TIP of the day (logic): tools to evaluate Lawrence W. Carrino's Just Say No An Evangelical Assessmen

MJ. Smith

 Lawrence W. Carrino's Just Say No An Evangelical Assessment of Eastern Apophaticism is available at http://www.christiantruth.com/articles/orthodoxyapophaticism.html

No I am not going to say anything positive or negative about this article other than to say it is an interesting article that raises interesting questions about how we think about theology and how different traditions emphasize different tools. But I am going to say something about a forum post years ago which knocked the use of anything other than Aristotlean logic.

1. Aristotle himself acknowledged the limits of his system. You can reasonably consider his logic as the logical equivalent of whole number arithmetic in math - it is foundational to learning logic but it is not the right tool for all logical problems.

wikipedia: many valued logic said:

The first known classical logician who didn't fully accept the law of excluded middle was Aristotle (who, ironically, is also generally considered to be the first classical logician and the "father of logic"). Aristotle admitted that his laws did not all apply to future events (De Interpretatione, ch. IX), but he didn't create a system of multi-valued logic to explain this isolated remark

I suspect most theologians would be willing to accept a three valued system - true, false, unknown while some would want a fourth value of unknowable. A possible example: if one accepts that what one knows about God is known only because God revealed it, then what God has not revealed is unknowable ... no amount of human reasoning and experimentation is going make it known. Note that I present this as a possible example of a fourth value ... a possibility raised in response to the article by Carrino.

2. A second form of logic is necessary when we talk about knowledge. Why? Because no matter how true (or false) a statement may be, if no one knows it, it is not knowledge. Carrino's article is not about God per se but about how two different approaches to speaking about God express themselves. A very brief introduction to epistemic logic is given in the Stanford  Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Two matters of terminology:

• agent refers to the person(s) doing the knowing (or not knowing)
• deontic logic is the logic of ethics

Vincent Hendricks and John Symons said:

When epistemic logic was still in its infancy, Dana Scott noted:

Here is what I consider one of the biggest mistakes of all in modal logic: concentration on a system with just one modal operator. The only way to have any philosophically significant results in deontic logic or epistemic logic is to combine these operators with: Tense operators (otherwise how can you formulate principles of change?); the logical operators (otherwise how can you compare the relative with the absolute?); the operators like historical or physical necessity (otherwise how can you relate the agent to his environment?); and so on and so on.

3. Finally we need to determine what type of logic negative theology is using. It is not simply Aristotelian logic with a no stuck in front of everything. Pawel Rojek has done work trying to identify the coherent logic behind Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.  In his conclusion he states:

Pawel Rojek said:

• T1 God has all positive properties . . .
• T2 God has negations of all positive properties . . .
• T3 God has negations of all negations of positive properties . . .
• T4 God is unknowable . . .

I have developed here three interpretations of NT (negative theology). The first one claims that God is fundamentally unknowable; the second one that God has no positive properties and in this sense is not an object; the third that God has all positive properties but in such perfect way, that it is more appropriate to say that he has no properties at all.

Pawel Rojek settles on the third interpretation. What interpretation does Carrino base his argument on? I'm not saying that it needs to be one of Rojek's interpretation but I am saying that the reader needs to be able to glean from the article precisely what Carrino understands negative (apophatic) theology to be.

If you are interested in exploring the argument of theological method East & West further I would recommend A. N. Williams: The Logic of Genre: Theological Method in East and West. She is much more readable than the formal logic of Rojek.

4. We need to decide whether this basic issue is actually one of reasoning (logic) or of expression (language). This issue is addressed well in two books:

A Philosophy of the Unsayable by William Franke

Amazon description said:

In A Philosophy of the Unsayable, William Franke argues that the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time. He proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language. The book also offers readings of literary texts as poetically performing the philosophical principles it expounds. Franke engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology and shows how apophaticism infiltrates the thinking even of those who attempt to deny or delimit it.

In six cohesive essays, Franke explores fundamental aspects of unsayability. In the first and third essays, his philosophical argument is carried through with acute attention to modes of unsayability that are revealed best by literary works, particularly by negativities of poetic language in the oeuvres of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabès. Franke engages in critical discussion of apophatic currents of philosophy both ancient and modern, focusing on Hegel and French post-Hegelianism in his second essay and on Neoplatonism in his fourth essay. He treats Neoplatonic apophatics especially as found in Damascius and as illuminated by postmodern thought, particularly Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity. In the last two essays, Franke treats the tension between two contemporary approaches to philosophy of religion—Radical Orthodoxy and radically secular or Death-of-God theologies. A Philosophy of the Unsayable will interest scholars and students of philosophy, literature, religion, and the humanities. This book develops Franke's explicit theory of unsayability, which is informed by his long-standing engagement with major representatives of apophatic thought in the Western tradition.

Mystical Languages of Unsaying by Michael A. Sells

Amazon description said:

The subject of Mystical Languages of Unsaying is an important but neglected mode of mystical discourse, apophasis. which literally means "speaking away." Sometimes translated as "negative theology," apophatic discourse embraces the impossibility of naming something that is ineffable by continually turning back upon its own propositions and names. In this close study of apophasis in Greek, Christian, and Islamic texts, Michael Sells offers a sustained, critical account of how apophatic language works, the conventions, logic, and paradoxes it employs, and the dilemmas encountered in any attempt to analyze it.

This book includes readings of the most rigorously apophatic texts of Plotinus, John the Scot Eriugena, Ibn Arabi, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart, with comparative reference to important apophatic writers in the Jewish tradition, such as Abraham Abulafia and Moses de Leon. Sells reveals essential common features in the writings of these authors, despite their
wide-ranging differences in era, tradition, and theology.

By showing how apophasis works as a mode of discourse rather than as a negative theology, this work opens a rich heritage to reevaluation. Sells demonstrates that the more radical claims of apophatic writers—claims that critics have often dismissed as hyperbolic or condemned as pantheistic or nihilistic—are vital to an adequate account of the mystical languages of unsaying. This work also has important implications for the relationship of classical apophasis to contemporary languages of the unsayable. Sells challenges many widely circulated characterizations of apophasis among deconstructionists as well as a number of common notions about medieval thought and gender relations in medieval mysticism.

5. Finally we need to identify the biases that Carrino brings to his article - as well as the biases we bring to reading the article. Here I do not mean biases in a negative sense although biases are often a cause of fallacies. Rather I mean the inclinations we have based upon our upbringing, education and experience. As defined in wikipedia:

Wikipedia bias said:

Bias is an inclination or outlook to present or hold a partial perspective, often accompanied by a refusal to consider the possible merits of alternative points of view. Biases are learned implicitly within cultural contexts.

In this case the author explicitly admits to a Reformed/Calvinist bias. Therefore, in reading the article we need to watch specifically for instances in which he does not subject the Reformed view to the same scrutiny that he is subjecting the Orthodox view. It is easy to make any view appear badly if you find the right lens to view it through ... think of it as a fun house where one's own biases serve as curved mirrors warping the other point of view. Note: the same would be true if his bias was Wesleyan, Lutheran, Western Catholic ...

Yes, we often take shortcuts and accept what an article says without subjecting it to the kind of scrutiny it needs in order to be verified as "true". What is important is that we recognize that without careful scrutiny using the appropriate tools for that scrutiny, we need to recognize that what we take away from the article is provisional and subject to change when additional information is gained. And, yes, there is a specific form of logic to apply here - logic of belief revision.