http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2009/12/theology-fail-richard-swinburne-proves.html
It’s not the purpose of this blog to get tangled into theobloggy debates, but I should draw your attention to this post by Myers and the ensuing comment thread, which is what I’m most interested in.
Myers, normally generous, offers an embarrasing summary of Richard Swinburne’s The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford UP: 2003) as part of his Theology FAIL series. His summary/reconstruction was justifiedly criticized for being poor by those with training in the analytic tradition and/or familiar with Swinburne’s work. I myself have not read much if any Swinburne (if any, it would be an article/articles that I am not recalling), but I am well aware of his reputation and stature as a thinker, and I have some background in analytic philosophy.
I should put my own cards on the table and note that I resonated with Shane’s remark in the comment thread that it is far more likely that Myers had misunderstood Swinburne than that Swinburne had said what Myers reported. The following review by Richard Otte supports Shane’s comment. http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1329 Although unconvinced by the values Swinburne assigns to his probability statements, Otte reaches the following conclusion:
But even if Swinburne is not successful in showing that it is overwhelmingly likely that Jesus was God incarnate who rose from the dead, he has made a good case that it is rationally permissible to hold beliefs that, by Bayes’ theorem, result in this being very probable. Thus although Swinburne may not have shown that it is rationally obligatory to believe in the incarnation and resurrection, he does give us reason to believe that one can rationally hold beliefs that imply their high probability. Another way of putting this would be to say that Swinburne’s argument is unsuccessful if dealing with logical probabilities, but we can instead interpret it as describing Swinburne’s own subjective probabilities or degrees of belief. If probability, like logic, places constraints on rational belief, Swinburne’s argument can be seen as supporting that it is epistemically permissible to believe in the resurrection of God incarnate.
Coming from Otte, himself an expert in Bayesian epistemology, this is a strong conclusion and certainly a positive one overall regarding the strength of Swinburne’s argument.
So, what is my interest here? It is in a problem that Myers’ post exemplifies, which is that of criteria in contemporary theology. Myers says his problem is not with analytic tools being applied to theology: “I just happen to feel that Swinburne’s Bayesian stuff is neither serious nor interesting — not because it’s “analytic”, but because it strikes me as bad methodology and bad theology.”
Now this is worth pondering. Myers, who, to my knowledge, is not trained in philosophy (although he’s incredibly well read in his field) much less an expert in probability theory and Bayesian epistemology, thinks Swinburne’s work represents “bad methodology.” What would entitle someone without expertise or perhaps even basic competence and knowledge about a field and method (Bayesian probability and epistemology in this case) to the conclusion that it’s a bad method? It’s not easy to see how we could answer this question. Two alternatives are to challenge the premise (the person is in fact knowledgeable, competent, etc. to make the judgement) or to appeal to a prior position held, itself already warranted, which licenses the judgement about said methodology. The latter seems to be the only alternative open in this case, as a comparison of Myers’ summary and Otte’s review reveals that Myers did, intentionally or not, parody Swinburne’s text.
Reconstructing what kind of theological argument or position would license the rejection of Bayesian theory by someone not themselves apparently well acquainted with it is beyond my abilities and, I suspect, the scope of a blog post. But perhaps my attempt to discern what kind of argument would warrant Ben’s conclusion seem a little off, a little silly?
I think it does, and for this reason: this is not about arguments, it’s about sensibilities. As some commenters noted, Ben was generous in a recent post about a rather dubious theological approach (dubious in every possible sense: ethically, theologically, argumentatively), but then he attempts to skewer someone who is acknowleged as a superb thinker, and who no one can fault for a lack of clarity or rigor (an accusation that, if made blindfolded by finger-pointing in a room of theologians, would almost always stick). Indeed, Myers’ whole post seems to imply that Oxford University and all of Swinburne’s colleagues who have a high regard for his work are all missing something that Ben Myers’s has, else they would not regard Swinburne’s work as “serious” never mind “interesting” (a damnable category).
I submit that this shows that whatever they are missing is not some argument against Bayesian probability applied to philosophical theology, but rather a theological sensibility that Myers has and shares with others (seemingly many Barthians, among others). For, if the matter really were about argumentation, there would be more respect for Swinburne’s position and methods. Arguments are fallible, and when one’s opponent is someone of the intellectual stature as Swinburne, one would presumably be humble about the success or at least persuasiveness of one’s arguments.
But if I am right that what is at issue here is more a sensibility, derived perhaps from a particular approach to and understanding of theology, this would suggest that sensibilities actually play criterial roles in theological debate (in philosophy too, no doubt, but that is not my present concern). I think this is an obvious conclusion, a bit like observing after a group of people have shot each other that there seems to be some disagreement between them. Obvious but disturbing. Properly speaking a sensibility cannot, or should not, play the role of a criterion in the evaluation of arguments. While I am quite chary of the demand for criteria in certain contexts, one should be able to state, at least descriptively, the criteria that are governing a field of discourse. If sensibilities play even a minor, but still significant, role as criteria in theology, we would expect to see a lot of unwarranted misrepresentations, talking past one another, and simple refusals to engage with another’s work. And, of course, this is what we find.
A good example here is conservative evangelical theology. Much of this is not great, if by “great” one is thinking of theologians like Calvin or Aquinas. But, then, most contemporary theology in general is not “great” by this standard, and that does not warrant dismissing it wholesale as unworthy of engagement. Indeed, the work, say, of D.A. Carson (I pick him because I see him often mocked) is certainly no worse than his liberal counterparts, but his work is scorned, never engaged. Personally, I have read little of Carson’s work, and though I disagree with him about a number of things, I would be a pompous ass to conclude he’s not doing “real theology,” or that his work is not governed by criteria I regard as important, like internal rationality, clarity, and submission to the authority of Scripture and the canons of the fields in which he writes. Now, it may happen that one’s work does not engage anything Carson works on (mine does not and probably won’t); in that case, why do people bother mentioning him?
Because he’s a good target for a certain shared theological sensibility, and that sensibility is produced by a certain kind of theological culture, and that culture has certain vices, one of which is dismissing work that stands too far to the right of one’s own, even if it meets formal and substantive criteria for “good work,” i.e., work deserving academic engagement. Academics have vices – this is an important fact. Specific academic cultures inculcate specific vices, some of which manifest themselves in sensibilities. These sensibilities in turn function as criteria in academic work, with the results being what we would expect: disastrously unserious and shoddy engagement or simple sneering dismissal. So much of the nonsense between different positions has nothing to do with the positions themselves so much as the vices each position tends to produce in its adherents (e.g. suspicion of history, clarity, rigor, plain arguments, metaphors, literary sensibilities, etc.). No doubt we all have such vices because we inhabit certain academic cultures, but we ought to bring our vices to the light of language, name and declaim against them and ourselves when we manifest them, and get on with our work.