Pascal's Wager: Betcha Can't!

Blaise Pascal
Portrait by Jean Domat, around 1677-1681,
After a Portrait by Francois II Quesnel
Wikipedia

In "Can Wanting to Believe Make Us Believers?" (NYT, October 5, 2014; hat-tip to Pete Hale), Gary Gutting, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, discusses the will to believe in God with Daniel Garber, professor of philosophy at Princeton who specializes in philosophy and science of the 16th and 17th centuries, and they touch on Pascal's famous wager (which I myself refer to in my novella):

Gary Gutting: Wanting to believe in God suggests Pascal's wager argument, which remains for many the most appealing case for religious belief. What do you think about it?

Daniel Garber: Formally, the argument has many well-known flaws, though it also has its friends. Even knowing the flaws, I do find myself somewhat moved by it. The reason is that at the core of the argument there are some very compelling intuitions. Basically, the argument turns on the idea that if there is a God, and we believe in him, we then have a shot at eternal happiness. If God doesn't exist, then we are stuck in this very finite and imperfect life, whether we believe in him or not. So, it would seem, for all sorts of reasons, we should want to believe in him. The problem (perhaps insuperable) is taking these plausible considerations and turning them into a genuine argument.

But the real worry about the argument comes at a later moment, I think. It is important to remember that Pascal's wager it isn't an argument for the truth of the proposition that God exists, but an argument for why we should want to believe that God exists: It only tells us that it is to our advantage to believe, and in this way makes us want to believe, but it doesn't give us any reasons to think that God actually exists. In a way, I'm already convinced that I should want to believe. But there is a step from there to actual belief, and that's a step I cannot personally negotiate. Pascal tells us, roughly, that we should adopt the life of the believer and eventually the belief will come. And maybe it will. But that seems too much like self-deception to me.

Gary Gutting: You seem to be ignoring what is often taken as the heart of Pascal's argument: a cost-benefit calculation that you should believe in God because the likely benefits of belief are greater than the likely benefits of nonbelief. Put that way, the argument seems morally dubious, leading to William James's comment that God would likely exclude from heaven precisely the sorts of people who believe because of such an argument. Is this a misreading of Pascal?

Readers interested in Garber's response can go to the article. I have my own problem with Pascal's Wager, a problem that goes unmentioned in the article, namely, that Pascal doesn't tell us which God we should believe in. Christianity's God? Or Islam's Allah? Or Hinduism's Brahma? Or some other differently conceived divinity? What happens if we back the wrong horse? Allah, for instance, seems unwilling to forgive Christians for their Trinitarianism.

One doesn't, therefore, make a single decision on where to put one's chips with this wager, but hedging one's bets presents the same problem.

And what if God doesn't like betting, anyway?

Arrived: Bodies of God!

Cambridge University Press

My copy of Benjamin Sommer's Bodies of God book has arrived, a text whose review I noted in a recent blog entry. I don't recall if I quoted any of the words from the Cambridge University Press advertising copy (though I think not), but here they are in full:

Sommer utilizes a lost ancient Near Eastern perception of divinity according to which a god has more than one body and fluid, unbounded selves. Though the dominant strains of biblical religion rejected it, a monotheistic version of this theological intuition is found in some biblical texts. Later Jewish and Christian thinkers inherited this ancient way of thinking; ideas such as the sefirot in Kabbalah and the trinity in Christianity represent a late version of this theology. This book forces us to rethink the distinction between monotheism and polytheism, as this notion of divine fluidity is found in both polytheistic cultures (Babylonia, Assyria, Canaan) and monotheistic ones (biblical religion, Jewish mysticism, Christianity), whereas it is absent in some polytheistic cultures (classical Greece). The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel has important repercussions not only for biblical scholarship and comparative religion but for Jewish-Christian dialogue.

