Related to Rödl's comments on human intellect, Klaus Reich discusses thought in a way that might also be employed toward an understanding of the Kantian distinction between God and humanity, specifically with regard to the Creator as productive in the very act of apperception:
"[...] the concept of the object that alone has sense for me rests on the fact that, although I am conscious of myself in the 'I think' as spontaneity, I am also conscious of myself as nonproductive, that is, if you will, as finite. I could only be productive as pure 'I' if a determinate content of consciousness was given through my pure apperception. I, therefore, depend on a given manifold and must 'think' this, that is, I must unite [syntithenai] this given manifold in a consciousness that is conditioned by the thoroughgoing unity of all consciousness."
Klaus Reich, The Completeness of Kant's Table of Judgments (Stanford, 1992), p. 29.
The One for Whom the content of consciousness is actually produced through its very apperception - Who saw everything that He had made, and it was very good - is, in contrast, an infinite divine intellect.
On the nature of human intellect, Sebastian Rödl writes:
"Our intellect depends on what it represents; it is dependent on its object's being given to it. This can be understood in two ways: such that it constitutes the essence of the human intellect, or such that it indicates its deficiency. In the one case, the human intellect is what it is through its unity with sensibility and therefore essentially finite; in the other case the human intellect is in itself infinite, and finite only insofar as it is limited by its dependence on sensibility. If understanding and sensibility form an essential unity in man, then human thought is essentially situational. Conversely, if understanding and sensibility come together in human beings only by accident (so that their unity does not touch what they are), then thought is not essentially related to intuition; and in that case thought is, insofar as it is situational, deficient as thought."
Sebastian Rödl, Categories of the Temporal (Cambridge: Harvard, 2012), p. 70-71
The idea seems counter-intuitive at first. Dependence upon earthly senses leading to the deficiency of human knowledge seems to be a theologically useful way of understanding our cognitive limitations as creatures. But in fact, such circumstances would only signal a deficiency if unalloyed human intellect were not originally so constrained - if our intellect looked something more like the divine intellect. In fact, sensibility does not limit human intellect because to be human is to think within the unity of sensibility and understanding. That is, to think as finite intellect... creaturely... but not as bound to creaturely sensibility like some kind of chained demigod.
Rödl contrasts this with the divine intellect:
"Thoughts without intuitions are empty: the human, discursive intellect depends on its being given an object through the senses. Thus it is finite: it is conditioned by what it represents. This distinguishes it from the divine intellect, Who intuits nothing but Himself. What He intuits is not given to Him, but is His own act. The divine intellect is infinite; He is the origin of what He knows and does not depend on it. Human knowledge is of a different kind from divine knowledge; knowing is something different in Him from what it is in us." (57)
This follows Kant, who says,
"[Human sensibility] is derivative (intuitus derivativus), not original (intuitus originarius), and therefore not an intellectual intuition. [...] such intellectual intuition seems to belong solely to the primordial being, and can never be ascribed to a dependent being, dependent in its existence as well as in its intuition, and which through that intuition determines its existence solely in relation to given objects." (B72)
Rödl offers an interestingly Kantian picture of God. Kant's use of God in the Critique of Pure Reason has much more of a subjunctive feel to it. God is there as a usefully posited limit concept that sets the contours of human knowledge in relief, but the primary point is clearly elsewhere than theology. Commentators might understandably conclude that Kant isn't really even talking about God here, but Rödl takes the God-talk at face value. He speaks rather plainly of God and is not shy about using capitalized pronouns or even setting up what looks a lot like a hierarchy of being from animal sensibility to human and then divine intellect. At the same time, Rödl never really strays from the God of Kant's Critique... there is no attempt to sneak God in by overthinking the purport of one of Kant's concepts. Rödl is more emphatic about the reality of the divine intellect, but as far as I can tell he isn't trying to make something out of Kant's point that isn't already present in Kant. What impresses me about this is that Rödl's comfort-level in talking about God makes him sound like a theologian, but at the same time he ends up adding less in the way of philosophical overlay to Kant than most any other of the philosophical interpretations on offer.
