Psalms Commentaries

• James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History

• Tremper Longman, Reading the Psalms

• Willem A. VanGemeren, Psalms, in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary

• Augustine, Exposition on the Book of the Psalms

• John Calvin, Psalms

• Derek Kidner, Psalms, in The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries

• Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David

Isaac Watts, Logic: Or the Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry after Truth

Reprint, Kessinger Publishing, nd; Edinburgh, Charles Elliot: 1781 

Summary: A basic undergraduate level introduction to traditional or formal logic by the pastor and hymn writer Isaac Watts (1674-1748). The book was used in colleges up until the mid to late 1800s. 

Logic is the movement of ideas from apprehension to the relationship of ideas as judgment to deductive inferences that are repeatable and testable by others. Formal deductive logic allows us to learn or confirm new truth from already established truths.

The formal system was developed by Aristotle and was the norm in the West until mid-1800s. The system remains a powerful tool for analysis. Watts offers a helpful introduction to logic by showing us how to move from simple apprehension to definitions or terms, from terms to judgments written as the four propositions (All S is P; Some S is P; No S is P; Some S is not P) to deductive inferences. 

I will at a later date attempt a more careful explanation of deductive logic, but for the purposes of this review I will highlight some of the theological/philosophical issues within Watts’ Logic.

The Thomistic (Catholic) and Augustinian (Reformed) branches of Christian theology came to different understandings on the relationship of nature and grace deep within their theological systems—very often at the level of unarticulated presuppositions (cf. articles on Catholic Catechism). Thomists tend to assume no intrinsic knowledge of God and the perfection of nature by grace. This requires that all knowledge come to humanity through senses, as taught by Aristotle, and a more positive outlook on the moral and intellectual faculties. Augustinian thought assumes some intrinsic knowledge, as taught by Plato, and a more negative view of the noetic capacities.  

Regardless of judgments made about human capacities and epistemology, Aristotelian or formal logic functions well. The issue is that the prior theological conclusions are often imbedded in the description not of logic but how information is gleaned and human capacities. 

Watts is clearly Reformed in his Logic:

. . . . judgment has something of the will in it, and does not merely consist in perception; since we sometimes judge, (though unhappily) without perceiving, and sometimes we perceive without immediate judging (136).

The move of attaching the faculty of the will to judgment allows people to be unconsciously disingenuous as described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:18-32. Watts then adds to this:

But among all the causes of false judgements which are within ourselves, I ought by no means to leave out that universal and original spring of error, which we are informed of by the word of God; and that is, the sin and defection of our first parents; whereby all our best and natural powers both of mind and body are impaired, and rendered very much inferior to what they were in a state of innocence. Our understanding is darkened, our memory contracted, our corrupt humors and passions are grown predominate, our reason enfeebled, and various disorders attend our constitution and animal nature, whereby the mind is strangely imposed upon in its judgment of things (198). 

And he reiterates the problem on the issue of the fear of man: 

Besides all this, there is a fashion in opinions, there is a fashion in writing and in printing, in style and language. . . This business of the fashion has the most powerful influence on our judgments; for it employs those two strong engines of fear and shame to operate upon our understanding with unhappy success. We are ashamed to believe or profess an unfashionable opinion in philosophy, and a cowardly soul dares not so much as indulge a thought contrary to the established or fashionable faith, nor act in opposition to custom, though it be according to the dictates of reason (203-204). 

He drops a form of the ontological argument as aside on the fact that “the mere possibility of a thing we cannot infer its actual existence; nor from the non-existence of it can we infer its impossibility” (234).

Note, The idea of God seems to claim an exemption from this general rule; for if he be possible, he certainly exists, because the idea includes eternity; and he cannot begin to be; If he exists not, he is impossible, for the very same reason. 

Benefits/Detriments: Watts is in many ways a good, clear, and wholesome teacher of logic, reasoning, and Reformed thought. 

I suspected logic seemed almost intuitive to him after appropriating the definitions; therefore, he is impatient and dismissive of providing mnemonic devices, schemas to assist analysis, or example problems. The book frames logic well, but it doesn’t provide the necessary case studies to fill in the details. It’s rather like an algebra book with very, very few example problems and no answer key. 

