Doubt And Certainty
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Ben Smith points us to the reaction of Michael Sean Winters, who was decidedly underwhelmed by Obama’s speech at Notre Dame, which Winters had hoped would be a “home run.” Winters found the praise of doubt that Obama offered to be mistaken and tone-deaf:
If that was the President’s best impersonation of Augustine, he gets an F. For starters, there is nothing ironic about faith. Secondly, a Catholic university is an odd place to give an essentially Protestant interpretation of what can, and cannot, be “known” by faith. Finally, it is not doubt that invites humility. It is faith itself – faith in a God who has not finished with His creation, faith in a God who counseled us to humility in His scriptures and who gave an example of humility if His own life when He walked the earth – that leads us to humility. And, I would have thought even a rudimentary knowledge of human psychology would suggest that self-righteousness is a temptation as well known to the doubters as to those possessed of true faith.
This seems quite right. Everyone is stricken with doubt at times, but it has to be understood that doubt, like an illness, is something from which one may suffer but which is something that needs to be remedied rather than perpetuated or celebrated. Physical illness can have a humbling effect, but a proper understanding of theological anthropology tells us that illness, like death, is part of our fallen state. Doubt is a function of a mind clouded by the passions–it is the result of confusion. It does not teach us anything, but rather prevents us from learning. It is important to see the difference between doubt and apophatic theology: one is the function of human confusion, the other is the necessary recognition of the unknowability of God in His essence. Obama misleadingly lumps the two together. As Obama would have it, because we cannot know God in Himself and cannot always understand what He wills for us we must therefore abandon all claims of certainty, even when these are founded in what God has told and revealed to us about Himself. Obama said, “It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what he asks of us,” but only for the first part of this is true. What God asks of us is well-known. In the Psalms, for example, He tells us, “Be still and know that I am God.” He has not said, “Be ironically detached and suppose that I might very well be God, depending on how the mood strikes you.” We hide behind doubt and any number of other convenient shields to protect our little selfish empires from the demands that we know God makes of us. He has said, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul and all thy mind and all thy strength.” What He asks of us is quite clear. Indeed, if there is anything we can say that we know with certainty, it is this.
Smith says that it was “less predictable” that Andrew found the speech admirable, but it was actually perfectly predictable. Andrew regularly promotes his idea of a “conservatism of doubt,” classes all expressions of religious certainty as fundamentalist and believes that the universal experience of doubt should somehow make doubt essential to a living faith. While I doubt I will ever manage to persuade Andrew on this point, this is rather like saying that the general experience of sin should make sin a crucial part of one’s faith, which is more obviously absurd but otherwise basically the same kind of argument.
Thomas Sunday is an interesting day. Following the first week after Pascha, we hear the Gospel reading that tells us of the Apostle Thomas’ doubt that the Lord has indeed risen. The One Whom we have been proclaiming to be truly risen ever since the week before has to appear to Thomas so that he may believe in the most fundamental truth of the faith, without which, the Apostle Paul has told us, our faith is in vain. In other words, St. Thomas’ doubt at that moment was a failure to believe in things not seen, and in that failure he was failing to believe the one thing that all disciples of Christ had to believe if their faith was to mean anything. If we look at it this way, we understand that doubt is not necessary, nor is it profitable, nor it is good, but it is rather a betrayal of the power and truth of faith. Doubt is a kind of denial of the Master. While we might understand how St. Peter, on the night the Lord gave Himself up for us, might have been so terrified as to deny that he knew the Lord, what excuse do we have to offer up such denials, much less wrap them up in faux-serious introspection and self-serving poses of humility?
Scott Richert has more on the speech, noting the “fair-minded words” anecdote that Obama keeps recycling every time he is called on to address matters of faith and ethics, especially in connection with abortion. This is an anecdote he has been using and reinventing for years as the occasion requires it. This “fair-minded words” dodge is one of the oldest tricks in Obama’s book, which is how he can continue to portray himself as some sort of reasonable interlocutor, especially on those basic issues of human dignity and justice concerning the unborn on which he is among the least reasonable and most reflexive and ideological. Perhaps if Obama were more prone to doubt the ideological certainties that prompt him to oppose any and all restrictions on abortion, he might then seem like less of a caricature on this issue and more like the reasonable person he wants us to think he is.
P.S. What part of “Do not be unbelieving, but believing” do people not understand?
