better not be too much common ground; after all, you describe the two cities as “fundamentally different things (or places) with different values, concepts, and ideas… within the current context they have different philosophies.” Perhaps the last phrase can clear up the tension? If the two cities have too much abundance of middle ground, the motif may better be put as a metropolis with different occupants, and that would lose the force or image the two cities are supposed to portray.
(3) The reason I asked for a citation for where Plantinga states all philosophy is the articulation of the faith is that you said in the original essay, “Plantinga’s Augustinian approach instead maintains that all philosophy is really the articulation of fundamentally religious perspectives (4)”, where I take it the Christian would want to articulate the Christian perspective. That should explain why I asked.
I’m back on vacation with the family (the in-laws this time) and so comments from my end will be limited again.
Cheers,
James