Abstract
In his warranted christian belief, Alvin Plantinga launches a forceful attack on apophaticism, the view that God is in some sense or other beyond description. This paper explores his attack before searching for a Plantinga-proof formulation of apophaticism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Mike Rea (in correspondence) has suggested that there may be a contradiction lurking in the background of Jacobs’ view. Though Jacobs accepts classical logic and therefore the principle of bivalence, it seems that he is committed to the denial of bivalence at the level of fundamental truths. Jacobs thinks that it’s not fundamentally true that God is wise, and that it’s not fundamentally true that God isn’t wise. Fundamental-bivalence would be the view that, for any \(p\), \(p\) is fundamentally true or not-\(p\) is fundamentally true. Jacobs’ views about God violate fundamental-bivalence, which may allow us to derive contradictions. His denial of fundamental-bivalence would seem to lead him to a denial of fundamental-excluded-middle, that for any \(p\), (fundamentally \(p\) v fundamentally not-\(p)\). The denial of fundamental-excluded-middle seems to license the following sort of argument:
-
1.
\(\lnot \)(fund(p) v fund(\(\lnot \)p)) (the denial of fundamental-excluded-middle)
-
2.
Therefore: (fund(p) \(\rightarrow \lnot \) (fund(\(\lnot \)p))
-
3.
Therefore: \(\lnot \)(fund(p) & \(\lnot \lnot \)(fund(\(\lnot \)p))
-
4.
Therefore: (fund(p) & fund(\(\lnot \)p))
4 is, of course, a contradiction. Perhaps Jacobs could save himself from this result if he qualifies his denial of fundamental-bivalence and fundamental-excluded-middle. Perhaps he thinks that these principles are not fundamentally false, but that they’re not fundamentally true either, whether this will save him from further embarrassments down the line, I’m not sure. This line of inquiry deserves a more thorough investigation than I can provide in this paper.
-
1.
In Lebens (forthcoming), I present my formulation of apophaticism as an outgrowth of Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing.
I’m grateful to Amy Seymour for providing me with this analogy for strong sustenance.
This translation is my own, but it follows the JPS translation (Margolis 1917), somewhat controversially, in translating
as vanish, whereas every other full translation I have seen, including later JPS editions, translate it along the lines of ‘they are troubled’. In defense of my favoured translation, Bresslau (1913), Gesenius (Gesenius 1836, using our psalm as his example) and Clines (1993) all include, as one of the meanings of the root,
, something along the lines of ‘suddenly to perish’. Furthermore, regarding this phrase in the psalm, Dahood (1970) reads it, as ‘they would expire’ arguing that the root here isn’t
but is actually
. Notwithstanding the defense of my translation, even if you revert to the more standard translation, it is clear that these verses from Psalm 104 express something like the strong doctrine of Divine sustenance, leading Eichrodt (1961 v.ii, pg.154) to say, ‘It is hardly going too far to describe this Old Testament view of the maintenance of the word as creation continua.’ For more on the controversies surrounding the Hebrew root,
, cf. Vanderkam (1977), who could be seen to be sympathetic to my translation, since he would be well-disposed to include ‘to cease’ under the meanings of the root in question, (pg. 250).
Gabriel Citron (in as yet unpublished work) has accumulated beautiful examples of this phenomenon from both the Christian and Jewish traditions. For example, Angela of Foligno (1993, pg. 191–2) talks of her personal religious experiences that left her claiming to know ‘with the utmost certainty that the more one feels God, the less is one able to say anything about him’ because of ‘his infinite goodness being so far beyond anything you could possibly say or think.’ Citron also points to the Chassidic master, the Kedushat Levi (Levi 1875/6, p. 127), who seems to think that the more you experience God, rather than think about him, the more you come to realise that none of your predicates can apply to him, such that you end up calling him, paradoxically, the ‘great nothing’ given that there is no thing such that that thing can be predicated of God!
cf. Feldman’s synopsis in Gersonides (1987), pg. 79, and Gersonides’ own argument there on pp. 111–2.
References
Bresslau, M. (1913). Hebrew and english dictionary, biblical and rabbinical: Containing the Hebrew and Chaldee roots of the old testament, post-biblical writings. London: Lockwood.
Brueckner, A. (1986). Brains in a vat. The Journal of Philosophy, 83(3), 148–167.
Clines, D. (1993). The dictionary of classical hebrew. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Dahood, M. (1970). Psalms. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Dummett, M. (1981). Frege: Philosophy of language (2nd ed.). London: Duckworth.
Eichrodt, W. (1961). Theology of the old testament. London: SCM Press.
Fine, K. (2009). The question of ontology. In D. Chalmers, D. Manley, & R. Wasserman (Eds.), Metametaphysics: New essays on the foundation of ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foligno, A. (1993). Angelo of foligno: Complete works (Paul Lachance, trans.). Mahwah: Paulist Press.
Gersonides L. (1987). The wars of the lord (Seymour Feldman, trans.). Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.
Gesenius, W. (1836). A hebrew and english lexicon of the old testament, including the Biblical Chaldee. Boston: Leavitt, Lord & co.
Hick, J. (1989). An interpretation of religion: Human responses to the transcendent. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Jacobs, J. (forthcoming). ‘The ineffable, inconceivable, and incomprehensible god: Fundamentality and apophatic theology’, Oxford studies in Philosophy of religion. https://bearspace.baylor.edu/Jonathan_Kvanvig/www/tex/OSPR%20VI/Jacobs-Fundamentality-Apophatic.pdf.
Lebens, S. (forthcoming). ‘Negative theology as illuminating falsehood’. In M. Fagenblat’s projected volume, Negative theology as jewish modernity.
Levi, Y. (1875/6). Kedushat Levi. Warsaw: Yitzchak Gellerman.
Margolis, M. (Ed.). (1917). The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic text: A new translation with the aid of previous versions and with constant consultation of Jewish authorities. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
Plantinga, A. (2000). Warranted christian belief. New York: Oxford University Press.
Putnam, H. (1982). Reason, truth, and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nagel, T. (1986). The view from nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scott, M. (2010). Religious language. Philosophy Compass, 5(6), 506–515.
Sider, T. (2012). Writing the book of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vanderkam, J. (1977). Bhl in Ps 2:5 and its etymology. Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 39, 245–250.
Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. London: Kegan Paul Trench Trubner & Co.
Acknowledgments
This paper was written during my post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at Notre Dame. I’m grateful to Mike Rea, Samuel Newlands and all the wonderful people at the Centre who helped to enrich my research and my time in Indiana. I presented a working draft of this paper to the philosophy club at Pepperdine Univervisty; thanks are due to Tomas Bogardus for arranging and participating in that fruitful discussion. This work grew out of my reflections on the Hassidic philosophy of Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner, which won’t be obviously apparent from reading it! I thank my teacher Rabbi Herzl Hefter for introducing me to the world of Rabbi Leiner’s thought, and my friend Gabriel Citron for leading me to think about apophaticism.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lebens, S.R. Why so negative about negative theology? The search for a plantinga-proof apophaticism. Int J Philos Relig 76, 259–275 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9464-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9464-3