The Sham of Dividing Metaphysics and Method

"We have no interest in simultaneously being metaphysical theists and methodological non-theists."

-A Biblical History of Israel by I. Provan, V.P. Long, and T. Longman III (2003).

To briefly continue a thought developed in my long(winded) post from a couple months ago on "Knowledge, Coauthors, and Intended Audiences," I am struck again by the difference in the approach of this volume versus Science, Creation, and the Bible, also coauthored by Longman along with Richard F. Carlson. In the latter, the authors write, "Science as a whole should not be classified as atheistic but rather as methodologically naturalistic, not metaphysically naturalistic." As I mused in my earlier post, much of the difference might have to do with co-authorship and audience. Moreover, the former speaks of historical work, while the latter directly addresses science.

Even still, the two volumes work from incompatible epistemological premises. Science, Creation, and the Bible offers a comparatively chastened view of the role of theology--which is not necessarily bad, except that it's paired with a view of science that could perhaps stand a touch more chastening itself. As I pointed out before, "they have too much faith that, so long as it stays within the bounds of the discipline, science remains at heart an empirical exercise" that can be methodologically non-theist without being metaphysically so. In contrast, the authors of A Biblical History recognize that those who become "practical or methodological nontheists" may "find themselves in danger of sliding eventually into metaphysical nontheism." In other words, the boundary between the two is very permeable.

If we suppose, as A Biblical History does (and I agree) that "a connection always exists between the kind of world one believes in and the kind of history that one writes"--in short, if we think that such a division between metaphysics and method, between belief and practice, is ultimately a sham when it comes to historical work, why should the same not apply to science?

Knowledge, Coauthors, and Intended Audiences

(I have a very short follow-up post on the same topic which you can read here.)

We know about the past, to the extent that we know about it at all, primarily through the testimony of others.... We began this section by using the language of "knowledge": how do we know what we claim to know about the past? In truth, however, this question is a concession... What is commonly referred to as "knowledge of the past" is more accurately described as "faith in testimony,"in the interpretations of the past, offered by other people. We consider the gathered testimonies at our disposal; we reflect on the various interpretations offered; and we decide in various ways and to various extents to invest faith in these--to make these testimonies and interpretations our own, because we consider them trustworthy. If our level of trust is very strong, or we are simply not conscious of what we are in fact doing, then we tend to call our faith "knowledge"; but this term is dangerous to use, since it too easily leads us into self-delusion, or deludes others who listen to us or read what we write, as to the truth of the matter. This delusion seems to lie at the heart of the problem with much of our modern writing on the history of Israel. In particular, it is this delusion (among other things) that has led many historians of Israel, in common with many of their colleagues elsewhere in the discipline of history, to make the false move of sharply differentiating in principle between dependence upon tradition and dependence upon "scientifically established" facts.

This comes from a chapter titled "Knowing and Believing: Faith in the Past," in A Biblical History of Israel, cowritten by Ian Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. The bold emphasis is mine; the italics are original.

The first hundred pages of this three-hundred-page volume are entirely devoted to a defense of biblical history. It's an apology in the face of many scholars who wish (and generally fail) to discard biblical testimony and rely solely on archaeology or other external evidence. I am far from finishing it, but so far it's a compelling, well-written, and entertaining case.

As I read this volume, I have two other things I've recently read--plus one not-so-recent author--bouncing around in my mind:

The Modernity of American Christianity

This conversation between Ross Douthat, reasonable and orthodox Catholic, and William Saletan, reasonable and agnostic liberal, is well worth your time. In setting up the exchange, Douthat tries to clarify what he's defending and, more to the point, what he's not:

If orthodoxy is ancient, it’s useful to think of fundamentalism as a characteristically modern school of thought: It has the weird mix of closed-mindedness, pseudo-analytic rigor (once you’re inside the system, at least), and certain faith that History is about to vindicate its ideas that we associate with certain strains of Marxism.

Historically speaking, the modernness of religious fundamentalism is glaringly obvious, but there's this lagging sense in the culture at large (and in slow-to-alter textbooks) that religious fundamentalism represents some sort of archaic, reactionary hold on the past. For example, American history textbooks still tend to represent the "Roaring 20s" as a battle between modern, progressive elements (flappers, jazz, women's suffrage) and conservative, reactionary impulses (the Red Scare, the Scopes Trial, Prohibition).

It's not hard to expose this dichotomy as patently absurd. William Jennings Bryan, the prosecutor in the Scopes Trial, was the American populist, a champion of "the people" against the moneyed interests of Republicans and in some ways a progressive hero. Even more telling, women's suffrage and Prohibition were overlapping, complementary movements. Not only were the causes aligned--to a significant degree (though not, of course, universally speaking), the supporters were the exact same people. To support the progressive/reactionary antithesis, then, you have to suppose a kind of schizophrenia among suffragettes and Prohibitionists: they were progressives when talking about women's rights, reactionaries when talking about alcohol. It doesn't work.

Throughout the conversation, Douthat pleads with American Christians to dissolve the artificial, unnatural, and destructive bond they've forged between Christianity and the fundamentalism of modern American Protestantism. This may sound like some kind of creeping liberal compromise, but it's not. The point is less a defensive posture against Saletan and other liberals critical of Christian "backwardness" than it is an aggressive indictment of Christian conservatism. If the cause of Christ is synonymous with that of modern Christian fundamentalism (or, for that matter, political neo-conservatism), then it will surely fade into oblivion alongside the evaporating modern age.

Faeries, History, God

I. Faeries

Writer's block keeps alive the pagan world of nymphs and faeries, of capricious powers beyond human control who can enrich or destroy human lives at a whim, who are immune to compassion yet can be sated somehow by mystical, ever-changing rituals. It–writer's block, I mean–exists alongside infinite other reminders of our world's irrationality and our human frailty. Control is an illusion. Those who think they wield it live in imminent danger of disillusionment, and the inevitable disaster which befalls them serves as a warning to us.

We are pitifully impotent to direct our lives.