Update: There is a relevant passage from the introductory article in Orthodox Readings of Augustine discussing the theology of Christos Yannaras:
Following Lossky, apophaticism for Yannaras is not simply defining God in terms of what God is not, but the affirmation that true knowledge of God occurs in mystical union with God. Although apophaticism does assert the incomprehensibility of God’s essence, it does not deny that God is known. Apophaticism points to a limit in the adequacy of human conceptualization of God not to silence theology, but to indicate that true knowledge of God is an ekstatic going beyond human reason in the experience of mystical union. The logic of divine-human communion, theosis, thus demands an apophatic method in theology, in the sense that it asserts the incomprehensibility of the divine essence; but this incomprehensibility implies that knowledge of God lies beyond reason in an ekstatic movement of participation in the divine energies.
Doubt does not facilitate this participation, but thwarts it by calling into question whether it is even possible.
Second Update: It is, of course, futile to continue debating this, but I do have another quote that will at least clarify why it is futile. Fr. John Behr, writing on the Nicene-Arian debates of the fourth century, said in “The question of Nicene orthodoxy”:
This is an important point: at stake are different paradigms, within which doctrinal formulations take flesh. The similarity of terms and expressions, yet difference of paradigm or imaginative framework, explains why most of the figures in the fourth century seem to be talking past each other, endlessly repeating the same point yet perennially perplexed as to why their opponents simply don’t get it.
Those who do not understand that doubt is contrary to and antithetical to faith keep using the words doubt and faith as if these usages were the same as those employed by the critics of Obama’s remarks. Once again, we are running up against the problem of Obama’s manifest heterodoxy (in which he is obviously far from alone), which makes every dispute over his statements on faith into an interminable grudge-match. Orthodox critics will apply standards and definitions to his words that he does not apply, and so he says what seems to him and those of like mind to be utterly unobjectionable, almost boilerplate, statements, but which are obviously nonsense to anyone with meaningful grounding in orthodox definitions. The endless argument over what Obama was saying, much less whether he was right in what he said, is unlikely to be resolved when the disputing parties are not even working within the same framework. This doesn’t mean that all frameworks are right, but merely that they are infuriatingly opaque to one another, so much so that there seems to be no possibility of agreement on the basic definitions of terms. Nothing could have better illustrated why dialogue and “fair-minded words” are utterly inadequate to any debate that involves such fundamental disagreements than the debates that Obama’s speech has provoked.
Third Update: H.C. Johns, guest blogging for John at Upturned Earth, has an excellent post that explains with much more patience what I was trying to say with my quote from Fr. Behr, and which does an admirable job of responding to Damon Linker’s comments on the debate. One of things that Johns says that is crucial for understanding the vastness of the chasm between the two sides here was this:
This difference is glaringly apparent in Linker’s response. His attitude towards doubt is thoroughly post-Cartesian: doubt for him directs us to the seen, to the experiences which ground proper understanding [bold mine-DL]. Because we are blind to the things named by revelatory tradition and lack a direct experiential confirmation, doubt demands we should withhold judgement. This mode of thinking has deep roots stretching back to the beginning of modernity, underlies our science and political process, and is deeply appealing at many levels, but note how different this is from Larison’s doubting: doubt here does not lead us away from truth. To the contrary, it is the only way to truth, and a truth which is obscured from the very beginning of inquiry.
I think Johns has described this correctly, and it is this emphasis on the visible that is the most troubling. Were we to have “direct confirmation,” our freedom would be curtailed. At the same time, to say that remaining in uncertainty is the “destiny of all thoughtful human beings” is to say that it is the destiny of all thoughtful human beings to remain out of communion with God for at least their entire earthly lives. This is a denial of the possibility of real incarnate faith, but just as important it is a denial of the Christian’s hope of entering into communion with God.
My view on this has been influenced to some degree by Dostoevsky’s understanding of the relationship between free will and faith, which places great emphasis not only on belief in things not seen, but a strong suspicion of believing things about God simply on the basis of visible signs. After all, the Lord said, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” (Mt. 16:4) For Dostoevsky, the miraculous was real, but it was something that he also believed could infringe on free will and a freely-received faith.
