Debate with Eric MacDonald re Spong

• Eric MacDonald (pennypig@ns.sympatico.ca) Tue, 26 May 1998 13:51:01 -0300

Are you really intending to put your rather puerile response up against Spong's theses? Come come.
• Nicholas Beale 26 May: Indeed?  Perhaps you can find some arguments against the refutations. Describing them as "puerile" hardly counts.
• Eric MacDonald 27 May: Sorry Nicholas, no doubt I was in a hurry, but your response is so much in the nature of a rant that it's not to be taken seriously. For example, your response to the first thesis: "I can conceive of it, so there!" That's basically what you say, and then you end off with your flourish QED. Do you really think Spong thought that someone could not say what you have said? I agree that the theses are weakly expressed, but I don't think what you have done really counts either. Engage them seriously, or simply dismiss them as beneath your notice, but don't rant.
• Nicholas Beale 27 May: You must have been in a hurry - you haven't read the refutation at all.

What it actually says at (1) is: "all over the world theism is intellectually very much alive.  To give just a few counter-examples Dr John Polkinghorne FRS at Cambridge and Prof Keith Ward at Oxford have both written masterly books explaining and 'defending'  theism in the light of the most modern developments in science.  A debate between me and Prof Colin Howson at the LSE on the existence of God was published in May 98 in Prospect Magazine.  Similar examples could no doubt be found in most other countries.  Spong might disagree with {eg} the RC Church and with Judaism and Islam, but they are certainly not 'dead' and certainly theistic."
Can you explain either:
(i)  Why this does not refute the thesis T1:"Theism has no current intellectual life"? or
(ii) Why Spong's Thesis 1 does not mean T1?
• Eric MacDonald 27 May: {a}That’s not the point, as I understand it. Certainly, all sorts of people believe that they give meaning to the words that they use, but whether it makes a lot of sense, in terms of our culture and world-view, is another question. I know all sorts of people who believe, implicitly, in angels. No doubt, to the extent that they give this word a meaning within this particular language game, belief in angels can be quite alive. Whether it makes a lot of sense in relation to the scientific world view, or in terms of the events that happen in the world as we know it, is another and a more difficult question. Mackie, for instance, in his book  “The Mircalce of Theism”, argues that theism is meaningful but false. But just saying that it makes sense to speak of a being who is “a person without a body (i.e. a spirit), present everywhere, the creator and sustainer of the universe, a free agent, able to do everything (i.e. omnipotent), knowing all things, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation, immutable, eternal, a necessary being, holy, and worthy of worship,”  (Swinburne’s definition) doesn’t really achieve very much. Whether this is, as a matter of fact, something to which many people can give religious meaning today, is, I suspect, doubtful. What is more, there is reason to think that trying to give religious meaning to the conception of such a being is dangerous.

{b}Of course, theism is alive and well, for, as Spong would no doubt argue, the paradigm in terms of which this conception makes religious sense, has persisted into an age when it makes less and less sense, and does more and more harm. But this is all wrapped up in his – I agree, carelessly expressed – thesis, and that is why it is pointless to argue in your geometric, QED sort of way.
  Spong is not arguing as a philosopher, but as a religious person for whom a conception of God has simply died. And he is speaking, as he says again and again in his book, to those who are entering the same exile.
{c} So, yes I did read what you had to say, but it still seems to me in the nature of a rather careless romp through someone’s living room.
{d} If theism makes sense to you, fine, but it doesn’t make sense to everyone, and it more and more makes less sense to me. So as I enter the exile of which Spong speaks, and which many others in this century have entered before him, he is good company for the voyage. But, as I say again, I could wish he had been more circumspect in the way that he expresses himself. That he opens himself up to the kind of rant (yes, I want to continue to use this word) that you have posted on your web site, is, I think, unfortunate, for he and Robinson and Tillich, and others have something important to say to those who, as thoroughly postmodern people (if I can use that word without too much ambiguity to capture a style and a mood) are less and less helped by the conceptions, including the theistic religious conceptions of yesteryear.
• Nicholas Beale 28 May: {a} Many people have always had difficulties (cultural & other) in believing the Christian Faith. No "thesis" here.

