Episode 109: Interview with Dr. Daniel W. Houck
Dr. Houck talks with us about original sin, original justice, and how St. Thomas can help us think through these critical doctrines. His book Aquinas, Original Sin, and the Challenge of Evolution (Cambridge University Press) is the definitive treatment of the topic in addition to incorporating conversations on evolution. Dr. Houck discusses the univocity of language, why original sin is a humane doctrine, and much more.
Timestamps:
4:45- Original Sin
13:15- Original Justice
27:06- Participation and Patristics
35:08- The Doctrine of Analogy
43:20- Wittgenstein and Language
46:11- Dehumanization and Rejection of Original Sin
Episode Transcription
Charles Kim 0:00
Hello and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. With me this week will be Dr. Daniel W. Houk. Dr. Houk has recently written a book Aquinas Original Sin and the challenge of evolution with Cambridge University Press, who very graciously gave me a copy of his book, Danny and I got to know each other originally in our master's program in Princeton. So it was good to get to talk with him again about this work. So Danny will introduce to us some of the major concepts nature and grace, Original Sin original justice. And he'll also talk about the University of language and how humans can speak about the divine and how the doctrine of original sin contrary to the way that many people speak about it is actually one of the most humane doctrines as it includes even those who don't have the sort of reasoning, the highest reasoning capacities, and it's a really interesting conversation. So I'm hopeful that you will enjoy it. We also had a nice come comment from Australia. Andy McGraw wrote to us recently and said that he is in Western Australia in the Kimberley region, and he has enjoyed our podcasts, especially our conversation with Dr. Bergsma. And so I think thank Andy for reaching out and having a good conversation. So if you have any comments or questions, please feel free to message us on Facebook on which is facebook.com/a hocked or Twitter. We are at theology x i A N. So find us on Twitter, find us on Facebook and rate us and review us on iTunes. We will have one episode coming up with Jacob would called to start on his book to stir a restless heart. And we have some other stuff in the works. Dr. Drew Johnson's book on him break philosophy, and another conversation with Tom and Trevor, who will be back from a long hiatus. So a lot is in the works. So thank you for listening and enjoy this episode. All right. Well, today on the podcast. We have Dr. Daniel Houk and Danny and I knew each other at Princeton seminary. And now Danny is the pastor of Calvary Hill Baptist Church in Virginia. And he recently wrote Aquinas Original Sin and the challenge of evolution. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. And yeah, so I'm excited to have Danny on. We've done one other book from Cambridge Tyler Whitman's book recently came out with Cambridge. So we've done a little bit more Aquinas recently ended a podcast that hasn't been released yet I recorded with Ben Hi gherkin, who did Aquinas and Maximus the Confessor on the Temptation of Christ. So we actually are going to be a little bit more Aquinas heavy recently than than we had been in the past. So but then Danny brings a very philosophical approach, or at least sort of straightforward reasoning approach. And we talked a little beforehand about what exactly his approach is. But I think I think though, there'll be some, this could be sort of an interesting podcast for us. So I asked him to kind of define some terms and lay out exactly how some of these pieces are going to fit together. But as always, I tried to make the podcast a little bit more, not just a straightforward rehashing of the book. So we'll have some other questions that will that, you know, sort of touch on what he covers in the book, but the book is, of course worth reading for, for its own sake. And it was a it's a, it was a really interesting read. It stretched my my intellectual capacities, I will say, as someone who does a little bit more historical, contextual work, getting into the argumentative, more philosophical work, like this definitely took took me you know, really stretched me. So I appreciated Danny's work. So thanks for coming on.
Daniel Houck 4:07
Thanks for having me, Chad. Happy to be here.
Charles Kim 4:10
It was a bit of a long introduction. I don't normally go that long. I don't know what happened. Sorry about that.
Daniel Houck 4:13
It's all right. That's all right, dude.
Charles Kim 4:17
So yeah, so there you go. That's the book Daddy's here. So we're gonna just jump right, a jump right in. And so I've you know, as always, I send Danny some questions. And so I say, your treatment of original sins, sin leans more on the philosophical theology side, I thought we might begin by getting some of the terms out on the table. So the most obvious is what is original sin? What are we talking about?