Filed under: Christianity, culture, politics
There’s quite a big distinction between what believers think they owe to deities in their own personal lives (“Be still and know that I am Godâ€) versus what we “know” God thinks about public policy. Depending on which of His interlocutors you ask, God stood on both sides of the slavery and segregation debates, on both sides of the invasions of Iraq and Vietnam, and stands on both sides of the abortion debate. (He was apparently resolute in His support of the Crusades; my history is weak enough that I’m not entirely sure what He was telling the Muslims at the time, however).
Appeals to God’s will, in public policy debates, obscure quite a bit more than they clarify. It is a simple fact that no one knows God’s will on any given policy issue; and even if I do think I know what He thinks, someone out there thinks He thinks the opposite. Pres. Obama is quite right that public debate requires more humility and reason-based argumentation than simple assertions that God wills this or that policy.
This shouldn’t be controversial.
Elvis, matters of faith are not amenable to reason alone. Otherwise they would be philosophy and not religion.
I’m struck by the “Let’s agree to disagree” attitude of the President. If my ancestors had adopted that line about slavery and the humanity of Black persons, the President would not be the President.
I think you are making a category error here in relation to Obama’s discussion of doubt, as well as to the usefulness of doubt and uncertainty altogether. You conflate one’s intimate knowledge of God (“Be still and know that I am God”), with the interpersonal, social, worldly and practical matters of knowing how to properly act and respond to God. In the first area, doubt and uncertainty are indeed a kind of illness that needs to be cured, and for which God offers a direct and immediate cure: Grace. In the second category, we do not have a direct and immediate cure for doubt. In fact, in the second category, we will always be uncertain, and will always need to seek counsel, both within and without, to determine the right course of action. This is where Jewish law came about, through endless consideration of the meanings of the scripture as applied in action. It is far from obvious what is true and right, and reqires much humility in admitting first off that we are not certain as to how to act in truth in the midst of all the possible responses to every variant circumstance.
What Obama is criticizes is not the first kind of certainty, both those who profess certainty in the second category. There are plenty of people who feel certain they know exactly what is right and what is wrong, never admitting to any doubt, but waving scripture as if its interpretation is without debate or argument. Obama considers this a false approach, a false certainty, and a false way of using both scripture and the sanctity of personal knowledge of God. There are many people who think, because they have some kind of knowledge of God in the personal sense – that they are born again – that they know for certain what God wishes us to do in the second category.
I am of the view, similar to Obama, that God did not desire for us to know for certain every detail of how we are to work out the truth in our relational lives, in politics, the world at large, etc., but that God intends for us to do the hard and difficult and yes, humbling work of having to work this through ourselves, with his help of course, but his help not being of the kind that establishes rigid, unbending rules of authoritarian dictatorship, but loving guidelines that allow us to grow and learn through his grace in the midst of the mysteries of life. By cultivating the first kind of knowledge of God, one becomes more capable in the second category, but one never achieves certainty. One can always be wrong and in need of correction, and even those who correct you can be wrong.
@Gordianus
I quite sure that is because the President doesn’t think that “Abortion = Murder.” Then again there is a significant portion of the population who believes that any limit on “Abortion, the medical procedure” would be limiting the humanity pregnant women. Its hard to be agreeable if one hold either points of view. Presumably that’s why he’s been trying to sidestep the whole question of abortion legality and shift the debate to abortion reduction.
To be honest, I wonder if a pragmatic gradual abolition of slavery would have been the best course for all concerned, especially for those hundreds of thousands who were killed in the civil war, but also for those being freed.
FWIW I think that President Obama does not have the temperment to be the big revolutionary who makes the hard-line decisions that split the country in half. Its not his temperment, and given this time in America, I don’t think there is such an issue for him to take such a hardline stance. Even as an Obama supporter, I would grant that he’s not the guy I would want to lead charge for the hardline implementation or abolition of XYZ, that’s just not how he is wired. Doesn’t mean he’s the right or wrong guy for the job at this time….
I should add, that from what I’ve read of history, I doubt that any such fairytale “abolition process” of slavery would have been possible….but it was an interesting thought that popped into my head while writing the comment….
Joypog,
I agree with most of what you say, but I think you are actually wrong in your afterthought, that slavery could not have ended more gradually. The times were simply changing. It was certainly not Lincoln’s intention to abolish slavery in his term as President. Nor was it his intention to get into a long bloody war. His basic intention was to begin a slow, gradual approach that would eventually lead to the abolition of slavery, as was already happening all over the westernized world. If the Civil War had never happened, it’s hard to imagine that slavery would still be in place in the south. Eventually, it would have simply been phased out, as an antiquated relic, most likely before the 20th century came along. The south forced the issue by seceeding, without any actual pretext, since Lincoln never made any campaign promises about ending slavery. The South just panicked, seeing the writing on the wall. It could all have ended much more peacefully, as apartheid did in South Africa.
