Does Divine Mystery Lead to Moral Paralysis? The Agency of the Spirit and the Skeptical Theist Response to the Problem of Evil (Part 6)

Last time I noted that the skeptical theist needs an alternative model that appropriately identifies the locus of her skepticism. This model will make the following claims:

(1) Some, but not all, of God’s purposes are beyond our cognitive capacities.

(2) God has revealed to us the purposes of divine agency, which are relevant to our moral obligations.

(3) Therefore, we have revealed to us divine purposes relevant to our moral agency while divine purposes are not fully understood.

What is it, then, that we affirm about divine agency that is helpful here? First, we affirm that both human and divine agency involve the power to bring about certain states of affairs intentionally. Agents of any kind act in purposive ways so as to achieve an end. This definition ensures that we can indeed predicate the same sense of agency to both God and humans. Secondly, we must affirm, however, that there are significant differences in how God and humans are able to bring about states of affairs. The difference that is relevant here which I would like to highlight is that for the Christian tradition, God is a Trinitarian agent. That is to say, there are three divine agents who act in various ways and with distinct roles in the Godhead. It is often noted that the Father is closely associated with creation, the Son with redemption, and the Holy Spirit with perfection. Indeed, Gunton notes that “the Spirit’s work is considered to be eschatological: as perfecting that which was created in the beginning.”[1] Relevant to our discussion is that the Holy Spirit is affirmed in the Christian tradition as that divine agent whose mission it is to perfect creation, to rid the earth of suffering and evil. Thus an oft-neglected element in Christian discussions of the problem of evil is the pneumatological element. If we want to look for the God who acts with regard to evil today, we should look no further than to the agency of the Holy Spirit.

The upshot of our interest with the agency of the Spirit is that rather than acting solo, the Spirit mediates his agency through human agents. Luke 4:14 sees the Spirit empowering Jesus for mission and service, and Acts 1:8 describes to the disciples the impending day of Pentecost, at which they will be given power through the Spirit. It is this focus on the Spirit’s enabling our own human agency that is characteristic of Pentecostal theology, as Kärkkäinen affirms, “Pentecostal/Charismatic approaches emphasize empowerment through the Spirit for witnessing and service.”[2] The problem of evil should therefore take a distinct turn for Pentecostals.

It is not simply that we question why God allows evil to happen in the world, but it is that we have already affirmed that we are part of the solution. As the Holy Spirit has mediated his agency through the church, we have been empowered to partner with the Spirit’s work of perfecting and restoring creation. In their recent work, Mission in the Spirit, Julie and Wonsuk Ma emphasize that while Pentecostals have historically focused their mission on evangelism and healing, a broader and more comprehensive concept of mission is needed: “If Pentecostals develop the theological capability to apply their prized heritage of healing to the broken families, relationships, divided churches and societies, racial conflicts and moral decay, the impact of Pentecostal mission will be unimaginable.”[3] Thus, a robust Pentecostal theology with an emphasis on mission in the Spirit will have far-reaching consequences on our moral agency. Pentecostals will want to say that they have not only been enabled to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to set free those who are oppressed, but that they have been mandated to do this work. Further, Pentecostals will affirm with John 16:13 that the Holy Spirit is the divine agent who leads us into all truth. Because moral truth is here included, this means that the Pentecostal will rely on the Holy Spirit for guidance in the arena of moral action.  This formulation of Pentecostal theology provides a rich framework for moral agency and obligation.

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[1] Colin Gunton, The Christian Faith (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 185.

[2] Velli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 92.

[3] Julie C. Ma and Wonsuk Ma, Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Charismatic/Pentecostal Missiology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 25.

