Idealism and Christian Theology

Idealism and Christianity Volume 1

Joshua R. Farris, S. Mark Hamilton, James S. Spiegel, Joshua R. Farris, S. Mark Hamilton, James S. Spiegel

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781628924039
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

In the recent history of philosophy few works have appeared which favorably portray Idealism as a plausible philosophical view of the world. Considerably less has been written about Idealism as a viable framework for doing theology. While the most recent and significant works on Idealism, composed by the late John Foster ( Case for Idealism and A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenological Idealism ), have put this theory back on the philosophical map, no such attempt has been made to re-introduce Idealism to contemporary Christian theology. Idealism and Christian Theology is such a work, retrieving ideas and arguments from its most significant modern exponents (especially George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards) in order to assess its value for present and future theological construction. As a piece of constructive philosophical-theology itself, this volume considers the explanatory power an Idealist ontology has for contemporary Christian theology.

1

The Theological Orthodoxy of Berkeley’s Immaterialism

James S. Spiegel

It is well known that the chief end of Berkeley’s philosophical labors was to defend the Christian religion. He says as much in the closing section of the Principles, where he states that that work was calculated to “better dispose [his readers] to reverence and embrace the salutary truths of the Gospel, which to know and to practice is the highest perfection of human nature.”¹ This being Berkeley’s aim, it is no surprise that he is careful to insist that his metaphysics is fully consistent with biblical principles. Indeed, in the Philosophical Commentaries, he proclaims “there is nothing in scripture that can possibly be wrested against me, but, perhaps, many things for me.”² Here Berkeley’s claim is two-fold. On the one hand, he boldly asserts that his immaterialism implies nothing that in any way contradicts scripture; on the other hand, he suggests that in scripture there are to be found some passages that in fact favor his immaterialism. For the sake of brevity, let us call the above two claims Berkeley’s “consistency” thesis and the “endorsement” thesis, respectively. In this chapter I shall assess these two theses, investigating, first, Berkeley’s defense of the biblical soundness of his immaterialism and, second, the degree to which, if at all, his immaterialism is recommended by scripture.

Berkeley’s immaterialism and the consistency thesis

Before proceeding to an examination of these two theses, let us review the essential features of Berkeley’s metaphysics, which earn him the title “immaterialist” and which his Christian opponents have on occasion found offensive. The central thesis of Berkeley’s system is the principle esse est percipi aut percipere (to be is to be perceived or to perceive). Nothing that is not itself a mind exists independently of perception by some mind. In the Principles Berkeley arrives at this conclusion by arguing as follows: Since an object is nothing more than a collection of sensible qualities, and sensible qualities are ideas, an object is just a collection of ideas. Now since ideas are mind dependent, existing only when perceived, it follows that objects exist only when perceived. Their esse is percipi. In Berkeley’s ontology, then, there are two categories of being: minds and ideas. There exist only ideas perceived and minds perceiving them. Ideas are entirely passive, having “nothing of power or agency included in them,” while minds are “simple, undivided, active substance[s].”³ Only mind possesses the power to produce and perceive ideas. Insofar as it does the former, it is called will; as it does the latter it is called the understanding.

Implicit in Berkeley’s principle that to be is to be perceived is a denial of material substance, the inert, qualitiless “I know not what” of which Locke spoke and in which, according to him, all of the sensible qualities of bodies subsist.⁴ This doctrine is repudiated by Berkeley as unintelligible, since it is impossible to conceive of something that is unperceived, and Locke’s material substance, itself possessing no sensible qualities, is unperceivable. These are, in a nutshell, Berkeley’s philosophical reasons for rejecting material substance. But, as we shall see in evaluating his consistency thesis, his objections are not entirely philosophical but theological as well.

Berkeley’s consistency thesis, once again, is that his immaterialism in no way implies anything that is inconsistent with scripture. I want to explore those doctrines or issues that the orthodox Christian might think to be threatened by a Berkeleyan metaphysics. That is, I shall discuss those issues where inconsistency between Berkeley’s immaterialism and scripture might be (and in some cases has been) alleged.

