Chalcedonian reason and the demon of closure

Scottish Journal of Theology

Volumn 57, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 56-79

  Greenway, William ^a  

^a Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67649851006     PISSN: 00369306     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0036930603001261     Document Type: Review

References (15)

1. Emmanuel Levinas, 'Ethics as First Philosophy', The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 76.
2. Charles Taylor, 'How is Mechanism Conceivable?', Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 169.
3. Also critical to my argument is Taylor's 'The Validity of Transcendental Arguments', Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 20-33.
4. Taylor,'How is Mechanism Conceivable?', p. 169.
5. The overwhelming majority of the time, the demand for extant coherence is perfectly reasonable. But if incommensurable vocabularies are internally coherent and indispensable (as determined by a communally broad and historically deep consensus of qualified evaluators), then the demand for extant conceptual coherence is unreasonable. I am here gesturing toward a looser form of indispensability than does Taylor, who aims at a sort of revised apodicticity ('The Validity of Transcendental Arguments', 20-33).
6. Charles Taylor, 'Preface', Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. viii.
7. I analyze the controversies in conversation with J. N. D. Kelly's classic, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). In the notes I argue that Kelly, though unawares, nonetheless delineates brilliantly the thwarting of the demon of closure.
8. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 238-9.
9. I owe thanks to George Hunsinger, who in How to Read Karl Barth identifies the 'Chalcedonian pattern' that characterizes Barth's thought ([New York: Oxford University Press, 1991], pp. 185ff. ). While reading Hunsinger, I realized that my excitement over the promise of Taylor's revised transcendental reasoning was not something new, but a recovery of reasoning already classic in the Christian tradition. Hunsinger's excellent analysis identifies almost precisely the dynamics I am highlighting. In my opinion, he rightly identifies a key to understanding Barth (see, for instance, his penetrating application of Chalcedonian reasoning to the question of how to understand the relationship between human and divine agency). However, both Hunsinger and Barth saw the Chalcedonian pattern as justified because the subject of theological ratiocination is uniquely unique. Thus they mount a defense of the literal incoherence of their affirmations with an appeal to mystery, which facilitates the quite correct modern objection that theologians, on specious grounds, attempt to insulate themselves from basic and otherwise uncontested principles of rationality that are fundamental to modern thought. This validates the conclusion that central Christian affirmations are irrational. The mistake results from a misplaced appeal to mystery. Barth and Hunsinger's work can easily be modified in accord with Chalcedonian reasoning in order to strengthen their otherwise extremely insightful analyses.
10. Tragically, Kelly, still haunted by the demon, does not recognize the dynamics of Chalcedonian reasoning even as he brilliantly depicts it. Thus he can only praise Alexandria as 'a practical step of great importance' (Early Christian Doctrines, p. 253) and 'statesmanlike' (p. 254). He can only see Cyril's eventual decision to accept the Symbol of Union as 'practical politics' (p. 323). He feels compelled to comment that the four theses of Leo's Tome had not 'probed the Christological problem very deeply' (pp. 337-8). He can only conclude the Chalcedonian definition is a product of an imperial demand, one that was finally accepted '[o]nly by dint of consummate skill and diplomacy' (pp. 339-40), and one best characterized as a 'settlement' (p. 338). Kelly's political analyses are all surely right. His descriptions likely exhaust the self-understanding of all involved. But I am suggesting that at Alexandria and Chalcedon the community also made a momentous and brilliant epistemological maneuver and banished the demon from their communal affirmations, if not from their individual hearts and minds. Thus the Christian can discern in the Counciliar trinitarian and christological definitions not mere pragmatic compromise, but a theologically and philosophically profound triumph of the Spirit.
11. The words of Ivan Karamazov in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Signet Classic, 1999), p. 237.
12. For an example of how one might reflect upon evil after exorcizing the demons of certainty and closure, see William Greenway, 'Charles Taylor on Affirmation, Mutilation, and Theism: A Retrospective Reading of Sources of the Self', Journal of Religion (Jan 2000), pp. 23-40.
13. A 'classic' is a work whose wisdom has been established by virtue of the judgement of generations. No 'classic' is absolutely beyond question, but the more enduring the judgement 'classic' (e. g. The Iliad, Macbeth), the more authority is credited to the judgement (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Garrett Barden and John Cumming (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1988), pp. 253-8, 2nd part, II. b. ii, 'The classical example'). In the Christian community, there is also the belief that the influence of the Spirit is subtly inspiring our creation and discernment of classics (e. g. Genesis, the Gospel of John).
14. Above I tried to rehabilitate the classic trinitarian and christological confessions by arguing that they preserved the best and excised the worst from the Antiochene and Alexandrian trajectories. It does not follow that these two trajectories exhaust valuable possibilities for trinitarian or christological reflection. In this regard, see Daniel Migliore's 'The Person and Work of Jesus Christ' for a beautiful example of Chalcedonian reasoning and of a Chalcedonian spirit (Faith Seeking Understanding [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991], pp. 139-64).
15. Isa 55:9. While many might find the version of reason I am sketching here threatening in its ambiguity, others will recognize my strong dependence upon Gadamer's hermeneutics. A standard critique of Gadamer, and in particular of his reliance upon the wisdom of historic communities to generate classics, pivots upon the inherent conservatism entailed in his affirmation of the status quo. This critique also applies to my approach. In brief, I would follow Paul Ricoeur in 'Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology' (in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. and trans. John Thompson [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], pp. 63-100) by balancing my appeal to Gadamer with Habermas's critique - properly exorcized, as appropriated by Ricoeur, of the haunting that stimulates Habermas's desperate clinging after a metaphysics of certainty and closure. Unfortunately, at the close of this brilliant essay Ricoeur manifests the haunting of the demon of closure. He finds 'hermeneutical consciousness' (primarily an 'ontology of prior understanding') and 'critical consciousness' (primarily an 'eschatology of freedom') to be incommensurable (pp. 99-100). But whereas Chalcedonian reason would be unsurprised at this antinomy (or aporia), Ricoeur, possessed, feels the lurking threat of incoherence. He declares it a 'false antinomy', exclaiming that we should not react 'as if it were necessary to choose between reminiscence and hope!' (p. 100). Ricoeur, unconvincingly compromising the brilliant contrasts drawn to that point in the essay, reacts (caveats flying) by collapsing critique into tradition (that it is a tradition of liberation is no help). Chalcedonian reason facilitates clear admission that the vocabularies of hermeneutics and critical theory are incommensurable, that both must be kept in play, and that frankly acknowledging the antinomy, far from being a descent into incoherence, is presently our most reasonable course of action, as is the admission that we cannot but oscillate on an ad hoc basis between these two indispensable vocabularies. Ricoeur's brilliant analysis would thereby be simplified and strengthened. I would also follow Ricoeur in drawing the clear parallel within religion to the antinomy between dependence upon the wisdom of the tradition (e. g. scriptures) and openness to the emergence of the radically new and discontinuous (e. g. the prophetic, or something as unpredictable and wildly improbable as incarnation).