Does Divine Mystery Lead to Moral Paralysis? The Agency of the Spirit and the Skeptical Theist Response to the Problem of Evil (Part 5)

The intuitive appeal of skeptical theism for the Christian lies in the claim that we must have due humility in the face of our understanding of God and evil. Indeed this seems to be the point of the Job narrative in the Old Testament, that as finite human beings, it is simply not given to us to know why God allows evil to occur. Thus, retaining a strong sense of divine mystery has been an important feature of the Christian tradition, one that I think the skeptical theist position tries to articulate. The problem enters when the skeptical theist allows her skepticism to become too pervasive, when divine mystery is emphasized above positive knowledge of God. As Colin Gunton notes in reference to negative theology, “What might appear to be a proper human modesty before the divine can turn into the supreme blasphemy of denying revelation.”[1] The skeptical theist position as described above does fit in the stream of the via negativa in relying on human ignorance to do the heavy lifting when it comes to theological language. The potential danger, then, of skeptical theism is that it promotes a picture of God apart from the picture that He has painted of himself for us in divine revelation, in Scripture. While it is clear that retaining a sense of divine mystery is a healthful aspect of the Christian’s beliefs, that sense of cognitive limitation should not also remove Scripture from giving knowledge of God. Therefore, from a theological, as well as from a philosophical, perspective, complete skepticism is not desirable or warranted. 

Critics of skeptical theism often pose this dilemma:[2] on the one hand, if we confess our cognitive limitations in the realm of values or in the realm of discerning God’s purposes, we end up morally paralyzed. On the other hand, if we begin to provide reasons for thinking we understand goods, evils, and God’s purposes concerning them, we have taken the path of theodicy, we must reject divine mystery, and can no longer call ourselves skeptical theists. But what reason is there for thinking that the skeptical theist must be committed to this dichotomy? While this dichotomy may hold for the skeptical theist who accepts ST 1-3 or a bare LST, I take it that these positions are not essential for skeptical theism. The defining feature of the skeptical theist is that she rejects the noseeum inference. She believes that our inability to spot (all) the reasons God may have for allowing evil isn’t evidence that there are no such reasons. This position is perfectly compatible, however, with the skeptical theist being able to spot some reasons. The skeptical theist doesn’t need to claim that God’s purposes are wholly inaccessible to us, but merely that we lack a complete and comprehensive knowledge of those purposes. At the same time, our cognitive limitations must not interfere with our ability to act in any given moral situation.

The skeptical theist, then, needs an alternative model that appropriately identifies the locus of her skepticism. Rather than understanding our cognitive limitations in terms of general considerations about value (as in ST 1-3) or a blanket skepticism of divine intentions (as in LST), I suggest we fuse LST, the skepticism about our knowledge of divine purposes, with what we know about divine agency. This model will make the following claims:

(1) Some, but not all, of God’s purposes are beyond our cognitive capacities.

(2) God has revealed to us the purposes of divine agency, which are relevant to our moral obligations.

(3) Therefore, we have revealed to us divine purposes relevant to our moral agency while divine purposes are not fully understood.

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[1] Colin Gunton, Act and Being (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 36.

[2] See Sehon, “The Problem of Evil: Skeptical Theism Leads to Moral Paralysis,” 72; and Mike Almeida and Graham Oppy, “Reply to Trakakis and Nagasawa,” 7.

Does Divine Mystery Lead to Moral Paralysis? The Agency of the Spirit and the Skeptical Theist Response to the Problem of Evil (Part 4)

Second Response

The next route which may be taken by the skeptical theist is to moderate her skepticism by claiming that she does have adequate knowledge in the realm of human moral agency, but that those considerations are not adequate in the realm of divine moral agency. So she may put forward a Limited Skeptical Thesis (LST):

           LST:  We have no good reason for thinking that the goods, evils, and entailment relations between them that are applicable to human agents are representative of the goods, evils, and entailment relations between them that are applicable to divine agents. 

Trakakis and Nagasawa seem to have something like this in mind when they claim, “the skeptical theist need only hold that it is God’s purposes or intentions that often elude us. That is to say, our knowledge or understanding of God-justifying goods falls miserably short, even though our grasp of goods in general is quite adequate.”[1] The advantage of this position is that it seems to fall in line with a more common sense theistic picture of God and humanity. While human agents have moral capacities and awareness, God’s reasons and purposes are often inscrutable. Nevertheless, there lies a problem for the proponent of LST as well. Almeida and Oppy reply with the following reductio argument that emphasizes our duty not to interfere with God’s purposes:

1. We (human beings) are always (at least) morally permitted not to interfere with the purposes of God.

2. For all we can tell, there are divine purposes in allowing certain evils.

            3. (Therefore) For all we know, we are morally permitted not to interfere with those evils.[2]

While the skeptical theist may want to claim that she can be confident that God’s purposes don’t conflict with her moral obligations, as Sehon points out, “If God’s reasons are entirely unknown, then it is hard to fathom how the theist could possibly know that those reasons are not relevant to my situation.”[3] Thus it appears that the skeptical theist who endorses a bare form of LST still does not elude a problematic moral skepticism.