Another round of chatter about open access has come up, this time stemming from a statement by the president of the Archaeological Institute of America (and from there to discussions on early Christianity and biblical studies blogs, which constitute the one degree of separation before getting to theology folks like me).
I haven't personally been able to muster any intense activism for Open Access in scholarship. I try not to mention this apathy too much, though, because I know that lots of librarians and researchers strongly support it, and that it can be a touchy subject. The rub for me is that I don't see how scholarship under the currently prevalent publishing model is all that closed or inaccessible in contrast to OA.
So as to avoid any misunderstanding, let me start by clarifying that...
I am not opposed to open access of published materials... I'm perfectly happy with initiatives to digitize and offer scholarship for free to people.
The prospect of Open Access should not be presented as an either/or opposite an Elsevier style publishing situation. There are plenty of possible futures for academic and other publishing that steer between these two stark alternatives and are genuinely attentive to the abuses of the latter. And they often incorporate aspects of the former.
As I see it, academic publishing already is (or is potentially) quite open and accessible to anyone who wants to engage in scholarly discourse. Further, where closedness and inaccessibility is present, it is also present in Open Access publication.
What would we achieve from an OA academy? From what I can tell, the goal is free online databases of research that are preserved for and accessible to the public. Apart from the accessibility of having it right here, and rightnow, though, what does this model achieve that can't already be achieved by emailing the author of an article and asking for a pdf attachment of it? Are there really authors out there who wouldn't oblige and pass on their published work to others personally? A novelist may not do it, but what royalties does the author of a journal article stand to lose?
This sort of open access already goes on all the time in the academy and beyond institutional affiliations. Further, I can't imagine that it hurts the sale of scholarly literature any more than something like Inter-library Loan does. Institutions and individuals still have good reasons to make their own libraries strong through purchased acquisitions despite free exchange of materials -- not least of which is the ability to continue to act as just such a lender in the exchange of academic discourse. On the contrary, an open database constitutes a transfer of curatorial responsibility away from libraries and individual scholars. There are good reasons for a library to own an electronic and a print version of a single academic resource under the current situation. To have an electronic version that is intended to be at everyone's fingertips, however, precludes any institutional or personal commitment to hold and exchange academic work.
It may not be an obviously bad thing for a centralized database (or various databases) to readily expose all scholarly work to everyone (everyone with the luxury of an internet connection, at least). In this case the literature would be accessed, digested, and cited just like it always has been. What is lost, it seems, is the institutional or personal exchange required by a traditional model of publication and dissemination of literature.
Is this just nostalgia for an old boy's club of academics? I don't think so. I'm not talking about keeping dusty old books for the sake of dust and age. The current state of scholarly exchange needs electronic versions of scholarly work and similarly advanced networking possibilities to function in as successful a manner as it does. It also needs good bibliographic information available online and with sophisticated search functions- this level of academic exchange can't work for the independent scholar (or even the affiliated scholar!) if journals don't have article contents and abstracts available openly to human browsers. There is no comparison between the level of academic exchange taking place now and what took place a century ago, and I don't want to roll things back to an idyllic past. Quite the opposite, we need to move forward with new research technologies.
The OA discussion, however, would have you believe that without scholarly research available freely (to anyone with an internet connection), no one would be willing or able to share information with one another! When the AIA opposes certain measures to enforce OA, they're immediately branded as anti-liberal and elitist, despite many significant ventures in open technology and metadata improvement that they're committed to. Don't let this sort of rhetoric fool you. Open Access is a good ideal to strive for, and it's beneficial to the academic world that we can post research for free viewing (to anyone with an internet connection). But we are not coming out of some dark ages in leaving the current model of publication, collection, and exchange. Plenty of reforms and improvements have been going on for some time, and should continue without feeling undue pressure to think that an online "open access" is the only adequate solution.
Did you know that in the same issue of the Review of Metaphysics that W.V.O. Quine published his essay "On What There Is", a young George Lindbeck published a note "On Aristotle's Discussion of God and the World"?
I haven't posted in over a month, and while I'm usually loath to get too autobiographical here, I thought I'd write a quick update for lack of anything else.