Conradg,
I tend agree that Lincoln would have been less radical than the South ended up making him look (outside of fiction and despots, I wonder how many leaders freely make the hard decisions that makes them Mythic Heros). That said, that I don’t think the Southern States were ready to go down quietly or gradually. For one thing, I think that these United States had not figured out that secession was not an option for resolving policy differences.
Totally OT theoretical history question: I wonder if we would have had to fight out out the question of seceding from the union over one issue or another even if we didn’t do so over slavery.
joypog,
I don’t think there was really any other issue dividing the north from the south except slavery. All the economic conflicts boiled back down to slavery as well.
Another theoretical question would be, suppose we hadn’t fought the Civil War. How long would slavery have lasted in an independent South. I can’t imagine it would surive to the present. So it would end somehow. Gradually, suddenly, I don’t know for sure, but I would guess gradually. As it happened, slavery didn’t actually end suddenly, in that the condition of most blacks in the south during Jim Crow weren’t much different from slavery. So even with the CW happening,the actual ending of slavery took a very long time, up to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s. My guess is that a similar time-table would have occurred in the gradual elimination of slavery, maybe with Jim Crow apartheid laws extending a few more decades. No country is an island anymore. Slavery was an antiquated economic and social system that can’t compete well in the modern world.
Obama is a Protestant. Why shouldn’t he sound like one, and why would he need to tailor his theology to suit the audience, which would probably not be convincing and would probably draw complaints about insincerity. He does not agree with the Church on abortion but elected not to pick a fight. Everyone knew this going in, too.
“I’m struck by the “Let’s agree to disagree†attitude of the President. If my ancestors had adopted that line about slavery and the humanity of Black persons, the President would not be the President.”
Assuming you are speaking of the Civil War and your ancestors were not committed abolitionists or civil rights workers, they didn’t fight to end slavery and for the humanity of blacks. Some did, but most of them fought to keep the South in the Union, and the end of slavery was the consequence of the South’s total defeat. African Americans finally achieved their civil rights largely through their own efforts and not because some benevolent white people decided to consider them human.
What part of “Do not be unbelieving, but believing†do people not understand?
Somehow we’ve gotten the idea that Jesus says this scoldingly or imperiously. And anyway, the relevant contrast is not between Thomas and the other apostles, who all believed after seeing Jesus, but between Thomas and the faithful of the post-apostolic age, when the story was recorded.
I don’t say that He says this scoldingly or imperiously, but He does say it, which implies that until Thomas saw Him he was unbelieving and then came to believe. That means that his doubt gave way to faith, which means that his doubt is not an integral part of faith but is instead the uncertainty and ignorance that precede faith. Scripture contains the petition, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. That acknowledges that people have imperfect faith, which God then perfects, but it does not mean that we should say that the imperfect faith is the desirable end.
Of course the contrast is with the audience of the Gospel, who believed without seeing. I don’t think I was saying anything that would contradict this.
Scripture contains the petition, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. That acknowledges that people have imperfect faith, which God then perfects, but it does not mean that we should say that the imperfect faith is the desirable end.
If I knew of even one saint in Scripture or tradition who ever attained such perfect faith, I would concede that this is the correct reading of the petition. As it is, God is either miserly with such grace or–as confessed by not a few divines–using doubt for an edifying purpose. Which is not to say that the kind of generalized dubiousness praised by so many is what this is about, but rather that the life of faith is a sometimes terrifying dialectic between doubt and assurance. Indeed, if I truly believed in the Resurrection all the time, my life would be different. I would probably not be commenting on blogs, for one.
Ahum. Mr. Larison is a little too eager to score against the Obama team here. The idea that faith is inseparable from doubt has firm foundations in Catholic theology. Faith must raise questions, must inquire, and is always “seeking understanding”. And that means admitting doubt, yes. A good thing too, says then cardinal Ratzinger: http://www.jknirp.com/ratzmore.htm.
And of course Obama did not confuse the unknowability of God with our limited understanding of His plan. That’s an elementary misreading of what he meant.
