The Metaphysics of Faith: Part 1, The Background Glitch

In what will be a rambling series I want to tell a story, make an argument, and then draw some diagnostic conclusions about Protestantism. Protestantism won't, however, make a showing until the very end. Part of this story will be things I've shared before, and some things will be new, but the whole will highlight difficulties I've had talking about the faith in my Protestant context. This difficulty concerns the metaphysical vacuum one finds in sola scriptura (Scripture alone) traditions and why this vacuum is a problem. 

Now, this is not, if you're jumping to conclusions, a series about tradition and hermeneutics. Yes, many have pointed out that without a magisterial authority hermeneutics within Protestantism is doomed to disputatiousness and schism. I agree with this. Protestantism fissures. I'm just not very worried about it. Most Protestant denominations sit comfortably within the bounds of creedal orthodoxy, so I don't see much fissuring of concern. When Protestants start denying the divinity of Jesus or the historicity of the resurrection, give me a call. Until then, I'm unbothered. I should also say that I think the traditions of both Catholicism and Orthodoxy go off the rails in unbiblical and extra-biblical ways. Plus, the magisterial traditions schismed before the Protestants did, and the Orthodox and the Catholics continue to squabble about which is the "one true tradition." People in glass houses...

So, no, this isn't a series about tradition and hermeneutics. This series is focused on the metaphysical worldview that sits a level deeper than doctrines, creeds, dogma, tradition, and hermeneutics. I'm wanting to explore our deep presuppositions about the nature of God and reality, and how those assumptions affect how we see ourselves and our relationship with God. My concern here is the topic I've been interested in since the publishing of Reviving Old Scratch, and have continued to explore in Hunting Magic Eels and The Shape of Joy: the pervasive disenchantment of Christianity in the West and the prospect of re-enchantment. 

Let's begin.

Here's the first point I want to make, perhaps contentious to some but well known to others. The metaphysical worldview of the patristic and scholastic traditions--Christianity prior to the Enlightenment--was deeply influenced by Neoplatonic thought. 

I expect many people are familiar with the claim that Christianity has been "too Greek." A claim often followed by the statement that we need to recover a more "Hebrew" view of Scripture. The point being, the Hellenistic influence upon Christianity is generally recognized. For example, Greek concepts shaped and were reshaped by the Christological and Trinitarian controversies that resulted in the Nicene (325 AD) and Niceno-Constantinopolitan (381 AD) Creeds, where the Platonic notions of ousia ("substance") and hypostasis ("being/person") were used to create what we now call "orthodoxy." 

To be sure, Christianity repudiated key tenets of Platonic thought, like emanationism and the pre-existence of souls, but the Platonic framework was carried forward. An example of this is Origen, the first great systematic theologian. Origen was hugely influential upon the tradition, especially how he integrated Biblical faith with Neoplatonic thought. In fact, Origen was too Neoplatonic, necessitating some correction. But the Neoplatonic influence persisted, from Origen to Gregory of Nyssa to Augustine to Pseudo-Dionysius to Maximus the Confessor, and all the way to Thomas Aquinas. You can trace the Neoplatonic thread through the entire tradition, right up to the Enlightenment.

A lot of people tell this story in a critical light. The Greek influence upon Christian thought is lamented. But not every theologian thinks so. For example, in his famous Regensburg address Benedict XVI described the "synthesis" between the Biblical faith and Greek thought in providential terms:

The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

...[B]iblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity...

As Benedict XVI points out, the oft-repeated "Hebrew" versus "Greek" contrast is false. The fusion between Jewish and Hellenistic thought predates Christianity, and the union was driven by Judaism itself. Alexandrian Jewry, like Philo of Alexandria, was reading their ancient texts in light of Hellenistic philosophy centuries prior to the church fathers. And it was this Hebrew/Greek merger, Benedict argues, that decisively shaped the Christian faith. Neoplatonism provided the metaphysical waters in which Christian thought would come to swim.

At least up until the Enlightenment. Which brings us to the point of this series. 

As I've shared, for a generation or so, "the Greek" influence upon Christianity has been an issue of concern. But Neoplatonism has been making something of a comeback. Part of this is due to the rising profile of Eastern Orthodoxy, thanks to theologians like David Bentley Hart and John Behr, as well as high-profile converts such as Rod Dreher and Paul Kingsnorth. There's also a lot of very online and loud (mostly male) Orthodox converts. We're also seeing increased interest in early patristic thought. Alongside Augustine, people are reading Origen, Maximus the Confessor, and the Cappadocian Fathers. With this has come a renewed appreciation for the metaphysical and Neoplatonic influences upon the Christian faith.

Broadly speaking, what is lamented is the modern loss of what theologians call a “participatory metaphysics,” a notion inherited from Platonism. That is to say, all beings are connected to God (the One, the Absolute) and exist in an ongoing ontological dependence upon God. Further, our soteriological journey is one of deepening participation in God’s own being and life. As 2 Peter 1:4 puts it, we become “partakers of the divine nature.” In the Orthodox tradition, this is called theosis or divinization. As Athanasius famously said, “God became man so that man might become God.” This entire vision is deeply metaphysical and deeply Neoplatonic. It's also Christianity 101. At least according to the church fathers.

The point I would like to make here is that, for over a millennia, the Christian faith worked with this participatory and Neoplatonic cosmology, a worldview that shaped our view of God, the relationship between God and the world, and our vision of salvation. This participatory metaphysics provided many of the background assumptions that guided theological reflection and doctrinal development. It shaped how we interpreted Scripture. And then, suddenly, it was gone. During the Enlightenment, the cosmological and metaphysical scaffolding of Christian thought was rejected. The Neoplatonic framework was jettisoned. 

As I described above, what is generally noted in this discussion is the Protestant Reformation's rejection of a magisterial tradition in favor of sola scriptura (Scripture alone). But what I'm interested in goes deeper than hermeneutics. I'm describing a metaphysical rejection, the loss of a participatory metaphysics, the little discussed paradigm shift when one cosmological worldview was replaced with another.

It’s true that, when the Reformation turned away from an authoritative teaching office, a hermeneutical Pandora's box was opened. But my concern is not about doctrinal debates like infant baptism, but with the deeper metaphysical shifts that have taken place over the last 500 years. These shifts have changed how we imagine the world and our place within it. And this imaginative background, this metaphysical backdrop, is rarely discussed. 

What I'm interested in are the deep and often invisible assumptions that now regulate and guide Christian thought. In my opinion, many of Christianity’s current ailments have less to do with hermeneutical disagreement than with this metaphysical loss.

However, what makes this metaphysical loss so hard to name and confront is that, from the very beginning, Christianity’s fusion with Platonic thought was extra-biblical, an encounter with a philosophical vision beyond the plain text of Scripture. As a result, any talk of metaphysics will seem off-topic, overly philosophical, and unbiblical.

But if it's true that Neoplatonic metaphysics shaped Christianity from the start, then a metaphysical recovery is essential, both for making sense of the faith we have inherited and for understanding why modernity has run it off the rails. Some of Christianity’s modern crises have less to do with Scripture itself than with something “off the page” glitching in the background.

The point of this series is to bring that background glitch into view.