Idealism, Postmodernism, and Christian Metaphysics
Having looked at the Platonic and Aristotelian angles on Christian metaphysics, we turn now to the two other contributions to the recent publication, Four Views on Christian Metaphysics. The experienced student of philosophy will immediately ask at this juncture: Is this even a thing? Certainly the modern and postmodern paradigms are doing metaphysics, even as they claim to have overthrown the classical metaphysical outlook. But isn’t a modern (and especially postmodern) metaphysician a bit like a liberal theologian? What’s the point? They don’t really believe in the thing that they are proposing to study.
And yet it is precisely because these are put forward as alternatives that they must be understood.
Idealism and Christianity
The first surprise, perhaps, is the brand of idealism that is meant. If one is expecting the German idealism of Hegel, for example, they will have to do a double-take. The chapter’s author, James Spiegel, endorses the definition of Idealism as “the view that ideas and the minds that perceive them are what is most real.”1 How will idealists handle universals? “They may affirm nominalism or conceptualism. Only realism seems out of consideration, because idealists believe that all non-minds are mind-dependent."2
Spiegel further distinguishes: “the kind of idealism with which I am concerned is that affirmed by George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards: that the entire physical world is mind-dependent.”3 Here, there are 1. two kinds of beings: minds (souls) and ideas; 2. two kinds of minds: infinite (God) and finite; 3. two kinds of ideas: real and imaginary.
Now at the heart of Spiegel’s case is that idealism is the view most consistent with the principle of parsimony—a theoretical virtue most famously expressed by Ockham’s Razor. At the risk of over-simplification, the simplest explanation is best. In our study, that cashes out as only “one step” being required from God’s mind to ours. In a sense, Locke did with the material substratum what Plato did with the realm of the forms. They are media posited to account for objects, violating the principle of parsimony (e.g. God’s mind or power would be a sufficient and superior explanation).
Let us back up a step to the specifics of Berkeley’s view because it is quite incredible on the face of it. Spiegel wants to explain it in this way:
"Berkeley does not deny the existence of ordinary physical objects we encounter everywhere we go. Rather, he denies the existence of matter in the sense affirmed by the early modern philosopher John Locke. According to Locke, the sensible qualities that we perceive in an object must subsist or inhere in some sort of underlying stuff or material 'substratum' which is itself unperceivable."4
So, on what basis did he deny Locke’s view? Again Spiegel says, "For one thing, no one has ever perceived material substratum, nor, as Locke himself admits, can we even conceive it in our minds. So the concept of matter is unintelligible … Berkeley supplements his argument for the idealist thesis with an appeal to perceptual relativity. The qualities of objects that we perceive with our senses vary with context and circumstance."5 Berkeley's positive logic may be set in the following syllogism:
1. All physical objects are mere collections of ideas.
2. All ideas are mind-dependent objects.
∴ All physical objects are mind-dependent objects.
If there is a biblical rationale for this, it consists of two points, but two which are foundational: 1. All things are sustained by God; 2. God is a spirit / mind. From these, it is reasonable to conclude that the world, in its whole and its parts, is mind-dependent, that is, on the Divine Mind.6
What then is the idealist view of particulars? When it comes to basic physical objects, since Idealism is the positive expression of Immaterialism's critique of material substrata, particulars are easy to explain in the same way: as a collection of ideas. But what about immaterial objects such as the soul? Minds or spirits are neither sensible nor imaginary. Therefore they do not fall under the problems identified by Berkeley's immaterialism. So even if one cannot tell you exactly what a mind is, as Berkeley said, "that this substance which supports or perceives ideas should itself be an idea or like an idea is evidently absurd" (Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. 135).
But then another puzzle immediately follows. If all is mind or idea, and all minds know are ideas, how do we come to know other minds or mind per se? It turns out that Berkeley also addressed this:
"It is plain that we cannot know the existence of other spirits otherwise than by their operations, or the ideas by them excited in us. I perceive several motions, changes, and combinations of ideas that inform me that there are certain particular agents, like myself, which accompany them and concur in their production. Hence, the knowledge I have of other spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge of my ideas, but depending on the intervention of ideas, by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from myself, as effects or concomitant signs" (Principles of Human Understanding, sect. 145).
