The Dark Side of Political Philosophy, and How it Led to the Growth and Development of Today’s “Political Left” Movement

(Updated August 30, 2020): On the topic of why I think that the Roman Catholic Church is a problem with respect to the “wokism” situation we see today, it is not simply that I think things like “the Mass”, the priesthood, the saints, had anything (or much) to do with it. Roman Catholicism is NOT just its religious trappings. It is not just its history. It is not just “the evils that it has done in history”. It is also a thought system of its own. It has adopted “philosophies” over time. It is in fact a collection of these things. More, as well, it was a “cause” against certain “effects” reacted. Today we see some “effects” in the form of the so-called “academic subject” called “intersectionalism” that reacts against “White European Males”. There is so much more.

In this article, originally dated February 2019, I began to make the philosophical connection.

I’ve been asked many times, “why do you think it’s the intellectuals who convert to Roman Catholicism, while many of those who don’t approach the topic from a so-called intellectual viewpoint tend in large measure to convert the other way, from Roman Catholicism to evangelicalism?”

It seems to me that the “intellectuals” (or those who would think of themselves in that way) are more philosophically savvy, and they tend toward logical and ordered systems such as Aristotelianism (and derivatively, Thomism). That is a definite draw.

However, I think that is wrong-headed in several important ways. To take just one example, in his “Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction”, Edward Feser outlines Kant’s “naturalist” assumptions and decides simply to ignore all of Kant (and what followed). He says (and I’ve added paragraph breaks to enhance readability):

The lockdown is no longer morally justifiable

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-lockdown-is-no-longer-morally.html

Aristotle's Revenge

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/aristotles-revenge-the-metaphysical-foundations-of-physical-and-biological-science/

Relevant to debates over Catholic Thomism and Reformed Thomism.

Feser on simplicity redux

I commented on Ed Feser's reply to Ryan Mullins one before:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/feser-on-simplicity.html

In his reply, Feser says he defends Thomistic simplicity at greater length in his book on Five Proofs of the Existence of God. So I'll turn to that. What he says on pp186-96 adds nothing of consequence to his response to Mullins. So I'll begin by sampling the argument in chap. 2: 

The things of our experience are made up of parts…There is a sense in which, in each of these cases, the parts are less fundamental than the whole…Still, there is obviously also another sense in which each of these wholes is less fundamental than its parts. For the whole cannot exist unless the parts exist and are combined in the right way. 

So, the things of our experience are composite, or composed of parts. And a composite is less fundamental than its parts in the sense that its existence presupposes that its parts are put together in the right way…Composite things have causes (chap. 2).

Feser on simplicity

Ed Feser has responded to a critique of divine simplicity. It's useful to see how a Thomist  of his caliber fields objections:

https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/simply-irresistible/

Take the latter point first. Though its critics often treat the notion of divine simplicity as an unimportant curiosity, there are good reasons why the Church Fathers, the medieval Doctors, and two ecclesiastical councils regarded it as essential to orthodoxy. For one thing, it is a consequence of God’s ultimacy. For anything composed of parts is ontologically posterior to those parts, and can exist only if something causes the parts to be combined. Hence if God were composed of parts, there would have to be something ontologically prior to him and something which combines those parts, thereby causing him to exist. But there is nothing ontologically prior to or more ultimate than God, and nothing that causes him. To be the uncaused cause of everything other than himself is just part of what it is to be God. Hence God cannot be composed of parts but must be absolutely simple.[1]

Turning to Catholicism-4

This is the fourth installment in my review of Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism. Here's I comment on some statements by Ed Feser in his chapter: 

If you are going to insist that Jesus was God in the flesh, that is going to have implications for what you say about his mother–such as whether she, functioning as essentially the tabernacle of God–could have been stained by sin (46).

i) Just in passing, shouldn't Feser say that Jesus is God in the flesh rather than was God in the flesh? Why the past tense?

ii) More to the point, even assuming that during her pregnancy, Mary was the tabernacle of God, why can't she be stained by sin? Does he think that if the vessel is stained, it will stain the contents of the vessel–figuratively speaking? Was Jesus stained by sin through contact with sinners during his earthly existence? 

Would it not be more accurate to say that Jesus is immune to sin? If anything, sinners don't defile Jesus; rather, Jesus purifies sinners. Some diseases are transmitted by touch. But Jesus has the healing touch. Rather than the sinner's touch infecting Jesus, his touch cures the sinner. 