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[1] Nick Trakakis and Yujin Nagasawa, “Skeptical Theism and Moral Skepticism,” Ars Disputandi 4 (2004): 23.

[2] Mike Almeida and Graham Oppy, “Reply to Trakakis and Nagasawa,” Ars Disputand 5 (2005).

[3] Scott Sehon, “The Problem of Evil: Skeptical Theism Leads to Moral Paralysis,” 73.

Does Divine Mystery Lead to Moral Paralysis? The Agency of the Spirit and the Skeptical Theist Response to the Problem of Evil (Part 3)

At this point, two responses have been given in defense of the skeptical theist position, which, as I will argue, are not successful when they are joined with ST 1-3. The first is the argument that it is God’s commands, rather than our competence in the sphere of value assessments, that gives us the ability to act morally. The second is the argument that the skepticism entailed by ST 1-3 should be limited to divine agents rather than human agents.

First Response 

Bergmann and Rea respond by claiming that the skeptical theist need not worry about this objection, for she doesn’t hold ST 1-3 in a vacuum. As a theist, she believes that we have other ways of apprehending our moral obligations than by having a thorough command of goods, evils, and the relations between them. Bergmann and Rea state, “theists very typically believe that God has commanded his creatures to behave in certain ways; and they also very typically believe that God’s commands provide all-things-considered reasons to act.”[1] Thus Bergmann and Rea argue that we do have enough knowledge in the realm of value to recognize what God’s commands are and to follow them. The theist’s full understanding of moral obligations doesn’t come from our contemplation of the realm of values, but what God has revealed to us.

           

This kind of reply, however, does not tell us where God’s commands are to be found and how we might be able to evaluate them. What are we to make of conflicting reports of God’s commands (say, between the Christian Bible and the Koran), or dubious commands that are given, for instance, in the Old Testament? In this manner, Scott Sehon objects that “on the Bergmann and Rea response, we are to do what God tells us to do, rather than reasoning things out on our own; so, we can’t employ our common sense moral reasoning when interpreting what it is that God is telling us. So it will become very difficult to interpret around recalcitrant scriptural passages (e.g., those condoning slavery).”[2] While the common theistic approach to interpreting and interpreting difficult scriptural passages is to appeal to moral reasoning and divine intentions, it doesn’t appear that these are options for the skeptical theist who has endorsed ST 1-3. For if we cannot draw ultimate conclusions about goods, evils, and their relations, we cannot judge which commands apply to us and which ones do not. Stephen Maitzen points out the dilemma which once again confronts the skeptical theist: “Our knowing enough to identify, interpret, and apply God’s commands ought to increase our confidence in drawing the very ‘noseeum’ inferences that skeptical theism is deliberately designed to block.”[3] Thus for the skeptical theist who is committed to ST 1-3, the appeal to divine commands is not sufficient to overturn a pervading moral skepticism.

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[1] Michael Bergmann and Michael Rea, “In Defense of Skeptical Theism: A Reply to Almeida and Oppy,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2005): 244.

[2] Scott Sehon, “The Problem of Evil: Skeptical Theism Leads to Moral Paralysis,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 67 (2010): 77.

[3] Stephen Maitzen, “Skeptical Theism and God’s Commands,” Sophia 47 (2007): 41.

Okay, back at it...

I am now attempting to end my obligatory blogging hiatus, having regained some semblance of constancy after the busyness of the end of the semester, family in town, and moving across town.

Look forward to the conclusions to my paper on the skeptical theist response to the problem of evil, Ricoeur on forgiveness, and some reflections on Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self.