The winter quarter is always a bit rough here at the University of Chicago; the atmosphere is more gloomy, and the bunker mentality among students is heightened from its already-high baseline. Working in the undergraduate dorms (and some particular problems that have come up this year) have made the last few months especially wearing. The recent sun and the warmer weather is welcome, then, even though I would usually prefer the long, cold, snowy winters.
Last quarter I took courses on Monotheism and Its Discontents and Religion in the European Enlightenment. This quarter I'm only taking one course, and in the philosophy department- Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It has been going well so far. I'm actually finding Kant relatively straightforward my second time through the Critique. Interestingly, I have been finding Kantians much more difficult to understand than Kant himself. I'm not sure this is because of the imprecision or relative difficulty of the secondary literature. It may be simply because I don't yet have the background knowledge to follow current arguments as well as I could.
It has been my intention to lower my course load like this for a little while now so that I can begin to focus more on reading for exams (which I'll hopefully take toward the end of the next academic year) or personal research... not to mention on doing a more thorough job with the fewer classes that I am taking. I'm still learning the ropes of how best to get this done in a constructive manner, but it's certainly the right direction to take at the moment.
One new commitment that I'm very much looking forward to is working with the Library Student Resource Group here at the university. I was recently chosen as the representative for the Divinity School, which involves a two-year term of occasional meetings for discussing new developments at the library, student needs, proposals for future work, etc. This is obviously a real passion of mine, and I'm happy to be a part of the group. Our first meeting (well, my first meeting) is tomorrow.
In January I mentioned a Schleiermacher paper that I presented at a Divinity School workshop - this is currently being looked at by a journal, and sitting with its second referee. I'll have a chapter on "The Anglican Covenant and Anglicanorum Coetibus" coming out by the end of the summer in Pro Communione, a volume of essays on the Anglican Communion Covenant. Other than that, I'm not really in the midst of any writing projects. I have a few things in their earlier stages that I'm trying to set aside so as to be more productive in my reading, but they're not in any shape to speak of right now.
I won't be presenting a paper at AAR this year, but I will be there. I probably won't be attending NAPS, but I will be catching folks for drinks while they're in town for it... so let me know if you'll be at NAPS, and I'd be happy to try to meet/see you.
I am doing more of my work standing up these days, since reading Robert Minto on the standing desk. At the moment I'm trying not to frustrate Tricia too much by moving our desktop computer to higher places around the apartment, but I may have to build a more intentional standing desk over the summer -- this in addition to plans that I already have for a homemade book scanner of some sort (hopefully the topic of some future posts).
I've only skimmed through the ITC document published yesterday -- Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles, and Criteria. Worth noting are a few paragraphs that discuss the core identity of theology and seem, to me, intended to avoid a reduction of theology to one object or task. Each chapter of the document might be said to re-describe the essential task of theology.
In paras. 21 and 23, there is discussion of sacred scripture as the "soul of theology," and from Verbum Domini it is reaffirmed that: ‘where theology is not essentially the interpretation of the Church’s Scripture, such a theology no longer has a foundation.’ Theologians are here characterized as primarily commentators on Scripture.
In para. 35 the characterization of theology becomes more familiar to Protestants following Schleiermacher, who will tend to characterize theology as a sort of second-order critical reflection upon the doctrines of the faith: "Theologians help to clarify and articulate the content of the sensus fidelium, recognising and demonstrating that issues relating to the truth of faith can be complex, and that investigation of them must be precise." Do note, though, that such an understanding of theology does not mean that arguments for the necessity of personal faith in the theologian are no longer available: "It is clear, therefore, that theologians themselves must participate in the life of the Church to be truly aware of it." (I have argued something like this elsewhere, although in a somewhat weaker form)
In para. 93, the characterization of theology is akin to Barth's thought, and more like what one usually sees argued by theologians these days: "The object of theology is the living God, and the life of the theologian cannot fail to be affected by the sustained effort to know the living God. The theologian cannot exclude his or her own life from the endeavour to understand all of reality with regard to God"
This is probably a long shot, but in the spirit of a recent post I thought it was worth asking. I'm working on a paper that considers Karl Bretschneider's thought on reason and revelation in relation to its Enlightenment precursors. The other day I ran across Verzeichniss der Bibliothek des Generalsuper. K. G. Bretschneider, which looks to be a catalogue of his personal library in Gotha. This source would be a great help in determining exactly whom Bretschneider was reading; I'm especially curious to see which (if any) English philosophers he was reading, as he doesn't tend to cite these in his works.