Daniel Houck 4:45
So, the origins of the doctrine of original sin are in Scripture, and the locus classicus. The most important passage that led to the development of the doctrine is Romans 512 through 21 and I might just read a couple of verses from that section to help unpack the origins of the idea of original sin. Paul says in Romans 512, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all sinned, and then it kind of breaks off there. And there's a lot of controversy over how to interpret this verse. But many interpreters through the centuries have thought that Paul is saying that all human beings die as a result of sin. So this phrase at the end deaths spread to all because all have sinned. Now, as you know, Chad, from your study of Augustine, there's a controversy over the translation of this verse Augustine, famously, or infamously, thinks that this clause in the Latin says, in whom all sinned as though the text literally said that all human being sinned in Adam, but that's not according to most biblical scholars the best way of thinking about it. But even if you don't take Agustin ins translation of this verse, what I just read was The New Revised Standard Version. So even if you take what is the sort of standard critical and scholarly text and the mainstream translations, you still have Paul saying that death came to all because all sinned. And of course, as, as we all know, tragically, many infants wind up dying. And so human beings are mortal, from the very beginning of their lives and the very beginning of their existence. And so what many interpreters have argued over the years is that there is a connection, that Paul is establishing between mortality and sin such that if a human being is mortal, then normally they would have sent now there's a big exception in the case of Christ, which we can talk about. But in terms of the normal state of human beings after that one man who sin and that's a reference, of course, to Adam, Paul makes explicitly in verse 14 says, Death, exercise dominion from Adam to Moses. So the idea would be that since that sin of Adam, all human beings have mortality and have sin, and the two are intertwined, in a sort of necessary way, in the sense that if you have mortality of sin, and vice vice versa. Another quick point here, in terms of the exegetical basis of the doctrine, that sometimes gets neglected, I think, in the mainstream discussion over whether the doctrine is biblical, because it has been very controversial. And to this very day, there are many Christians who argue about whether it actually has an adequate, biblical foundation or not. But one other verse that I think is relevant is verse 18, Romans 518, which says, Therefore, just as one man's trespass, lead to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness that leads to justification and life for all. So I think, in my view, that the combat the passage as a whole, and in particular, verses 12, and 18, there do provide strong support for the idea that since the first sin of human beings, that subsequent human beings have been born in this default state of death, sin condemnation. And so that's, that's the basic biblical origin. Now, in terms of the question, what is original sin? It's tricky to define because one of the things I explore in the book is the diversity and variety of theories of understanding original sin. And that's one of the goals of the historical section. The first few chapters are largely historical. One of the goals is to just show theologians and pastors and others who are interested in this topic, just how much disagreement there has been over how to understand this doctrine. I think
St. Augustine is has the most well known and famous articulation of the doctrine. And we can get into that in a little bit. But one of the things I want to show is that the doctrine precedes Agustin and even after Augustine, there's a huge amount of debate over different aspects of the doctrine. You know, for example, how guilt relates to Original Sin, how Adam relates to Original Sin, how the corruption of nature relates to Original Sin. There's a lot of debates over these and other questions. And in my view, Scripture doesn't give us an extremely precise theory of the doctrine. I think that this idea of Original Sin is found in scripture. But I don't think that it tells us all of the details of the doctrine. So I think that's the task of theology to try to seek understanding of this datum of faith, if you will. Okay, so with that said, I will give a definition of the doctrine which is tricky, but I define it basically as the doctrine that infants are normally born with cin. And that's extremely vague, extremely broad, but I think it's a definition that is designed to encompass a lot of the different theories. Come around the doctrine. Yeah. So normally is the qualification that's put there to certainly include Christ, whom we believe is without sin, as scripture says. He was he was tempted as we were, in all ways the author of Hebrews says, but was without sin. And there's numerous other reasons to believe that He was sinless, including biblical, theological, etc. So he was without sin. And I don't get into questions of Mariology in the book. And so I sort of leave, I leave it open, you know, whether there could be others. I personally, am not Roman Catholic. And so for me, it would be Christ would be the sole exception. But the argument of the book does not depend on on one's take on the question of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which we could we can get into that too, if we if we want. But yeah, so it's basically this idea that infants normally have sin. Yep. Is the bottom line.
Charles Kim 10:56
Yeah, for me, very helpful. Yeah, well, and I had a paper that I had sort of started to write and never really got published or work towards it. But the other textual locus for Agustin is First Corinthians 1522. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. And so that like, and in some cases, chronologically that seems to precede for Agustin, his reading of Romans five. So you might think that his reading of Romans five could even be informed by this. Anyway. Yeah. So, but there's
Daniel Houck 11:32
it's really, I wasn't aware of I was not aware of that in Agustin thought there. But yeah, First Corinthians 15 is another huge text for this discussion.
Charles Kim 11:41
Yeah. So I mean, while there's there's some debates about how much Agustin actually understood Greek and this sort of thing. But it shouldn't actually be a debate. He clearly read Greek and was translating Greek by the end of his life, despite what some like David Bentley Hart, among others, have have wanted to claim about his ignorance of Greek. So anyway, I do leave that to decide if he did you know that it does seem odd that he, like the way that he reads it, I understand why there's a concern about it. But But anyway, yeah, well, that's, that's super helpful. Also, just as a plug for another podcast that will come out probably before this one. Ben hiker, Ken and I discussed a little bit what that means for Christ to be sinless. With respect to what, how Christ was tempted by demons. So he goes through Maximus the Confessor And Aquinas on that question, so it's pretty so so that's another one if you want to explore and think about what Christ sinlessness means, and specifically, that verse And Hebrews four is extremely important for hydrogen.
Daniel Houck 12:53
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that episode myself, because I like Ben's work. And I think it's a really interesting topic, and one that I'm doing a little bit of work on myself. So I'm excited to see what he has to say. And I've read a little bit of an earlier draft of his book, assuming that it's coming from his dissertation, if I'm not mistaken. That's I'm looking forward to seeing his final copy of that.
Charles Kim 13:15
Yeah, well, we'll Yeah, that should be out soon. Moving on. The next term is Danny define is one that you hear a lot less. So everyone or everyone, many people who studied theology are aware of debates about original sin. But one term and phrase that becomes important in this work is original justice. And so that plays a role in thinking about how we move from original sin and original justice, and what the implications are of those two tie being tied together. So take it away, Danny, what are we talking about when we talk about original justice?