Recommended as an explanation of logic and as a corrective for more Thomistic books like Basic Logic by Raymond J. McCall and Martin Cothran’s homeschooling curriculum through Memoria Press. Could be assigned as a textbook by someone having mastered formal logic. Late high school or mid-college reading level. Avoid the Kessinger reprint because of orthography issues. 

Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginning to the Babylonian Exile

Translated and abridged by Mosehe Greenberg (1928-2010).

The University of Chicago Press, 1963, 451 pgs.

Summary: Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963) was an Israeli philosopher and biblical scholar. The majority of his publications were in modern Hebrew and remain untranslated.

Kaufmann sets out and as far as I am able to discern succeeds in creating a completely secular and academic framework for the uniqueness of the Jewish conception of the relationship of the divine with creation over and against the pagan religions. The Deity of the Jews is not contingent on nature or any process unlike all other known examples.

He may provide the most powerful possible academically palatable argument for the uniqueness of a worldview springing from such a conception of deity.

Benefits/Detriments: The book is not at all Christian nor does it have a high view of the inspiration of the preserved and existing text. Kaufmann’s personal convictions as to the existence of the God described by Moses alludes me. 

The above review is essentially a place holder for a longer and more exhaustive review in the future.

John N. Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths: Unique or Just Different?

Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2009, 204 pgs.

Summary: John N. Oswalt (1940-     ) is distinguished professor of Old Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. He has a written a careful assessment of the uniqueness of the biblical conception of God and how this distinguishes the Bible from similar forms of ancient near-eastern religious texts.

The Bible unlike any other ancient source views God as absolutely independent and transcendent of the cosmos and any other order. There is then no non-personal congruence between the created reality and God. He is God not a man. 

Oswalt, following Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963) in The Religion of Israel, then defines myth and mythological thinking as finding continuity between the deity and the cosmos. The gods of the pagans are produced and to some degree controlled by the material world or a power above them, because they are of the same process or controlled by the same ultimately impersonal force. Thus the Bible exists as a text that describes a unique relationship between God and creation in opposition to that described in mythological literature.

[M]yth depends for its whole rational on the idea that all things in the cosmos are continuous with each other. Furthermore, myth exists to actualize that continuity. Thus mythical descriptions of the gods invariably depict them as human in every respect, only more so. They are strong; they are weak; they are good; they are bad; they are trustworthy; they are fickle. All that humanity is, the gods are. And how could it be otherwise in a cosmos of continuity? (45) 

The spiritual universe then becomes manipulable through spiritual and physical means. The gods are bribable and dependent on human action for sustenance, glory, and perhaps being. Even when the gods cannot be influenced or manipulated, they too are controlled by a power behind and above them that can be accessed by humans. 

Humanity under this view is then caught up in powers that are above and beyond their ken, yet they may be able to channel some aspects to their advantage through ceremony, magic, or unique personal attributes. Here lies the ground work for magic, parochial Christianity of all stripes, paganism, evolutionary and process thought, and so forth. Continuity, manipulable personal powers, and impersonal necessary powers, allows humans to participate on equal footing with the gods. 

Benefits/Detriments: Oswalt presents a careful and Christian account of Kauffmann’s work. Further, he links it well to modern philosophical and liberal Christian views. The contingency of God or the divine and other species of divine and material uniformity are the default worldview of the flesh. Oswalt describes the “the rules” and the “authorities” of this “present darkness” (Eph. 6:12).

My only caveat is that Oswalt appears to hold a non-traditional view on the attributes of God (pg. 131); it also not clear to me that his Arminian view of soteriology is coherent with his rejection of the non-contingency of God. 

Highly recommended for all interested in higher criticism, apologetics, inter-religious dialogue, and understanding of the role of magic in Christian practice.  

Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will

Translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnson

Fleming H. Revell, 2004, pgs. 320.

Summary: At the behest of the Pope and the Catholic party, Desiderius Erasmus (1466/9-1536) wrote a little book called Diatribe de Libero Arbitrio defending a semi-Pelagian to Pelagian view of the will (cf. Pelagius, Roman Commentary review) in 1524. According to Erasmus the fallen human will has enough residual goodness within itself to cooperate with grace or perhaps to do some small good without grace.