I don’t care about scoring points against Obama or his team. His theology is shoddy, and this is painfully obvious. Doubt may be inevitable, but that does not mean that it is necessary to faith.
He never referred to the unknowability of God directly, it’s true. I mentioned it by way of giving him some benefit of the doubt. I was allowing that he was not entirely off base by granting that there were things about God that we cannot know with certainty. He chose to say that there was nothing that could be known about God with certainty. He was wrong. This is extremely simple to understand.
Daniel, I have to disagree 100% with the claim that “his theology is shoddy, and this is painfully obvious.”
“He chose to say that there was nothing that could be known about God with certainty.” No, he doesn’t say that, and you don’t come close to proving that he said that.
This is what he says:
“It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us.”
You took this “what He asks of us” in a very general — and theological — sense, and “refuted” it by quoting “Be still and know that I am God.” Not helpful. From context, Obama clearly means “what He asks of us” in a very specific, and *moral/political* sense. Doubt does not go all the way down to the basics. But at the level of specific policy prescriptions, a healthy self-doubt and humility is required.
Why do I think this is Obama’s position? By reading the rest of the speech. For instance, just a few paragraphs later, Obama says: “For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It is no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. To serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth.”
In other words, we can know with certainty that this is what God asks of us. There is no “doubt” here. And note that this is a moral/political requirement, a requirement of applied rather than theoretical / contemplative theology, and as such is more relevant to his calling as President and the reason he had given the speech. Thus it’s a much better thing for him to have said than “Be still and know….”
Here’s another example. Obama:
“So many of you at Notre Dame – by the last count, upwards of 80% — have lived this law of love through the service you’ve performed at schools and hospitals; international relief agencies and local charities. That is incredibly impressive, and a powerful testament to this institution. Now you must carry the tradition forward. Make it a way of life. Because when you serve, it doesn’t just improve your community, it makes you a part of your community. It breaks down walls. It fosters cooperation. And when that happens – when people set aside their differences to work in common effort toward a common good; when they struggle together, and sacrifice together, and learn from one another – all things are possible.”
Obama here links (a) “the law of love” with (b) service to others with (c) creation of community, with (d) God (“all things are possible” is so obviously a reference to the God with whom).
Love others, serve others, create community, and thus serve God. How is that not the core of Christian faith? And how is Obama not saying that this is true and real? Where does he say that the importance of any of this should be doubted?
Where we should doubt is in the realm where we can not know with certainty — God’s will for the implementation of specific policies. Obama thus renounces Rauschenbuschian “social gospel” thinking in favor of mainstream Augustinian Christianity. What is required of the Christian in society? Service. Not specific policy prescriptions, and definitely not “if you don’t take position X on policy Y then you are not a member of the Church.” Just service.
He more or less concludes with the following:
“Remember that each of us, endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family and the same fulfillment of a life well-lived.”
Do not “doubt” that these things — a significant portion of the core of Christian anthropology — are the case. Remember them, believe them, and live them.
I have no idea how you find any of this objectionable.
“This “fair-minded words†dodge is one of the oldest tricks in Obama’s book, which is how he can continue to portray himself as some sort of reasonable interlocutor, especially on those basic issues of human dignity and justice concerning the unborn on which he is among the least reasonable and most reflexive and ideological. Perhaps if Obama were more prone to doubt the ideological certainties that prompt him to oppose any and all restrictions on abortion, he might then seem like less of a caricature on this issue and more like the reasonable person he wants us to think he is.”
Hmm. First, I’m confused. Which “ideology” of his are you referring to? How would you phrase it or describe it, beyond its manifestations?
Second, I agree with a couple of posters above that you are… “unnecessarily disdainful?,” perhaps… of his “fair-minded words” strategy. I think trying one’s best to express respect for a view not shared if fundamentally admirable. It’s not like he’s copping *out* of his position, and we all know what it is. How could he possibly handle it better or more respectfully? I think even calling it a “dodge” is faulty.
Which brings up a third plank of perhaps “unreasonable disdain” that you may be assuming. I can’t speak for Obama or his thought process, but I share his priorities on this issue. And speaking for myself, and contrary to your accusation, I doubt and question my certainties on the issue over and over and over and over again. I am *constantly* doubting and questioning my certainties, but I *keep* coming back to the same answer, that a woman’s medical decisions are not yours, my, or the state’s business, and it would become a dramatically more tyrannical state when it intervenes in those decisions.
