You’re right, Jim, there’s a lot that comes with Wright’s view of history. I merely meant to emphasize that Christianity is based on an event that we believe really, historically occurred in time and space. We fail to be responsible interpreters of God’s revelation if we neglect its historical context.

Matt C. – I think you are right – most of the heat is how I express this ordering of sciences rather than the ordering itself. I could use more Van Tillian language, but I think the Scholastic categories are tighter and cleaner. Nonetheless, they are interchangeable. In the end, and in my opinion, I’m really just allowing scholastic categories to formalize what I and others have always said as Van Tillians – the transcendence of theology and the dependence of all other knowledge (and being!).

Steve – I take a traditional view on the ordering of philosophical discourse. Metaphysics takes primacy (first philosophy) over epistemology and ethics. That is to say, metaphysical doctrines contour and calibrate epistemological inquiry – and to the best of our ability, not the other way around! These subdisciplines investigate the most proper questions and problems in philosophy. After these doctrines are set, aestetics, politics, jurisprudence, philosophy of history etc, are legitimate topics for philosophical inquiry, but they are taking all of their principles from what has been already discoverd in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Here is a crude way of putting it – you can’t have a metaphysic or epistemology without governing theological doctrines already set and you can’t have a philosophy of history or art without governing metaphysical or epistemological doctrines in place. What myself and many experienced in college is that for history or art, etc there is no metaphysic or epistemology to draw from because they are decried as principleless and thus arbitrary, and rightly so. My whole and most imporant point is that for Christians, reformed Trinitarian Christians, metaphysics and epistemology are NOT principleless and arbitrary – but activated and governed and founded within a Christian Trinitarian worldview. Nonetheless, even while philosophy depends on the higher science of theology, philosophy still has a separate body of knowledge that is not derived from a theological investigation but a distinct philosophical one. I suppose that is the controversial point. (It warrants repeating – in ultimate principle there is no philosophy, knowledge, thought, or language without theological truths governing, determining, and founding the whole life and world system).

Steve

Looks like I didn’t remember the quote correctly at all. However, I suppose it still can be used similarly, even if Pascal meant it for a different context.

Thanks Jim!

I’m thankful for the benefit of being able to sit back slightly more as a listener of a podcast, rather than that of a participant in a live, interactive conversation – otherwise I probably would much more easily have gotten lost!

I think I adopt LaRocca’s hermeneutic more readily than the others’. I’m not able to tell if it’s more because of the presuppositions driven by my personality or the objective weight of the argument. I think that formalism is something of an epistemological draw to some more than others, but for personal motivations driven by the inevitable effect of our subjective natures (obvious, of course).

Who was it that said, something to the effect of, “There are personal motivations the heart knows not what of?” I remember disagreeing with this philosopher on most points but in this one, but it seems easier to apply when, as some would see it, we’re splitting epistemological hairs.

Nevertheless, I think that LaRocca’s argument is more cohesive and thorough in its system than the others’, contentious and full of tricky implications as it evidently is. In the heat of the moment that it’s being drawn out, though, it’s a bit more difficult to supress a distrust for, perhaps because it has the potential to slightly readjust so many of our presuppositions (and that seems to always leave Reformed folks feeling more vulnerable than those in other camps who don’t use Van Tilian apologetics so heavily)

Sorry guys, these thoughts are rambling. The show was great and a lot of fun to listen to, as iron sharpens iron.

PS – We have to be careful with Wright’s quote on history and Christianity. For him, history is not determined by special revelation, but rather is an autonomous discipline to which he believes he needs to make Christianity adhere. Because of his critical-realism, he is able to use a filter approach with the biblical text, questioning the historical nature of some texts, or re-interpret them, if they do not fit into the mold of his own autonomously derived historiography.

