Analysis 2 - Propositions and Speech Acts

‘Take away assertions, and you take away Christianity’ - Martin Luther

In this note I comment on the current idea that ‘speech-acts’ ought to supplant propositions in our view of divine revelation, (this 'propositionalist' view has been called the ‘Hodge-Henry hypothesis). Speech-acts , it is said, hold a key, if not the key, to a much-needed re-shaping of systematic theology. It is argued that the 'static view' of propositional revelation must give way to the ‘dramatic’ view of revelation as God’s speech-acts.

The term ‘speech-act’ arose from the work of J.L. Austin in the 1950’s. (How To Do Things With Words (published in 1962 after Austin’s early death) is the seminal work.) However, we must not confuse the term with the thing. Appreciation of speech-acts is by no means a novelty in biblical interpretation, as we shall see.

But first we need to note a couple of things about speech-acts. In his work Austin focused upon performative utterances; forms of utterance in which to say something is to do something. The standard example is the wedding ceremony. In saying ‘I do’ at the appropriate points, the groom and the bride are wed. Such acting-by-speaking occurs because of the existence of certain conventions; in the case of marriage, certain legal and moral conventions which govern the marriage service, making it the sort of occasion that it is. Saying ‘I resign’ is, in certain circumstances, to resign, saying ‘I apologise’ is an apology, and so on. (Incidentally, sometimes we are told that the Lord’s creative fiats in Genesis 1 are instances of performatives, but this is a mistake. In Genesis 1 the reason that God’s saying is his doing is not in virtue of any conventions, but solely because of his supreme power.) As noted, there are many types of speech-act: including asking questions, giving orders, and (most importantly for us) making assertions. In appropriate circumstances, saying ‘The cat is on the mat’ is asserting that the cat is on the mat.

The idea that in view of Austin’s work we are faced with a new choice: either a speech-act view of divine revelation, or a propositional view, won’t stand up. For propositions are used to make assertions, to express beliefs, true propositions to express true beliefs. Assertion is a familiar and fundamental type of speech-act. Propositions standardly have this form in Scripture. In addition, the whole of divine revelation in Scripture is confessed by the Christian church to be God’s speech. We might think of the whole of Scripture as being enclosed within speech marks, with other sets of speech marks occurring within Scripture.

Not surprisingly, this point was widely recognised well before the 1950’s. However, no-one who holds the standard view of propositional revelation doubts that the Scriptures contain other forms of utterance than assertions. But since Scripture is taken to be a revelation, with a unique cognitive value, assertions have primacy because its other speech forms – exclamations, questions, etc. – logically depend for their own force and intelligibility on a bedrock of assertions. The exclamation ‘How good is the Lord!’ implies the truth of the assertion ‘The Lord is good’. Those who uphold the propositional character of divine revelation - those who subscribe to the 'Hodge-Henry hypothesis' - have nothing more or less in mind than the central importance of assertions, especially God's assertions about himself, in Scripture.

The second point is that the same form of words can be used to make different and incompatible speech acts. The question ‘Have you cleaned your teeth, yet?’ may have the force (in circumstances familiar to parents) of ‘Please clean your teeth’ or ‘Clean your teeth at once!’. Others besides parents have long understood this. In the case of the language of Scripture it may not always be easy to determine what is the force of the original speech-act, partly because its force (its ‘illocutionary force’ as Austin put it) of the utterance depends on tone, and on other non-verbal cues such as body-language, which as interpreters of Scripture we are largely ignorant of. When Jesus said . ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary’, (Lk. 10.41-2), what was his facial expression? Was Jesus serious or jocular? Was Vermeer correctly catching Jesus’ mood by having him extend his arm, palm open, to Mary? Does the context, and what else we know about Jesus – our Christology - answer this question without us needing to know his tone of voice? Would a video-clip help? Perhaps it would. But perhaps we have sufficient information from the words on the page and what else we know from Scripture to enable us to interpret the passage accurately, though naturally enough we'd like to have more.