{b}So Spong's thesis is false, at least logically and philosophically. All he is saying is "I Spong, and many people I know, find theism hard to believe".
{c}Wow! Spong publicly denigrates, vilifies and betrays the faith of millions of people, but when I refute his theses I am having "a careless romp through someone's living room"!
{d} God bless you on your voyage. Seek and you will find.  I knew John Robinson quite well - he came back to the truth in the end.
•  Eric MacDonald 28 May:

{a} It's not just a problem with belief. It is, rather, a problem with intelligibility. As David Tracy says in one of his books: "Most Christians now recognize that much of the traditional Christian manner of understanding the cognitive claims made in the Christian scriptures should be rejected by the findings of history and of the natural and human sciences." (Blessed Rage for Order, 5) And we can add traditional Christian theology to this. It is possible, as you show, to ignore this, and go on making the same cognitive claims as were traditonally made, but that doesn't mean it makes sense in terms of the world we live in. The sense it makes is in terms of a long dead world-view which is being kept artificially alive in much traditionally held Christian faith. This is at least a reasonable point of view to take - as Spong does - although it has to be worked out in detail, as he tries to do (not altogether successfully, in my view, because he is too polemical, and somewhat careless).
{b} No, Spong's thesis is not false, logically and philosophically. Nor is he simply saying that he finds theism hard to believe. He's saying, and this will take considerable showing, that theistic language doesn't make sense in terms of a lot of other language that we use. He's not saying that you can't ignore this other language. You can, as you show. But that doesn't mean that you can hold contemporary scientific and traditional theistic views in suspension at once without severe conflict. Of course, it might be possible to work through a form of theism that can be held in concert with contemporary scientific beliefs. It doesn't seem to me that anyone has done this yet, Keith Ward notwithstanding.
{c} First, you didn't refute his theses. You haven't even engaged his argument.
{c2} Second, millions of Christians have left the church precisely because they couldn't be modern people and Christians at the same time, since the Church seemed quite uninterested in thinking through its theology in contemporary terms. So they just slipped quietly away. They're just as important (and their believing and questing is just as important) as the ones that stayed. Besides, in my experience many who stayed are asking questions too, and having their doubts.
{c3} Besides Spong doesn't publicly denigrate, vilify and betray the faith of anyone, although, as I say, he is a bit too polemical. His image of himself as controversial has got the better of him sometimes.
{d} It doesn't help to call your own position (or the traditional position) on things the truth, or THE TRUTH. Perhaps the word truth is inaptly applied here. Instead of speaking about the truth, a habit which has been so divisive and dangerous in the past, and is still used, as you use it with a particularly sharp point, to dismiss others and their search for religious understanding. It's a habit that dies hard, but it's a nasty one. It is exemplified in your assumption that refutation, QED, is in order. I don't think that's what Spong has in mind when he asks people to debate with him. You can't do theology more geometrico, which is why QED scarcely belongs in this discussion.
 Incidentally, you say that Robinson came back to truth in the end. Certainly, he became more traditional. The truth is not so easy to find.
• Nicholas Beale 28 May