Let us now turn to objections posed by the other contributors to Spiegel’s idealist vision.
Obj.1. The argument that matter is “unintelligible” winds up only being an argument against Locke, yet there are other accounts.
As a side-note to the more pointed response Spiegel gives to Jacobs, this one came from Gould; and Spiegel does us a potential service7 at least in pointing out that Berkeley's motive in critiquing Locke's material substratum was not in empiricist hubris, but in light of the skepticism that ensued. It was the reaction of many (not least Locke himself at points) that this view made objects in the material world more elusive.
Obj.2. Idealism attempts to overcome the mind-body interaction problem by making bodies just collections of divine ideas (like other “bundles of qualities”), passive in themselves. But how immaterial, finite substances interact with divine ideas seems more obscure, seems to imply causal powers over some dimension of the divine mind, and seems not to account for body-to-mind causality (e.g. brain injury).
Spiegel replies that, "Gould is mistaken in assuming that the idealist must provide an account of body-soul interaction. Most idealists are occasionalists who deny such causal interaction between body and soul. On this view, God has decreed that certain human choices would occasion certain bodily movements. And we need not see this as a power we possess over the deity ... On the occasionalist account, it is simply God's chosen way of endowing human beings with the capacity to act in the physical world, most immediately regarding our own bodies."8
Obj.3. The doubt of the material world by idealism, in whatever form, “assumes the perceptual reliability it denies,” and Berkeley’s form in particular (e.g., “To be is to be perceived”) likewise assumes pre-existing objects.9
Spiegel claims that Jacobs misconstrues the idealist argument. "On the contrary, idealists are as confident as anyone that the material world exists and that our senses are generally reliable. The idealist thesis, rather, concerns what the material world really is, namely perceivable ideas."10 This is not to deal seriously with the objection. Moreover, it ignores one's own pathway to this thesis. How did Berkeley arrive at this recasting of a "material world" inside of minds and ideas? Answer: By doubting the more intuitive, traditional view.
Obj.4. Idealism collapses ideas into the subject’s act of thinking—so, “subject and predicate, act and object” are conflated, and “Ideas cannot fail because mistakes cannot be measured against reality.” Lewis’ argument against the Naturalist would have to strike here against the idealist as well.11
Spiegel simply dismisses all this as a series of non-sequiturs. In order to do this, he must reduce the claim of several conflations into a straw man (specifically a leap in logic). So he says, "How does the thesis that there is no Lockean material substratum underlying sensible qualities imply solipsism? ... How does the thesis that God alone sustains material objects imply solipsism?"12
This is either very shallow reading or else dishonesty. To the first question, the Aristotelian view upholds real matter yet also denies Lockean material substratum (surely he knows this?); and to the second question, Jacobs was abundantly clear that all Christian theists are committed to God upholding all things (ideas and matter), but that Idealism really means that God does this with ideas, not with any external matter (surely he knows this too?).
There were other objections, but as far as I can tell, Spiegel did not attempt much of a reply to these at all. I will mention only two.
Unanswered Objection 1. Ideas simply do not constitute the world, for two main reasons: 1. they “mediate between the mind and the physical world” and 2. because they “are intentional objects” where properties are not.13
Unanswered Objection 2. Either God has properties (but properties are just ideas) or else, God is simple (and so does not have a plurality of ideas).14
Postmodernism and Christianity
Sam Welbaum gives a history of the epochs of classical, modern, and postmodern thought. He also gives mention to the Emergent Church, from the late 1990s to early 2010s, but laments how it “scared” Evangelicals into thinking it was against objective truth. He then proceeds to do what so many of the authors of that movement did: to assure conservative Evangelicals that postmodernists are not against classical commitments to reality being one and external and accessible to us, but that they do not concern themselves with that, given their more adamant opposition to Modernism’s quest for certainty and “complete objectivity.”
