Epistemology

Complexity and Benefit

Matt ShraderLeave a comment

We all have met that person who has the unsavory habit of interjecting themselves into a topic or conversation so they can force in contrary evidence and set everyone on the straight and narrow. We all cringe when the proverbial “Well, actually…” rears up unwelcome. If you have spent any amount of time on social media, you know how ubiquitous this is. And how annoying. How can someone be so arrogant and selfish?  

The problem with being frustrated about this is that we are often the one to interject (or we want to) and correct the abject stupidity in front of us. Of course, when we interject it is to defend truth and set reality back on its course. If you have spent any amount of time on social media, you know the nonsense that is out there. Your correction is sorely needed. How can you let such madness go unchallenged?

We could make several observations about these tendencies, but I want to a point out how this coincides with the practice of history. Further, I think that history—done well—offers help here. Historians are usually categorized among the “Well, actually…” crowd. It’s the historian’s job to remind us that history is complex. Sure, it’s annoying. But often this is necessary. Simplistic answers to complex questions rarely satisfy. Convenient quotes often twist historical facts. And basing an action or movement on an inaccuracy breeds bigger problems. Sometimes adding complexity is beneficial.

Recently, I have come across several examples of this beneficial corrective to problematic or simplistic history. I want to present one of these in order to demonstrate how complexity leads to benefit. 

(Mis)Quoting the French

My example is from the recent book by Robert Tracy McKenzie, We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy. McKenzie begins with the famous quote from the nineteenth-century French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville: “America is great because America is good.” Tocqueville came to America in the 1830s with express purpose to observe what made American democracy tick. The above quote is one piece of longer quotation:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers—and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her fertile fields and boundless forests—and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it probably is. It has been quoted by political figures such as Ronald Reagan, John Kerry, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, Michelle Bachmann, Charles Coulson, Rush Limbaugh, Colin Powell, Ben Carson, and many others (see McKenzie’s prologue for more). The problem is that it’s fake. Tocqueville didn’t say it. What’s worse, as McKenzie shows, is that it is terrible misrepresentation of what Tocqueville argued. As a matter of fact, it is nearly exactly the opposite of Tocqueville’s view. That this quote is fake is a fact that historians have pointed out since at least when Eisenhower evoked it. 

McKenzie’s book is not just an effort to correct the record on the quote, that is just the springboard. Rather he shows that Tocqueville was a devout student of democracy with a deft understanding of its dangers and hopes, which he laid out in his famous book, Democracy in America. McKenzie argues that Tocqueville saw within democracy the capability of tyranny, particularly when the collective majority has an uncontrolled desire for something that the minority possesses. “In a democratic society, ‘the omnipotence of the majority’ can readily become ‘the tyranny of the majority’” (204). McKenzie adds complexity not just in a historical presentation of Tocqueville’s work but in the historical background to 1830s America. He lays out the notion of democracy that the founders held and then contrasts it with that which prevailed in the 1830s in the era when Andrew Jackson was president. While the founders held that democracy was the best form of government and also recognized that the people were not naturally virtuous, Jacksonian democracy was a faith that “democracy is intrinsically just” and that “we are individually good and collectively wise” (12). 

The complexity McKenzie offers is important. A false quote has been repeated over and over again because it was useful to someone, not because it was true. The historical facts are that Tocqueville and the founding fathers had a different understanding of democracy than the quote recognizes. In fact, he actively warned against the idea that the fake quote puts forward. The historical change to Jacksonian understanding (which McKenzie calls the “Great Reversal”) is a fundamental shift in the understanding of democracy. This is McKenzie’s purpose: to recognize the various philosophies of democracy and realize the differences between them is a shift in how trustworthy the human heart is. 