Erasmus was latitudinarian on salvation. He wasn’t terribly concerned if people believed the Catholic gospel, Luther’s gospel, or whatever Erasmus held as his private beliefs, as long as there was civil peace. The Diatribe is an attempt to establish peace—private leisure for Erasmus to study and European religious accord.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) responded with The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio) in 1525. Luther was stringent on the gospel: believing the wrong gospel sent one to hell. And Luther was willing to overturn the whole world so that some might believe and be saved.

The Bondage of the Will is Luther’s master piece. He speaks, fights, and thinks with fire that warms, burns, and delights in turn. Nowhere is he more brilliant, earnest, more systematic, or more careful in his exegesis of Scripture. Luther argues with the Bible in hand, his scholastic credentials fully exposed and exhibited, his native Saxon wit sharpened by wide classical reading, and a heart softened by the Spirit.

Luther’s argument theological and exegetical can be summarized in two paragraphs:

So when Ecclesiasticus says, ‘If thou are willing to keep the commandments, and to keep the faith that pleaseth me, they shall preserve thee,’ I fail to see how ‘free will’ can be proved from his words. ‘If thou are willing’ is a verb in the subjunctive mood, which asserts nothing. As the logicians say, a conditional statement asserts nothing indicatively—such statements as ‘if the devil be God, he is deservedly worshipped’; or, ‘if an ass flies, an ass has wings’; or, ‘if there be “free will’, grace is nothing’. And if Ecclesiasticus had wished to assert ‘free-will’, he ought to have spoken thus; ‘man is able to keep God’s commandments’; or, ‘man has power to keep the commandments’. (151)

Wherefore, my good Erasmus, as often as you confront me with the words of the law, so often shall I confront you with the words of Paul: ‘By the law is knowledge of sin’—not the power of the will! Gather together from the big concordances all the imperative words into a chaotic heap (not the words of promise, but the words of the law and its demands)—and I shall at once declare that they always show, not what man can do, or do do, but what they should do! Even grammarians and schoolboys at street corners know that nothing more is signified by verbs in the imperative mood than what ought to be done, and that what is done or can be done should be expressed by verbs in the indicative. (159).

Erasmus and all Pelagians and most semi-Pelagians argue that an imperative verb requires or implies an intrinsic or natural power to obey. The power is presumed as a condition of justice on God’s part. The Lord ought not to command what cannot be obeyed. Yet the argument is a moral assessment and not a logical necessity. Because it’s not a logical issue, the disagreement can only be resolved by biblical texts descriptive of human power or God’s moral obligation.

Thus Erasmus must provide a declarative statement from Scripture stating something near “man has power to keep the commandments.” Yet he is faced with the difficulty that Scripture provides the exact opposite: “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:6-8, ESV) [See Luther’s comments on pg. 300].

The second option for Erasmus is to demonstrate that God allows free will as a moral obligation to humanity to judge them. But again this is broken by declarative statements of Scripture: “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.’” (Exod. 4:21) [See Luther’s comments pg. 193.]

Erasmus attempts with Origen (c. 185-254) and Jerome (c. 347-419) in tow to argue that passages about deafening and hardening are tropes, but Luther ably disabuses his readers. And closes the book pleading with Erasmus to submit to the gospel.

Benefits/Detriments: The Bondage of the Will is a delight to read and answers most questions on the issue of the free will in salvation and pleasing God among Christians. Arminius (1560-1609) managed to shift the argument a bit in his theology proper, but Luther is still helpful in this regard as well (cf. review of God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius). Highly recommended for all.

Jyotrimaya Sharma, Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism

Penguin Books India, 2003, 205 pgs. 

Summary: The book is a critical introduction to the basic sources of the modern Hindutva movement: Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1883), Siri Auronbindo (1872-1950) , Swami Vivekanda (1863-1902), Vinayak Damadar Svarkar (1883-1966). The author Jyotrimaya Sharma is a professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad. 

Hindutva is political philosophy and way of life for the purpose of establishing the hegemony of the Hindus. Sharma describes it as an odd mixture of 19th century nationalism as expounded by an Italian revolutionary Mazzini (1805-1872), and British and German liberalism from about 1870, enframing the Veda.  