{a}Tracy says - but it ain't necessarily so.  I know of no serious philosophers who consider Christianity un-intelligible, that's reserved for fringe (ex-)Christians.  When Karl Popper's successor at the LSE debated theism with me he did not question its intelligibility. If you can't understand a language that other people can, that does not make it "dead" or "unintelligible".
{b} You say "theism is alive and well" but now deny that "Theism is dead" is false?!
{b1} So T1 is refuted, but you say Spong means T1a: "theistic language doesn't make sense in terms of a lot of other language that we use" or T1b: "[no current] form of theism [is logically consistent] with contemporary scientific beliefs".  T1a is irrelevant to "truth" or "death" - Quantum Mechanics certainly "doesn't make sense in terms of a lot of other language that we use" but that doesn't make it "dead".  As for T1b, many of the world's leading scientists are theists (about 30%, a figure that has remained constant according to polls for over 70 years).  Are they "dead" or "bankrupt"?  Polkinghorne may be wrong, but no-one serious thinks he is inconsistent. Of what aspect of contemporary science am I  (Cambridge Maths Degree, Weekly reader of Nature, MRI, Adviser to CofE on Science, Medicine & Technology) unaware that somehow refutes theism? (and why didn't Prof  Howson mention it in our debate?).
{c1} T1 (which is what he said) is refuted.  You've suggested he might have meant T1a (irrelevant to truth or death) or T1b (refuted by Polkinghorne & many others).  Spong, of course, offers no argument, just vainglorious assertions which he is not (so far) prepared to defend.
{c2} Are you sure the drift is not driven by more general social trends? Almost all membership organisations that require attendance have reduced in numbers.  Couldn't the pressures to have sex outside marriage also have something to do with it?  The Church has always been thinking through its theology in contemporary terms.  Of course everyone is of infinite value, but that does not mean that all ideas are. ECUSA's decline is becasue of people like Spong: the growth of the RCs, and of the Diocese of London, is becasue of people like JPII and Bishop Richard Chartres.
{c3} if describing the faith of millions as "dead", "bankrupt", "meaningless", "nonsense" and "impossible" isn't denigrating and vilifying it then what is?
{d} I can quite see why you want to abandon the concept of truth!  I do not "dismiss others and their search for religious understanding."  Spong, and you, and Zacharay Snooks are quite entitled as private persons to follow whatever quests you wish, and I hope and pray that they will be fruitful.  But if Spong uses his Diocesan position to deny, vilify and denigrate the Christian Faith then his false theses must be refuted. If he has any intellectual integrity, he will debate them.
• Eric Thu, 28 May 1998 21:10