A divine revelation is of no effect unless one can know both what counts as part of the revelation, and whether one has properly understood it. I came to see that the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura makes such knowledge impossible. A book cannot interpret itself, and it cannot even tell you what counts as part of the book. For even if there were some passage in it that said, "Here is a list of the materials that should be counted as part of this book," that would only raise the further question of how we can know that that passage should really be counted as part of the book. Obviously, to answer that question, we could not appeal to the book itself without begging the question (49).

i) I take it that he's alluding to the question of how to establish the canon. I've responded to that objection on multiple occasions. Since it's not a new objection, and I have nothing new to say in response, I'll let that pass.

ii) But consider the bolded statement. That falls under the purview of textual criticism. If our best MSS contain a passage, there's a presumption that the passage is original to the text–unless there's some positive evidence that it's a scribal interpolation. That's not a question to be answered a priori, but based on principles of textual criticism. This is a problem when philosophers act as though evidentiary questions can be settled through abstract, armchair postulates. 

iii) Apropos (ii), how do we know that the statements attributed to Feser in chap. 1 were penned by him rather than a ghostwriter? But the burden of proof is on the skeptic in that regard. Is it really begging the question to say we think Feser wrote it because that's what the book says? In theory, the book might be a hoax, but is the onus on the reader to prove otherwise? 

iv) It's simplistic to say a book cannot interpret itself. Since a book is an inanimate object, there's a sense in which it can't interpret itself. But that's very one-sided. Unless he's a deceiver, an author is writing to be understood. The trail is strewn with clues to guide the reader. Sometimes a book includes editorial asides that speak directly to the reader. Likewise, some parts of a book may provide clues to interpret other parts of a book. That's a standard interpretive procedure. 

…the institution cannot function unless there is some chief executive with authority to break any deadlock…Without such an institutional authority, whether to accept something as part of divine revelation, and how to interpret revelation, ultimately seem arbitrary, subjective, and fideistic… (49-50).

But had Catholicism really preserved the teaching of the early Church whole and undefiled? My study of the development of doctrine convinced me that it had (51).

What a hoot! You gotta wonder if this was written before or after Feser went ape over Pope Francis reversing Catholic tradition on the death penalty. For instance:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/08/pope-francis-and-capital-punishment

https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/10/15/the-popes-remarks-on-capital-punishment-need-to-be-clarified/

Feser was gung-ho for a "chief executive with authority to break any deadlock"–right up to the moment when his position on capital punishment collided with Pope Francis. Now that Francis has rewritten the Catechism, Feser's entire argument lies in shambles. He could try to salvage his argument by claiming that the Catechism is just a fallible document. But the whole point of the Catechism is to do the sorting for the laity so that they don't have to decide for themselves which traditions are authoritative in contrast to reformable teaching. In defiance of the pope, Feser takes it upon himself to sift tradition to his own satisfaction.  

Turning to Catholicism-3

This is the third installment in my review of Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism. Several contributors use variations on the same argument. For instance, Ed Feser says:

A book is merely the expression of the thoughts of the person who wrote the book. In order to know for sure what he intended as part of the book and what he meant by it, you have to ask him. Or you might ask someone who knows him, or someone he has given authority to represent him. The point is that you have to be able to ask, and you can't literally ask a book anything. You can only ask, and get answers from, something personal rather than impersonal…Now, when Christ was on earth, he could obviously be asked by his disciples about his revelation. After he departed, these disciples themselves could do the job for others who had questions. Unless these disciples themselves left successors, in each succeeding generation, with the authority to do the same, those later generations would be unable to get an answer to the question of what is truly part of Christ's revelation and how to understand it…Where these persons disagree, the institution cannot function unless there is some chief executive with authority to break any deadlock. In short, divine revelation, to be effective, requires something like apostolic succession and a papacy–that is, of course, exactly what Catholicism maintains…Without such an institutional authority, whether to accept something as part of divine revelation, and how to interpret revelation, ultimately seem arbitrary, subjective, and fideistic… (49-50).

