Oliver Objectivist: I can agree with a good bit of what we have been saying. But surely now, in matters of interpretation some things just are what they are. Everyone with sufficient technical competence can agree.
Missy Missiologist: But a cultural setting can limit who has access to technical competence. So what is the average person supposed to do?
Peter Pietist: Even if people agree on technical matters, don’t their attitudes and their service to God still differ? They agree only in outward form.
Herman Hermeneut: And is the agreement so thorough-going as it may sometimes appear?
Objectivist: Well, take the area of word meanings. “Dog” means “dog.” What more is there to say?
Because God is present in all interpretation, our view of him affects everything. Hence, counterfeiting and deceit, by distorting our view of God, can have an influence on details as well as on global frameworks. In fact, they affect how we deal with any one particular word in language. Let us see some of the ways in which effects occur.
Recall from our earlier discussion that every term in language enjoys classificational, instantiational, and associational aspects, reflecting the Trinitarian character of God. If terms reflect the character of God, then idolatrous distortion can infect our treatment of terms. Thus, we expect our understanding of terms to be influenced by idolatry.1
To begin with, what implications do we draw in considering the fundamental categories that we use in thinking, reasoning, and communicating? Consider the medieval controversy between realism and nominalism. Realism maintained that universals had a “real” existence, whereas nominalism contended that universals were simply humanly convenient names for collections of individuals. Realism tended to exalt the unity of the universal, the class, at the expense of diversity. Nominalism tended to exalt the diversity of particulars, the individual things, at the expense of unity (the universal).
This dichotomy is in fact a false one. Unity and diversity are equally ultimate. Unity of the universal, that is, the class or “kind,” is an expression of the classificational aspect, while diversity of the particulars is an expression of the instantiational aspect. Both presuppose each other and neither is more fundamental than the other. There is no such thing as a “pure” universal that one could grasp apart from particularities of instances. There is no such thing as a “pure” particular apart from the (universal-like) features that it possesses according to the plan of God. The unity of class and the diversity of particularity both rest on the ontologically ultimate unity and diversity of God, as expressed in the classificational and instantiational aspects, respectively.
Our analysis has still broader implications, applicable to Western philosophy as a whole. Since before the days of Plato and Aristotle, Western philosophy has concerned itself with fundamental ontology (the theory of what exists). What is the fundamental ontological character of things? Philosophy has endeavored to explore this ontology through human thought and human language. Philosophers produce systems of categories. These categories supposedly enable us to obtain insight into the systematic character and structure of the world. For example, in Plato, the categories of “form” and “good” and “idea” play a key role. In other philosophies the categories may be different. But some particular categories always play a key role. The philosopher sets forth these categories as particularly promising for understanding the world.
In the time of Descartes and Kant, philosophy came to focus largely on epistemology (theory of knowledge) rather than simply on ontology. In the twentieth century, it has focused on language. Through all these variations, fundamental categories have played an important role.
Now what do these categories look like under close inspection? We have to deal with words. These words belong to human language. And as we have seen, human language is not autonomous or self-sufficient. Every single term or category of human language is dependent on divine language. Classificational, instantiational, and associational aspects belong together--they enjoy a mysterious coinherence testifying to God’s Trinitarian character. Yet pagan philosophers do not want to acknowledge that dependence. They prefer to walk in darkness rather than light (John 3:19-20).
Characteristically, within the system of rationalist philosophers, philosophical categories pretend self-sufficiency. The categories simply are what they are. They pretend to identify themselves not in the mystery of the Trinity, but in the supposed exhaustive clarity of self-sufficiency.2
Typically, philosophers exalt the classificational aspect of categories at the expense of the associational and the instantiational aspects. The categories of classical philosophy supposedly need no associations or instantiation for understanding. In fact, if they were needed, association and instantiation would potentially bring in “impurities.” The categories are grasped by pure reason or pure insight, independent of ordinary life and personal idiosyncrasies.
