“Literal” Creationist and Nominalism (Voluntarism)? Scholasticism, the Matrix, and more from Osborn

By -
Today I want to share with you what may be one of the most penetrating insights on offer from Osborn and his recent book (pictured right). What insight is that, you ask? Why, that “literalist” readings of the Genesis creation narratives, and the theological constellations that insist on them, inadvertently demand a nominalist conception of God.

“Nominalism” is a concept that can get thrown around carelessly in theological discourse, especially with reference to late medieval scholastic theology (think Scotus, Occam, etc.). It is hard in that context to pin down exactly what “nominalism” is, and it tends to be taken as a far more totalizing concept than I tend to think is warranted. And this expanded discourse occurs especially when the question of the Reformation arises, with some folks on both the Protestant and Catholic side interested in painting reformational theology as nominalist and others interested in refusing that designation.

In any case, the core of nominalism is “voluntarism,” which is best seen when paired with its technical opposite, namely, intellectualism. Broadly speaking, the antagonism here is a question of which mental faculty takes precedence in the mind of God. Is it God’s willing (voluntarism, as the conceptual core of nominalism), or is it God’s knowing (intellectualism)? I’ll speak now simply to the application in the doctrine of creation: a voluntarist / nominalist thinks that God created as God did just because, as an arbitrary exercise of will; an intellectualist thinks that God created in a way consistent with God’s self-knowledge, that is, in a way consistent with the sort of God that God is which, in this case, is not arbitrary but loving, etc. (fill in the blanks here with revelation). Of course, as is always the case in theology, decisions on these sorts of issues have far-reaching consequences . . .

So, with that background, we turn to Osborn. Bold is mine, italics are his:

Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014).
The goddess Athena, according to the Greeks, sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus. Not to be outdone, young earth creationists have conceived a Creator who pulls fully formed rabbits and people from out of the soil on day six of creation. But while this would be an impressive feat, we must ask what sort of picture of God emerges from this vision. Is this not a strictly nominalist or voluntarist God whose ways may indeed be stupendous but whose creation – as an inscrutable performance of sheer will – must now also be seen as a kind of deception or sleight of hand? What should we make of a God who creates a universe, an earth, plants, animals and humans with the appearance but not the actuality of age? How many days old did Adam appear on the first day of his creation? Those who would say more than one are positing a basic incongruity between the reality disclosed in Scripture and the realities of the physical world that stare us . . . in the face. . . . Existence at a very fundamental level, in this way of thinking, cannot be believed or trusted. It is at bottom an artificial stage production. Reality has the ontological properties of unreality or surrealism and did so from the very start. (133)
Osborn now turns to how this picture of God and creation swings back around to shape thinking about what it means to be human, and especially what it means to be in relationship with God (i.e., what faith is all about):
What the nominalist Creator seems to require of us is not belief in the superabundance of divine love that opens the possibility of the miraculous as a revelation of what is in fact most natural and most real in God’s inbreaking kingdom – the kind of hyperreality that might even raise a man from the dead. Instead, what the nominalist deity demands of us is a performance of sheer will in turn: the will to believe; fideistic mental compliance to purely propositional assertions in the name of protecting the Bible’s internal coherence; unquestioning acceptance of a creation that now contains the arbitrary and surd elements of an unbelievable magic show (thousand-year-old trees that are really one second old, day-old humans without any memories who nevertheless know how to speak to one another in a fully evolved human language, apparently downloaded directly from the mind of God like preinstalled software).
If you’re like me, gentle readers, the thought that jumped into your mind when you finished the last sentence of the above quote is that “literalists” basically believe in the Matrix. Follow the white rabbit…

[Ed. note: Wow, from medieval scholasticism to the Matrix. This is a post for the DET record books.]