The complexity that McKenzie provides means that a view of democracy that fails to see the latent danger in the democractic system is incomplete. The founding fathers saw this danger, as did Tocqueville. They still believed in democracy as the best option available, but they were unwilling to set aside their convictions that people (even—or especially—the majority of people) have a tendency to mistreat others because their own desires blind them. Tocqueville saw this as the danger of democracy. Christians have traditionally called this fallenness. A faith in democracy to automatically produce the best result needs the complexity that McKenzie is pointing out.

I’ll leave McKenzie’s work there, though much more could be said. It is a book well worth your time. He uses this historical presentation to challenge contemporary Christians who have forgotten the theological idea that we are a fallen people. As you can perhaps gather, he will chastise politicians (former President Trump at the center) as well as Christians.

History and Virtue

Complexity has a few benefits. In most instances, not only is complexity helpful, but it is also necessary to avoid error. If someone appeals to the false Tocqueville quote, it does damage to their credibility (if one knows the problem with the quote) or it does damage to the one listening (if they accept the quote as genuine). An interjection of complexity would help. When we receive correction and someone demands we see more complexity, we should learn to accept such correction as grace. In fact, I would say this is vital even if quite difficult. Finally, when we insist on more complexity in others, we need both to be thorough (don’t correct if you don’t have your facts straight in the first place) and gentle. Proper historical practice requires we do our homework and gentleness is a virtue. In so doing, we build others and ourselves. Understanding and clarity only help. 

Perhaps the biggest problems with allowing complexity are that it is hard and it cuts both ways. We are just as susceptible as anyone else to want things to be simple. But good history is complex. It requires us to build virtue. Patience, humility, love of truth, love of others, and grace are all intellectual and social virtues. They are also central to good history. And this is my point. History done well builds virtue. Complexity, when offered or received well, is a benefit.

Bucket-Head History and the Vice of Non-Falsifiability

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Memorizing long lists of names, dates, and events is a frustrating yet common experience to history students. We can all picture a teacher standing like a statue by a chalkboard droning on and on while giving names and dates ad nauseum. This is not a good look for history. And, I would say that it is history done poorly. If the simple mention of the word “history” makes you want to fall asleep or cringe at having to put your memorization skills to the test, then you have not been properly introduced to what history can and should be. It is what I refer to as bucket-head history. There is an old (and bad!) idea that when you take a history class, your brain is like a giant bucket that the teacher is filling up with facts and dates. This will make history very boring. The bigger problem is that there are holes in the bottom of the bucket and the information being poured in seeps out. Or, as is true for many, there is no bottom to the bucket at all and it just goes in the top and out the bottom. Learning history like this is frustrating and ineffectual. There are better ways to think about history. 

We have to start by recognizing that history is not just simply the past. History is better understood as the “remembered past” (to borrow a phrase from John Lukacs). This is where C. S. Lewis’s short essay, “Historicism,” is helpful. Lewis explained that if you take one moment of time and that one moment represents one drop of water, then think about the incredible complexity of that one drop of water. That one moment is beyond our ability to grasp. So much happens in every moment in just one person’s life that it is staggering to extrapolate that one moment and every person on the planet. Now consider the past. For Lewis, it is like “a roaring cataract of billions upon billions of such moments: any one of them too complex to grasp in its entirety, and the aggregate beyond imagination.” Imagine that roaring stream flowing over a waterfall. The historian is the one standing at the bottom of the waterfall, holding out a cup, and catching some of the past. The question is not whether historians can know the past comprehensively (that is beyond all possibility). The question is whether historians know anything about the past at all. Historians have no choice but to pick and choose a small sample of what happened and weave it together into a narrative.

41mkizc-ncL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_Just to be clear, as an aside, this does not make me a relativist. There is a difference between historical neutrality and historical objectivity (as Carl Trueman has said) or between absolute truth and probable truth (as Richard Evans has said). When historical fallacies are avoided and positive evidence is correctly presented according to proper historical methods there there can be objectivity or probable truth.