To be sure, the categories may typically apply to various instances, but the instances are not necessary for the being of the categories. That is, no instantiation is really needed. The essence of a category remains completely independent of the grubby instantiations through which, in actual life, the categories may have been learned by real human beings. In Plato, the instantiations of the forms actually contaminate the forms and confuse knowledge by bringing in matter. In other cases, with more debt to Aristotle, the forms may exist only “in” their instantiations, but human reason still suffices in principle to distinguish the form from the particularity of its instantiation. The self-identity of what is really common to the instances is still unproblematic.
The rationalist philosopher claims deity by being able to master language in one divine vision. If not all language can be mastered, at least the philosopher masters that crucial piece of language that he needs in order to make the systematic assertions and the universal claims. In the philosophic vision the philosopher triumphs over the mystery of coinherence by reducing everything to the pure identity of a class (the identity of the category). Thus philosophers think that they can manipulate their categories without reference to an associational aspect or an instantiational aspect. The categories are supposedly association-free and instance-free.
Philosophers are in fact human beings. Hence, they have themselves learned language from associations and instances. Their present knowledge is not in fact free from the “contamination” of their past learning, as well as their present bodily existence. They themselves are instantiations of humanity. Their own thoughts and words are instantiations of human thoughts and words. They themselves live within social and historical associations, in the context of their own bodies.
But philosophical reflection is idealized. Philosophers project their reflection out toward an ideal that is association-free and instance-free. If they are candid and alert, they may admit that this projection is somewhat idealized. But the idealization is useful, if not necessary, to provide the sort of results that they desire.
But we can now see that the particular type of idealization that characterizes traditional rationalist Western philosophy is intrinsically and irreducibly idolatrous. According to this approach, the ideal category is a self-identical classification, but with no instantiational or associational aspect. Or if it has such instantiational or associational aspects, they are trivial and can safely be ignored in philosophical reflection. This view of categories is intrinsically monist or unitarian.
Sometimes philosophers may admit that differentiation exists. But it still comes in at a subordinate, applicational level. Each category is intrinsically an undifferentiable monadic classificational universal; but it does somehow differentiate itself into instances when applied to the real world in practical terms.
This differentiation is analogous to the kind of differentiation postulated in a modalistic view of God. Modalistic heresy says that God in himself is one, in a pure undifferentiated manner. God reveals himself in three persons as three modes of revelation or three modes of action of the one original. Threeness (differentiation) occurs in God’s contact with his creation, but not in God as he is in himself. Thus, rationalistic philosophy recapitulates a unitarian view or at best a modalistic view of God in its approach to fundamental categories.
If philosophical rationalism is a false trail, what about empiricism? For empiricists the event, the datum, the percept, or the particular instance is fundamental. (Thus modern empiricism is akin to medieval nominalism.) In essence empiricists begin by exalting the instantiational aspect at the expense of the classificational and the associational. At its root, this approach is just as unitarian and just as idolatrous as is the rationalistic approach. The main difference is that the instantiational rather than the classificational aspect is deified.
Moreover, when empiricists talk about their views, they talk using categories that are viewed as unproblematic, universal, and self-identical. The categories of “sense data” or “physical objects” or “sense experience” function in the same deified role that belonged to the categories of rationalistic philosophy. Such a result is inevitable. If there is only one level of being and one level of knowledge, one’s own analysis, to be correct, must have virtually divine status. It must make universal assertions, and at the same time be exhaustively grasped by the human philosopher.
Philosophies oriented to relations have analogous difficulties. We have in mind both structuralism in its more philosophical forms and deconstruction. Here the ultimate starting point is with the associational aspect. Relationalistic philosophies advocate unitarianism or modalism by collapsing the classificational and the instantiational into the associational. The classificational aspect comes into being as nodes within a system of relations. The instantiational aspect comes into being as event within a system of language and culture.
Relationalistic philosophy has the same difficulty as does all pagan philosophy when it attempts to state itself. The statements come out in language claiming universality in a de-associationalized and de-instantiationalized fashion. Theoretical formulation falls victim to the same difficulties that beset rationalistic philosophy. Deconstruction, to its credit, sees the problem, leading to giving to its own discourses a paradoxical status.