Unfortunately the volume doesn't seem to be digitized and I can only find it at the University of Tübingen, with a non-circulating status. I've looked around a bit in some of the Thüringian archives online, but with no luck. Does anyone know if this volume is available elsewhere, or is digitized somewhere?
In the latest issue of American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, Gary Dorrien offers us a taste of his new book coming out this year.
As Princeton Theological Seminary moves into its presidential search, a letter to the selection committee calls for recognition of the evangelical presence at the seminary and consideration of this tradition and its commitment to mission as the "mother of theology." (letter pdf)
Benjamin Guyer on "+Robinson and an Elizabethan Apocryphon"... I love the historical sobriety that suddenly and unexpectedly gives way to the last line of the penultimate paragraph, "— as if Elizabeth were some sort of proto-1960s hippie-dippie!"
Academic frustration with Elsevier has recently reached the point of broader cultural visibility, with many angry editorials and a petition. Readers will know that this is not a new topic here, and of course I support its new-found momentum. The episode of Candide meeting Martin strikes me as an appropriate commentary: "He assembled them at his inn and gave them supper on condition that each took an oath to give a faithful account of his life-story; promising in return to choose the one who seemed to him most to be pitied and to have most cause for being discontented with his lot [...] He finally decided in favor of a poor scholar who had worked ten years for the publishing houses of Amsterdam, taking the view that there was no occupation in the world which could more disgust a man."
Mike Allen has a new book coming out - an introduction and reader for the Church Dogmatics.
I stumbled upon an amazing site the other day (via Early Modern Thought Online) run by the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and the Università di Cagliari. Biblioteche dei Filosofi is a database of the private libraries of great thinkers over the past few centuries. The site includes Nicholas of Cusa, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Stillingfleet, Zwingli, Goethe, Arminius, and many others. It looks like for most of the personalities, a pdf of a previously published index volume is included that lists the holdings of their personal library. These are of course the old and out-of-copyright versions; for instance, Georg Reimer's 1835 list of Schleiermacher's library is included rather than the more recent critical editions. This site offers a lot for curious exploration, as well as useful research material.
The Biblioteche also has an extensive explanation of the project that is worth reading, and they are looking for contributors.
The latest issue of the Scottish Journal of Theology is full of articles that look interesting... Najeb Awad on Augustine's de Trinitate as de Spirito Sancto ; Adam Eitel on Thomas Aquinas and Victor Preller ; John Webster on Torrance and Scripture ; and Kevin Hector on the Barthian controversy over trinity and election.
I will be sharing a paper with the theology workshop here at the Divinity School, entitled "Godforsakenness as the End of Prophecy: a proposal from Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre". If you're in the area, I'd be happy to see you there.
The ACNS has just released a statement from the province of the Southern Cone, which has approved the new Anglican Communion Covenant. This is good news for progress in Anglican unity, and a change from the previous situation, when then-primate Gregory Venables signed the Oxford Statement and affirmed that "the current text [of the Covenant] is fatally flawed and so support for this initiative is no longer appropriate."
Most interesting, to me, is the status of the Southern Cone in its relationship with the North American churches, and how this affects its standing in the wider communion. Last October I discussed the dismissal of the Southern Cone from ecumenical bodies because of its intervention in the affairs of other Anglican provinces. Kenneth Kearon had inquired about this transgression of the Windsor moratoria, with no response. In today's statement from the Southern Cone, however, we read:
the Southern Cone had held churches in North America under its wing for some time while the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) was formed. However, the Province has not maintained jurisdiction over any local churches there for over a year. As a result, all so called ‘border crossings’ by any provincial members ceased (as of October, 2010) even though the Southern Cone still remains in impaired communion with US and Canadian Provinces. It is hoped that the Covenant can now provide Communion stability.