While Cutter says:

A living teaching authority is also, I think, a practical necessity for the spiritual life of the individual believer…If the Catholic Church did not have divine authority, then there was no hope of gaining firm knowledge of much of anything in theology. I felt that if the Church of Rome could not be trusted, then the whole Christian theological project was hopelessly under-constrained (95; cf. 107-08; 230). 

i) That's a standard Catholic tactic. It goes back to the Pyrrhonian skepticism of Counter-Reformation apologists. But such radical hermeneutical skepticism boomerangs on the Catholic apologist. To begin with, that makes it impossible to provide epistemic warrant for conversion to Catholicism. Take Catholic prooftexts from the Bible and the church fathers. But if interpreting a text is so hopelessly subjective and arbitrary, then the prooftexts can't be used to establish a "living teaching authority" in the first place. So conversion to Rome can never be justified. 

ii) Apropos (i), how do Cutter and Feser know that Jesus founded a church? How do they know what he meant? How do they know he even existed? Given their radical doubt about communication, they can't appeal to the NT or the church fathers. They can't appeal to documentary evidence, since that must be interpreted. So what's their source of information? What's their frame of reference? 

iii) Likewise, it isn't possible on their view to compare the Catholic alternative to Protestant theology. For instance, you can't compare and contrast Tridentine theology to the Westminster Confession if you think interpreting a text is so hopelessly subjective and arbitrary. 

iv) By the same token, where does that leave The Catechism of the Catholic Church, or papal encyclicals? How many Catholic laymen can grill the pope what a particular sentence means in the Catechism or some papal encyclical? 

v) Feser seems awfully confident about his grasp of Aquinas. Did he step into a time machine and consult Aquinas in person? Did he consult Reginald of Piperno? 

vi) Feser is utterly convinced that Pope Francis is wrong about capital punishment. Feser is sure he can interpret church tradition regarding capital punishment independently of the pope and in defiance of the pope. 

vii) How can a reader evaluate Hume's objections to miracles and theistic proofs given their radical hermeneutical skepticism? How can a Catholic apologist or prospective convert understand and evaluate Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine if a reader must be able to ask the author what he meant? 

viii) The reason we have a Bible, the reason some things were committed to writing, was to provide a permanent record for posterity in the absence of Jesus, the apostles, and OT prophets. Since we didn't live by then, that's our referent point.

ix) In addition, some NT epistles were written with the express purpose of resolving a doctrinal dispute–in the absence of the writer. Imagine of the opponents of St. John or St. Paul resorted to the impious skepticism of Cutter and Feser? "That's just a text! It could mean anything! Unless I can personally quiz St. John (or St. Paul), I'm entitled to disregard their letter!"

Hard truths

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/07/speaking-what-you-take-to-be-hard.html

Saving Catholicism from the pope

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/08/pope-francis-and-capital-punishment

How to paint yourself into a corner

Convert to Catholicism and Catholic philosopher Ed Feser:

For another thing, if the Pope is saying that capital punishment is always and intrinsically immoral, then he would be effectively saying – whether consciously or unconsciously – that previous popes, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and even divinely inspired Scripture are in error. If this is what he is saying, then he would be attempting to “make known some new doctrine,” which the First Vatican Council expressly forbids a pope from doing. He would, contrary to the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI, be “proclaim[ing] his own ideas” rather than “bind[ing] himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word.” He would be joining that very small company of popes who have flirted with doctrinal error. And he would be undermining the credibility of the entire Magisterium of the Church, including his own credibility. For if the Church has been that wrong for that long about something that serious, why should we trust anything else she teaches? And if all previous popes have been so badly mistaken about something so important, why should we think Pope Francis is right? 

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/10/15/the-popes-remarks-on-capital-punishment-need-to-be-clarified/

That was before Francis made it official by rewriting the Catechism. 

Feser debunks Carrier

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2018/02/carrier-on-five-proofs.html

One long circular argument

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/one-long-circular-argument/

Saving Catholicism from the pope

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/10/15/the-popes-remarks-on-capital-punishment-need-to-be-clarified/

Credulous Catholics

It's revealing to see the gullibility of faithful Catholics, including some very intelligent Catholics. Take Feser's response to Robert George:

a major difficulty for Robbie’s assertion is that then-Cardinal Ratzinger, speaking as head of the CDF and the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, explicitly denied that John Paul II had made any change to the Church’s teaching on capital punishment at the level of doctrinal principle (as opposed to prudential application of principle).  In a letter responding to an inquiry from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus about whether the teaching of Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism represented a doctrinal change, published in First Things in October of 1995, Ratzinger said:

Clearly, the Holy Father has not altered the doctrinal principles which pertain to this issue as they are presented in the Catechism, but has simply deepened the application of such principles in the context of present-day historical circumstances… In my statements during the presentation of the encyclical to the press, I sought to elucidate these elements, and noted the importance of taking such circumstantial considerations into account.  It is in this sense that the Catechism may be rewritten, naturally without any modification of the relevant doctrinal principles. (emphasis added) 

That’s about as clear a rejection as there could be of the thesis that the teaching of Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism represents a change in doctrine rather than merely a change in prudential application of doctrine.  