The Veda are the four most basic and ancient Hindu texts. Sharma argues that Hindutva sidelines the pacifist texts in addition to the Veda and suggests that the movement is a threat to Jainist and Buddhist.

The outline of the view can be summarized thus: 

1. Hinduism is the mother of all religions and the Aryans are the superior race.

2. Hinduism as understood by the  Hindutva  movement is superior to all other religions because it recognizes the truth found in the other religions.

3. The exclusivism or quietism of the stepchildren of Hinduism (everything but Hinduism as understood by  Hindutva) gives a cultural and military advantage to those faiths or threatens Hinduism's existence by pacifism. Therefore  Hindutva  must be dogmatic on recognizing and requiring submission to the superiority of Hinduism.

4. To live in India one must be Hindu, recognize the superiority of Hinduism or one is a threat to India's existence.  

The system provides an incredibly flexible rhetorical vocabulary near to modern liberalism but bound to nationalism and attached to the forms of traditional Hinduism.  

Benefits/Detriments: I am almost wholly unable to critique the book as this is my first foray into Hindutva literature. Sharma’s familiarity with Western philosophy seems to be centered on Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and he seems well regarded among moderns outside of Hindutva circles.  

Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, 1243 pgs. 

Summary: Augustine (354-430 AD) wrote The City of God against the Pagans in response to pagan apologists arguing that the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 was caused by the Romans embracing Christianity. 

Augustine responded by: 

• Proving the irrational nature of pagan theology and the inadequacy of speculative philosophy.

• Coordinating secular “universal history” with biblical history.

• Developing a basic biblical theology and Christian view of history.

• Developing and expounding a systematic theology with a clear anthropology, eschatology, epistemology, soteriology, doctrine of nature and grace, and theology proper.

• Arguing for the trustworthiness and necessity of biblical revelation.

• Developing a Christian political philosophy.

• Arguing for the superiority of Christian ethics with historical examples.

In all of his argumentation Augustine proves familiar with both the academic and general practice of the pagans, the natural and speculative philosophers, and Christian sources in both Latin and Greek. (Augustine’s supposed ignorance of both Greek and Aristotle is often over stated.) 

His most basic point of departure was to argue for a conflict between the City of God and the City of man. 

Two cities, then, have been created by two loves: that is, the earthly by love of self extending even to contempt of God, and the heavenly by love of God extending to the contempt of self. The one, therefore, glories in itself, the other in the Lord; the one seeks glory from men, the other finds its highest glory in God, the Witness of our conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory: the other says to its God, ‘Thou are my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.’ In the Earthly City, princes are as mastered by the lust for mastery as the nations which they subdue are by them, in the Heavenly, all serve one another in charity, rulers by their counsel and subjects by their obedience. The one city loves its own strength as displayed in its mighty men; the other says, ‘I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.’ (14:28, pg. 632). 

The two cities will remain in conflict and to some degree are entwined until Jesus Christ returns and the New Jerusalem takes its place in the new heavens and earth. All of the citizens of the City of God will enter heaven and all the citizens of the City of Men will go to hell. 

Benefits/ Detriments: Seminal to all subsequent theology. The organization is classical rhetoric rather than common loci or topical. The flurry of primary source documentation may be confusing but worth the effort to master. Be sure to note his assumption of esoteric writing when interacting with Varro and Varro’s modern caustic hermeneutic. 

Recommended for late high school students, academically minded pastors; Christian philosophy students and pastors. Tolle Lege!

Albrecht Ritschl, Three Essays: Theology and Metaphysics, “Prolegomena” to The History of Pietism, and Instruction in the Christian Religion

Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1972, 301pgs. 

Summary: The volume translated by Philip Hefner was designed to introduce the basic theological framework of Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889). 

Ritschl is in the line of German theologians and philosophers beginning with Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) continuing through Schleiermacher (1768-1834, cf. review), and Barth (1886-1968, cf. reviews). His basic concern is to reformulate Christianity around the self-consciousness of humanity embodied in Kantian philosophy and Spinoza’s conclusions of the dependence orthodox Christian and Jewish theology on Greek philosophy (cf. review). There is also a steady pressure from Hegel (1770-1831) and his dialectic to see history as progressing towards “modern” conclusions in contradiction to the “primitive” past. 

