Many comments have popped up about John Piper's ludicrous proposition that the tornado over Minneapolis was a warning to Lutherans for capitulating to a sinful same sex behavior (Tony Jones, Jenell Williams Paris, iMonk, pomomusings.com, liberal pastor, Missio Dei, Queer Messages, astatum, Greg Boyd, Halden, me, jonathan stegall, and others). The problem that I think founds the disagreement is not just a way of reading the bible, and it's not a sensitive discerning of God's revelation. As I read through Denny Burk's response supportive of Piper's application of a biblical interpretation to a natural event, the disagreement became clear. This is at root a disagreement over determinism.
Baconian science in the late 19th century rejected the emerging hypothetical method because an hypothesis makes a prediction about something that has not yet been directly observed. For the Baconian, this was not science. Rather, science was about the things that one directly observes followed largely by a method of taxonomy and categorization. Darwin, for example, presented a problem to this method because natural selection could not be directly observed and therefore it had to be deduced from hypotheses about evidence.
It is clear, except for a few fringe groups, that the hypothetical method won out. Since the hypothetical method became standard, science has exploded with progress and influence. Biblical studies faced the same challenge at about the same time. It was no longer assumed that what you read was what you got within a given tradition. Rather, a different hypothetical method would critique the bible as a text in its own right outside of the doctrinal requirements of a religious tradition. Approaches to the bible such as inerrancy, infallibilism, and so forth can be traced back to this conception of what knowledge is reliable and true. For that Baconian method, determinism fits well since everything must be realted under an assumed notion of cause and effect. But when we approach reality with hypotheses that do not yet have observable outcomes, it makes determinism a much less easy fit. Karl Barth challenged this Baconian view with respect to election, predestination, and determinism.
Karl Barth had a problem with the Westminster Confession, incidentally the confession to which those of a Calvinist persuasion tend to read the bible. The root problem was that this confession in its legacy from the Synod of Dort is rooted in a decretum absolutum in which God's elective and predestining activity happens outside of Jesus Christ as the elected one who redeems humankind. The Westminster Confession says:
God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass…
Here God is the subject that determines all events great and small in history including the event of Jesus Christ. There is a logic here, but for Barth, the logic has a serious theological problem – the logic precedes the event of Jesus Christ which while revealed to humankind in the person of Jesus, is nonetheless an eternal person in the being of the Triune God. How can it be that God's absolute decree can come before the revelation of God in Jesus Christ who was elected for human redemption – from eternity? Barth's resolution was that God's true determining activity as God is in God's own freedom to elect God's self in Jesus Christ. God is both the subject and object of election. God's omnipotence is not something that determines election, it is God's election that determines the sphere of God's omnipotence. This sphere is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. As Barth writes:
What makes Him the divine Ruler is the very fact that His rule is determined and limited: self-determined and self-limited, but determined and limited none the less; and not in the sense that His caprice as such constitutes His divine being and therefore the principle of His world government, but in such a way that He has concretely determined and limited Himself after the manner of a true king (and not a tyrant); in such a way, then, that we can never expect any decisions from God except those which rest upon this concrete determination and limitation of His being, upon this primal decision made in His eternal being; decisions, then, which are always in direct line with this primal decision, and not somewhat right or left of it in an infinite sphere (Church Dogmatics II.2, 32.2).
Divine agency is prior to human action and the sphere of human action is delimited or conditioned by this divine agency. As humankind is made in God's image there is a correlation with the freedom of God and the freedom of humankind. Moreover, in order to be truly obedient to God's self revelation one must have the freedom to determine one's obedience to God through a passive reception of grace. Grace is revealed in the self-limitation of God in Christ as the predestined one.
Barth was no fan of natural theology as a result of his irreducible Christocentric focus. Making the deduction from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ to natural events that may or may not point back to that revelation were overly speculative and would do more harm than good in maintaining the distinction between nature and God.
That is what Piper does with his interpretation of the tornado: He makes a speculative conclusion tied back to a general notion of God that is fundamentally rooted not in Christ; but does so with a vague notion of determinism that ultimately regulates the being of God. In other words, he roots his notion of God in an absolute decree which, as Barth argues and I think Barth is right, must somehow be prior to God's self-determination in Christ. What happens here is that caprice through immutable law conditions God's grace in Christ – the event that paradoxically creates a space for human freedom to respond.
