While Calvin’s theology of participation is wide-ranging, it is distinctive in relation to contemporary discussion, because it brings together what are usually held apart:  organic images of transformation into Christlikeness by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit with forensic images of God’s free pardon; a strong account of humanity’s sin with a soteriology based on the restoration of a primal uniting communion with God (p. 196).

Throughout the book, Billings has been at pains to demonstrate that Calvin’s theology of participation, contra the claims of “Gift theologians” (e.g., Milbank) involves an inner transformation of the believer as s/he is incorporated into the Trinitarian life of God.  In other words, given Calvin’s understanding of the duplex gratia, imputation does not necessarily rule out ideas of infusion and partaking in the very life of the Triune God (including feeding on the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist).  Billings also points out the importance of the corporate dimension of the Christian life for Calvin’s doctrine of participation-being united with Christ necessarily unites us with our fellow Christians in a genuine and mystical bond.  Hence, concerns for social justice and love of neighbor are intrinsic to Calvin’s understanding of participation in Christ.

Regarding the “common ground” that Calvin’s theology of participation offers, Billings writes:

While Calvin’s theology of participation brings together what many theologies of participation hold apart, it also has a great deal of common ground with Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox theologies of participation.  Calvin’s soteriology gives a central place to the problem of sin and forgiveness, but it is not fixated on those themes.  Rather, those themes occur within a larger vision of salvation that is, in many ways, a catholic vision.  Calvin is concerned, along with key patristic writers, to affirm the goodness of creation and that redemption is a fulfillment rather than a disruption of the originally good human nature.  Calvin offers a soteriology that is Trinitarian from beginning to end, continually returning to the way in which we are united to Christ by the Spirit, revealing the Father.  Calvin’s theology of participation is both sacramental and ecclesial, emphasizing the centrality of the Word and sacraments for the life of Christ’s body, which can receive the sacraments only in the communion of the church (p. 196).

Though Calvin’s theology of participation is in many ways a rather complex combination of scriptural, patristic, and medieval teachings, it is also from another perspective very simple.  It speaks of a life of Trinitarian participation, in which one is united to Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and receives the gift of pardon and forgiveness from the Father.  “As such, the life of faith is a life of voluntary gratitude, made possible by the God who restores to sinners what they have lost, and reunites them with God” (p. 197). 

The following is taken from a transcription of a lecture given by Alvin Plantinga.  I have at times summarized his points, but for the most part the content is his.  I have also uploaded the full transcription, which you can obtain

As I understand Plantinga’s argument against evolutionary naturalism, he is not directing his argument against the theory of evolution itself, but rather against the problems that arise for the materialistic atheist due his/her belief in the conjunction of naturalism and evolution, viz., the position becomes self-referentially incoherent because a defeater can be established that shows that on such a position our cognitive faculties are unreliable and hence all of our beliefs are as well (including the belief in naturalism and evolution).

Plantinga opens his lecture by stating that there is a surface disagreement between science and theism, but in truth a deep concord between the two.  He also adds that there is a surface agreement between naturalism and science, but in truth a deep discord between the two.

Plantinga’s lecture centers on our cognitive faculties-the faculties whereby we have knowledge and form beliefs.    According to Plantinga, it is natural from a theistic point of view to think that our cognitive faculties are reliable.  That is, they give us for the most part true beliefs when they are functioning properly and are in the right sort of setting-when they are in the cognitive environment for which they were designed.  Plantinga thinks, however, that for the naturalist there is problem as to whether our cognitive faculties are reliable.  He argues that the naturalist has a defeater for the idea that our faculties are reliable, and that this gives him a defeater for everything that he believes, including then, the belief in evolution and naturalism.  Thus, the basic structure of Plantinga’s talk is that evolutionary naturalism, the idea that evolution and naturalism are both true, is self-referentially incoherent.  If you think that the proposition, “N&E” [naturalism and evolution are true], then Plantinga will attempt to show that there is a very good reason to doubt it and give up this belief. 