Standing against Ritschl within the Lutheran and German Calvinists churches were two conservative opponents the pietists and the creedalist. The pietists were essentially folks who retreated from scholastic debate and dogmatism into fideism and mysticism.  The creedalist were those who attempted to maintain historic orthodoxy through maintaining creedal markers. Ritschl’s liberal audience were those who had or were removing themselves from Christianity due to the implications of Kant, Hegel, and Spinoza’s philosophy. 

Ritschl’s goal was to save Christianity in the modern era by assuming the truth contemporary philosophical conclusion and accommodating Christian doctrine to the new natural and metaphysical philosophy.   

"Prolegomena” to The History of Pietism

Ritschl desired to prove that pietism and to a lesser degree the Reformation were an unfortunate and historical response working for the “restoration of the proper relationship between Christianity and the world based on the assumption that the relationship has passed over into confusion of Christianity and the world” (67). 

The roots of pietism were found in the “Franciscian reformation” (c. 1181-1226) which attempted to bring all Christians into either a monastery separated from the world or into ordo tertius de poenitentia also distinguished from the world. These tertiaries were “composed of lay congregations of men, and women as well, for whom [Francis] provided a comprehensive rule of twenty articles” (64). “It is especially noteworthy that the Franciscan reformation of the catholic church was based on the principle of the primitive church, which was still free of confusion with the world (67). 

Further, the pietistic concern over how the world and church related were driven by non-Christian and mystical religious and philosophical ideals: “Mysticism in the Christian church is actually a growth of neoplatonism, for the leading idea, which is common to both this philosophy and to mysticism as well, is that God is not the world but that his the denial of the world” (76).  

Ritschl then connects the Anabaptist movement to the Lutheran pietistic movement, the  Anabaptist to the Franciscan tertiaries, and the entire lot to  mysticism; thus disqualifying all these parties from modern participation in Christian dialogue. (He also includes a series of swipes at Calvin.) 

Ritschl made all these arguments admitting that they cannot be documented:, “I sharpened this hunch into the hypothesis that the Anabaptist emerged directly from the circle of the Franciscan tertiaries, in particular, from the Observants. Since I could not support this hypothesis through any documentary evidence. . .” (78). And, “Even if the fifteenth century did not offer us a single document indicting that the Franciscan-Observants had propagated their fundamental objection. . .” (67). 

Theology and Metaphysics

In the second essay Ritschl responded to orthodox scholars noting his rejection of the historical understanding of God. 

Ritschl rejected the traditional theism because he believed that Kant proved it was impossible to know God in his nature (omnipresent, omniscient, self-existent, and Trinitarian). Thus the Bible must now be read through Jesus Christ as the only source of the knowledge of God. We know God only through description of Jesus, and we know Jesus only through the church. 

Again the author fences with the historically orthodox and the pietism. Ritschl’s irritation, contempt, and impatience for traditional conceptions of God and his opponents is palatable:  

The personal relationship of God or Christ to us, however, is and remains mediated through our precise recollection of the word, i.e. of the law and the promise of God. And God works upon us only through the one or the other of these revelations. The basic assertion of the immediacy of certain perceptions and relationships raises the question of distinguishing between reality and hallucination. Those who maintain the pretension of having an immediate personal relationship to Christ or God are apparently not well-read in the literature of mysticism (196).

He then makes a half-hearted effort to prove that Luther agrees with him: and then attempts to show that Melanchthon reverted back to the pre-Luther Platonic philosophy. “Melanchthon frustrates the reshaping of the doctrine of God which he himself lays down by a formula which he describes as the summation of the biblical affirmations about God, but which, in reality, represent a capitulation to the neoplatonic and scholastic position” (206).  

Instruction in the Christian Religion

Ritschl attempts to correct and replace Lombard, Calvin, and Melanchthon by writing a theology textbook for high school students (220). 

He begins by rejecting the authoritative nature of the Old Testament (222). The next step is for humanity to recognize that while they are products of the world they are actually greater than the world and therefore must advance the Kingdom of heaven which is the “highest good of its members” (224). 