From my perspective, much contemporary philosophy is dependent on the sciences and does not take an authoritative or constraining stance. Philosophers dictating the sciences from the armchair via introspection, intuition, and conceptual analysis, have been too often mistaken in the next generation. Think of Kant’s assertion that Euclidean geometry is a necessary category by which we structure our perception—only a few decades before the development of non-Euclidean geometries. One way to know Thales’s metaphysics is incorrect is by knowing there is a Creator-creature distinction, yet another way is through the natural sciences, to test the empirical status of his water-ontology. In other words, much philosophy is (and should be) subservient to the sciences, simply because much philosophy is within the bounds of science an attempt to understand the world in ways the sciences are good at discovering—the role of neurological faculties in moral judgment, the reliability of probabilistic reasoning or intuition, cross-cultural differences in linguistic practices such as proper name reference, or conceptual issues in the sciences.

I don’t see where such scientifically oriented philosophy fits into Bob’s picture, perhaps simply because Bob is not fully acknowledging that much of what is called philosophy, especially in the late 20th century and today, is simply theoretical science, to which we should have no objection (and I think such division of labor is most welcoming after so many centuries of philosophers dictating—via pure conceptual analysis or intuition—how the world must of necessity be, science or theology be damned).

Ontological naturalism (whatever that is) might be incompatible with Christian theism, but a weak methodological naturalism shouldn’t be within the proper domains. Of course, the naturalistic projects range from eliminitivistic of traditional philosophy (e.g., the Churchland’s eliminitivism in philosophy of mind, to Ladyman’s recent book Everything must go: metaphysics naturalized) to simply conversant with philosophy. Which particular project places too much authority on science or philosophy, or which is simply false or self-refuting, will have to be discovered in the details.

So, for instance, when Bob seems to equate philosophy and theology at 45:30-46:10, he might want to note the fact that much of what goes on in philosophy, Christian and non-, does not fit this schema—his is a normative schema, not descriptive of, say, how philosophy is practiced, I take it. Bob’s definition of philosophy is appropriate, but it does place most of what goes on in philosophy as not philosophy but science, and it does not give us a priori grounds for rejecting the contents of those sciences or philosophies.

Kuddos to Bob (I think it was him) for attempting to hash out some helpful boundaries. A bit disappointing that the discussion did not touch more deeply on questions like, “What, then, is the proper use of philosophy in (doing) theology?”, but not particularly surprising that it did not.

A few general comments on Bob’s categorization… I thought it very astute and helpful, actually, with a minor but important qualification: On the point where he touches on theology’s utilization of philosophy, I would suggest again – even for fear of sounding like a broken record – that theology is not free to use philosophy “as much as it wants” (49.36m). We appear to be rather obviously constrained by Scripture on this point.

I hold that we are not free to mingle philosophy, speaking generally, with our theology. I further hold that sound reformed tradition concurs with this. The participants of this panel all take an opposing view, I am aware, but I would argue that you have not made an exegetical case for this, ever, but merely assumed it. (Not that this disposition is uniquely yours, to be sure. It seems well grounded across the departments of today seminaries, I am also aware.)

So to hear Bob’s attempts at categorization (and formalization) was a refreshing breeze.

Yet the reluctance with which the rest of the panel endured his helpful efforts – with a very clearly expressed view to the authority, and not to rigid boundary! – was telling. This indeed is one of the places where, in my experience, Van Tilian expositors appear most determined to remain undisturbed. And not without reason, i think. When the boundary between these fields of study is loose, or nonexistent, even according to the model of VT’s writings, the unchecked mixture of theology and philosophy is free to promulgate itself as orthodoxy. But place a biblical constraint on the use of philosophy, even the ones proposed here by Bob, and Van Tilian construct itself begs to be revisited while shedding light on another important truth: That the unregenerate man may well attain correct/true (whatever adjective you fancy) knowledge in any field of natural sciences, philosophy included, provided its findings do not contradict sound theology.

Now, I know this last statement is not where Bob intended to go with his categories and I do not want to misuse his words in any way- I understand him to be a self professed Van Tilian. But I think his categorization helpful in promoting reflection on some important biblical matters.