Contra certain optimistic claims by folks like Richard Dawkins, Plantinga believes that there is a problem for the naturalist, at least the naturalist who thinks that we and our cognitive faculties have arrived on the scene after some billions of years of evolution basically by way of natural selection working on random genetic mutation.  As the story goes, Richard Dawkins, according to Peter Medawar, once leaned over to the philosopher A.J. Ayer, at one of those fancy Oxford candlelight dinners and said that he couldn’t imagine being an atheist before 1859, which was the year when Darwin’s Origin of Species was published.  Dawkins went on to say, “although atheism might have been logically tenable before 1859 [before Darwin], Darwin made is possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”  

Contra Dawkins claim that Darwin made is possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, Plantinga argues Dawkins is dead wrong here and that the truth lies in the opposite direction.  In fact, Plantinga’s argument suggests that is not possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist or naturalist. The reason that Darwinism doesn’t allow this to be possible is that according to naturalistic evolution, the function or purpose of our cognitive faculties, is not that of producing in us true beliefs, but of promoting fitness, promoting survival, promoting survival through reproduction and reproductive fitness. If our cognitive faculties just happen to produce true beliefs that really doesn’t matter.  Rather, what counts for that perspective is what role they play in maximizing fitness. Plantinga turns to Patricia Churchland, a natural philosopher of science, who writes on evolution and such topics.  According to Churchland, “a nervous system allows the organisms to succeed in the four ‘f’s’:  feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing.” Churchland continues, “the principle chore of nervous systems [that is, a brain, for example, and the rest of one's nervous system] is to get the body parts where they should be in order that an organism survive.” So the brain and cognitive faculties serve to get the body parts in such a place that the organism may survive.  Then Churchland adds, “Improvements in [...] motor control confer an evolutionary advantage, [...] representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism’s chances of survival.  Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”  Her point is that from the perspective of evolutionary naturalism, what counts is one’s behavior-this is what evolution is interested in-it rewards adaptive behavior and penalizes maladaptive behavior, but it doesn’t care a bit about belief. If all of your beliefs are ludicrously false, but your behavior is appropriate, then you will survive and reproductive. On the other hand, if all of your beliefs are true, but your behavior doesn’t conduce to fitness, you won’t survive and reproduce.  What natural selection is interested in is not true beliefs or reliable cognitive faculties, but faculties and beliefs that contribute to survival. 

As Plantinga points out, Darwin himself saw the problem that Plantinga will highlight.  Darwin himself wrote in a letter to a friend, “with me the horror always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.  Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”  So Darwin has this doubt [Plantinga refers to this as "Darwin's doubt"], that is, given the origin of ourselves and our cognitive faculties, there is a real question as to whether our cognitive faculties can be reliable or trustworthy. 

Plantinga presents both a simplified and a complex version of his argument.    The simplified version is as follows.  If you are a naturalist, you will also be a materialist.  You will think that human beings are material objects-they do not have an immaterial soul, self or ego.  You will also think that your beliefs are caused by processes in your body, in particular, by neuro-physiological processes.  So neuro-physiology causes belief. It is also neuro-physiology that causes behavior.  Electrical impulses are sent down through different nerves to the muscles. The muscles contract and the result is action and hence behavior.  Thus, neuro-physiology causes both belief and behavior.  Now we can assume with respect to these creatures that their behavior is adaptive and hence that their neuro-physiology is adaptive in the sense that it causes adaptive behavior and belief.  

Now what is the likelihood that a given belief is true, given that it is produced by neuro-physiology that causes adaptive behavior?  If you think about it, it really doesn’t matter whether it is true.  Rather, what matters for survival and for fitness is that the neuro-physiology causes the right kind of behavior.  It can cause whatever kind of belief it wants to as far as natural selection is concerned. So from the fact that the behavior is adaptive, nothing follows so far about the likelihood that a given belief is true.  So what is the likelihood then that a given belief is true on the part of these creatures? Given the information that we have, which is just N&E [the conjunction of naturalism and evolution], the probability is .5-50% true and 50% false.  So you have no more reason to think it true, than to think it false. But if that is true for each individual belief, then the probability that a whole set of beliefs are true or mostly true, which would be required by cognitive reliability-by the idea that cognitive faculties are reliable-the probability is going to be very small.  Suppose that you have one hundred independent, logically and probabilistically independent beliefs. The probability with respect to each one of them that each would be true is .5.  Then the probability that three-fourths of them would be true will be very small (one out of ten thousand or so).  Hence, the probability of the reliability of our cognitive faculties given the conjunction of naturalism and evolution P(R/N&E) is low.

In Plantinga’s more complex version of the argument (which I won’t spell out here-download the transcript if you are interested in the details), he highlights four different possibilities as to how belief and behavior could be related (including (1) epiphenomenalism, (2) semantic epiphenomenalism, and (4) the idea that our beliefs cause behavior both by way of content and by way of neuro-physiology and are adaptive).[1]  On the first two possibilities (1) epiphenomenalism and (2) semantic epiphenomenalism, P(R/N&E) is low and on the fourth the  P(R/N&E) is .5 or perhaps somewhat better. If you put these all together (and there is a formula for doing so from which he spares us), the P(R/N&E) will be fairly low.  So it seems something like this reasoning regarding the reliability of our cognitive faculties [P(R/N&E) is low] is similar to what conflicted Darwin. 