Fifth, contrary to what Robbie asserts, this previous teaching is in fact infallible.  Every Catholic must assent to it.  The First Vatican Council solemnly teaches that:

[T]hat meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture.In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers. 

The Council of Trent taught the same thing.  Now, many scriptural passages teach not only that capital punishment is legitimate, but also that it is legitimate even just for purposes of securing retributive justice.  (Cf. the examples Joe Bessette and I cited in our recent Catholic World Report article.)  And the Church, from the Fathers onward, has always understood these passages this way.  The various contemporary attempts creatively to re-interpret such passages simply cannot be squared with the principle that scripture must be understood to mean what the Church has always “held” it to mean. 

This is why Cardinal Ratzinger, despite his personal opposition to capital punishment, made the statements he did about the subject during his time as head of the CDF, i.e. to the effect that John Paul II’s teaching was prudential rather than doctrinal and to the effect that a good Catholic could disagree with it.  This is what Ratzinger’s famous “hermeneutic of continuity” with past teaching – and thus the very credibility of the magisterium of the Church – strictly requires. 

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/09/robert-p-george-on-capital-punishment.html

Feser is right to say the "very credibility of the magisterium" is at stake. And that's why you wouldn't expect the "the Church’s chief doctrinal officer" to openly accuse a sitting pope of altering doctrinal principles. Ratzinger is hardly a disinterested party. To begin with, it was JP2 who appointed him to be the CDF. He was serving at the pleasure of JP2. For that reason alone, he's not going to publicly contradict his boss.

Moreover, Ratzinger believes in the system. He's been a leading member of the Catholic establishment for decades. He's a convinced Catholic. Naturally he's not going to take a position that torpedos the authority of the magisterium. That would be self-defeating. Feser quotes Ratzinger as a witness to Feser's interpretation. But Ratzinger is hardly a nonpartisan referee. Ratzinger has a vested interest in defending the consistency of the magisterium. That's a cornerstone of his Catholic faith. 

So this is an illicit appeal to authority. You can't very well quote a member of the magisterium to prove the consistency of the magisterium when the consistency of the magisterium is the very issue in dispute. That fails to respond to George on his own level. That fails to refute his evidence. George is not alone  in this. Justice Scalia made the same point. There's a trajectory in recent papal teaching. That's easy to document. For instance:

https://www.firstthings.com/issue/2002/05

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/10/antonin-scalia-and-his-critics-the-church-the-courts-and-the-death-penalty  

Catholics like Feser are so easily taken in by Rome's runaround. 

Michael Rea owes Richard Swinburne an apology

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/09/michael-rea-owes-richard-swinburne.html

Analogy and intervention

Since "Reformed Thomism" is popular among some young Calvinists, I'd going to consider two such positions. Once again, I'll be using Brian Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (3rd ed.), as a reference point. 

1. Analogy

As Davies explains, Thomism rejects univocal predication in favor of analogical predication (ibid. 147-52). 

Although this discussion can get into the weeds, it raises a fundamental question, both in principle and practice, about whether God is knowable. Can we pray to God? 

i) One issue is whether analogical predication is parasitic on univocal predication. If we can't pinpoint what two things have in common, then do they really have anything in common. 

ii) I don't deny that our knowledge of God includes analogical knowledge. But I deny that we can't have univocal knowledge of God. Sometimes it's one or the other or both. Let's illustrate:

A sundial and a Rolex are analogous objects. In terms of function, they are univocal. They have an identical function, as timepieces. Yet the way they tell time is very different, so in that respect they are analogical. 

In this case, the relationship can be both univocal and analogies, in differing respects. 