Therefore God's revelation conditions historical events and does not determine them. For Piper and others, God's sovereignty must be rooted in determinism. That this is such a necessary condition of God's being is assumed to be indubitable and that is the problem. If Piper and others who share this view would dump the unnecessary condition of determinism for the sphere of God's activity, then absurd divinations of nature would not be necessary.
UPDATE: Blake asked a question from Moltmann's view that Barth seems to address here. Synchronicity at its finest.
Related posts:
I think we both hit the publish button at the same time. And, you answered the question, I asked. Nice.
[...] The core problem with Piper's view — aside from the outdated cosmology — is theological determinism. Such a view makes things very simple to understand: X happened because God caused it and thought it should happen, there is a moral reason for everything that happens in the cosmos so we shouldn't worry too much, it will all work out in the end. It is an easy way to make sense of tragedy but I must effectively excuse myself from wrestling with the moral ambiguities of reality. Not to mention that must ascribe to a premodern cosmology and assume that God is, at best, amoral. [...]
It was nutty when Jerry Failwell and Pat Robertson did it, and it's crazy when Piper does it.
all people are saying in defense is "you misunderstood him" and "he's a godly man." no, i understood it, it was stupid, the "clarification" only clarified that it was stupid, and it does not matter how "godly" he is. i hope no one ever puts that much faith in me.
It warms my heart to see that Barth lives!
tellin' ya! his doctrine of election is one of probably 5 theological concepts that i go back to all the time. others – simone weil's affliction, kierkegaard's despair and paradox, the cappadocians' trinity, and niebuhr's revelation.
[...] Drew Tatusko – the tornado to stop the "gays" and determinism: a core problem with piper [...]
Drew wrote – “But when we approach reality with hypotheses that do not yet have observable outcomes, it makes determinism a much less easy fit.”
Except when a neo-Platonist and theoretical physicist like Eugene Wigner casts to dust his favorite neo-platonic religious bias of a metric universe, and instead, he writes, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.” Where the extensions of the relativity equation predicted the existence of black holes leading to their discovery in exactly the places where the “hypotheses that [did] not yet have observable outcomes,” and where no one ever looked nor was looking. And we still don’t know why maths are effective in this way (hence Wigner’s riff that maths are ‘unreasonable’ but effective – an amazing bias-check for a religious neo-Platonist!) .
In other words, Bacon’s agnosticism relative to contingent events absent direct observation lives on at higher levels.
Though I write this from a science-bent impatient of philosophy. Discount accordingly.
My problem with the list of heavies on both sides of this new theological divide (nice links, Drew) is that none of them can draft an ecological equation nor even a fast and frugal heuristic decision-tree for divine agency in the natural world. Independently of the dicta in their respective theologies. It’s all language idling. And camp.
The status of theology from your list of heavies is a recipe for a rewrite of Wigner – “The Reasonable Ineffectiveness of Theology for a Natural Understanding of Anything: aka, God as Throat-Clearing Dicta.” In short, those who think God is the little engine who can (affect natural events) can’t say how, and those who say God doesn’t, have defined God into methodological naturalistic ineffectiveness (to coin a phrase).
Relative to stochastic-deterministic natural events like Piper’s tornadoes, all of Wigner’s unreasonable but effective mathematical work must now be done by natural scientists merging with theologians who know Wigner’s metalanguage, and who correlate applied empirical theology to the natural sciences. Crutchfield, Drees, Farmer, Peacocke, Robert S. Shaw, Polkinghorne, Schroeder (okay: he’s an orthodox rabbi, MIT physicist) – and a very long list of other scientists-qua-theologians. Leaving the pack of prose and prosaic theologians (whether Barth or Boyd) behind. Though I credit Boyd as the best of the whole pack on your list in coming closest to an empirical theological comment in this silly tornado of a dustup. Otherwise, the pack has moved on. I noted my pro-science bias above: now discount me for learning Barth through Gilkey, who exposed Barth’s conceit of attaining a ‘presuppositionless theology’- again as language idling. Say anything. A “just-so” story.