What Plantinga argues next is that if we accept N&E, then we have a defeater for R [=reliability of our cognitive faculties].  Thus, anyone who believes N&E has a defeater for R.  The conclusion of Plantinga’s argument then is that it is irrational to believe N&E, as the probability of R/N&E is low.  That means that if you accept N&E, then you have a defeater for R [=the proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliability]. But if you have a defeater for that belief, then you have a defeater for any belief that is a product of your cognitive faculties, and of course, that is all of your beliefs.  One of those beliefs is of course N&E itself [that naturalism and evolution are true]. So you have a defeater for N&E itself.  Consequently, one who accepts N&E has a defeater for N&E-a reason to doubt it or to be agnostic about it. If s/he has no independent evidence for it, then the rational position would be to reject belief in N&E.  Therefore, N&E in the absence of independent evidence for reliability-(and he argues elsewhere that you can’t really get independent evidence for your own reliability)-in the absence of that N&E is self-defeating, and hence, irrational. It is self-referentially incoherent.

Consequently, one who is contemplating naturalism and is torn between naturalism and theism should reason as follows:  if I were to accept naturalism (and here naturalism includes evolution, N&E), I would have good and ultimately un-defeatable reasons to be agnostic about naturalism, so I shouldn’t accept it. So what we have is an argument not for the falsehood of naturalism, but for the irrationality of believing it.  The traditional theist, on the other hand, has no corresponding reason for doubting that it is the purpose of our cognitive systems to produce true beliefs, nor a reason for thinking that the probability of a belief’s being true given that it is a product of our cognitive faculties is low or inscrutable. She may indeed endorse some form of evolution, but if she does it will be a form of evolution guided and orchestrated by God. And qua traditional Jewish, Christian and Muslim theists, she believes that God is the premier knower and has created human beings in his image. 

Notes

The Lord willingly and freely reveals himself in his Christ.  For in Christ, he offers all happiness in place of our misery, all wealth in place of our neediness; in him he opens to us the heavenly treasures that our whole faith may contemplate his beloved Son, our whole expectation depend upon him, and our whole hope cleave to and rest in him.  This, indeed, is that secret and hidden philosophy which cannot be wrested from syllogisms.  But they whose eyes God has opened surely learnt it by heart, that in his light they may see light (Institutes, 3.20.1, trans. Ford Lewis Battles). 

Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you-we who carry our mortality about us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. Yet these humans, due part of your creation as they are, still do long to praise you. You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you (St. Augustine, Confessions, Boulding translation).

Class details:  The class will be taught by Cynthia R. Nielsen (me), doctoral student of philosophy at the University of Dallas, and will meet at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Tuesdays from 6:30-8pm during the month of June, beginning June 3, 2008.  For more information email Cynthia Nielsen at crn@pobox.com.  For those who desire to read the book while taking the course, I highly recommend (but do not require) Maria Boulding’s translation of the Confessions, which is the translation that I will be using for the course. 

the real event of understanding…goes continually beyond what can be brought to the understanding of the other person’s words by methodological effort and critical self-control.  It is true of every conversation that through it something different has come to be (”Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem,” p. 58).  

In addition to his focus on the dialogical character of a text (emphasizing the text’s flexibility or dynamism, yet still affirming the text’s identity), Gadamer develops what he calls a “phenomenology of the game” to highlight the inadequacy of a theory of understanding that focuses solely and exclusively on the subjectivity of the author or the interpreter.[1]  In his editorial introduction to Gadamer’s Philosophical Heremeneutics, David Linge describes how, in the phenomenon of play, the player, so to speak, “loses himself” in the game-he or she is “absorbed into the back-and-forth movement of the game, that is, into the definable procedure and rules of the game.”[2] The game is not understood as an “action of subjectivity,” but rather as a “release from subjectivity.”  As Linge explains, “what is essential to the phenomenon of play is not so much the particular goal it involves but the dynamic back-and-forth movement in which the players are caught up-the movement that itself specifies how the goal will be reached.  Thus the game has its own place or space (its Spielraum), and its movement and aims are cut off from the direct involvement in the world stretching beyond it.”[3]

The structures that Gadamer finds in the phenomenology of play are then put in service of Gadamer’s attempt to develop an alternative theory of understanding–one that neither confines the meaning of the text solely to the subjective intention of the author, nor construes the project of understanding as merely an attempt to re-produce the original intention of the author.  As Linge observes, the customary authorial intention hermeneutical approach is fashioned in the image of the methodology of modern science. “Just as scientific experiments can be repeated exactly any number of times under the same conditions and mathematical problems have but one answer, so the author’s intention constitutes a kind of fact, a ‘meaning-in-itself,’ which is repeated by the correct interpretation.”[4]

Notes

 [2] Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. xxiii.