Daniel Houck 13:54
So the phrase original justice originated with Anselm of Canterbury, but the idea of it goes back much earlier, really to the beginning of reflection on human pathology and human origins in the connection with this question of original sin. And the basic idea is, essentially what is required to say, as Paul says, that sin came into the world through one man, the idea would seem to be that the first human beings the first, specifically, he's talking about Adam, but Adam and Eve are when we can talk about human origins more broadly. But the idea would be that the first human beings were created without sin. They were created sinless, and that's why on the basis of their sin, sin entered the world. Now, Paul's not in this passage, he's not thinking about demons and demonology. And that's kind of another question that people can ask, Well, did sin really enter the world through Adam, if Satan was the first one to sin before that, but that's not really in Paul's. It's not really his focus in that passage. So original righteousness. The basic idea is there has to be some kind of sinless state ate before the first sin. Now, exactly what that state entails is a very tricky thing to spell out. And there's been just about as much debate over the nature of original righteousness, as there has been over the debate over the nature of original sin. And part of the tricky thing is that one has to define the sin in order to define sinlessness. And there's debates over for example, whether sin is simply the volition of sin, acting in disobedience to God's commandment, or whether an internal disposition or inclination to sin, would also count as sin, sometimes in the West, that's known as concupiscence. And so in many cases, and there's a strong tradition of this, especially in the West, there is a connection between sin and this disposition to center inclination to send notice and keep a sense, such that the, the inference from that would be that the first human beings must have been free from Cuba sense, as well as free of any volition that disobeyed divine command. And so in Augustine, for example, is a classic example though he's not the only one, Adam and Eve, He doesn't use that phrase, original righteousness. But the idea is that they are created in a state where they love God above all things, where they do not have compute the sense that they don't have disordered compute a sense rather, and they are also potentially capable of living forever, if they continue in obedience. And so those are the three kind of main traits of original righteousness as it developed in western theology, namely, in our wills, and intellect, there's this love for God above all things. And we also are free from any kind of inclination or disposition to sinning, again, often known as a freedom from up sense. And we also have the capability of living forever and not dying. And then there's debates about exactly what that what that means and how that connects to the tree of life and so on. But at least this capability of not dying, is traditionally in the West thought to be crucial for that original state of righteousness.
Charles Kim 17:05
Very good. And so then, you know, as we just move along, so the question is, you know, we have got this original sin, you know, we may have this original, we have original sin now, we had some sort of original justice, and then Grace plays some role in moving us to back to Justice to righteousness. And I guess, just for as a sort of separate question, I, I don't like that we have two English words that are justice and righteousness, it drives me a little nuts. Because I think in sort of popular usage of righteousness might feel more spiritual and justice sort of feels more like civic and like communal or something, like people don't, at least as I hear people use it, it usually seems like justice. And I just mean, sort of in common parlance, like not in theological debates, specifically. And so I tend to think that people sort of misuse or I don't even know if it's misused, but like, we just have let these two words slide into slightly different domains. So I assume that we're using these as effectively synonyms. But yeah, do you have a thought? Which
Daniel Houck 18:17
one? Would you yeah, that's, that's a really interesting thought. Chad, I haven't thought of it that way before. So which which one? Do you think it has a you think righteousness as a better connotation? And that I
Charles Kim 18:28
would I want to use justice. I don't want to use this on this almost at all. But that may be my proclivity to wanting to use a Latin based term that have a dramatic base term. But yeah, no, I mean, but I don't want it to be overly so I think the, for me, the fear is that it's sort of privatized, righteousness feels privatized, Justice feels communal. And I think that we at the very least, I don't want it to be at the expense of our responsibilities outward. And so it's sort of like, you know, sort of almost like righteousness has become a synonym for piousness to, oh, I'm so pious, and that is my own sort of personal goodness. And we don't think to connect that to this sort of broader justice. And so so we use justice, and we use social justice. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think I think I don't know that they should be dissociated at all. But if we just had one, we could sort of have a larger concept that would tie the two together, rather than thinking that they are separate domains.
Daniel Houck 19:31
Yeah, that's, that's an interesting line of thought. I haven't really thought of it that way before too much in the scholarly literature. They're basically synonymous in this context, at least when it comes to original righteousness, original justice. But I think that's an important question to ask, like, what are the words keynoting and how are they going to be received? And I think that's, that's interesting. Definitely something to think about.
Charles Kim 19:53
Yeah, and it's not well, it's a I like when I teach my students, Latin and Greek I always say like as a, as a historian, or as a person who's interested in ancient languages, you're always navigating to different fields, whether you realize it or not, you're studying the ancient world, but you're also still studying the contemporary world. Because if you're not effective at communicating what you've understood about the ancient world, either you'll be lost to your present speakers, or you can be, you know, the problem of of reading, you know, sort of Eisah, Jesus reading your contemporary concepts, and to the ancient literature without recognizing that, that, you know, that you're doing that, that you're importing your own sort of thought world. And so, you know, so I feel like it's important to have your feet of both camps, like, Okay, I need to be very aware of how we think now, so that I can see the ways in which that's different than to what some period you're studying. But absolutely. So what is what is grace?