With the help of John Calvin we can reflect on another biblical incident, the drama of Hezekiah’s sickness and recovery, (Isaiah 38) and note the conditions in which some of the language of the drama occurs, and understand the language accordingly, seeing for instance that the Lord’s words 'Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover' not as a prediction but as a warning. Commenting the Lord’s response to Hezekiah’s prayer, after the Lord had said that he would die, Calvin says

It may be thought strange that God, having uttered a sentence, should soon after be moved, as it were, by repentance to reverse it; for nothing is more at variance with his nature than a change of purpose. (How does Calvin know this? Because he takes from elsewhere in Scripture its teaching about the immutability or steadfastness of the Lord.) I reply, while death was threatened against Hezekiah, still God had not decreed it, but determined in this manner to put to the test of the faith of Hezekiah. (So the Lord’s words had a particular force, not the force of a decree or infallible prediction, but of a threat. His intention was to threaten Hezekiah.) We must, therefore, suppose a condition to be implied in that threatening; for otherwise Hezekiah would not have altered, by repentance or prayer, the irreversible decree of God. (Commentary on Is. 38.4, CTS, III.157-8. There is more in Calvin’s treatment of this incident that is relevant)

So (500 years ago) Calvin had regard to the particular force that expressions may have, a concern that is now a prominent feature of speech-act theory. The Lord's words to Hezekiah are a threat, not a decree. Calvin pays attention to the flow of the narrative. But for all our adherence to the narrative, we cannot ourselves be Hezekiah, or be back in his time. After all, the story is in front of us and we have read it through endless times and know how it goes. The idea that we come closer to the nature of God’s revelation by adopting a kind of ‘real time’ approach to the text is jejune. The events were pretty dramatic for Hezekiah, much less so, if at all, for us. The idea that focusing on speech-acts will make the Bible more dramatic for us is a non-starter.

It’s only because we know (from elsewhere in Scripture) that God is utterly trustworthy and unchangeably true, and that we already know, as we re-read the story, how it turns out, that it is reasonable to believe that the Lord’s words to Hezekiah have the form of a threat, a test to elicit faith, and not a prediction which fails or may fail, or a decree which the Lord quickly countermands by another decree.

It’s not a matter of favouring prose and disparaging poetry, either. The poetry of Psalm 139 (an example used by my friend Guy Davies, who got me going on this) is full of propositions, of assertions. Of course it is full of questions too, and of exclamations, and so there’s the danger here of a false polarisation between propositions (or assertions) and other linguistic forms. But (as noted earlier) the other forms of speech are intelligible only because they imply (either logically or conversationally) certain propositions, and so themselves presuppose. ‘Shut the door!’ presupposes the truth of some or all of the assertions ‘The door can be shut’ or ‘The door is not shut’ or ‘You may shut the door’ or 'The door is shut when it is fixed within its frame by some kind of latch', and so on.

It is the assertions that the very many different speech-acts to be found in Scripture presuppose - the true assertions, or propositions, about God and his ways - that provide the bedrock of theological reflection that goes to form systematic theology.

So - as is usual in thinking theologically - we need a historical perspective if we are not to be bowled over by the latest big words. This perspective gives us a sense of proportion. More importantly, we need a little philosophy, in this case the idea of propositions and assertions, what accounts for their meaning, and their fundamental character as truth-bearers.

Attempting to make the form of systematic theology more ‘participatory’ by stressing its 'dramatic' character, and by talking about speech-acts as its jazzy units, will not ensure participation in the Gospel, nor will it help to ensure it. It’s likely outcome is something that will make participation in the Gospel more difficult. For it will fuzzy the distinctive cognitive character of God's revelation, its good news, and make our thinking about divine things less exact, and less exacting.

A New Development: Analysis

Alongside the monthly posting of drafts of pieces that are scheduled for publication I hope in future to begin a series of short discussions on themes and topics on which, it seems to me, philosophy can be of some assistance to theology. These will be headed ‘Analysis’, after the philosophy journal of that name, which is devoted to publishing short discussions.