[3] Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. xxiii[4] Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. xxiv.

[See part IV].  This is my concluding post on the “Phenomenological Explorations of Music” series.

Having examined the calculated aspects of jazz improvisation, as well as highlighting the some of the ways in which improvisation and places of indeterminacy emerge and exist in classical music, I now turn to discuss (by way of Benson’s insights), the idea that a sharp dichotomy exists between the work and its performance.  In chapter four (”The Ergon within the Energeia“) of his book, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, Benson discusses the ways in which a musical ergon or product both emerges from musical energeia or activity, and yet this ergon “still remains within the play of musical energeia” and cannot be separated from it.  In other words, Benson believes that given the fuzzy boundaries between composition and improvisation, coupled with the unavoidable presence of interpretation involved in performances and the on-going nature of musical traditions, perhaps musical works are more properly described in dynamic rather than static terms.  Benson even goes so far as to say that

the telos of music making cannot be defined simply in terms of the creation of musical works, or even primarily so.  Instead the work becomes a means to the end of making music, not an end in itself.  [Likewise], if the work exists within the play of musical energeia, then it cannot be seen as autonomous or detached.  Like a living organism, it is ever in motion and constantly in need of care and infusions of new life to keep it alive.[1]

One of Benson’s goals in this chapter is to attempt to explain “this elusive thing that exists within musical energeia,” and in order to do so he dialogues with Roman Ingarden’s position.  Ingarden’s fundamental assumption is that “there is not merely an accidental but an essential separation between the work and its written and aural expressions.”[2] Ingarden takes this route because he is concerned to preserve a kind of superhistorical ergon that remains untouched by the energia of actual music performance through the course of time.  However, as Benson points out, Ingarden himself, being a good phenomenologist, is aware of tensions within his own position, which makes his contribution highly instructive.[3]  First, Ingarden begins by asking, what is relation between the work and the score?  According to Ingarden, the score preserves the work and helps to maintain its identity.[4] Yet, Ingarden (as was the case with Cone) admits that the score does not exhaust the work and merely relates aspects of the work-the score functions as a kind of “schema.”  If we acknowledge both that the score maintains the identity of the work in some sense, and yet the score does fully circumscribe the work, then we are pressed to ask, what then is the “something more” that the score fails to capture?  To this question, Benson adds, “[i]s there something that guarantees the identity of this surplus that goes beyond the score?  Moreover, what connection is there-if any-between this more and musical energeia?”[5]

In order to try to deal with the differences that surface between various performances of the same piece, Ingarden takes the position that a work possesses a “stock of possibilities” and is “in a sense inherently complete.”[6] Consequently, according to Ingarden, over time the various performers of a work are not creating anything new, rather there are simply discovering the latent possibilities already “embedded” in the work which simply need to be actualized.  Thus, the work does not really change over time but merely appears to change.  However, as Benson observes, “the problem with this view is that-practically-these possibilities seem not to come merely from within but also from without:  for they arise-at least partly-by way of performance traditions, which are themselves developing.”[7]  But again, being a good phenomenologist, Ingarden does not totally ignore the fact that the work in practice does in fact go beyond the intentions of the composer due to, what we have referred to previously as “places of indeterminacy” (Unbestimmtheitsstellen), which are as it were “born” with every work, and some of which are made only determinate through a live performance.  Thus, Ingarden at least implies that these untouchable works are in fact in process and dynamic.

Against what Benson labels as a kind of Platonist understanding of a musical work, Benson argues for a mediating way which acknowledges that a work possesses a “stock of possibilities” that constitute it, but that those possibilities are supplemented by additional possibilities that come into being over the course of time via the performances themselves and as a result of evolving musical traditions.  Elaborating his view, Benson explains,

a composer may indeed have a complex conception of the work (and so potentially a relatively complex conception of the work (and so potentially a relatively complex set of “intentions”), but those intentions are supplemented by the actual performances and the development of performance traditions.  Thus, we could say that Bach had intentions for the St. Matthew Passion that were complex and specific.  But the [later] performance by Mendelssohn did not merely bring out those possibilities (even though it did that too).  Rather, it also created certain possibilities-possibilities that truly did not exist before.[8]