What is that selling point, concisely stated? In Welbaum's words, "a Christian postmodern metaphysic is one that does not necessarily contradict other views (though it may), because while they are aiming at understanding the objective world as it is, the postmodernist is concerned with the subjective world as it is constructed."15
What are some basic facts of the flow of thought that Postmodern Christians ignore? Welbaum gives us a prime example:
"Like most world religions, Christianity was birthed in the classical period, and therefore Christian theology presumes the existence of the exterior world, the primacy of metaphysical questions, the contingency of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, and any other features of classical thought."16
For many authors who make this observation, it is an opportunity to deconstruct what amounts to a "Greek intrusion" into the foundations of the story of theological reflection. It rarely occurs to such authors to ask whether or not the rise of the Christian faith and the rise of objective-civilizing thought, simultaneously, were no mere accident of history, much less the coming to a head of rival forces, but that these might just represent a real harmony of spiritual and intellectual truth. One main reason that this question is chased away from the mind is the fear that this would imply a total spiritual harmony of causes, so to speak: e.g. that it would necessitate the common cause of paganism and Christianity, and so erase the antithesis of the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan. But this would be a hasty conclusion.
At any rate, back to Welbaum’s vision of things. He borrows especially from Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein.
Christian postmodernists like Welbaum want to use Kierkegaard as a point of entry to show that postmodernism need not reject classical objectivity, but that is wants to force upon us all the "values" question. So "truth is subjectivity" never meant subjectivism. Rather, since Kierkegaard believed that (a) humans are made as individuals, (b) must not only know truth but love it and live entirely for it, that (c) in the stages on life's way, one is most "themselves" when they take the "leap of faith," breaking from the herd "to finding a truth by which they might live, to eventually having that truth be in line with the creator of the universe."17 No doubt, this is faithful to Kierkegaard's true meaning, but to suppose that this can still be retained in full-blown postmodernism is out of touch.
How does Wittgenstein’s “language games” claim to address the ‘No certainty? Are you certain?’ objection? Welbaum gives it a shot: "Words do not relate to the world, words relate to other words and are used as gestures toward the world. Words do not describe the world in full, and not all language users use all words the same, so words are used in various language games as a means of gesturing to those who we believe use words the same way that we do." He then goes on to make an incoherent distinction between those words (in the objection), which are talking merely about form, where as Wittgenstein (and Heidegger, who more clearly met the objection) is "talking about the world, not the language we use to describe or construct it."18 At least, these people have short attention spans and cannot follow even their own nonsensical arguments; and at worse, we have an intentional case of "Rules for thee, but not for me" when it comes to language games.
Welbaum summarizes the appropriation of Kant by Heidegger:
“instead of the noumenal and the phenomenal, Heidegger speaks about the ontic and the ontological … The ontic is the world of matter, the world of stuff. The ontological is the world of being. So often metaphysics will attempt to define the ontic world by means of the ontological, or will presume that the ontological world in some way transfers to the ontic, but it does not. While in Kant’s system, the mind takes sense data from the noumenal world to construct the phenomenal world that one interacts with, in Heidegger’s system, Dasein (the human) projects itself onto the ontic world and creates the ontological.”19
In other words, the manner in which a thing exists is what one can mean by its essence—hence “existence precedes essence.” But how does this ontological-versus-ontic distinction play out? He speaks of Heidegger's example of the bench and the house. They are not "there" in the ontic. There are materials, but they are without meaning. They have potential. In a sense, Heidegger uses "potential" as a more developed readiness to actualize that Aristotle's potency.
