I realize this is not the kind of everyday pleasure reading that most people would engage in. But it appeals not only to my tendency towards abstraction (hello, I'm a mathematician), but also my deep personal desire to answer those scary questions, like what is truth?
This book has had a profound impact on me. Not that everything it says is thoroughly compelling to me, but its approach is unlike anything I've seen before. I love how Florensky starts from such an intensely personal point of view, and then delves into philosophical abstraction not only with intellect, but with passion.
The (Eastern) Orthodox way of thinking is fiercely Trinitarian. This is the Ground of the Truth. There simply is no Truth without Trinity.
Already in this we see Florensky powerfully seek to dismantle Western rationalism. For him any attempt to search for the Truth based on "givens," the axioms of the human mind, is deeply flawed. Thus he strongly condemns the Law of Self-Identity:
"A = A. That is the final answer. But this tautological formula, this lifeless, thought-less, and therefore meaningless equality A = A, is, in fact, only a generalization of the self-identity that is inherent in every given. But by no means is this formula an answer to our question 'Why?'The Truth, on the other hand, is absolute precisely because it transcends this egotistical self-assertion. It finds its self-identity through the denial of self, receiving itself back through love.
...
"'I = I' turns out to be nothing more than a cry of naked egotism: 'I!'"
"Instead of an empty, dead, formal self-identity A = A, in virtue of which A should selfishly, self-assertively, egotistically exclude every not-A, we get a real self-identity of A, full of content and life, a self-identity that eternally rejects itself and that eternally receives itself in its self-rejection.So in this view, Truth is found not (as dear old Schaeffer would have it) in the Principle of Non-Contradiction, but rather in the Principle of Self-Contradiction, the principle of denying oneself in order to find self-identity through love, rather than rationality.
...
"Truth is the contemplation of Oneself through Another in a Third: Father, Son, and Spirit."
This view of the Truth also leads to a similarly styled view of the truth (with a lower-case "t"). If the nature of Truth is the denial of this self-identity "I = I," then it's not surprising that Florensky comes to a view of "truth" (meaning knowledge about the Truth) that relishes antinomy, or contradiction:
"A rational formula can be above the attacks of life if and only if it gathers all of life into itself, with all of life's diversity and all of its present and possible future contradictions. ... It follows that truth is a judgment that also contains the limit of all its refutations, or (in other words) that truth is a self-contradictory judgment."But if you really hate all this abstraction, you'll thank Florensky for pointing out how concretely this idea appears in scripture. He actually gives a little list of antinomies in scripture (one or two examples omitted):
Divinity: both One and ThreeFlorensky isn't giving skeptics a cheat-sheet for how to argue against Christianity. He's stating powerfully what he feels to be the very strength of Orthodoxy.
Christ: both human and divine
Relation of Man to God: both predistination (Rom 9) and free will (Rom 9:30 - 10:21)
Sin: both through the fall of Adam (Rom 5:12-21) and inherent in the flesh (1 Cor 15:50)
Retribution: both retribution according to works (Rom 2:6-10, 2 Cor 5:10) and free forgiveness (Rom 4:4, 9:11, 11:6)
Final Fate: both universal restoration (Rom 8:19-23, 11:30-36) and the "double end" (Rom 2:5-12)
Works: both the necessity of works (1 Cor 9:24) and the lack thereof (Rom 9:16). See also Phil 2:12 and then 2:13 for a related antinomy
Faith: both free and depending on free will (John 3:16-28) and God's gift not found in human will but in the will of God (John 6:44)
Judgment: "For judgment I come into the world" (John 9:39) "I came not to judge the world" (John 12:47)
"Contradiction! It is always a mystery of the soul, a mystery of prayer and love. The closer one is to God, the more distinct are the contradictions. In Heavenly Jerusalem, there are no contradictions. Here, on earth, there are contradictions in everything; and they can be removed neither by social reorganization nor by philosophical argument."In this way he disparages all rationalistic worldviews. (No doubt the Soviets didn't approve of this, as their own Marxism depended on the strength of "social reorganization" to solve the contradictions of life.)
It is with these things in mind that I read a recent article by Al Mohler disparaging the postmodernism of "emergent church" types. He writes:
"The problem is this -- [the] argument that truth is plural means that the church should both embrace and celebrate different and even contradictory understandings of these doctrinal statements and core truths."I wonder what Florensky would have to say about this classical Protestant attitude?