I'll be reading Sommer's book in the near future and blogging when I have something to say, but today, I can only note that Ben has mentioned me in his "Acknowledgements" as one one of the many people with whom be talked, conversations that in my case took place in Jerusalem more than ten years ago when I spent a year there as a Golda Meir Fellow (aka Lady Davis Fellow) at Hebrew University (Mt. Scopus Campus):

While writing this book, I have benefitted from conversations with many friends and colleagues . . . . Useful feedback came from . . . H. Jeffrey Hodges . . . . (Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, New York: Cambridge University Press, March 2011, page xiv)

That's me . . . despite the "-rey" ending. Everyone makes this mistake, so I'm fighting a losing battle over the spelling of my name. Moreover, Ben is being excessively generous. I didn't contribute much, barely enough to mention. But I appreciate Ben's words -- as well as the recommendation that he wrote for me back around 2001 when I was still vainly striving to make my scholarly way in religious studies. I had hoped to contribute to Jewish-Christian dialogue of the sort alluded to in the advertising copy above.

My aim these days is to be a competent teacher, editor, and blogger as well as wise old man. On that last goal, I'm at least halfway there -- my students consider me old!

He Qi, Abraham and Three Angels

He Qi, Abraham and Three Angels

Based on Genesis 18

(Image from Christianity Today)

I'm a bit pressed for time this morning, but I always blog faithfully about something, so I give you this fine, rainy morning an image of golden light, "Abraham and Three Angels, based on Genesis 18," from a slideshow of Old Testament scenes painted by the Chinese artist He Qi (pronounced huh-chee) that Christianity Today has made available through an article on this contemporary artist.

Here's what the slideshow says about the image above:

Abram and Sarai stand in the darkness of their tent, about to serve their mysterious guests. He Qi's depiction of the three faceless angels -- with three feet among them -- is reminiscent of iconic depictions of the Trinity. He portrays their spiritual essence by the near-iridescence of their clothing and the light that glows upward on their faces. ("Slideshow Image Nr. 2," from Susan Wunderink, "The Dragon in the Belly: Patriarchs, Judges, and Kings," Christianity Today, April 2008)

Wunderink notes the evocation of the Trinity in this image, and regular readers will recall my series of blog entries on Trinitarian icons of this very scene. Alexander Boguslawski has written on this very theme, as I've also reported.

See you tomorrow.

Alexander Boguslawski: Seraph in Bosom of "Christ the Blessed Silence"

Detail, Christ the Blessed Silence

Russian, circa 1700 (30.7 x 27 cm)

(Image from The Temple Gallery)

Two blog-days ago, I posted the entire icon of which the above image is a detail, and for ease of comparison, here is the full icon, albeit much reduced in size:


As previously noted, Brandon Watson (who blogs at Siris) drew my attention to this Russian Orthodox icon some days ago when I was blogging about various depictions of Christ as a winged figure in Western art.

I noticed that the icon depicted a seraph held in the bosom of Christ, and in my response to Brandon, I called his attention to the seraph and wondered if it were an allusion to the story of St. Francis receiving the stigmata from a six-winged 'Christ' in that puzzling vision, where Christ, a seraph, and the soul of St. Francis appear to coincide in identity -- a baffling vision to which I devoted several blog entries.

Brandon doubted an allusion to St. Francis, and I myself had thought the possibility remote but wanted at least to air it.

Just to be certain that this was not such an allusion to St. Francis, and also to learn more about the icon, I emailed an expert, Professor Alexander Boguslawski, who had noticed (and commented on) an earlier post of mine on Andrei Rublev's icon of The Old Testament Trinity, for I had cited Boguslawski's analysis of that icon in my blog entry.

Before sending the email to Professor Boguslawski, I posted my query in a reply to the comment that he had posted on Rublev's icon:

By the way, if you have time, perhaps you could explain this icon showing a winged Christ the Blessed Silence with what appears to be a seraph in his bosom.

When I saw this, I wondered if there were some allusion to the winged 'Christ' of St. Francis's vision when he received the stigmata, for 'Christ' took the form of a seraph there (though such a Catholic allusion would be unexpected in an Orthodox painting).

I then sent Professor Boguslawski the mentioned email, just to make sure that he was aware of my query:

Greetings from Jeffery Hodges (aka Gypsy Scholar). I was pleased to hear from you in the comment to my blog post on Rublev. I left a reply there, and also a query, directing you to my most-recent blog entry. I'm curious about the six-winged seraph in the bosom of a winged Christ (in the form of the Blessed Silence). What does the seraph signify? If you take a look at the blog entry (and some of its links), you'll understand my query.