The first three or four (perhaps more) will be on the general theme:

Systematic Theology: Since It Isn’t Broken, We Ought Not To Try To Fix It.

One increasingly meets basic misunderstandings about Reformed systematic theology: of what it is, what it attempts to do, what its limits are, and where its abiding value lies. Proposals that are made for developing new methods in systematic theology would often amount to changing its entire character while retaining the name. These brief discussions will attempt to highlight misunderstandings and to allay some fears. So this is how I hope it’ll go:

Analysis 1, ‘What definitions do and don’t do’, now posted.

Analysis 2, ‘Propositions and Speech Acts’, now posted.

Analysis 3, ‘Biblical and Systematic Theology’, now posted.

Papers that have been accepted for publication but have not yet been published will continue be posted on this site each month.

The next Analysis, to be posted in July, will be on Bishop N.T. Wright's account of the ordo salutis, and the next paper will on Samuel Rutherford and Toleration.

Analysis 1 - What definitions do and don't do

’I hate definitions', Benjamin Disraeli

Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology is an example of what I call standard systematic theology. ‘Berkhof’, as people refer to this book, comes in for more than its share of disparagement and misunderstanding nowadays. The author often offers definitions. Unlike Calvin in the Institutes he does not search for them, (see, for example, Inst. I.15.2; II.1.8; II.2.4; III.2.7) , he finds them ready-made in the tradition of Reformed Scholasticism which he inherited. For instance, he offers a definition of divine omnipresence as ‘that perfection of the Divine Being by which He transcends all spatial limitations, and yet is present in every point of space with His whole Being’. (p. 60) (The italics are LB’s) What’s the point of such a definition?

Some seem to think that a definition of something says it all. A definition of divine omnipresence tells us all that there is to know about it. But making a definition is not like the manufacture of a chemical essence or an extract which takes everything that is value from a plant or a rock and discards the rest. A definition of omnipresence does not turn Psalm 139, for example, into a waste, like ash or pith. The systematic theologian, with a string of such definitions, is not smarter than Scripture. So what is going on? In defining omnipresence has Berkhof mastered it? In defining it, has he bottled it up, boxed it in? This suggestion seems weird, especially in theology. If Berkhof defines omnipresence does that mean that he is omnipresent, or knows what it’s like to be omnipresent, or has invented omnipresence, or is able to explain it?

No, none of these things. It’s especially important to underline the last point. Defining is not explaining. A theologian brandishing definitions is not like a scientist or a detective, filling in the gaps in our knowledge, solving problems. Berkhof’s definition of omnipresence does not solve the problem of omnipresence, of how it can be that God is wholly and indivisibly present everywhere. It may even be said to accentuate the problem. I’d rather say, it protects the problem.

Why is a problem worth protecting ? Only if the problem that is protected is less of a problem than any alternative. Could God’s omnipresence be understood in spatial terms? Is there more of God in an elephant than in a flea? No. So his presence is non-spatial. Is his non-spatial presence local in character? Is part of God non-physically present in the church of Ephesus and part in Corinth? No again. The unity of God is such that he is indivisible. So God is wholly present here, and there, and at every point. Is this not mysterious? To be sure it is. But the alternatives are not only mysterious, but manifestly at odds with God’s infinity and perfection, clearly taught in Scripture. So, systematic theologians are more like grammarians than like scientists or detectives. They show us (from Scripture, if they are being faithfully Christian) how to think, and not to think, about God, and so how to talk about him. What to say and what not to say, in the same way that grammarians codify a natural language, telling us what makes sense in that language, what is a mistake, and so on. Grammarians do not control what we say: they indicate the rules of intelligible speech.