This is an argument I've been making for a while... that continuing Anglican groups who have been in a situation of oversight from other provinces need to get out on their own and move into the ACNA as quickly as possible. Oversight from elsewhere, even if justified by Gospel purposes, means that these provinces remain delinquent as far as the Windsor Report and the canons of the Anglican churches are concerned.
If the Southern Cone is claiming that their border crossing ended in October of 2010, it's a shame that they never established communication with Kearon in order to prevent dismissal from the Unity, Faith, and Order Commission around the same time. I'm not sure what their current status is in this body, but hopefully the organizational machinery can now start to turn in the direction of reinstating their delegate, if this process has not begun already. The acceptance of the Covenant also raises questions about the future direction of GAFCON... that such an important province as the Southern Cone has affirmed the Covenant is hopefully a signal that minds are beginning to change from the rather harsh views that have come from conservative quarters about the viability of a covenanted Anglican future.
We are happily away from immediate responsibilities of work and school for a few weeks -- a much needed holiday with family. I've just finished reading H. Stuart Hughes' Consciousness and Society, which I have been meaning to get to ever since encountering it in the footnotes of Pauck's little Harnack-Troeltsch biography. I would definitely recommend the book (with a few hesitations) for a survey of a pivotal period in recent intellectual history. Interestingly, Hughes was pretty dismissive of Troeltsch, presenting him as a decidedly second-rate thinker throughout (a worthwhile criticism to consider, I think, though a bit too harsh as presented). I am now into a much-needed rereading of Schleiermacher's On Religion, and then on to his Hermeneutics and Criticism.
Congratulations to two PTS theologians... W. Travis McMacken for successfully defending, and David Congdon for an editing position with IVP.
Difficulties have arisen between the Anglican Mission in the Americas and the Province of Rwanda. AMiA bishops have broken (and created schism?) with Rwanda. Time will tell what future oversight will look like... perhaps a move towards ACNA?
The latest issue of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal is out, celebrating 25 years of the Ecclesiastical Law Society. Included in the issue is a reprinting of the late Eric Kemp's "The Spirit of the Canon Law and its Application in England," which was given as the keynote address of the Society's first meeting and published in the first issue of the journal.
In commemoration of its fifteenth year, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum has published a theme issue on the historiography of the patristic period around 1911. Included are articles on patristic scholarship in Germany, Armenia, Belgium, and Italy. There are also articles covering important works published during this time such as the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum and the third edition of the Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche. The following is taken from the opening editorial:
The Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/Journal of Ancient Christianity (ZAC) is celebrating its fifteenth “birthday” this year. On this occasion, the editors have decided to dedicate the thematic issue not to a specific topic from Early Christianity but to a question pertaining to research history: “What did patristic research look like 100 years ago?” The issue focuses, above all, on the German context, given that patristics played a prominent, if not central, role in German academic life of the late Wilhelmine period. This perspective is complemented by observations on the situation in Belgium and the Netherlands, Armenia and Italy. These angles are, of course, paradigmatic, and the selection was made for pragmatic reasons. For research on France and the English-speaking area, let us refer to the conference proceedings edited by Jacques Fontaine et al. (Patristique et Antiquité Tardive en Allemagne et en France de 1870 à 1930, Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1993) and to recent studies published by Elizabeth A. Clark, respectively. The contribution looking at Armenia shall serve as an incentive to produce analogous research for other linguistic areas as well. The same goes for the entire Russian speaking area.
"[...] the concept of the object that alone has sense for me rests on the fact that, although I am conscious of myself in the 'I think' as spontaneity, I am also conscious of myself as nonproductive, that is, if you will, as finite. I could only be productive as pure 'I' if a determinate content of consciousness was given through my pure apperception. I, therefore, depend on a given manifold and must 'think' this, that is, I must unite [syntithenai] this given manifold in a consciousness that is conditioned by the thoroughgoing unity of all consciousness."