At any rate, "mankind's concern is not with the essence of a thing, but the meaning of a thing. There is no bench, there is no house, there is this bench, and there is this house." Out of what Dasein cares about, he projects meaning onto the raw material and takes part in "thinging" or "the worlding of the world." All this means is "the process whereby [things] become what they are."20
At the very least, Welbaum understands the differences that he nevertheless thinks can be papered over. He gives us another clarifying example, this time a comparison between Plato and Heidegger on what makes a dog a dog: "Plato would say "dogness," focusing on the unique, set apart, unchangeable essence that makes a dog a dog. Heidegger would say that a dog is a dog by the way the dog dogs, or another way, a dog is a dog by the doging of the dog."21
After so much ink spent on assuring the reader that the subjective and objective are not foes, Welbaum turns around and says,
"When I make a statement about the identity of an object, I am not stating a universal about the object in and of itself, but rather about how I understand the object, or perhaps how the object is revealing itself to me."22
This is very reminiscent of C. S. Lewis' analysis of the so-called "Green Book" of grammar at the outset of The Abolition of Man. I refer to the statement by Coleridge that the waterfall "is sublime" and how it was taken by the authors to refer to the observer's sentiments about the waterfall and not the external phenomenon itself.
The point was not lost on the other authors. And it was what Spiegel defined as "postmodern evasiveness,” namely, "a refusal to seriously engage metaphysical questions without outright denying their significance and ... without having having to give up one's metaphysical commitments."23
Now we come to the awkward objection section—awkward because this fourth author sort of gets ganged up on. But what else were we expecting? Inviting a postmodernist to contribute to a book on metaphysics is a bit like splitting a plate at a Texas barbecue with a vegan. Unlike Spiegel’s three unanswered objections, Welbaum did not really address any of them. They are nevertheless instructive, so here they are:
Obj.1. The postmodernist “confuses metaphysical and epistemic notions of truth and objectivity. The moderns were not wrong about metaphysical truth. They believed truth is discoverable and can be known. Welbaum seems to equate the search for ‘objective truth’ or ‘absolute truth’ with the quest for certainty and the myth of neutrality.”24
Obj.2. The popular thesis that Wittgenstein’s “language games” was meant to be a precursor to postmodernism is said by Jacobs to be false: as evidenced by the take of “prized followers” Anscombe, Geach, and Kenny.25
Obj.3. Even that which might be admissible, such as Kierkegaard’s appeal to a living truth as “our subjective truth,” is an instance of subjectivist language obscuring truth.26
Obj.4. Much of postmodern metaphysics turns out to be ethics wrapped in relativistic metaphysics. Meanwhile, it leaves metaphysical questions unanswered because it is supposedly not concerned with those questions.”27
Obj.5. What Spiegel says about metaphysics is equally true of metanarratives (so, comprehensiveness added), namely, “in making the claim about the world being subjectively constructed the postmodernist is making a metaphysical claim.”28 In claiming this about all finite world-interpreters, the postmodernist is giving us a metanarrative.
It seems to me that Postmodernist theses or concluding statements are tiresomely grandiose and cannot withstand genuine scrutiny. As an example of this, Welbaum says, "Modernity attempted to find a place of neutral certitude, and in doing so created a mechanistic secular world."29
While we can understand how each of these component parts functions in the postmodern scheme, such concise statements reveal a tendency to leap in logic. How exactly was it the quest for neutrality and certainty that "created" the secular machine? One clear answer is that science—as the exclusive enterprise of objective knowing—was seen to exclude human intentionality (especially prejudicial intentions), and thus to cut out the higher aspirations of the soul from the knowing process. The trouble is that, in ignoring the answers that classical thought already possessed to refute modernism, such summary statements always communicate that "certainty" and "objectivity" and "comprehensiveness" as epistemic virtues, in any conception of them, are the problem.
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1. James Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” in Timothy M. Mosteller, ed., Four Views on Christian Metaphysics (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2022),72.
2. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 77.
3. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 72.
4. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 73.
5. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 73, 74.
6. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 75.
7. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 99.
8. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 98.
9. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 92.
10. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 99.
11. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 92.
12. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 99.
13. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 87.
14. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Idealism,” 89.
15. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 133.
16. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 108.
17. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 112.
18. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 111.
19. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 114-15.
20. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 115.
21. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 116.
22. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 117.
23. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 131-32.
24. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 123.
25. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 126.
26. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 127.
27. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 127.
28. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 131.
29. Welbaum, “Christian Metaphysics and Postmodernism,” 112.