Here is his reply, which he posted as a comment to my blog entry of two days ago on this seraph in Christ's bosom:

I can answer some of the questions you posed, but, unfortunately, not all... The seraphim is definitely not an allusion to St. Francis, even though St. Francis did have a vision of a seraphim! The icon from the Temple Gallery seems to be absolutely unique; I looked through my extensive book collection and through the Russian Orthodox sites and found not even one similar icon of the Holy Silence. On all icons, the angelic figure is shown with hands crossed at the bosom. So why the seraphim at this particular icon? The only possible explanation I can think of would be that the author of this icon wanted to stress the closeness of the seraphim to God.

The God-loving six-winged SERAPHIM stand closer than all before their Creator and Maker, as the prophet Isaiah saw, saying: "And the seraphim stood around Him, each having six wings" (Isaiah 6:2). They are fire-like since they stand before That One of Whom it is written: "For our God is a consuming fire." (Heb. 12:29); "His throne was a flame of fire" (Dan 7:9); "the appearance of the Lord was like a blazing fire" (Ex. 24:17). Standing before such glory, the seraphim are fire-like, as it said: "Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire" (Ps. 103:4). They are aflame with love for God and kindle others to such love, as I shown by their very name, for "seraphim" in the Hebrew language means: "flaming".

Icons of Holy Silence (Blessed Silence) were most popular among the Old Believers, but they, as dedicated traditionalists, would not accept any significant change in iconography. Therefore, the question why the seraphim was included in this icon remains unanswered... I wonder whether Richard Temple realized what kind of a unique work he had in his gallery.

I hope all this helps. Looking forward to finding more about this and other icons.

That the icon was "absolutely unique" thrilled me -- in an intellectual way -- and I replied:

[T]hank you for your reply to my query about the seraph in this icon.

I looked more closely at the icon at Richard Temple's website, and since the site allows close-ups of details, I was able to see the seraph more clearly. Although the figure is clearly a seraph, given the six wings, it seems to have no body and looks more like an image of the sun -- which would connect to the Hebrew meaning of "seraph" as "flaming."

This looks like a topic for an article, but I lack the expertise in icons. Perhaps you will write something?

Meanwhile, I'll post your comment as a blog entry, for this is informative stuff.

And today's is that 'promised' blog entry. Perhaps some reader who knows the explanation to this puzzling image of the the seraph in Christ's bosom will take the time to lead us through the labyrinth to the answer.

UPDATE: Concerning the seraph's lack of a body, Professor Boguslawski informs me that "In Russian tradition, seraphim are always represented this way (they can be larger in size)," so my speculation about a possible resemblence to the "sun" is perhaps way off target.

Pre-Rublev: Winged Trinity

The Hospitality of Abraham

(Old Testament Trinity)
Mid-14th century
168 × 144 cm
The Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin

(Image from icon-art.info/masterpiece)

Yesterday, we looked at Andrei Rublev's masterpiece, and I've found some more material on that, but I wanted to post this image, which dates to a century or so before Rublev's own icon, to show the tradition within which he was working and from which he departed somewhat.

Notable is the presence of Abraham and Sarah, as well as of a young servant (or might it be Ishmael?) slaughtering the calf for the meal, for precisely in ignoring these other three figures lay part of Rublev's innovation. The other part of his innovation lay in removing Christological symbols from the central figure.

Why did Rublev innovate in this way? According to Alexander Boguslawski, an expert on Russian art:

Very few artists before Rublev dared to eliminate all the narrative elements from the story, leaving only the three angels; usually those who did so had to deal with limited space. The results of their efforts did not find general acceptance or many copyists. Rublev was the first to make a conscious decision not to include in his composition the figures of Abraham and Sarah because he did not set out to illustrate the story of the hospitality of Abraham, as did many painters before him, but to convey through his image the idea of the unity and indivisibility of the three persons of the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinity, difficult to explain logically, found various interpretations. Some thought that the Trinity consisted of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Others believed that it was just God and two angels. In the 14th and 15th-century Russia, in the period of many heretical movements, the idea of the Trinity was often questioned. The heretics in Novgorod claimed that it is not permissible to paint the Trinity on icons because Abraham did not see the Trinity but only God and two angels. Other heretics rejected the idea of the three hypostases of God altogether. The church fought the heresies with all the means it had -- usually with polemical treaties, but also with force, if necessary. Russian icon painters before Rublev subscribed to the same point of view that Abraham was visited by God (in Christ's image) and two angels. Hence, Christ was represented in icons of the Trinity as the middle angel and was symbolically set apart either by a halo with a cross, by a considerable enlargement of his figure, by widely spread wings or by a scroll in His hand.

In the pre-Rublev image above, the middle figure would seem to be portrayed in the image of Christ, for he is giving the Orthodox sign of the cross, so I assume that the unknown artist interpreted the story as one in which "Abraham was visited by God (in Christ's image) and two angels." Compare this to Rublev's icon:

Andrei Rublev, Hospitality of Abraham

The Old Testament Trinity

(Image from Wikipedia)

Alexander Boguslawski notes some interesting ambiguities in Rublev's painting:

All scholars agree that the three hypostases of the Trinity are represented in Rublev's icon. But there are greatly differing views as to which angel represents which hypostasis. Many see Christ in the middle angel and God the Father in the left. Others see God the Father in the middle angel, and Christ in the left one. The middle angel occupies a special place in the icon: it is set apart not only by its central position, but also by a "regal" turn of its head towards the left angel, and by pointing with its hand towards the cup on the table. Both the turn of the head and the gesture are important clues to the hidden meaning of the icon. Equal among equals, the middle angel has such expressive power that one hesitates not to see in it a symbolic representation of God the Father. On the other hand one cannot fail to notice that the left angel is also essential: two other angels lower their heads towards it and seem to address it. Therefore, if we assume that the left angel is God the Father, the middle angel, dressed in the clothes customarily used in compositions depicting the second person of the Trinity (a blue himation and a crimson tunic), should represent Christ. This amazing and perhaps purposeful encoding of these two persons of the Trinity by Rublev does not give us a clear clue for a single interpretation. Whatever the case, the icon shows a dialogue between two angels: The Father turns to His Son and explains the necessity of His sacrifice, and the Son answers by agreeing with His Father's wish.

In referring to the angel on the "left," Boguslawski is describing the image from our perspective. Seen from the middle figure's perspective, this angel is actually on the right, and one would expect to find the Son in that righthand position, the Father thus being the central figure, but Boguslawski has made some interesting points about ambiguity concerning the precise identification of the three figures -- which might, indeed, be the point that Rublev is trying to convey about the Trinity, that these are the three hypostases of God, not merely God and two angels.

But I leave that for your contemplation.

Meanwhile, take a look at Boguslawski's own art, for he not only comments as a scholar on Slavic art, he paints his own artwork as an artist (and something about his style recalls in some way the style of Terrance Lindall, though the latter's vision is darker).

Andrei Rublev: Winged Trinity

Andrei Rublev, Hospitality of Abraham

The Old Testament Trinity

(Image from Wikipedia)

Over at the Milton List, the scholar Paul Miller, author of the article "John Gower, Satiric Poet" (in Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments (1983), edited by A.J. Minnis), has called our attention to Andrei Rublev's winged Trinity, which dates to the 1420s and hangs in the the State Tretyakov Gallery, also known as the National Museum of Russian Fine Art, which is located in Moscow.

I think that I've previously seen reproductions of this icon without ever having given it my full attention, but I now see that there's an entire tradition, at least in Russia, of presenting the Trinity with wings, as this website reveals.

As the title "Hospitality of Abraham" indicates, this tradition finds inspiration in the story related in Genesis 18 and 19 that begins by referring to "the Lord" (Yahweh, Genesis 18.1) appearing to Abraham, but quickly shifts the reference to "three men" (shloshah anashim, Genesis 18.2), and later refers to the two of the men who go forth to destroy the city of Sodom as "two of the angels" (shnei hammalachim).