Another comparison might be wooden and aluminum baseball bats. Different composition, but identical function.

iii) If I make something, and God makes something, is that attribution analogical or univocal? Let's begin with definitions. What do we mean by causation? David Lewis proposed that this represents our intuitive concept of causation:

We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. Had it been absent, its effects — some of them, at least, and usually all — would have been absent as well. 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/#CouCauDep

Offhand, I think that nicely captures our pretheoretical intuition. And this, in turn, leads him to define causation thusly:

e causally depends on c if and only if, if c were to occur e would occur; and if c were not to occur e would not occur.

Again, seems reasonable to me.

If I make a batch of cookies and God makes the world, is that analogical or univocal predication? No doubt there are categorical differences, but is the meaning of the terms and the core concept the same? Well, let's plug these examples into the formula:

a) Absent divine agency, the world would not exist.

b) Absent human agency, the cookies would not exist.

The world causally depends on God if the world would not exist unless God did something.

The cookies causally depend on me if the cookies would not exist unless I did something. 

(There are other ways of phrasing it, to the same effect.) 

Of course, in both cases, the prior action has to suitably related to the outcome. Nevertheless, I think it's unavoidable that based on this definition, "making" means the same thing in reference to God and human agents alike. 

The fact that God and human agents are so different, the fact that how they bring about the result is so different, the fact that what they make is so different, is irrelevant to the fact that the same idea covers both actions.

What makes it work is comparing two things at a high enough level of abstraction that you eliminate differences which are incidental to the core idea. 

2. Intervention

Davies has problems with an interventionist model of miracles (chap. 11). So does Ed Feser. 

i) In one sense I agree. I think the word can be misleading. But that's because God's relationship to the world is too complex to be summed up in a word. Single words can't do the work of concepts. But we need a word to denote the concept. The real issue is fleshing out the concept. 

ii) It depends in large part on what analogies or metaphors we use to model miracles. Suppose we view the physical universe as a machine. Indeed, much of the natural world has a mechanical quality to it. Machines within machines. The human body is like a superbly engineered machine. Indeed, that's not really a metaphor. There's a sense in which the human body is a machine. An organic machine.

That's only a problem if you think "machine" or "mechanical" has pejorative connotations. But why think that? In fact, Davies even quotes Aquinas defining a miracle as "an event that happens outside the ordinary processes of the whole of created nature" (258). 

Well, that conjures up the image of what is normally a closed system. A miracle would involve outside agency. 

Now, automated machines are programmed to do the same thing. Likewise, natural processes are unintelligent. They simply do what they were designed to do. 

But personal agency can reprogram the machine. Personal agency can redirect a natural process, or bypass the process altogether. 

The knock against a "mechanical" model of miracles is that it makes God looks like an inefficient watchmaker. But that's an uncharitable interpretation. 

To begin with, in a fallen world, some miracles do involving repairing the damage. Take healing miracles. 

In addition, "intervention" doesn't imply a design flaw or lack of foresight. Automation is useful, but what makes it useful makes it limited. Automation is indiscriminate. But sometimes it's better to circumvent the process, to achieve a more discriminating result. Human agents do this all the time.

"Intervention" doesn't mean "the world is able to carry on independently" (239) of God. That misses the point. It doesn't mean the cosmos is actually a closed system. 

Rather, it means God made a world in which natural processes generally yield uniform results. All things being equal, physical causes produce the same effects. 

And surely that's undeniable. That's how the natural world operates. What's the alternative? Idealism? Occasionalism?

Sure, God is still the "ground of being," without which the universe would cease to exist. "Intervention" doesn't mean God is normally uninvolved in that sense. 

Now, as with illustrations generally, the mechanical illustration has its limitations. A different illustration would be a film in which, at one level, the director causes everything. He doesn't "step in" to change the plot in midstream, because he wrote the plot in advance. He's scripted every scene.

However, a film involves an interplay between personal agents and their physical environment. Things happen as a result of human interaction that would not occur in crystal formation. 

Likewise, the director can write a "coincidence" into the plot. Timely, opportune meetings between one person and another, or a character and something he needs at that very moment. This doesn't require the director to introduce "breaks" into the continuity of the plot. Rather, they reflect the coordination of otherwise independent chains of events to achieve an intended goal. Something beyond the ability or ken of characters inside the story. 

Is God a person?