==================================

Comments

Paul Martin Waters said…
Fascinating and insightful. Better buy the book :-)
April 14, 2015 1:24 PM
Post a Comment

Popular Posts

So You Want to Read….Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

By -
Image
"I fear that Christians who stand with only one leg upon earth also stand with only one leg in heaven." "The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community…may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door." "Since ethical thinking in terms of realms is overcome by faith in the revelation of the ultimate reality in Jesus Christ . . . there is no real Christian existence outside the reality of the world." "People who reject their bodies reject their existence before God the Creator." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer Prelude Andreas Steinhoff [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons I envisioned having a lot of time for blogging this summer, but that simply has not been the case - the last month has been a crazy one, to say the least. For two weeks, I was working at a theology summer camp of sorts, the Duke Youth Academy, and s...
Keep reading

So, You Want To Read Karl Barth?

By -
Image
Every now and then I am asked for advice about studying Karl Barth. So, I thought that I would share some of my standard advice here. But, before I do that, let me just say that I am by no means a Barth expert as compared to the people whose books I will mention below. I would be thrilled to find myself in their league one day, but as of yet that remains a distant dream. Still, I have been reading Barth for long enough, and under the supervision of a number of the scholars that I will mention below, that I think I can provide a decent orientation. I have never read Karl Barth before. Which of his books should I read first? Barth’s most famous work is the monumental 13-volume Church Dogmatics . Reading the CD with understanding is not an easy thing, so you definitely do NOT want to start here. Luckily, there are two smaller works by Barth that serve as helpful introductions to his work. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction - Based on the lectures that Barth delivered duri...
Keep reading

Karl Barth on Hell, the Devil, Demons, and Universalism – A Florilegium

By -
Image
You know, all the most interesting topics. Although Barth often confessed that he didn’t find these questions particularly interesting. At best they might draw sideways glances, as it were, as one travels the theological road. But I found a number of places in the records of Barth’s later conversations that I thought folks might find interesting, so I’ve collected them here. And if you aren’t familiar with the term “florilegium,” here you go ! All these texts are from the first volume of Barth in Conversation , with pages numbers given in parentheses along the way. As usual, italics are in the text and bold is mine. Hell “Now we come to hell. You shouldn’t laugh! There is nothing to laugh at! What does hell mean? I think hell means to be in the place where you are once fore all damned and lost without ceasing to exist, without losing the image of God, being what you are but being damned and lost, separated from God, whose creature you are, separated also from your neighbor, from...
Keep reading

George Hunsinger’s gloss of the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2

By -
Image
I’ve been reading George Hunsinger’s (my doktorvater , for anyone who might be new around here) entry in the Brazos Theoloical Commentary on the Bible series on Philippians. Anyone who has studied with George will find this book to be a compendium and application of many of his most characteristic and beloved analytical tools and patterns, and I’ve been enjoying it immensely. But one of the things that really stood out to me was how he glossed the so-called “Christ hymn” of Philippians 2. George Hunsinger, Philippians , Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: BrazosPress, 2020). The gloss that Hunsinger provides is not a historical-critical interpretation. Rather, it is an ecclesial, ecumenical, and theological interpretation that attempts to fill in the blanks for how to understand this proto-liturgical formulation in light of the later formulations of the ecumenical creeds. In order to achieve this gloss, Hunsinger engages in “ecclesial hermeneutics” and makes “...
Keep reading

2010 KBBC: Week 3, Day 1

By -
On the Monstrosity of Christ : Karl Barth in Conversation with Slavoj Žižek & John Milbank By Paul Dafydd Jones For a while, I hoped to frame this conversation in terms of a dramatic interchange – something along the lines of “A Slovenian philosopher, a British theologian, and a Swiss dogmatician walk into a bar…” Alongside an eye-wateringly hip assemblage of cinematic references, literary allusions, and comedic scenes – my early favorites being when Barth imagines a young adult novel, entitled Are you there God? It’s me, Žižek , and when Milbank waxes poetic about the Twilight movies – I wanted to engage some topics that would likely receive attention, were the authors to meet for drinks. Primarily, I envisioned an intense discussion of the logos asarkos and the logos ensarkos , with Milbank talking up the former category, Barth emphasizing the latter, and Žižek asking whether recent debates are but symptoms of secret puzzle, embedded in the Church Dogmatics – a puzzle that...
Keep reading