To make history interesting the historian tells a compelling story. This presents history as coherent and explains causal connections. The good news is that this helpfully replaces bucket-head history. But there can be a danger on the other end. It is tempting to come up with a paradigm of what is happening in history and then let this hypothesis become the grand scheme to which all historical evidence must conform. Carl Trueman, in his book Histories and Fallacies, spends an entire chapter talking about these “grand schemes and misdemeanors.” Trueman gives an extended example of Marxism and its all-explaining theory. Marxism is a theory of everything which argues all history is understood dialectically in terms of class struggle. The purpose of discussing Marxism is to show it is a grand scheme that forces all evidence to fit. A thoroughgoing Marxist believes that all actions are ultimately driven by material class struggle. Historically speaking, it is really hard to prove that, despite the elaborate schemes Marxist historians create.

The fundamental problem with such an overarching scheme of history is that it fails Karl Popper’s falsifiability test. There is literally nothing that can prove Marxism wrong because the theory is controlling of all evidence. A non-Marxist might be able to present evidence that someone’s actions were fundamentally motivated by religion or by good-will toward others, but a Marxist would reject it. They have a category of false consciousness wherein someone thinks they are acting according to religion or something else, but in reality there is an underlying explanation of material class struggle going on. You can see that Marxism twists and distorts evidence to fit their preconceived scheme (you can also see how they call religion the opium of the masses). Trueman describes it as “an all-encompassing aprioristic view of reality into which the phenomena of history must be made to fit, whether by fair means or foul” (101). It is nonfalsifiable and, ultimately, a Procrustean bed.

I don’t think most conservative Christians are tempted toward Marxist explanations of history, but we are often tempted toward other grand schemes (what my former professor John Woodbridge called “paradigmatic history”). Several examples in church history can be given: the repeated recourse to calling conservative theology a child of Scottish common-sense realism, distinguishing Calvin from the calvinists, Harnack’s hellenization thesis, assuming a strong distinction between Antiochene literal exegesis and Alexandrian allegorical exegesis, and saying that church history “fell” after Constantine and has not recovered yet. This also does not mean that we cannot use some scheme or paradigm for historical understanding. But we must see those schemes as heuristic and not prescriptive. Problematic grand narratives are often all-encompassing and utilize fanciful schemes to explain contrary evidence away. Good history is always open to revision based off further evidence and proper historical reasoning (and I’ll say it again: that is not relativism).

Good history is not disjunctive, boring history and it is not paradigmatic history. The problem with such historical schemes is that they simply do not convince many who do not already agree. Eventually, a mountain of evidence and contrary explanations will collapse such explanations. And, they are not being fundamentally honest with the evidence. A better path is to have humility enough to admit we are prone to error and our understandings of history are never above correction. And there are other practical benefits to being able think this way. It is not just historical schemes that can be paradigmatic. It is easy to skim the political scene today and realize that many (on the left and the right) basically understand politics according to unfalsifiable grand schemes (one example would be reference to the “deep state” as somehow an explanation for contrary evidence).

Good historical thinking forces us to be honest with contrary evidence and honest with the limitations of our own explanations. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is not relativism. Solid evidence can be found and can be marshaled in favor of various historical narratives. Not all explanations are created equal and not all evidence is equally strong and convincing. The root problem, though, is us. Our limitations demand some humility and caution.

Thinking Sensibly about Unicorns

Matt Shrader1 Comment

horse chest piece on chess board

Nearly everyone agrees that history is necessary subject in school. We all agree that it is helpful to know history. But the truth is that we do not always agree on what it means to “know history.” Maybe a better way to say it is that we do not always agree on what it means to think historically. Books, books, and more books have been written on this subject. I want to mention just one piece of this puzzle, and also unicorns.

One famous article by Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke distill historical thinking to five basic sensitivities. These “five C’s of historical thinking” are change over time, context, causality, contingency, and complexity. If someone can weave these sensibilities into their thinking process, they are well on their way to good historical thinking. The categories are not too hard to understand. The problem is that they are unnatural and thus hard to learn.