Nowadays, classical theism is contrasted with theistic personalism. Likewise, many proponents treat Thomism as a virtual synonym for classical theism, although Thomism is just one version of classical theism. Because some young Calvinists are attracted to Thomism, I'd like to say a few things about theistic personalism. I'll use Brian Davies as my frame of reference: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (2004, 3rd. ed.).

…according to classical theism, God is not a person. When we speak of persons, we are normally referring to human beings (8).

That depends on the context. In theological discourse, you have Trinitarian persons, angelic persons, and disembodied souls. 

Human beings have bodies and are parts of a changing and changeable universe (8).

Living human beings have bodies. 

For classical theism, however, God is not an individual belonging to a kind…God is simple means in part that God is not a member of any genus or species. They are claiming that God is not what we would ordinarily call an individual. To call something an individual is usually to imply that there could be another such thing distinct from it though just like it. In this sense, different people are individuals. But in this sense, says the classical theist, God is not an individual. He belongs to no kind or sort (8-9).

This gets to be very dicey. 

i) If monotheism is true, then there's a sense in which God is one of a kind. Sui generis. A class apart.

ii) If Trinitarianism is true, then there's a sense in which the Father, Son, and Spirit are three of a kind. 

iii) Likewise, if monotheism is true, then there's a sense in which God is an individual, in contrast to other individuals (i.e. creatures). 

iv) By the same token, if Trinitarianism is true, then there's a sense in which the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct (but similar) individuals. 

v) Now, I don't think God is a property instance of a generic divine nature. I don't think the persons of the Trinity are property instances of a generic divine nature. They aren't finite exemplifications of a generic exemplar. Rather, I'd model them on mirror symmetries. Each mirror symmetry is exhaustive. Each mirror symmetry reflects the content of its antipode, in one-to-one correspondence. Yet each presents a unique frame of reference (e.g. chirality). 

According to the teaching that God is simple, God also lacks attributes or properties distinguishable from himself (9).

The real nub of the issue is whether God's attributes are distinguishable from each other.

Yet, what are we to understand by expressions like "person without a body" and "disembodied person"?…Aristotle holds that persons we call people are essentially corporeal…According to [Locke], persons might swap bodies with each other…But it would, he argues, be the same person...The view that persons are not essentially corporeal is most often associated with René Descartes…So the history of philosophy contains examples of authors who take persons to be distinguishable from what is essentially corporeal (10-11).

What's striking about this exposition is how he correlates that position with theistic personalism, in contrast to classical theism. Yet the idea of discarnate persons is standard in Christian theology, from God through angels and demons to disembodied souls (during the intermediate state).

His dichotomy doesn't make much sense unless you correlate classical theism with physicalism. But that's not traditional orthodoxy. 

There is a sense in which God is not "a person". If Trinitarianism is true, then it's more accurate to say that God is personal.

Yet classical theists also typically insist that none of this means that we therefore have a grasp of God or a concept which allows us to say that we understand what God is. This fact partly emerges from the way in which classical theists often characterize God in negative terms…But it also comes out in the fact that classical theists tend to deny that words used to characterize God mean what they do when applied to what is not divine (7).
[Theistic personalists] also sometimes suggest that words (especially adjectives) used by believers when speaking of God are most naturally to be construed in the same way as when they are applied to people. Theists say that God is, for example, knowing, loving, and good. But we know what it means to say that people are knowing, loving, and good. So, reasons many a theistic personalist, we know something of what it means to say that God is knowing, loving, and good (14). 

The way he dichotomizes the two positions makes it hard to distinguish classical theism from pious agnosticism. 

Another round on the same God controversy

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/same-god-more-from-francis-beckwith.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/edward-feser-on-christians-muslims-and-the-reference-of-god.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/a-searle-y-objection-to-the-causal-theory-of-names.html

Is sola scriptura ad hoc?

Naturally, the sola scriptura advocate will deny all this.  But the problem is that even the purportedly more modest, non-simplistic version of sola scriptura has no non-question-begging reason for denying it.  The position is entirely ad hoc, having no motivation at all other than as a way of trying to maintain rejection of the various Catholic doctrines the sola scriptura advocate doesn’t like, without falling into the self-refutation problem facing the more simplistic version of sola scriptura.  It is nothing more than an expression of one’s rejection of those Catholic doctrines, and in no way provides a rational justification for rejecting them.  