Those pursuing the “Kingdom of heaven” gather together in churches or communities, and these communities mediate faith to the individual. 

The kingdom of God is the divinely ordained highest good of the community founded through God’s revelation in Christ; but it is the highest good only in the sense that it forms at the same time the ethical ideal for whose attainment the members of the community bind themselves to each other through a definite type of reciprocal action (222).

Church discipline and a countercultural definition of marriage are artifacts of the opposition of Christianity to Judaism and paganism. By maintaining such distinctions the church has become a state within a state, and this should be dropped. The ordering of the church is “limited essentially to the maintenance of the preaching office” (259). 

God’s purpose in the system is to provide benefits to humanity; thus in rejecting vicarious atonement and the covenant of grace and works he notes:

Now all law is binding only because the lawgiver shows himself a benefactor, maintainer of public weal. Thus the goodness of such a benefactor is the motive for the recognition of his law by the society he founds. Applied to God, this principle shows that the experience of God’s goodness or grace is precedent to every law which gives expression to the mutual rights between God and man (277, ft. 113). 

And then he grinds through rejecting almost all orthodox doctrines or modifying them. Heaven and hell are cast aside, “since a consistent eschatological theory cannot be gained from the data of the New Testament, the hints of the New Testament as to the condition of the blessed and the lost lie beyond the possibility of clear presentation”(254). 

The vocabulary of Christianity is continued, but the meaning is radically altered. Sin “is established by the impulse of unrestrained exercise of freedom, with which everyone comes into the world and meets the manifold attractions to self-seeking which arises out of the sin of society” (232-233). The Holy Spirit is an impulse towards good

Detriments/Benefits: Helpful for students of Barth and historical theology. Almost completely worthless for spiritual edification, unless you happen to be a late Enlightenment liberal wanting to trust both Kant and Jesus. 

Thomas Nagal, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False

Oxford University Press, 2012, pgs. 130.

Summary:  Thomas Nagal (1937-     ) is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at New York University and has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard. He is an avid atheist (12).

According to Nagal, consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and realist values (values based on a standard outside of the self) require that the materialism of Neo-Darwinism is very likely false. Evolution is true, but reductionist materialism is false, and the Neo-Darwinian juggernaut really needs to get over this and come up with a better theory.

He even says shocking things like:

I realize that such doubts will strike many people as outrageous, but that is because almost everyone in our secular culture has been browbeaten into regarding the reductive research program as sacrosanct, on the ground that anything else would not be science (7).

And:

Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts [intelligent design folks] pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair (10).

Whatever one may think about the possibility of a designer, the prevailing doctrine—that the appearance of life from dead matter and its evolution through accidental mutation and natural selection to its present forms has involved nothing but the operation of physical law—cannot be regarded as unassailable. It is an assumption governing the scientific project rather than a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis (11).

Nagal at this point has Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Plotinus, pre-Christian and post-Christian Augustine, all the Scholastic theologians/philosophers from 500 AD to the present, Averroes, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel, Dr. Marjorie Grene (cf. review on Heidegger), historian Gertrud Himmelfarb, and a swath of modern philosophers, the Buddha, and . . . all nodding their heads. Thus, Nagal does not add anything to the historical conversation.

Nagal’s contribution is found in that he is willing to actually say to moderns, “Umm, (polite cough), Neo-Darwinism’s materialism, is very unlikely to be true.” Speaking very quickly. “But I am not a theist. So, please don’t take away my intelligentsia union card. But I just want to point out that because the concept of evolution is non-material a reductionist material explanation of the universe is absurd. Further, merely material things can’t produce non-material things, so we’ve got to have a theory that includes non-material things in it or we can’t have non-material thing like the concept of evolution, consciousness, reason, values, ‘cause otherwise were all just bags of wet chemicals with interior skeletons twitching to environmental stimuli.”

And now I will stop being snarky, and attempt a degree of sobriety since both Nagal and I are exposed to the above mentioned browbeating.

Nagal politely points out that there are only three kinds of accounts of existence: “causal (appealing only to law-governed efficient causation)” {58}, teleological—“a teleological account will hold that in addition to the law governing the behavior of the elements in every circumstance, there are also principles of self-organization or of the development of complexity that are not explained by those elemental laws” (59), and intentional, God using his free will to either create or manipulate the existing.