The corresponding challenge to theology in the next generations will not be whether theologians move beyond lit-crit prose creedalism and lit-crit prosaic heroes of favorite camps (“I’m of Barth!,” “I’m of Piper!,” “I’m of Boyd!,” – thank God for Alan Sokal spoofing, “Social Text”), but instead, the problem with prose theology will be its response to the next generations of the most rigorous and relentless empirical studies of religion in history.
I’d say God is pleased with the return to the observational Bacon. Via Wigner. And the upcoming studies of religion and theology. Bacon knew more observational faith (got it right, that is) than Barth could ever forget.
And God – as pleased as with Elijah – calling for drought and rain (not just observing it): whether Piper or Boyd (or neither, my bias) got it right in this one case.
Elijah – a Baconian who Barth would like.
My guess.
A surprise. "Intel_Logos" identity at:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/0767448907893563...
Discus surprised me.
Jim
thanks. i am totally unfamiliar with wigner so i can't say much actually. not many leave me speechless
however, the best books on the book of nature as it were are butterfield's the origins of modern science, diogenes allen's christian belief in a postmodern world, and still the best theologian of science (scientist of theology?) is torrance especially in his book Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge.
that's really not a response to your comment, but i had to say SOMEthing! cheers.
oh anyone interested in the cited essay, check it out here: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/readin...
Drew, a good riff.
I don’t have the answers.
You did a good job angling on determinism. I really dig your Christocentric Barth on, “God is both the subject and object of election.” And your Piper-posit, “He makes a speculative conclusion tied back to a general notion of God that is fundamentally rooted not in Christ; but does so with a vague notion of determinism.”
That’s the concept in your essay that can be tested. Empirically. . And it has: Miner, M. H. and McKnight, J. (1999). “Religious Attributions: Situational Factors and Effects on Coping.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38(2), 274-287 (showing Calvinist orthodox creedal confessional theology produces no net effect among practicing Presbyterians as a population in their attributions to God of natural events). That study holds only for Presby-populations; not Pipers (individuals). But you asked exactly the right question.
Alas.
I’m bugging you here because an actuary-qua-theologian on my blog saw this whole dustup and wants to riff on it because she’s got to prepare actuarial tables for “acts of God.”
Wouldn’t you know?
I’d give you a dad-gummed link back, but haven’t figured the switch on Discus (thanks anyway @: http://intellogos.blogspot.com/2009/08/pipers-p...)
A good exchange, thanks!
Jim
http://www.blogger.com/profile/0767448907893563...
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Piper is engaged in pure superstition. How is this any different than black cats or cracks in the sidewalk? There, I said it!
I know I get flack for saying this, but I can't sit back and watch . Moderate Christians can't continue to support this crap or make excuses for it. We complain that moderate Muslims are not publicly outraged about their radical superstitions, but yet we seem to tolerate faith healers and manipulative charlatans like Piper. We can't make up excuses about predestination or rules for divine action. This is just plain silly. It is superstition. The whole mess of it.
If we can't come up with a superstition-less Christianity, then I don't want any part of it. Personally, I think we can. I think there is a great deal of historical theological inquiry that could lead us out of this mess. However we have to let this crap go. If some people feel like the baby is going out with the bath water, then so be it. This Piper crap is where it always seems to lead.
i have in my new book queue robert wright's the evolution of god. it sounds like he is making the same kind of argument.
Piper is engaged in pure superstition. How is this any different than black cats or cracks in the sidewalk? There, I said it!
I know I get flack for saying this, but I can't sit back and watch . Moderate Christians can't continue to support this crap or make excuses for it. We complain that moderate Muslims are not publicly outraged about their radical superstitions, but yet we seem to tolerate faith healers and manipulative charlatans like Piper. We can't make up excuses about predestination or rules for divine action. This is just plain silly. It is superstition. The whole mess of it.
If we can't come up with a superstition-less Christianity, then I don't want any part of it. Personally, I think we can. I think there is a great deal of historical theological inquiry that could lead us out of this mess. However we have to let this crap go. If some people feel like the baby is going out with the bath water, then so be it. This Piper crap is where it always seems to lead.
i have in my new book queue robert wright's the evolution of god. it sounds like he is making the same kind of argument.
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