The icon portrays the moment when Abraham has extended hospitality to the three 'men' by inviting them to a meal provided by him. The original story says nothing about wings, and so far as I recall, angels in the Bible are never explicitly described as winged (correct me if I'm wrong), but because Christian tradition depicts angels as having wings, then Rublev paints this 'Trinity' with wings.

Technically, this Trinity doesn't present a winged Jesus, for the 'Son' in this image would be pre-incarnational, but it might be presumed to be depicting a winged Christ, depending upon when one considers the Son to have been anointed as Messiah -- Milton, for example, puts the anointing prior to the fall of Satan and presents it as the act that precipitated Satan's rebellion.

As for Rublev, I don't know that he was the first to paint the Trinity as winged, for I don't have time to further investigate this tradition today because I've got to finish some editing and also some last minute student grading.

J.P. Moreland: "Fighting 'Bibliolatry' at the Evangelical Theological Society"

J.P. Moreland

Fighting 'Bibliolatry'

(Image from Wikipedia)

Ted Olsen, an editor at Christianity Today, is attending a meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) being held in San Diego, and he reports on a talk by the philosopher J. P. Moreland:

"Postcard from San Diego: Fighting 'Bibliolatry' at the Evangelical Theological Society: Talbot's J.P. Moreland warns that evangelicals are 'over-committed to the Bible.'" (Christianity Today, November 14, 2007)

The ETS is the organization that Francis Beckwith used to head before he returned to Catholicism, after which, he had to step down from his position as its president. The issue was related to the ETS's membership requirements:

ETS membership has only two doctrinal requirements: you must affirm the Trinity and the inerrancy of Scripture.

The latter requirement posed the problem, apparently. Be that as it may, I find interesting that the ETS requires members to affirm the Trinity, which implies that for them, it's something additional to scripture. Of course, Trinitarianism is orthodox Christian theology, but how does the ETS ground it on the narrow foundation of Scriptural inerrancy? I'm asking in ignorance and perhaps conflating two different issues, i.e., inerrancy of the Bible and sources of theology. Possibly, the ETS insists on biblical inerrancy but allows for other sources of theological truth.

Yet, one of Moreland's points seems to be that the ETS, or perhaps Evangelicals more broadly, exclude any authority outside of scripture:

The problem, he said, is "the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice."

Which returns us to the problem that I noted. The Trinity is never mentioned in the Bible. Now, I don't doubt that the ETS has a response, for there are a lot of learned and intelligent people in it, including William Lane Craig, but the concept of the Trinity draws on the Greek philosophical tradition and would not make sense (assuming that it does make sense) outside of that tradition.

This sort of thing is what Pope Benedict XVI was referring to in his Regensberg talk as the two streams that join in the Christian tradition, namely, Jewish spirituality and Greek rationality. Readers will recall that I analyzed the Pope's address as being more critical of Protestant 'dehellenization' than of Islam. Well, Moreland could have been channeling the Pope on this in one of the points that he made:

"The sparse landscape of evangelical political thought stands in stark contrast to the overflowing garden both of evangelical biblical scholarship and Catholic reflection on reason, general revelation, and cultural and political engagement," he said. "We evangelicals could learn a lesson or two from our Catholic friends."

That wasn't as provocative a statement coming a few months after the ETS president became one of those "Catholic friends." Catholicism is on the agenda here, and Catholics are both implicitly and explicitly discussed in the meeting's many discussions of justification. But Catholicism doesn’t seem to be the "new open theism" at ETS.

By "open theism," Olson is referring to an ETS controversy of a few years back over God's omniscience, in which some evangelical theologians limited God's knowledge based on biblical passages that seem to show God looking for information or changing His mind. Apparently, the "Catholic issue" is not a hot button one:

No, more provocative was Moreland's argument about why evangelicals became over-committed to the Bible. Rather than developing a robust epistemology in response to secularism, he said, evangelicals reacted and retreated. Now evangelical theologians aren't allowed to come to any new conclusions about the truths in Scripture, and they're not allowed to find truths outside of Scripture. As a result, he said, they're engaged in "private language games and increasingly detailed minutia" and "we're not seeing work on broad cultural themes."

Interesting, at least for me. Too bad that Moreland's paper isn't (yet?) online.