Daniel Houck 20:52
Yeah, so that's, yeah, so that's an interesting, interesting one. And I might, I might use that as a segue to get into a little bit of the diversity of views on the effects of original sin as well. Okay. Yeah. So
basically, one, when you see the doctrine start to get debated over the over the centuries, there's a huge question about the relationship between the effects of original sin and the original state, and then the sort of restored state that we're in once we come into a relationship with Christ. And there's a lot of questions that get raised about this now, in Agustin ins account of original sin. He argues that human nature is corrupted when Adam since he thinks that, in some sense, human beings pre existed in Adam's loins, and that when Adam acted, that nature is corrupted. And as a result, all of subsequent humanity is born with a corrupted nature. Now, when we receive charity, in our hearts, in the charity of the Holy Spirit, there is a kind of beginning of the restoration of nature. And there's there's a lot that can be said in favor of Agustin ins account. But there's also a lot of tricky questions that it raises. And one of which is, what exactly is this relation between human nature that gets corrupted, and nature that continues to exist in some form, after the fall. And one major contribution I think comes in this is the one of the major historical kind of faux SCI of the books of the books historical analysis comes from Aquinas, who wants to clarify the use of the word nature in a few ways. And I think that it's somewhat helpful and what Aquinas wants to do, and this is going to relate to grace, eventually, what Aquinas wants to do is say that there's really a couple of different senses of the word nature that we have to distinguish, we have to distinguish nature insofar as it means the essence of the human being like what the human being is, like, you might say, human being is a soul and body, for example. And if you don't have a soul or body, then you're not really, truly human being, you might say, something like that is human nature. But there's also another sense of nature, which relates to flourishing or well being. And in that sense, you might say, well, it's really natural to human beings to love God and love each other. And there's some sense in which we're fulfilling our nature when we do that. And when we live into that. And in that sense of the word, it's an it's a valid sense is legitimate sense. But it isn't essential to human beings, at least, if you believe that human beings who wind up turning away from God and sin are still human. And so what Aquinas wants to do is, he wants to identify this second sense of the word nature nature as it relates to human flourishing in the love of God, the love of neighbor and so on. He wants to identify that with grace, He wants to identify that with a gift of God, as opposed to something that belongs to the human essence or something that is necessarily true of being human. And so as a result of this move, which is quite controversial was controversial, his own time, it was controversial in the Reformation. It's controversial today. But if you take that move that Aquinas suggests, then what you want to say is that the first human beings enjoyed grace, because they were in enjoying this kind of friendship, this intimate relationship with God, that also spilled over and allowed them to love each other allowed them to love creation, and allow them to flourish. And so, in Aquinas is terminology, then original sin becomes largely this lack of grace, this lack of relationship with God, and without that relationship, our lives wind up not going as they should, according to God's plan and intentions. And so what salvation then becomes is a We have a reception of grace. That is that is, in a sense, a restoration of that original gift that was lost. But human nature in the sense of being human existing as humans survives. So then what happens is in terms of this question of what is grace, so for Thomas and I basically agree with this suggestion, grace is this supernatural offer of friendship with God that orients us ultimately, to the beatific vision and heaven and allows us to live for God today. And although it takes different forms, in different periods in the history of the church, it looks different in Adam and Eve, for example, than it would look in Israel than in the church. But fundamentally, it's, it's united by that feature of bringing us into this friendship with God by which we can love him and so on. And there's controversies though, over the extent to whether you should think of grace as something supernatural, as I was just suggesting, that Thomas did, or whether it's something that actually belongs to human nature, which is an alternative position. So I mean, that's kind of a sketch of, of grace insofar as it's relevant to this discussion of original sin. There's obviously a lot of other ways we could talk about grace. It's a huge doctrine, because then you get into gifts of the Spirit and particular graces and things like that. But just in a very kind of basic sense as it relates to Original Sin. That's, that's how I would at least start the discussion. But we could take that in a lot of different ways, depending where you want to go.
Charles Kim 26:23
Well, no, it's I mean, yeah, I realizing that when I put that question, I should have said, What is nature to precede grace? And yeah, and that was a mistake on my part, but I think we may actually get to cover a little bit of this. I've got another book coming from Catholic you on Amrita Lu box interpretation of Agustin All right of Aquinas on Grace. Oh, interesting.
Daniel Houck 26:45
Who's Who's that by by the way?
Charles Kim 26:47
Jordan? Jordan? No, not Jordan. Would someone would. Joseph flood? I don't know. I just I just talked with the my marketing guy about getting it. I haven't read it yet.
Daniel Houck 27:01
Oh, I think. Yeah. Jacob wood.
Charles Kim 27:04
Is that here? The Jacob wood? Jacob wood? Yeah, I'm
Daniel Houck 27:06
looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to that quite a bit. Yeah, I think Yeah. So there's this whole debate over the relation between nature and grace that really takes off in 20th century Catholic theology. And, you know, it gets very, very technical and interesting, and I think a lot of it is actually rooted in Aquinas is a distinction between nature and grace. It's not that Aquinas was the only one to kind of distinguish nature from Grace and technical terms, or that he was even the first one. There's, there's a, there's some historical work that that shows us previous medieval thinkers who do that to a certain extent, but I think Aquinas was perhaps the first one to sketch a fairly rigorous distinction between nature and racist technical terms. And one thing I should just say, really quickly, when we're talking about the distinction between nature and grace, I think it's important because I think this gets lost in a lot of the contemporary debate is that when Aquinas is distinguishing nature from Grace, he's really distinguishing two levels of grace. He believes fundamentally that all creation is a gift of God. So there's no question in a sort of basic sense, like everything is grace. Yes, absolutely. For Aquinas, no question. God is not obligated to create, nothing forces him to create, he's actually free not to create, as Joel chop is going to be arguing some really interesting dissertation project from from Toronto. So there's no question that all things are grace in the sense that they are not owed to the creature and that God transcends creation and so on. However, however, the key for Aquinas is that he doesn't think that enjoying the intimate life of God in the Beatific Vision is something that comes with being human. Ultimately, salvation for Thomas, as well as a large part of the Christian tradition, is deification. It is participation in the divine nature. And because of that, it's not the kind of thing that could possibly come with being a creature. And so what he wants to say is that there is another gift, a second gift, and that is supernatural grace. And so, yes, all things are grace, but in order to show that the salvation that we have is ultimately something that transcends our natural abilities, the technical term, supernatural grace or sanctifying, Grace gets coined in distinction from the kind of grace of creation of human existence. And so I think there's a lot of people that who want to argue, well, you know, you shouldn't talk about nature because, you know, that implies that creatures have rights over against God or something like that. And I just don't think that's a rep accurate representation of Thomas's view or the kind of mainstream nature Grace distinction that developed over time. So that's, that's a little bit there. You know, and you can get into, you know, the unknown Quick thing I would say if Can we stay on this point for a minute? Is that right? Sure. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. So another thing too, that I think is important. And I get into this in the final chapter of the book as I try to anticipate some objections. A lot of people think that if nature and Grace are distinguished, that you have to fall into this, so called to tear scholasticism where nature has its own sort of autonomous existence, and it's capable of flourishing and doing just fine without supernatural grace. And this is one of one of the big arguments that de lubok makes kind of a meta argument he makes throughout various works, that this kind of two tier scholasticism developed over time. And it caused all these problems theologically, politically, spiritually, and so on. And I actually think you can grant that that occurred historically, you can grant that that occurred over time with different developments of the concept of nature. But I don't think that that criticism applies to Aquinas view, or just the basic idea of distinguishing nature from grace. And I think you can believe that nature and Grace are distinct, and still think that nature has an orientation to grace and his desire for grace. So although I want to distinguish nature from Grace, I think Aquinas does. And I think it's a good distinction to make for the reasons I was just mentioning about the importance of deification being something that transcends nature. I actually do agree with David Bach, that there's an intrinsic dynamism towards grace, and an intrinsic desire for the supernatural that comes with being human. Now, that's actually not an argument I make in the book. And my view of Original Sin is actually neutral. You know, it's actually neutral on this technical question of, of natural desire for the supernatural. But I will, I'm happy to say like, I'm inclined toward the daily box perspective on that. Yeah. And I think it's, I think it is a problem if we, if we do try to separate them too sharply. The two orders of nature and grace.