When trying to understand anything we take our frame of reference (our knowledge, experiences, and habits of mind) and apply it to what we are confronted with in order to make sense of it. When someone travels to a new place they can make sense of a lot of what is happening, but definitely not all of it. This understanding can be complicated if they do not know the language. It can be complicated if the dominant religion is different. It can be complicated if we know nothing of the history of this location. It can be complicated for many reasons. If you live in Minnesota (which I have for about 16 months as of writing this) it takes some time to learn in what ways “Minnesota nice” is different than other kinds of “nice.”

61q8hSE8AhL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_We begin to overcome these potential misunderstandings by assuming we do not know what all these things mean (I’m still working on the Minnesota nice one). This is where we can apply the five C’s. The fact is that good historians are almost never satisfied with quick solutions when a new problem arises. They have the developed sensibility to think patiently and “cultivate puzzlement,” as Sam Wineburg mentioned in his widely referenced book: Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. The main point is that when we approach something new and different we have to realize that our frames of references are pretty limited in comparison to the vastness of human history. Epistemic humility is a basic assumption. We have to keep asking questions so that we can build a thick understanding of something. Hard questions almost never have easy answers. We cannot begin to truly know something until we first agree that we do not know everything about that thing. When criticized, many in our day like to retort that “you don’t know me!” And, based on the five C’s of historical thinking, they are probably right. Here Wineburg is pure gold: “Paradoxically, what allows us to come to know others is our distrust in our capacity to know them, a skepticism about the extraordinary sense-making abilities that allow us to construct the world around us” (24).

That brings me to unicorns. Wineburg relates a story from the travels of Marco Polo where he was confronted with a new animal. He did what we all do, he tried to make sense of it through his frame of reference. He was confused by this new type of animal, “which are scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo…[and] a single large, black horn in the middle of the forehead. They do not attack with their horns, but only with their tongues and their knees; for their tongues are furnished with long sharp spines.” Polo concluded he had seen a unicorn. The problem was that “they are very ugly brutes to look at…not at all such as we describe them when…they let themselves be captured by virgins” (quoted in Wineburg, 24). Polo’s problem was his frame of reference had to be expanded. To actually understand what he was seeing required he not assume he had a wide enough frame of reference to understand. Again, Wineburg is right: “Our encounter with history presents us with a choice: to learn about rhinoceroses or to learn about unicorns. We naturally incline toward unicorns—they are prettier and more tame. But it is the rhinoceros that can teach us far more than we could ever imagine” (24). We ought to cultivate the historical sensibilities that help us see the things of the past that are unusual to us. Without them we see unicorns instead of rhinos. This is what it means to understanding history on its own terms.

You may notice that throughout this article I explored rules of historical thinking and applied them to thinking in general. That is because these ways of thinking are really helpful in our general life. A little humility, a little sensibility about the unusual, and a little more patient, deliberate thinking would go a long way. That is the heart of why history as a subject has long been considered necessary to nearly every level of education. It is more than just the events and people of history that is important, it is the ability to think well about history that we are after. Good historical thinking is a necessary skill, but it has to be cultivated.

On the Limits of Theological Knowledge

Matt ShraderLeave a comment

book shelves in a room close up photographyOne of the more important aspects of theology, in my opinion, is a healthy understanding of the limits of theological knowledge. There is a tendency for many to approach theology as something that can be mastered. This would be the feeling that once you get all your theological ducks in a row you will be set, or that you can approach theological controversy with an expectation that one side has all the answers. I find this problematic for at least two reasons: it is arrogant and it misses the entire point of theology.

I just finished reading an incredible book by Steven Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology. I’m not going to review Duby’s book. I’ll leave that to someone else. But, his chapter on the knowledge of God helpfully situates our knowledge within a greater superstructure.

From a human perspective, we understand that our understanding was marred by the fall (the noetic effects of sin). But it can be helped to understand the things of God by the Spirit through regeneration, illumination, and ultimately glorification. Also from this human perspective, we normally use the “crutch” of tradition (church history and the communion of saints) to help.