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2015/07/empiricism-and-sola-scriptura-redux.html

I commented on this once before, but now I'd like to expand on my analysis:

i) Suppose there are ad hoc elements in the traditional formulation of sola scriptura. That, of itself, doesn't imply that sola scriptura is wrong. It may only mean we need to refine sola scriptura.

ii) You aren't required to have an alternative on hand to know that the status quo is wrong. Take Newtonian physics. That was a very powerful theory. But increasingly, there were discrepancies between Newtonian predictions and empirical evidence. At first that might be chalked up to inaccuracies in measurement. To the imprecision of telescopes, &c. But as technology advanced, and discrepancies multiplied, that fell outside the margin of error. Moreover, because Newtonian physics was such a tight-knit theory, it couldn't be tweaked with little fixes. 

A 19C scientist could see that something was wrong with Newtonian physics, but not have a replacement theory waiting in the wings. For instance, Einstein's theory requires Riemannian geometry. But that wasn't available before Riemann. 

Oftentimes, scientists don't begin with an alternative theory. Rather, what motivates them to explore alternatives is when the dominant paradigm becomes unsatisfactory. 

Likewise, even if the Protestant Reformers didn't have an off-the-shelf alternative to Roman Catholicism, they'd still be able to see that Roman Catholicism was fundamentally flawed.  

iii) Even if the Protestant Reformers had to improvise, the church of Rome has been improvising from the get-go. The church of Rome has been resorting to quick fixes and big fixes for centuries. Newman's theory of development retrofitted Catholicism. Vatican II retrofitted Catholicism. It's all about "saving the phenomena."

iv) That said, the Protestant Reformers didn't have to start from scratch. They had the whole Bible at their disposal. Likewise, there were pioneering theologians like Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas whom the Protestant Reformers could cannibalize for spare parts.

v) Protestant theology didn't fall out of the sky with Luther. There were precursors like Wycliffe and Hus. 

Luther's 95 theses weren't especially revolutionary. In his time, these were open questions in theology. It's Trent that locked Catholicism into certain positions. 

vi) Papal supremacy has always been controversial. It was still controversial in the 19C, when Ignaz von Döllinger, greatest Catholic church historian of the day, opposed it. More significant was the number of Roman Catholic bishops who opposed the formal declaration of papal infallibility. 

Papal infallibility was always controversial. Indeed, there are persistent allegations of heretical popes, viz. Liberius, Vigilius. This goes back to the patristic era. 

Of course, papal apologists labor to extricate these popes from the charge of heresy, but that's irrelevant. My point is not whether they were, in fact, heretical, but the fact that misgivings about papal claims antedate the Reformation by centuries.

Same with respect to papal primacy. Consider the Quartodeciman controversy, or the dispute between Cyprian and Pope Stephen. Protestant Reformers didn't invent the wheel when they denied papal claims.

vii) Moreover, this isn't confined to outsiders or opponents of Rome. There's medieval conciliarism, according to which a general council outranks a pope. That was supported by Catholic theologians like Jean Quidort, Jean Gerson, and William of Ockham, as well as Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly.

viii) Furthermore, it wasn't just hypothetical. The Great Schism made that a practical necessity. The Roman church could hardly tolerate two or more competing, independent lines of apostolic succession, with each "pope" creating bishops. That had to be put to a stop. 

The problem wasn't, in the first instance, that none of the claimants was the true pope. The problem, rather, was that even if one of them was the true pope, if it was impossible to tell which was which, then not knowing which one was the true pope was worse than having no pope at all. There was no way of knowing who to follow. What if you disobeyed the true pope by unwittingly yielding to an anti-pope? 

To end the chaos, it was necessary to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch by deposing the claimants, if need be, then holding a new election with an undisputed winner.

That expedient succeeded, but at a cost. It was a stopgap measure. How can the pope be head of the church if his fellow bishops can depose him, even if he's the legitimate successor to Peter?   

Typically, to be authoritative, a general council must be convened by the pope and confirmed by the pope. But, of course, that remedy was unavailable during the Great Schism, so the Council of Constance had to do it backwards. It was up to the council to ratify the pope, not vice versa. 

ix) And the theoretical dilemma continued into the Counter-Reformation, with Catholic theologians like Suarez and Cardinal Bellarmine debating what recourse there'd be in the event of a heretical pope. They viewed a general council or the college of cardinals as the fallback. 