Charles Kim 31:57
Yeah. Yeah, no, that's helpful. I'd never I mean, you know, I'm familiar with some of the participation, sort of the discussions of participation in Augustine and sort of in patristic thought, but I'd never thought about what it would mean for a natural human, or the nature of humanity to ultimately end in part deified participation. What would that look like? And how would that be possible? Like those were not questions that I was actually asking of the of the doctrine, if we want to call it that, or at least have the discussion of it in? Well, and most of the time people ascribe it to Eastern thought. And as any regular listener of my podcast would know, I started with McCone, who says that this is actually part of Augustine and Western thought, and we need not think that just because it's associated more predominantly with Eastern thought that it's absent from Western theologies. But
Daniel Houck 32:53
absolutely.
Charles Kim 32:56
So that's, yeah, participation was not something that I understood, just, you know, just sort of going back thinking about my own process and growth theologically. And even when I, you know, knew Danny at Princeton, like I didn't even know how to like, I didn't even know what that was, like, you know, what, what are we talking about? Like, I only had concepts of atonement and justification that are sort of post reformation. And all of this was like, you know, when I started getting introduced to it, first with a little bit of like, rubbed off, not quite revolted, but like, what are you? What are you saying? And then as I began to understand that, I was like, Oh, this is kind of a beautiful doctrine.
Daniel Houck 33:36
Absolutely. Yeah, I had a similar background, and then I wasn't really exposed to those ideas, specifically, participation.
Charles Kim 33:43
Are you looking to make a meaningful, lifelong connection with someone who shares your beliefs? If so, then you've got to try Christian Mingle with over 15 million Christian singles. Christian Mingle is unlike any other faith based dating site. Their ability to help members make quality connections, is what sets them apart. They have robust profiles, and personalization features that help you connect with other like minded members. Plus their suite of communication tools helps you meet more people and make deeper connections. Finding your true love is one of life's great adventures. So discover why so many Christian singles find love at Christian mingle.com/history. That's Christian mingle.com/history. Yeah. Well, we're, let's see, we've been going on about a half hour, I'm going to jump to a question that just to shift gears a little bit to do something different. I'm going to ask Danny, the question that I like to ask all of my guests now. That is, what is in the course of your sort of life and your study of Scripture and theology? What's one thing that you've changed your mind on? So one thing you thought was true, and now think is false, or one thing that you thought was false and you now think is true? And I say this can be pretty open, like, you know, it could be something inconsequential or it could be something that comes about in the book Self. I elicited some interesting responses. And so I've really enjoyed it. So yeah, I'll let you take that in whatever direction you'd like.
Daniel Houck 35:08
Sure, yeah, no, it's a great question that the first thing that comes to mind is, is maybe a bit technical, but it's still, I think, an important issue in theology. And I have changed my mind on it. I used to think that the doctrine of analogy was credibly helpful in solving all kinds of theological problems. And it's one of the things that was really appealing to me about Aquinas, his thought was his his account of analogy. But I've become convinced that it's not necessarily so helpful. And I'm not sure that it doesn't reduce to, ultimately, equivocation or unification. So this whole debate about just for your listeners who may not be familiar, there's a whole debate about how our words wind up being true of God, how do we actually speak of God. And there's a worry that if our words mean the same things, when we speak about creatures, and God, there's a worry that will sort of put God in a box and imply that he's a creature and commit conceptual idolatry. But then there's a worry on the other end that if we commit equivocation, if we use words, in a totally different sense, like if we say God is loving, and we mean a totally different thing, by the word love than we do when we talk about like loving or your, you know, spouse, or your child or something, there's this worry that well, then, who knows if God's love is anything remotely like what we've experienced? And how is that not kind of a terrifying idea? So analogy is supposed to be this way of bridging the gap between the two where there's a kind of similarity and difference in the way that we use words about God at the conceptual level, but I'm just not sure that it's actually a viable middle way. And so yeah, I mean, to lay my cards on the table, I lean a bit more in a Scottish stick direction, in terms of the importance of having some words that are used, or rather, the concept itself is univocal when we applied to God and we applied to creatures. But I would say that, and one of the reasons that I changed my mind on this was that after reading SCOTUS, myself firsthand, I realized that there's a while I realized as a strong word, that's kind of a verb of success. So I realized, testable. But I came to think that his that SCOTUS his view, that just because it concept, can be univocal across creature and creator, it doesn't mean that the ontological status of creature and creator is the same. So in fact, you can say that God is good. And you can say that a horse is good, or a man is good. And you don't have to believe that ontologically they're on a par, you can believe that God is infinite. And man is finite, you can believe that the horse is irrational, the man is rational, and use the word across these different this different range ontologically. And so, but you avoid the problems of equivocation. So it's kind of I realize it's kind of a technical thing, but I have kind of shifted in on that question. Pretty, pretty sharply over over the last few years. Well, it
Charles Kim 38:18
may be like the most significant question of mid 20th century theology as far as Bart and shimira, and, you know, Protestant, and Catholic dialogue is almost entirely a debate about exactly what we mean by analogy, whether Yeah, so I was gonna say the other direction, I guess, like pure cat affairs, fattism or pure apophatic ism would be the other possibility. It seems like you're going the total other direction, if we're talking about sort of polls, that that you just it's actually absolute university would be your total ability to speak, rather than trying not to say anything, almost.