While it is helpful to think about human understanding within the large timeline of creation, fall, redemption, and glorification, this is not the only perspective from which to view human understanding. This is where Duby is helpful. His first chapter discusses knowledge of God within an even larger theological superstructure. These are the layers he provides, each of which builds on the previous:

  1. Theological knowledge has the divine purpose of communion with God. The divine purpose of theological knowledge is communion with God, which recognizes that God is complete in himself but yet wills that created beings can know something of him, which is primarily made known in Scripture;
  2. God is known in self-revelation through wisdom. The object of theological knowledge is God himself and is dependent on God’s initiative in revelation. Importantly, this revelation is not just to give bare information but to bring glory to God and restored fellowship between God and his creation. The way this looks in the life of the Christian is wisdom.
  3. The limitations of finitude. The limitations and incompleteness of theological knowledge are important to realize. Where one sits on the timeline of the history of revelation will affect theological knowledge (we sit between what the OT saints knew and what the blessed in heaven know). Likewise, where one sits in regard to redemption will affect theological knowledge (unregenerate, regenerate, or glorified).
  4. Not hidden but a pilgrim understanding. Despite limitations in knowledge, God is not a hidden and unknowable God (Deus absconditus). Rather, a recognition of the pilgrim nature of our understanding can lead to a healthy understanding of the knowledge of God.

In other words, Duby’s work locates theological reasoning within a divine framework, not just the human perspective (which is encompassed in Duby’s third point). The greater superstructure Duby points to is God’s being (the divine ontology). Duby is not the first to do this, others such as John Webster, Kevin Vanhoozer, Matthew Barrett, and Scott Swain have done similar work recently. And this really points to the much older “basic theological principles” of principium essendi (principle of being), principium cognoscendi externum (the external principle of knowing), and principium cognoscendi internum (the internal principle of knowing).

In a blog post I can only drop this bit of theology. To comment and explicate how these all fit together would take a seminary-level theology course. But I hope you can see at least the skeleton of what is being said: The Triune God in himself gives the base meaning to all reality, which is ultimately found in God alone. Thus, God has a purpose within himself for humans knowing him. To accomplish this purpose God has revealed himself through various means, and scripture is our primary access point at this time. It is at this juncture that the limitations of human understanding enter. Yet, we are not left alone because the Spirit works through regeneration, illumination, and the communion of saints to help us have theological understanding. All of which, of course, is so we can have a relationship with the Triune God.

When we understand theological knowledge within this greater framework, at least a few observations can be made.

First, we should lay aside the prideful notion that we can build an impregnable theology. This is not to say that we cannot be firm in our convictions, but we must realize that there are serious limitations to our theology. Which is nothing less than what many wise theologians will say. The three most comforting words in a theologian’s arsenal that they can give in response to tough theological questions are: “I don’t know.” And that is a good thing because we worship a God who is altogether different than we are. Yet he has made himself known, and for a reason.

Second, God makes himself known for us. As Duby pointed out, the purpose of theological knowledge is communion with God. The point is not merely to get your theological ducks in a row. The point is to grow in communion with the object of theology, which is God himself. Theology is no less than head knowledge, but it is so much more.

Third, from our human perspective, an understanding of historical theology helps here, both to give a robust theology and to guard from painful wandering. The categories put in place by those who came before us are not simply dry, scholastic bones. They are careful reflections on the way we can understand God. We do not have to constantly reinvent the wheel. And we neglect these carefully constructed safeguards at our own peril. The character of historical theology as memory is essential.

Fourth, the theological disciplines should all be done within this framework. Systematic and historical theology along with biblical studies are all encompassed by this overarching reality. That has often given me much food for thought, especially as I consider what a theology of historical theology looks like.

All that to say: Duby’s book really got me thinking. That is what the best books do. And these are only a few meditations on one chapter. Yet hardly anything is more important in theological reflection than remembering our own limitations and that the point of these reflections is to bring us to closer communion with God.