By drawing on other scriptural data a human definition of divine omnipresence (a fallible effort, of course) makes an attempt at saying what must be true if the assertions of Psalm 139 and similar language are to be understood. In a way that is surprising we often take such definitions (or the intuitions that lie behind them) for granted, despite (perhaps) our distaste for such things. They undergird a lot of our exegesis and how we apply it. The rhetorical force of ‘Where shall I go from your Spirit?’ with its implication ‘absolutely nowhere’ only indicates a truth about God’s presence if it is true that God (who is spirit) is omnipresent in something like the Berkhofian fashion. But Berkhof’s definition is not an attempt to replace the language of the Psalms or of any other language, or to be cleverer than Scripture. His definition does not take us beyond Scripture, making Scripture second-rate. It is a skeleton, not the entire body.

Insofar as Berkhof’s definition is faithful to the biblical data, it will uphold the biblical teaching on divine omnipresence and will in turn warrant us in concluding that Psalm 139 is a celebration of such omnipresence and so not something else. We might otherwise be quite attracted to the idea that the language of the Psalmist is hyperbolic, or that it records an ecstatic experience of the writer, and does not express, (through the language of poetry) the sober truth of divine omnipresence. So awareness of the definition, or of what the definition defines, which is intended to be drawn from scriptural teaching as a whole, serves to integrate that Psalm into the other, variously expressed, biblical teachings on divine omnipresence. The old-fashioned term for this connectedness is ‘the analogy of the faith’. Where we are not understanding the scriptures with the skeleton of systematic theology in place then our ‘body of divinity’ will be flabby and misshapen. This does not mean, as already noted, that the assertions of the systematic theologian are incorrigible. Scripture must continue to bear down on them, to force reconsideration and reflection. A skeleton is not a carapace. But at any one time the activity of Bible interpretation, if it is to have a hope of being faithfully Christian, must have the skeleton in place and build around it and out from it.

When Scripture itself says ‘God is Spirit.’ or ‘God is love’ or ‘ Faith is the assurance of things hoped for’ these definitions or epitomies do not replace particular instances of the exercise of God’s love, or of faith. The danger is that of comparing apples and oranges, the apples of exact definition, and the oranges of the dramatic, narrative and poetic language of Scripture, and thinking that the apples must always come off worse.

One particularly puzzling source of unease with Berkhofian systematic theology is that it is judged to be theoretical and so not practical. Berkhof theoretically describes, whereas we need a systematic theology that is ‘participatory’. This is odd because, as we have already noted, Berkhofian definitions do not describe, they protect and safeguard. (They function like the Chalcedonian definition works in the case of Christology.) But more importantly, whether some set of assertions is of theoretical or practical value depends entirely upon the attitude of the reader or hearer to it. Being theoretical is being exact, and in theology exactness of thought should not be derided. We ‘participate’ in sound definitions when they engender confidence that they have captured the relevant bit of the skeleton. However, our attitude to what is exactly expressed depends entirely on whether we believe what is expressed is important or not. In the same way, we can stress the ‘participatory’ nature of the language of Psalm 139 for all we are worth, but it remains on the page if we do not see the need to ‘engage’ with it.

Paul’s debates about justification by faith alone, or his defence of the resurrection of the body and the nature of the resurrection body, are instances in the New Testament of such systematic exactness. For in these arguments Paul teaches not only what justification is, but also what it is not; what the resurrection body will be like, and what it will not be like, and so on. Whether or not we ‘participate’ in what Paul teaches depends not upon Paul, but upon ourselves, upon whether we see the need to ‘engage’ with his teaching personally. That is true of all types of Christian discourse.

This reminds us that, whether we like it or not, we are subjects who apprehend the set of sentences which comprise Holy Scripture. There is no way round a subject-object ‘dichotomy’. Systematic theology is (or aims to be) above all other things loving and obedient thought about God. Loving and obedient speech and practice may follow, but whether or not it does so depends upon factors besides thought alone. Calling exact, propositional theology rude names like ‘theoretical’ or ‘foundationalistic’ does not alter anything. The sobering truth is that the one gospel is to some a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life (2 Cor. 2.16) Which it is very largely turns on whether we properly appreciate the aroma of Christ, not whether or not we care for definitions. But the definitions should help us to understand the gospel better.

So definitions are not imperialistic. They are not the work of theological know-alls. And the theoretical versus practical issue is a red herring.