If instead we opt for Ingarden’s position, we find ourselves in the following rather paradoxical situation.  That is, if we claim that musical works somehow transcend and are not touched by musical activity (energeia), then we must conclude that “no one every really experiences a musical work.”  Ingarden himself denies that we experience “a given musical work as an ideal aesthetic object.”[9]  As Benson puts it, “[o]n Ingarden’s account, then, the work itself turns out to be something that no one ever hears.”[10]  A second rather serious tension in Ingarden’s account again springs from his strict dichotomy between musical work (ergon) and musical activity (energeia).  Understandably, Ingarden is concerned to secure the identity of a musical work, and this is why he argues for a “superhistorical” work.  This allows Ingarden to say that the work is not simply identical to the score but possesses some degree of autonomy from both the score and the various performances.[11] Yet, Ingarden also admits both that musical works have an historical origin, and that “the properties of a work are constituted intersubjectively-and over time.”[12] Ingarden then leaves us somewhere between the historical and the superhistorical.  For Benson, this inbetween-ness highlights the failure of a position which advocates a sharp dichotomy between a work’s existence and identity on the one hand, and its “aural embodiments” on the other.[13]  Consequently, as mentioned above, Benson opts for an “interconnectedness of work and performance,” and suggests that instead of the denomination, “work,” which connotes a finished product, we should return to the idea of “piece.”  Piece implies both that which is “connected to a contextual whole” from which it cannot be completely severed, and it communicates a more fragmentary and on-going character-something “inherently incomplete, for the musical context in which it exists is in flux.”[14]

Although my essay probably raises more questions than it answers and only scratches the surface of what might be accomplished by bringing music into conversation with the insights of phenomenology, hopefully some the themes that we have considered-identity and difference, musical places of indeterminacy, and the various ways that music presents itself to us, from its origin (Ursprung) to the “final manuscript” (Fassung letzter Hand)-has provoked us to stretch our thinking about both disciplines in new ways. 

Notes

[6] Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, p. 128.

[7] Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, p. 128.

[8] Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, p. 129.

[9] Roman Ingarden, Ontology of the Work of Art:  The Musical Work-The Picture-The Architectural Work-The Film, trans. Raymond Meyer with John T. Goldthwait (Athens:  Ohio University Press, 1989), p. 108, as quoted in Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, p. 130.

[10] Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, p. 131.

[11] Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, p. 131. 

[12] Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, p. 131.  Cf. Ingarden, Ontology of the Work of Art, p. 110, 115, and 119-20. 

[13] Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, p. 132.

[14] Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, pp. 132-33.

affirms a differentiated unity of God and humanity in creation and redemption, such that humanity may participate in God through Christ; union with God is not only the eschatological end, but a paradigmatic feature of the God-human relationship (p. 26).

Given that the end of the semester is drawing near, I do not have time to give a more extensive summary of the book; however, I hope to do so this summer. 

My beautiful, brilliant and extremely delightful daughter, Ashley, has recently been showing signs of a budding philosopher (as well as a budding ballerina, a budding botanist, and a budding comedian).  Below are some of the more philosophical comments and inquiries that she has posed recently:

• (1) Application of the principle of non-contradiction. How so? We use a timer that we call a “dinger” when we put her in “time-out” for disciplinary purposes. Our dinger recently bit the dust, and we have yet to replace it. A few days ago, I needed to put her in time-out, and after doing so realized that we still are without a dinger. So I told Ashley that I would be the dinger, seeing that she was protesting that without a dinger she didn’t or couldn’t possibly stay in time-out. Right before I left the room, Ashley, with a very serious look on her face said, “How can you be the dinger? You are the momma?”
• (2) Am I my body? Before turning out the lights and saying goodnight, we often ask Ashley what her job is, that is, we pose the question, “what are you supposed to do?” To which she answers, “Stay in bed and go to sleep.” Lately, we’ve had a difficult time getting her to stay in bed, as she likes to explore in her toy box and make up all kinds of imaginary worlds, which each get their own song and characters. So we’ve added, “show us with your body that you will stay in bed”-meaning show us with your actions not just your words. To this, Ashley asked, pointing to her toe, “Is this my body?” “Yes,” we said. Then she pointed to her elbow, “is this also my body?” “Yes,” we answered. Ashley looked puzzled, as if she wanted to ask, “shouldn’t we then say bodies, and not body?” or “how many bodies do I have?” Then she touched the bedpost and asked, “Is this my body?” “No,” we replied. Pointing back at herself, she asked, “Am I my body?” Pretty good question for a three-year old.