Daniel Houck 38:57
I still think I would actually argue that. So I was I was trying to use these semantic terms equivocation unification analogy, because I actually think that even if you take a statistic view of the way that concepts can apply univocally, across creature and creator across that boundary, I still think there's a very robust role that apophatic theology can play, in the sense that as we come to understand God more deeply, it is absolutely crucial that we go through a extensive period really never ending in this life anyway, period of negating the kind of creaturely connotations of these concepts insofar as they apply to God. And so I do think there's a there's there needs to be an apophatic moment if you like, in theology. And I actually don't see a problem with combining that with a more broadly statistical understanding of the way that our concepts can apply to God. And if anybody's curious about this, I personally have enjoyed the work of Richard Cross on this on SCOTUS and he's been helpful among other scholars, but just kind of clarifying what what SCOTUS is actually saying he's badly misrepresented by a lot of scholarship, a lot of scholarship. In my Yeah, this dish is a lot of just bad misrepresentations of SCOTUS. And so that's, that's one place to look would be crosses work. There's some others as well. It's kind of a little bit of a detour here. But yeah, that would be one thing. You know, it's interesting, the book was about to theology science stuff. And that's not I mean, there's a lot of, I actually don't have a background where I was ever like, super strongly against evolution, and then came around to, to being an evolutionary creationist, which is kind of the preferred term these days to theistic evolution. I just didn't really think about it all that much. But I got fascinated with some of the problems in in grad school, but I didn't, I sort of went from not having an opinion, to thinking that these things can be brought together. I didn't really go from being super opposed or super in favor to flipping it around.
Charles Kim 41:13
There you go. i Okay. So now, I mean, all I'm thinking about is the analogy here. But you think that you one thing that you said, that's kind of interesting, it, it sparked in my mind. One of the things that Vic and Stein's talks about the philosophical investigations, is this sort of therapeutic nature of philosophical argumentation? And I wonder you're talking about a place for apparatus and where we're always trying to sort of make sure that we're not sort of applying too much creaturely illness to the divine. But I wonder if there's a sort of therapeutic elements to apophatic theology that could be sort of similar to how what Vic and Stein describes in the investigation. So what we're always trying to do is get get better, but you can't, you can't just say like I'm, well, I actually, I also love the idea of movement, versus stasis, and some of these things. So whatever we're doing when we're philosophizing or theologizing, is to some extent, a movement, right? I mean, so like to hold on to sort of an Augustinian and more ancient concept of, you're always moving in one direction or another. And so there's a place of apparatus of maybe intellectually of as kind of moving us closer towards our goal. So it's a necessary therapeutic for language that's sort of overly simplistic or maybe overly redundant about or not redundant, to simply applying creaturely concepts to the divine. I don't know if you have a thought about that. But maybe I'm totally off the rails. I don't
Daniel Houck 42:51
I don't accept that. It's an interesting thought. I think that's a really interesting idea. Vidkun Stein is, is someone that I need to read more of, at some point. He's not someone that I've been that I've studied in a deep way. And I think that's, it's an interesting idea. I mean, just prima Fashi I like the idea of the therapeutic moment there connecting that with apophatic. Thought and the apophatic movement. It's interesting.
Charles Kim 43:20
Yeah, no, I mean, I so yeah, we did a little bit of Wittgenstein and undergrad. We just read the Tractatus. And then as I don't know, somewhere after Princeton, I started reading the investigations and liked some of the other stuff. And you know, Wittgenstein has become popular for lots of different things. But uh, yeah, anyway, I don't know I find find some of his stuff thought provoking. Although it drives me nuts when the way that he describes Augustine his view of language from confessions. And I actually, like this huge footnote in my dissertation, because I use a little bit of vicarage died in one of my in my section on Augustine on language. And, like, as much as I appreciate that, I'm like, a customer is way more to say about language, but just what he says in book one of the confessions, right. Anyway. Oh, but that yeah, that's, that's, that's helpful and a direction that I would not have thought this podcast would go in. But yeah, I mean, it's an extreme, again, like things like I just think about, yeah, how much more I learned, the older I get, the more that I do this. And one of the things I didn't realize, when, even when I was doing my dissertation, like how much I would need to learn after, like, you sort of feel like, oh, you know, I'm gonna go really deep into this. And although, you know, like, part of what this podcast has become in the last year and a half is me trying to learn more things than than I did in my dissertation. Like I thought I had to be, I thought I had to have mastery over my subject. And I really didn't, I had I had a Pretty good command of a lot of like, you know what Augustine was influenced by. But I still like I had so much work to do on what he was up to theologically or what he was up to, you know, is placed in the tradition. And so it's, you know, I Yeah, it's it's some ways, of course, that's why I love it. There's always more to go on. But I like Absolutely.