This is emanating from doctrinaire supporters of the papacy. Papal loyalists. At the time, the raison d'être of the Jesuit order was to defend the papacy. But even so, they were forced to revisit the intractable conundra generated by the papacy. 

Feser fizzles

Ed Feser attempted a final refutation of Andrew Fulford's defense of sola scripture. Feser's post is clogged by a repeated, lengthy comparison with empiricism. I'll try to cut the dead wood and address the key contentions:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2015/07/empiricism-and-sola-scriptura-redux.html

First, why on earth should anyone take seriously the sola scriptura criterion in the first place?  Why should we affirm “scripture alone” as opposed to “Paul’s epistles alone” or “John 3:16 alone” or “the Gospels alone” or “scripture plus the Church Fathers alone” or “scripture plus the first seven ecumenical councils alone” or “scripture plus the councils plus the teachings of the first ten popes alone” or “scripture plus the letters of Ignatius alone” -- or any of a number of other possible ways of gerrymandering the various sources of authority that the Church had traditionally recognized prior to Luther?  And even if we did affirm “scripture alone,” why confine ourselves to the list of scriptural texts as Protestants would draw it up, rather than the canonical list as Catholics would draw it up?  Just as Humean empiricists have no non-question-begging way of explaining why we should confine ourselves to “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact,” sola scriptura advocates have no non-question begging way of explaining why we should confine ourselves to exactly the texts they say are “scriptural,” rather than to more texts or fewer texts or other texts entirely. 

One obvious problem with this objection is that boomerangs on Feser. What's his noncircular defense of the Roman Magisterium? Why should we affirm the pope alone rather than the pope and laity? Or the laity alone? 

Second, just as the Humean empiricist makes use of knowledge for which his principle cannot account (namely the truths of logic and metaphysics), so too does the sola scriptura advocate make use of knowledge for which his principle cannot account.  For example, scripture alone does not give you a list of exactly which books count as scripture. 

This illustrates the motto that he who frames the debate wins the debate. Feser asserts that a Protestant must make use of knowledge which his principle (sola scriptura) cannot account for. And he cites the canon as an example.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that a Protestant can't generate a (complete) list of canonical books using Scripture alone. How does that violate his principle? Feser doesn't bother to explain. He just takes that as self-evident. How does the principle of sola scripture imply that you can't use any extrabiblical evidence to attest which books count as scripture? From what I can tell, Feser's argument is purely semantic. It's based on a verbal slogan, a two-word phrase "scripture only" or "scripture alone." Therefore, if you can't generate that list from scripture alone, the principle is self-refuting.

i) If that's his unspoken argument, then it's fallacious, because you can't infer the principle from a label. "Sola scriptura" is simply a label to designate a position or principle. But you can't extract the conceptual content of the position from a two-word verbal label.   

ii) Another one of his unspoken assumptions seems to be that you need revelation to identify revelation. There's the initial revelation itself. Then there's the additional revelation to identify or verify what counts as revelation. Say, there's a prophet who reveals the word of God. But over and above the prophet it is necessary to have yet another revelation to identify the speaker as a prophet. 

If that's what Feser has in the back of his mind, it generates an infinite regress. You need a second revelation to attest the first revelation, a third revelation to attest the second revelation, and so forth. You need a revelation to attest the revealer, going back ad infinitum. 

But surely that principle wreaks havoc with Feser's alternative. You need a revelation to attest the pope. And another revelation to confirm the first revelation attesting the pope. And so on and so forth.

iii) Why assume it requires revelation to identify or verify revelation? Why assume it must be the same kind of thing in both cases? For one thing, doesn't that confuse the order of being (what revelation is) with the order of knowing (how we identify or verify revelation)? Why must those two activities be subsumed under the same principle? 

iv) Let's consider some ways in which revelation might be attested:

a) A prophetic claimant performs a miracle. A miracle is a different category than a revelation. 

b) A prophetic claimant exhibits verifiable supernatural knowledge. Suppose he tells you something that happened to you in private. Something which no one else would naturally be privy to. Although his supernatural knowledge is revelatory, it doesn't require revelation on your part to confirm what he said. Natural knowledge will suffice. Your memory of what happened to you. 

c) Suppose a contemporary of the apostles testifies that John was a disciple of Jesus. That's testimonial evidence. Eyewitness testimony. 

These are ways of attesting revelation that are not, themselves, revelatory. Do they violate sola scriptura? If so, how so?