Now if YOU have an ideology that says that’s murder, okay, I get that. But just because you’re not doubting your own ideology, is it fair to assume that anyone else isn’t doubting theirs?
And I’m still unclear on exactly which “ideology” you mean? If you mean something akin to my conclusion above, I think mine is rather conservatively grounded, actually. (It’s just not *religiously* grounded.)
But actually, if you reply to only one more post in this thread, I hope you’ll speak to Kent above. You and I don’t agree on a lot, but it seems rare to me that you get into “unreasonably venomous contempt” mode, so I appreciate how Kent has responded to that.
I second jTh – Kent spoke well. Daniel doesn’t need to respond – it’s his place, he gets to answer those comments he wants to answer.
But it would be nice.
Jake
Kent et al. are correct on the category error.
The classic quotation on point is Cromwell’s “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
That kind of “civil doubt,” as it were, is essential to a non-theocratic republic. Certainty brought us the Thirty Years’ War, the Inquisition, and their ilk.
I was allowing that he was not entirely off base by granting that there were things about God that we cannot know with certainty. He chose to say that there was nothing that could be known about God with certainty. He was wrong. This is extremely simple to understand.
Hubris, or simply arrogance? I can never tell whether this position is based in disdain for god’s creations, since the overwhelming majority of those creations throughout history haven’t understood it (at least, not in the One True Way that Daniel apparently does), or disdain for god, apparently unable or unwilling to reconcile the differences between myriad beliefs, all held with the same certainty. Now, it’s certainly possible that you and your co-religionists are the only possessors of the One Truth; but it’s certainly not simple or obvious. There have been and are untold numbers of people just as bright, just as devout, just as educated, just as articulate, just as concerned with faith, who have come to differing truths, or even sincere doubts. It is unlike what I have read of you to so forthrightly dismiss the sincerity or intellectual honesty of someone, because they don’t see your “simple” truth.
And no, I don’t really think that’s what Obama said, either.
Doubt is an essential part of my faith. It is what keeps me searching for the Truth.
Everyone has doubts from time to time, even if they won’t admit it to themselves – even Catholics who are above reproach like Mother Teresa and the Pope.
The conviction that one knows the Absolute Truth strikes me as an exceedingly arrogant theology that leads to things like Jihadism and The Crusades.
Even if your personal Truth on abortion is absolute, like it is for extremists on both sides of the issue, the problem lies in imposing your Truth on others.
Obama was pleading for a middle path. It wasn’t a dissertation on Theology.
Larison swings and misses on this one.
Kent,
You just completely pwned Daniel in that last post. He may not even be able to respond. Knockout blow.
Great and thorough analysis. Keep it up.
If by knockout blow, you mean changing the subject, you are correct. I said nothing about Obama’s remarks on service. Indeed, by highlighting those remarks Kent has helped make my point for me. Even Obama effectively acknowledges elsewhere in the speech that there are things that, from a Christian perspective, God asks of us that we can know with certainty (the “one law”), which makes his other comment nonsensical.
Again, Obama said, “It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us.â€
As I said in the original post, the second part of this is false. Kent has essentially agreed that the second part of this is false, because he quotes Obama to the effect that we can and do certainly know that we are called to love our fellow men as ourselves. That tells me that when I say, “He chose to say that there was nothing that could be known about God with certainty,” I don’t think I am off base at all, because he says that not only is God’s providence beyond our capacity to know with certainty, which is correct, but for all intents and purposes so is God’s revelation, which includes all of His statements about Himself. That is not just shoddy theology–it is practically anti-theology.
One could try to argue that Obama is appealing to a mystical theology that transcends mere rational, intellectual certainty, but I think that would be wishful thinking. Instead, people keep trying to tell me that he did not say what he plainly did say. I don’t know why ayone would persist in arguing this line. If this is what being pwned is like, please, keep it up.
I think you are taking a very narrow reading of what Mr. Obama said and applying it in a very broad-brush way.
Since Obama was speaking at a Catholic university, it might be worth revisiting what the Catechism says about doubt and faith, since so few people seem to know what either thing is.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2088:
“The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against faith:
Voluntary doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections concerning the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness.”
Obama recommends the path to spiritual blindness, and his defenders all declare that he has spoken the truth. Pardon me if I don’t go along with this.
Some would regard doubt as essential to the potential for enlightenment, not a prescription for blindness.