Nagal doesn’t explain why he rejects the intentional account besides, “I lack the sensus divinitatis” (12) and suggests in the footnote he’s been grumpy about theism in the past: “I am not just unreceptive but strongly averse to the idea, as I have said elsewhere” (12, ftn. 10).

He does seem a bit irked by the fact that most forms of theism require “that the divine mind just has to be accepted as a stopping point in the pursuit of understanding, it leaves the process incomplete. . .” (21). 

The complaint here seems to be that if there is a personal God then we can’t comprehend him nor will we ever be able to, and that would put limits on human knowledge. Satan of course mentions this same issue in Genesis 3.

He then goes on to argue for the teleological explanation but without the baggage of deity. Instead we get statements like “the process seems to be one of the universe gradually waking up” (117).

The basic alternative he offers to mere materialism is a sort of panpsychism. Inherent in the universe is the potential for consciousness:

And once there are beings who can respond to value, the rather different teleology of intentional action becomes part of the historical picture, resulting in the creation of new value. The universe has become not only conscious and aware of itself but capable in some respects of choosing its path into the future—though all three, the consciousness, the knowledge, and the choice, are dispersed over a vast crowd of beings, acting both individually and collectively (124).

In other words, an unintelligent, unintentional, determined, panpsychic cosmos had a teleological non-intent that organized something (perhaps things) that are now intelligent, intentional, and can create stuff with their free-wills.

Though Nagal pays lip service to the possibility of aliens, he’s never met one. So, humans and their offspring are the only reasonable, value laden, free-causes in the universe. They have the potential for infinite understanding. Thus, the universe woke up in that it produced little gods. The little gods working collectively or individually can now steer the cosmos with their consciousness, knowledge, and choices. We can become what Nagal rejects as our cause. 

Benefits/Detriments:

While I have great appreciation for Nagal’s bravery, iconoclasm, and fortitude (one can only imagine the distaste he has for being quoted by Baptist pastors in sermons and blogs), he doesn’t add anything particularly interesting to the conversation in argumentation, besides pointing out that intelligent design arguments cannot be rejected out of hand. 

He seems very intelligent and I think he represents a more rational and humane philosophy than say Heidegger on an ethicist who is a materialist. What he’s observing has been patently obvious since before Socrates rejected a form of evolution because of the distance of his nose from his rectum (Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates, 1.4.4-11). His panpsychism is no improvement on Hegel or Spinoza, and I suspect Aristotle would have been at best bemused by such a weakly formed teleology. 

My greatest hope for this book is that Nagal wrote it so shallowly as a heuristic device for scientists. May all his materialist readers have existential crises!  But as Nagal notes in closing, “The human will to believe is inexhaustible” (128).

Recommended for materialists.

F. C. Copleston, Aquinas: An Introduction to the Life and Work of the Great Medieval Thinker

Penguin Books, 1955, 272 pages.

Summary: A sound, lucid, and accurate description of Thomas Aquinas’ philosophical system by the Jesuit scholar F. C. Copleston (1907-1994). The book is strictly limited to Thomas’ philosophical system and suggests that Thomism is a perennial philosophy. 

Thomas denied that humans have innate ideas and attempted to develop a system that allowed Christian philosophers to remain in the church while philosophizing. Or as Copelston summarizes Pope Leo XIII encyclical letter Aeterni Patris:

[Leo XIII] was not asking them to shut their eyes to all thought since the thirteenth century but rather to penetrate and develop the synthesis of a thinker who combined a profound and living belief in the Christian religion with a real trust in the power of the human mind and in the value of philosophic reflection, uniting in readiness to see truth wherever it might be found with a fidelity to fundamental rational insights which prevented any surrender to passing fashion just because it was fashionable (246).

Benefits/Detriments: I find Copleston’s summary of Thomas and his interaction with other theologians and philosophers in Medieval Philosophy: From Augustine to Duns Scotus in A History of Philosophy (cf. review) to be more illuminating. 

Very helpful at establishing the potential of pre-Kantian philosophy as a response to modernity. However, I would argue for a more Augustinian stance as the perennial philosophy.