Daniel Houck 45:20
Absolutely. I mean, my reference manager just keeps the list of books to read just keeps expanding at a much higher rate than I actually read books. So it just gets worse and worse, in that sense.
Charles Kim 45:37
Well, yeah, if any of the editors actually are listening to this, who I've worked with, who sent me the books, I will say that is one of my favorite parts about doing the podcast is there's a lot of books I want to read. So I just I like reach out and they reach out to me. Hey, have you read this one? Not? Yeah, sure. Please send it on over. I don't want to pay $100 for it.
Daniel Houck 45:56
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Charles Kim 45:59
Um, okay. We only have a few more minutes. I don't want to I know that you got to go here. And I messed up our time a little bit when we got started.
Daniel Houck 46:09
I have a few more. But yeah, it's fun.
Charles Kim 46:11
I want to respect your time. Yeah. So let's see. So Oh, yeah. Like this is almost like a throwaway line as I was going through, but I thought was really interesting. You talk about a little bit about original sin in modern theologies, I can't remember chapter four or five. And, and you said that a rejection of original sin might be might seem be seen to be dehumanizing, and which was fascinating because a lot of people sort of argue that original sin, the concept itself is dehumanize or if not dehumanizing is at least sort of lambaste thing humans unnecessarily. And so you say specifically, when sin is reduced to an act, or better when sin is released to the reduced to the via, the violations of those with the use of freewill, infants and the severely mentally disabled are at least implicitly excluded. So I just thought maybe you could talk about a little bit about how Original Sin can actually be a useful and helpful way of helping us think through even these categories that we don't often think about when we're doing theology.
Daniel Houck 47:20
Yeah, absolutely. So the, the broader question is to this original question of whether the denial of Original Sin could lead to dehumanization is, comes in the context of a discussion of a movement in modern theology away from a historical fall. So for various reasons, in the modern era, many people came to believe that the doctrine of a historical fall was just totally untenable. Some people I think, made that move because they associated the idea of original sin and the fall very tightly with Augustine. And they came to believe that some specifically Augustinian theses such as the pre existence of human nature and Adams loins, this inheritance of the guilt for Adam's act of sin, and the idea that Adam and Eve existed in a historical garden from whom all human beings descended, in addition to being problematized, eventually, by evolutionary theory, there's also historical critical scholarship, biblical scholarship that precedes that challenging. So a lot of people started to think we can't think of the fall historically. And actually, really quick. As a side note, I actually don't think that that follows, and I have an article in broke, lazier, that extends some of the arguments of this book, that it's called toward a new account of the fall. And I argued that there actually is the possibility of defending historical fall even in a kind of modern context for various reasons. So I don't accept that, that modern move, but in response to this problematization of the fall, a couple of major attempts to replace it originated. And one of them was indebted to a least common interpretation of Immanuel Kant. And Kant, there's a lot of debate about exactly what he thought and exactly what he was trying to say. But at least one interpretation of content became influential, and theology held that although there was no historical fall, we can still reinterpret the fall as this universality of bad decision making. So it's like, yeah, there's no inherited guilt. There's no original sin. However, everybody basically messes up nobody's perfect, right? And so we shouldn't be like naive optimists and think that human nature is just, you know, super sunshine and roses. And we could just, you know, find our way to Utopia if we just freed ourselves of religious dogmas or whatever other story you want to tell. That's this, like very optimistic about the possibility of human nature and flourishing. And so the idea is, yeah, we all do wrong. We all sin, if you like, right, and it was intentionally framed in a way that could be translated into non theological terms like we're on doing this and so on. So but I think one of the things that's tricky about that is, is that if you want to identify this ability to have sin, if you want to identify that really, really, really closely with the possession of the use of reason, and the ability to exercise free will, there's a risk. I don't necessarily I don't claim that it's entailed by this. But I do think there's a kind of,
there's a kind of momentum or or sort of inclination, in this view in this direction, do you identify those things so strongly, it can become very easy to say that human existence itself requires in the full sense, requires the exercise of reason, freewill, and so on. And if you make that move, then there's going to be this temptation to deny humanity to those who do not actually have the ability to exercise, reason, freewill, and so on. And I mentioned in the notes in the book, a couple of scholars who did to actually move in that direction, they had this sort of Kantian idea that it's essential to have the exercise of reason in order to do wrong in order to have a kind of moral status. And because they wanted to only assign moral status to people who were able to exercise free will, they then wound up denying the moral status of being human to those who didn't. So that's the idea. Now, I think, you know, in theory, you could, I don't deny that someone could, you know, block that move. Logically, someone could say, Look, I don't believe in original sin. But I do believe that human beings have dignity and so on, you know, from the very beginning, and therefore they have to be accorded rights and so on, and they shouldn't be abused. So I grant that that can happen. But it does seem a little bit tricky. And I think the great thing about original sin, and one of the uses of it is that it gives you this clarity, extreme clarity, actually, about the moral worth of individuals from the beginning, because the the doctrine of original sin is about the need for redemption in Christ. And it is about the call to redemption in Christ, and especially into mystic terms, but also this could be framed in other terms as well, but especially into mystic terms, when Original Sin is precisely the lack of supernatural saving grace of Jesus Christ, when you're confessing that an infant has sin, you are confessing that that infant is you're confessing at the exact same time that that infant has made the Imago Dei called the redemption Christ and need something from the outside that will save him or her and bring them into eternal communion with God. So I think it's a it's a very beautiful doctrine in that sense. Although I would acknowledge that historically, there is a association of the doctrine of original sin with the doctrine of infant damnation, which is not one that I endorse, but and I think historically, they haven't always gone so tightly together. And we could get into that another time, perhaps in another conversation. But yeah, so it's, it's tricky historically. But I do think that there can be some very positive uses of the doctrine, if you'd like. Although I think, fundamentally, the doctrine is rooted in Scripture. So I wouldn't frame it in a kind of pragmatic sense. But I do think that having having established the doctrine, there are these benefits to it that that can be identified as well. So I don't know if that's getting exactly your question there, Chad. But
Charles Kim 53:30
oh, no, that was perfect. Yeah, I was I was I was gonna try to lead you on to where you ended. But you were almost preaching there may be. Which, which was another one of my questions. But yeah, I just, you know, one of the things that I'm sort of also interested in is how people are able to incorporate a lot of their doctoral research with their pastoral work. So we had Matthew Wilcox, and on, we talked a little bit about, you know, how I was trying to explain Cal Seaton to a church, to my church, in a class that we were doing. And I realized, like I said, What is what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be God? And I said, That was important for understanding what was going on at Cal Seton. And the definitions that I received about what was God and what was human. We're so far from, where where we were at, with Cyril of Alexandria, that I was like, you know, it's gonna be hard for me to explain this doctrine when you don't have the same concepts of that he does. And so it just made me wonder, I was like, Man, this is so hard.