Not expecting to change your views, but just sayin’.
Since Obama was speaking at a Catholic university, it might be worth revisiting what the Catechism says about doubt and faith, since so few people seem to know what either thing is.
This is even more irrelevant. The location of Obama’s speech does not make him a Catholic, does not limit him to statements in conformity with the Catholic catechism nor require him to study the niceties of Catholic doctrine. He’s the freaking president, not the nation’s theologian in chief. He’s speaking of practical political problems and of his own beliefs; and you’re categorically stating that he’s wrong, because your beliefs are different and your beliefs are True. All of which is fine with me, because the increasing intolerance and demand for ideological purity among the conservative splinter groups should keep them and the GOP out of brad based power for the foreseeable future.
First, as to “pwned” and “knockout blow” … well, how about we don’t turn this into a competition, please. A conversation is not a game of Starcraft, nor a boxing match.
But I do feel you have missed my point, Daniel. You are reading Obama’s speech in such a way as to make it not only false at the critical point, but also self-contradictory. A more charitable reading — one that does not presume the President to be a theological nitwit — would be to read the single sentence you quote in light of the remainder of the piece — rather than reading it in the least charitable sense, and insisting that its contradictions with the rest of the piece indicate only how stupid our President is.
The key sentence, again, appears to be:
“It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us.”
You think it is incorrect to say that we cannot know with certainty what God asks of us. You come to this conclusion by construing “what God asks of us” in a very broad sense. In a very broad sense, of course we know some things that God requires of us — you point some out. But Obama points some out as well! What a moron our president must be, to make such a strong claim that is so obviously false — and then to contradict it within a few paragraphs!
But let us suppose for a minute that Obama is not stupid. Then we must read the claim that we cannot know with certainty what God asks of us in a sense that is not contradicted by Obama himself, several times in the same speech. My suggestion is that we read it in a very specific sense, as follows: “I (like you, like all of us) cannot know with certainty the details of what God requires of me with respect to the specific situations I am facing right now.”
Should I get married to my current partner or not? When my friend makes a racist joke, should I respond, and if so, how? If I believe that my boss is sexually harassing a coworker, but I can’t prove it, how should I respond? On a political level: which party should I vote for? Should I send money to the ACLU, Concerned Women for America, the NRA, the American Cancer Society, NARAL, or all or none of the above? Should I volunteer my time at a homeless shelter or tutor children in math? Should I join the anti-abortion rally or the pro-choice rally? Obama’s point would then be, I do not know which of these options, or others not considered, may be God’s will for me. None of us has this knowledge.
I think this is Obama’s point, because it’s a perfectly reasonable interpretation that fits with the rest of what he said in that speech. Your interpretation, by contrast, makes Obama a moron. To date, you have not struck me as one of the conservatives who is convinced that Obama is in fact a moron, so I submit that my interpretation makes more sense of your own beliefs about the man.
In other words, you’re right in a sense –and Obama agrees with you: we can know some very basic, general things about God’s will for us. But what we can know is not enough to resolve our political disagreements. Because Obama is a politician, not a theologian, his concern is for this more difficult question.
Daniel, are you seriously saying that the context for judging a speech by a 21st century politician is the Nicene-Arian debates of the fourth century? I sincerely doubt that there is a single point of congruence between the two, in the minds of the speaker or any listener outside of this blog.
Well said, Kent.
Daniel is reeling so badly from so many punches, he doesn’t even know he’s down, he’s punch-drunk silly, he’s spouting blood and teeth and gooey stuff from his mouth, he’s hurt so badhe thinks he’s in another century, no, correct that, he thinks he’s in another millenium, and the trainers are worried about his future, desperately trying to salvage a once promising career of this newly minted boxer-pundit-theologian, will he ever be able to fight again, will they have to amputate that ragged stump that’s all that’s left of his catechismal nose, will the barbarian heathen gladiator Kent have another martyr’s notch on his belt, and oh, have mercy my Lord, will the lights please dim to hide the shame, the apostary, the victory of dark forces, the humiliation and damnation that may come to his soul from being so severely and absolutely and awesomely pwned by the new and future champion of Eunomia, Sir Kent the Eloquent, Slayer of the Grand Dragon Daniel.
A moment of silence as the torch is passed.
conradg, I don’t know who you are, but you certainly made me laugh. Thanks very much.