"A heresy, even a mystical one, is a rational one-sidedness that claims to be everything. ... Orthodoxy has a universal nature, but heresy essentially has a sectarian nature. The spirit of a sect is the egoism that emanates from it, spiritual separateness. A one-sided proposition takes the place of absolute Truth..."Under this view, I suppose that Protestantism is, by its very nature, heretical. At its very core is the desire to get the Bible right, to boldly affirm one interpretation to the exclusion of other contradictory interpretations.
I wonder if Florensky has a point. The empirical evidence from the Bible is almost compelling enough. Can anyone actually resolve these passages together logically? Somehow I think those who do inevitably suck the life out of one passage or another.
But if that's not enough, can't you just take a look around at the sheer number of Protestant denominations and ask, didn't these all come from a desire to be "right"? Is there maybe a hint of egoism in our Protestant tendency to split, not only from the historic Church, but even from each other?
On the other hand, Protestantism is a reaction against idolatry. Thus it always seeks to remind humanity that its conceptions of God are always too small. If only Protestants would continually apply this principle to our own rationalistic interpretations of scripture!
There are many reasons to think about this conception of truth other than to critique Protestantism, for sure. This just happens to be on my mind at the moment, as it often is.
In any case, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth is shaping my thinking in lots of ways, and this won't be the last time I mention it.
Lately, my everday pleasure reading is your outstanding blog! Well done, Jameson Graber. I wish you would review this book for Amazon.com!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking more about the other discussion on the other post re: the Laws of Being. In this post, I think Florensky would have been better suited using the term 'paradox' instead of 'contradiction' to describe the theological truths. Then I could agree with him; Chesterton is a hero of mine and paradoxes were his able weapons in apologetics.
ReplyDeleteBut attacking the validity of the laws of being saws out the branch of reason from under us, always, all the time.
I read this yesterday and I wondered what you might think of it: "We do not deduce the rest of our knowledge from tautologies; they are not the starting points of our learning. Sense experience is. Tautologies are the final court of appeal, so to speak: if any argument violates a tautology, a self-evident logical law, that fact alone shows that the argument is invalid..."
I would most certainly agree that tautologies are not the starting points of our learning. Sensory experience by itself doesn't count as the starting point of learning, either. I think learning is a process of adapting to experience and filtering it through categories which prove to be useful. The usefulness of these categories isn't seen in advance; they emerge out of a process of trial and error. I see abstract thought, followed by reason, to be abilities that grow up within this more general process of learning. The important consequence of this is that the laws of logic, which govern our reason, do not in fact govern the general process of learning.
ReplyDeleteNow if any argument violates a "self-evident logical law," then yes, we do dismiss that argument as invalid. But I question whether that's because we must, in any absolute metaphysical sense. To say, "I dismiss that argument as invalid," is one thing. To say, "I don't believe you," is another. I feel myself getting into a whole blog post, which perhaps I will take the time to write, but for now I hope I can cut this off without having fully explained what I'm after.
For my clarification: By saying "I think learning is a process of adapting to experience" does this not mean that sense experience is first? And if we do have "categories" in our minds, which I'm not sure of, aren't these in themselves limited a priori by the Laws of Being, i.e., you cannot "learn" the truth of a contradiction because it is impossible? We can't conceive a "round square" as part of the necessity of Being, yes?
ReplyDeleteIt seems there is a wide scope to what we can know, for sure, people shooting off all over the place. But to say that there aren't rules or starting points seems incomprehensible to me. But perhaps I've misunderstood.
To clarify a bit: The sense experience is "first," but I think there can be sense experience without learning. For instance, a computer program can arguably have "experiences," but all of its responses are merely programmed, and therefore it will not learn. (There are attempts being made at computer learning, but classical computer programming does not involve learning.) It does not particularly matter what kind of experiences we have; as long as we have minds capable of adapting to and in some sense filtering out experiences of our environment, this is learning.
ReplyDeleteDifferent logical systems are possible. There are some logical systems not requiring the law of the excluded middle. It is tempting to dismiss these systems, claiming some inherent flaw in their structure, but one logical system cannot "disprove" another.
If I get around to it, I'll have to write a full post explaining my views more fully.
I'll be lurking!
ReplyDelete