{a} This “dialogue” is getting a bit burdensome, as most internet dialogues do. Of course, that Tracy says something doesn’t make it so. But saying that it ain’t necessarily so doesn’t mean that it isn’t so, either. Nor, may I add, was I saying, nor is Spong saying I suggest, that Christianity is unintelligible, even though that is what you take him to be saying. All he’s saying is that a certain understanding of Christianity is unintelligible, given certain presuppositions. This is the puerile part of the argument here. Going on, I don’t much care about Karl Popper’s successor at LSE. Dropping this particular name doesn’t prove anyting either. Finally, no one’s claiming that the language of theism is unintelligible. I can quite clearly understand what theism is all about. I just don’t think it’s a religiously living option for someone who lives fully in the present today, and I know lots of people who think this way. Engage with us seriously, instead of highhandedly, or the point of the present discussion is lost.
{b} If that’s what I said, then I was contradicting myself. But I don’t think that’s what I said. And please, please stop trying to play the logic game.
{b1} We’re not talking T1, T2 and T3 here, in a nice neatly scholastic way. You say that “Polkinghorne may be wrong but no one seriously thinks he is inconsistent.” Well, I don’t know Polkinghorne, although I just read a review of one of his books in the New York Review, so I can’t say. Retorting in kind, I might say: Just because no one thinks him inconsistent, it ain’t necessarily so. Nor is what Prof Howson did not say in your debate relevant here, or anywhere. The truth is that for many many people the idea of a God “out there”, an external God governing things in an all-powerful way, has simply died, culturally died. There are all sorts of reasons for this, and though some scientists seem to manage to be theists and scientists, there are also many many who are not and find the idea of a (theistic) God inconsistent with their science.
{c1} Spong has tried, in a very defective book, to defend his theses, and to explain them more fully. I daresay in time he will get to the defence which he has offered. Vainglorious? Well, ad hominem isn’t really the way to go about it.
{c2} Well, what do you mean by “driven by more general social trends? After all, Spong’s books are extremely popular and widely read. I don’t think that they ’ve convinced most people that the church may have something to offer them after all, but there is a widespread interest in this kind of questioning approach to faith. Sure, for some who are confused by a very bewildering world, it is encouraging to find someone who will simply tell them what to believe and do. And who knows, this kind of heteronomous faith might be just the winning formula for the future. Hitler demonstrated that it doesn’t much matter what you tell people to do as long as you do it clearly and authoritatively. But authoritarianism, whether of the Pope or Bishop
Chartres, is immoral. That’s what Jesus taught me, and I try to teach it to others. I’m not impressed with growing numbers based on immoral systems of governance.
But, yes indeed, the “drift”, as you call it, is driven by general social trends – although what sex outside marriage has to do with it escapes me. The world is a different world now than it was a generation or two ago. All kinds of things go into this mix, no doubt, but much of it is determined by the whole compass of concepts, attitudes, beliefs and other cultural factors that go into whether this or that is conceivable any more. That’s just where
Spong comes in.
{c3} It might just be the truth! (to use your word). Spong is trying to rescue Christian faith from the captivity of the right, of those, like you, who speak so confidently of THE FAITH AND THE TRUTH. The only way to do this is with a fencing maul, unfortunately, as you have so amply demonstrated.
{d} There you go into your puerile mode again. This is simply abusive, and it is characteristic of the tradition when defending the “TRUTHS” of faith. People have not only been abused but exiled, tortured and murdered for standing up against the tyranny of the TRUTH.  You have not given one reason “why I should want to abandon the concept of truth”. Not one, although you can “quite see why I should”.  You do dismiss others and their search for religious understanding.  You say that Spong uses his position “to deny, vilify and denigrate the Christian Faith”. And this is precisely the
problem. By what right do you take possession of the Christian Faith in this way? Just because you want to claim it as your possession, doesn't make it
yours. It's yours and mine and Spongs and anyone's who chooses to come to Christ. But what coming to Christ means is not for you to define. You seem to think that it was defined once for all. That's precisely the problem, because those of us who think a bit like Spong, whether we agree with him
wholeheartedly or not, are ready to defend our right to think openly about the faith in new terms. Faith understood as defined once for all just is unintelligible today to many of us. That is just one thing that you will find throughout contemporary theology, that what has traditionally been held to define Christian faith is more and more being held up to closer scrutiny and question. The reasons for the early definitions of Christian belief are no longer taken, by many many theologians as sufficient to justify many of the conclusions to which the early church fathers came (see Wiles here)  – and I might say, in response to your rather childish suggestion about “reputable” philosophers, that no reputable contemporary theologian holds the faith in a clearly traditional way. Incidentally, you might look, for a reputable contemporary philosopher, at philosophers like DZ Phillips {retired Welsh Philosopher, bibliography here}or Wittgenstein, or, I suspect, Peter Strawson, as philosophers who do not hold theism to be a clearly intelligible project. Haven’t read them recently, but they hold some promise in that direction. However, thanks for the debate – discussion doesn’t seem to be your forte. I think, at this point, that I must simply bow out. If you want to say something sneering and abusive about that, you are certainly free to do so.
But a little more Christian love and tolerance here wouldn’t go amiss.
• Nicholas 29 May 98 10:00
  {a}Can you formulate Spong's Thesis 1 in a way that it is possible to debate its truth or falsity meaningfully?  "a certain understanding of Christianity is unintelligible, given certain presuppositions" What pre-suppositions?  How do you know they are valid? And how can an understanding be unintelligible? Do you take "There Exists a Loving Ultimate Creator" as "unintelligible"?
  {b}You don't want to use logic but appeal (vaguely) to science as a reason for not believing in God!  Scientists (and I was one for years) have to use logic and mathematics.  It seems to me ( but I may be wrong - show me otherwise) that there is no scientific or logical validity in your points, it's all postmodernist feel.  I note that when asked for specifics in science that refute theism you ducked this.
  {c}So the greatest Christian leaders are "immoral" now (how can you judge this?), as well as (religiously) "dead", "bankrupt" etc..  But to describe Spong as "vainglorious" is ad hominem, (but "puerile" and "abusive" are OK for me!)  Consistency seems not to be your strong suit.
  {d}It was you who said "the word truth is inaptly applied here" I am not trying to stop you or Spong from your private quests .  Can't you find a language to affirm your quest without denying mine?