Human language and human categories are in actual fact dependent on our Trinitarian God. They display God’s “eternal power and divine nature” (Rom. 1:20). In fact, since God’s nature is Trinitarian, human language reflects this Trinitarian nature. But non-Christians do not want to submit themselves to the Trinitarian God. They substitute idols, whether idols made of wood or idols of thought. They wish to be autonomous. So they make their idols, in order to govern them as well as to worship them. Their idolatry is manifest in their would-be autonomous approach to fundamental categories.
Idolatry cannot succeed, because there is only one God and God rules the world in righteousness (Ps. 97:1-2). Rationalism, empiricism, and relationalism falsify the very nature of the language that they use. Yet rationalism, empiricism, and relationalism remain plausible. They appear to give us powerful insights. Why?
They are plausible precisely because the classificational, instantiational, and associational aspects coinhere. Each is presupposed by the others, as we have seen. But each also involves the others. Each in a sense encompasses the others. The classificational aspect always involves the identification of instances in association. Properly understood, it tacitly includes the instantiational and associational as inevitable aspects of its being.
Rationalism exploits the perspectival character of the classificational aspect in order to view all of reality through it. Similarly, empiricism uses an instantiational perspective and relationalism uses an associational perspective. All three are parasitic on coinherence. All three are close to the truth, as a good counterfeit must be. All three fail because they worship their own unitarian corruption rather than the Trinitarian God.
We can also use a second triad of categories, namely the communicative triad, consisting of expressive, informational, and productive aspects. As we have seen, these three aspects belong to God’s speech. By analogy, they characterize human speech. Because speech and knowledge are closely intertwined, we can also extend the application to human knowledge. By means of this triad, we may see again the deficiencies in pagan philosophical systems.
Rationalism projects the idea of absolute rationality or absolute truth. This projection utilizes the informational perspective. But the ideal is unitarian rather than Trinitarian. Rationalism denies that the truth of God is personal (the expressive aspect). And it denies that the truth of God is eternally productive (the productive aspect). Instead, it conceives of truth as a rationalist abstraction independent of its practical effects. Hence the truth so conceived is not ultimately God’s truth, but the rationalist’s own human idea of truth.
Pragmatism projects the idea of absolute data, that is absolute effects. It thus utilizes the productive perspective. But again the ideal is unitarian, denying expressive and informational aspects. (The informational aspect is denied in that truth consists only in “effectiveness.”) Note that the result idolizes an aspect of the creation (data) rather than the Creator.
Finally, subjectivism projects the idea of absolute personality, absolute personal expression. It twists the expressive perspective into a unitarian counterfeit. It idolizes human personality instead of the Creator.3
1 The following discussion appears in expanded form in Vern S. Poythress, “Reforming Ontology and Logic.”
2 For a similar dissatisfaction with the use of formal modal logic in metaphysics, see James F. Ross, “The Crash of Modal Metaphysics,” Review of Metaphysics 43 (1989): 251-79. From a Thomistic point of view, Ross raises many objections to the attempt to have abstract universals or predicates independent of instantiations (actual individuals to which they may apply). But insofar as Thomism conforms to an Aristotelian view of categories, it is still deficient.
3 John M. Frame already arrived at the same conclusion using his triad of perspectives, the normative, situational, and existential perspectives. See John M. Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God , 73-75, 89-90, 109-122.
Frame observes that rationalism tries to reduce everything to rules, thus deifying a normative perspective. Empiricism tries to reduce everything to data, thus deifying a situational perspective. Subjectivism tries to reduce everything to the personal subject, thus deifying the existential perspective. Non-Christian category systems are most often rationalistic, in that the categories have no necessary attachment to the data that instantiate them (situational perspective) or the persons who formulate and understand in a personal context (existential perspective).
Alert readers will perceive that expressive, informational, and productive perspectives are analogous to Frame’s existential, normative, and situational perspectives, respectively. But the two sets of perspectives are not completely the same. My triad of perspectives applies archetypally to God and ectypally to creatures. By contrast, Frame’s triad is asymmetric (as he himself recognizes, ibid. 63). The normative perspective is focally oriented toward the law, which is divine (ibid.). The existential and situational perspectives are oriented toward creatures, namely human persons and the world.
Frame’s triad is then an analogical image of mine. I believe that Frame’s approach remains useful in emphasizing the interrelatedness of norm, world, and self in people’s practical, concrete reception of the word of God.