In both the Principles and the Three Dialogues Berkeley anticipates objections from scripture. In the former he proposes the objection that although no rational demonstration of the existence of bodies can be made,

the Holy Scriptures are so clear in the point as will sufficiently convince every good Christian that bodies do really exist, and are something more than mere ideas, there being in Holy Writ innumerable facts related which evidently suppose the reality of timber and stone, mountains and rivers, and cities, and human bodies.⁵

Berkeley’s reply, of course, is to deny that his principles in any way conflict with the scriptures or “the right use and significance of language.” He is prepared to abide by the “vulgar acceptation” of words such as “timber,” “stone,” “body,” and so on, which denote tangible objects and to distinguish between real and imaginary objects. And, reiterating his central thesis, he reminds us that it is only “matter,” as some philosophers use the term, which he denies. In the Three Dialogues, through Philonous, he presents us with this challenge:

As for solid corporeal substances, I desire you to shew where Moses makes any mention of them; and if they should be mentioned by him, or any other inspired writer, it would still be incumbent upon you to show those words were not taken in the vulgar acceptation, for things falling under our senses, but in the philosophic acceptation, for Matter, or an unknown quiddity, with an absolute existence.⁶

Until then, Berkeley urges, the authority of the scriptures is irrelevant to the discussion, for they are neutral on the issue of material substance. In this way Berkeley shifts the burden of proof onto the matterist, convinced that he has already fully demonstrated the truth of esse est percipi aut percipere. But with regard to the propriety of God’s use of material substance, Berkeley has yet another argument—from the principle of parsimony. In section 61 of the Principles he argues that the use of material substance in creating the world would be unnecessary and superfluous for an omnipotent deity. That is, Berkeley in effect asks, why should God use material substance in doing that which “might have been effected by the mere command of His will without all that apparatus”? To posit the existence of matter, then, when God can accomplish all that he has accomplished without it, is to violate Ockham’s razor (or, at least, the theological principle that a being of perfect wisdom and power will always effect his ends by the simplest and most expeditious means). The existence and operations of the universe are entirely explicable by God’s will and are needlessly explained with the addition of corporeal substance.

Theologically Berkeley considers the doctrine equally repugnant, because it implies that “God has created innumerable beings that are entirely useless and serve no manner of purpose.”⁷ Belief in material substance, then, amounts to the highest irreverence, for it suggests divine frivolity in the creation of the physical world.

A second potential objection from scripture pertains to Berkeley’s doctrine of mind or spirit. His view, we will recall, is that there exist only two kinds of things, spirits and ideas, or respectively, perceiving subjects and that which is perceived. So, Berkeley tells us, we have no idea of spirit. Now the problem is this. The Old and New Testaments, especially the latter, are replete with hundreds of discussions of and references to the human soul or spirit that clearly presuppose that we have some ideas of these entities. Numerous particular attributes are predicated of the human soul or spirit, for example, that it can be “downcast,”⁸ “steadfast,”⁹ “broken,”¹⁰ “joyful,”¹¹ “contrite,”¹² “lowly,”¹³ and “strong.”¹⁴

How is Berkeley’s professed ontology to be reconciled with this biblical language? He seems to have glimpsed the seriousness of the problem, for he deals with the matter explicitly in the Principles as follows: Spirit, being an active substance that perceives, cannot itself be perceived, for this implies passivity, a characteristic of ideas only. He says of spirit that it is an active being. So “there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit; for all ideas whatever, being passive and inert, they cannot represent unto us, by way of image or likeness, that which acts.”¹⁵ Therefore, spirit “cannot be of itself perceived, but only by the effects which it produces.”¹⁶ Berkeley’s position here in no way precludes him from describing spirits using the same sorts of ascriptions employed by the biblical writers, for these do not require the having of an idea of spirit, in the strict sense.

The technical distinction Berkeley makes in this context to allow for knowledge of spirit is between “ideational” and “notional” knowledge. He writes, “We may be said to have some knowledge or notion of our own minds, of spirits and active beings, whereof in a strict sense we have not ideas.”¹⁷ Unfortunately, Berkeley says little more in the way of explicating this distinction.¹⁸ This much we know, that notional knowledge has an active being as its object rather than a passive being, which is the object of ideational knowledge. Furthermore, the object of notional knowledge is perceived indirectly, through its effects, whereas the object of ideational knowledge is directly perceived.¹⁹ It seems that Berkeley is suggesting that notional knowledge is best (or only) understood as knowledge, which is non-ideational. At any rate, his doctrine of notions, cryptic though it is, is certainly motivated by his concern to preserve the possibility of genuine knowledge of spirits, which in turn can be seen as an attempt to reconcile his immaterialism with the basic scriptural presumption of this possibility.²⁰

A third objection from scripture comes from Berkeley’s associate Samuel Johnson. He argues that given Berkeley’s view of bodies as collections of ideas the perception of which is not really dependent upon sense organs, the doctrine of bodily resurrection seems to be undermined, since upon death it is conceivable that “we should still be attended with the same ideas of bodies as we have now.”²¹ The result is that the wonder of physical resurrection is diminished by the ease of its explicableness under Berkeley’s principles. Johnson’s ironic conclusion is that immaterialist metaphysics explains too much and that therefore Berkeley’s ontology “seems to have no place for any resurrection at all, at least in ...