Daniel Houck 54:36
Yeah, it's very tricky. And yeah, I can speak to that a bit if we want to move to that topic. I mean, well, so yeah, it's it's tricky. Yeah, it's something I'm trying to learn as I go. We had a opportunity that was that was a lot of fun to do a little grant from the Henry Center at Ted's at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and John Templeton Foundation. That was the John Stott award for pastoral engagement and it was specifically designed to help congregations engage science but in a broader sense, it's to this question of how do you engage the ology deeper scriptural understanding and that was fun, we were able to do a focus group. As a part of that grant, we're able to kind of explore some ideas and do a sermon series that came out of it. And the I mean, I would just say it's, it's something I'm learning, I think one of the great things about being and I would speak to anybody out there who's in a Ph. D. program, maybe in his thinking about maybe ministry or academia or both. But I think one of the things for me, that's been great about being in ministry and pastoral ministry, specifically, after many years, in an exclusively academic context, I do still teach at a at a seminary, but in terms of moving from an exclusively academic context, in terms of my focus to a to a pastoral context has been getting stretched to think about the connection between doctrine and people's lives. And I think that's really the key is can you connect these ideas that have this profound significance to the church? And they have this profound truth? Can you connect them to people's lives? It's not to instrumentalize it, not to say it's only important if it has quote, unquote, relevance or something. But can you show that connection? Can you can you make that connection, and that's, that's one of the main things that I've been trying to develop in my own ministry is trying to help people see the connections between these things. And one thing that I'm trying to do, and this is, again, as I say, it's a work in progress. It's something I'm trying to learn. But one thing I think is helpful is if in it, this is for anybody who's who is kind of a pastor theologian out there, I think, if you can show, like, if let's say that you're you're preaching, let's say your your sermon is like 25 minutes or something, maybe if you have a deep idea, that's kind of conceptually difficult that you want to get into, maybe get into that for a chunk of the sermon, but then bring it back to something that's more universally accessible, you know, at some point, you know, it doesn't have to be in one order or another, you know, it could be once the beginning once at the end, or vice versa. But at some point, have some kind of gospel proclamation or just something that's very clear, very resounding very inspiring, that anybody can get a hold on. And then maybe part of it becomes this more, you know, conceptual analysis, I think one of the mistakes I've made at times is getting so deep into the conceptual analysis, that you wind up speaking to some people who are interested in that kind of stuff, but then you wind up losing other people. So in some ways, actually just trying to speak to multiple things in the same message can be effective, even though it goes a little bit against some conventional wisdom and homiletical theory that a lot of it these days emphasizes the importance of a unified message. And really kind of unpacking one single idea through a lot of it through a lot of illustration, stories, analogies. The danger of that though, is if you're trying to do something theological, and you unpack only one difficult idea, in a given sermon, you may wind up losing a lot of people. So I don't know if that's helpful. But that's, that's one of the things I think a lot about is just that homiletical question of how to bring this into preaching. And yeah, it's definitely something I'm still learning. Another group, I would plug that has been great as the I think you said, you had Matt Wilcox Anon, or you're gonna have him on. But yeah, that Saturday, Pastor theologians, that he's a part of that as well. And that's been that's been a lot of fun to learn from other folks who are trying to bring kind of trying to renew this, this vocation of the pastor, as someone who's also thinking theologically, which is classic, of course, classic tradition. That has been the case for most of church history. But it's some for some reason, or reasons sort of faded in the 20th century, in recent decades, but I believe that it needs to be brought back. I'm trying to, in my own life, trying to do that, to the extent that I can. And I think it's an exciting development that a lot more people are thinking in those terms. Yeah.
Charles Kim 58:57
Well, Danny, thank you very much. And we've enjoyed having you on the podcast. So the book is Aquinas Original Sin and the challenge of evolution with Cambridge University Press. We of course, only touched the surface of a few different things. The book is rich, full. And is Yeah, we didn't even touch on the really the well, I guess, you mentioned briefly evolution, but we didn't really even get into the science part. So
Daniel Houck 59:23
thank you for the time another time.
Charles Kim 59:25
Yeah. Yeah, we really appreciate it.
Daniel Houck 59:29
Chad, thanks for having me on. Man. This was a lot of fun. Look forward to talking again.
Charles Kim 59:34
Thanks for listening to our episode this week. And like I say, we'll be back with a few more in the coming weeks. Thank you for listening.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
