Corrupting the Calvinist youth [UPDATED]

Some guy named “Steve” who contributes to the group apologetics blog Triablogue informs us that “Feser seems to have a following among some young, philosophically-minded Calvinists.”  (Who knew?)  “Steve” is awfully perturbed by this, as he has “considerable reservations” about me, warning that I am not “a very promising role model for aspiring Reformed philosophers.” And why is that?  Not, evidently, because of the quality of my philosophical arguments, as he does not address a single argument I have ever put forward.  Indeed, he admits that he has made only an “admittedly cursory sampling” of my work -- and, it seems, has read only some blog posts of mine, at that -- and acknowledges that “this may mean I'm not qualified to offer an informed opinion of Feser.”  So he offers an uninformed opinion instead, making some amazingly sweeping remarks on the basis of his “admittedly cursory” reading.  (Why that is the sort of example “aspiring Reformed philosophers” should emulate, I have no idea.)

Normally I ignore this sort of drive-by blogging, but since Triablogue seems to have a significant readership among people interested in apologetics, I suppose I should say something lest “Steve” corrupt the Calvinist youth by his rash example.

 
“Intelligent Design” theory

So, what’s “Steve’s” beef?  The first of his by-his-own-admission-uninformed objections to my work is this:

[Feser]'s a vociferous critic of intelligent-design theory. Now, ID-theory is fair game. However, it's philosophically unenlightening when philosophers like Feser (and Francis Beckwith) criticize ID-theory because it isn't Thomism. Unless you grant that Thomist epistemology and metaphysics should be the standard of comparison, that objection is uninteresting. 

Now, he’s right that I’m a critic of ID theory.  But his philosophy-by-power-browsing method has failed him badly if he thinks that my criticisms boil down to: “Well, it isn’t Thomism, ergo…”  First of all, as I have emphasized many times, I have two main problems with ID theory.  First, I hold that it presupposes, even if just for methodological purposes, a seriously problematic philosophy of nature.  Second, I hold that it tends to lead to a dangerously anthropomorphic conception of God that is incompatible with classical theism.  (See the posts linked to above for detailed exposition of these lines of criticism.)

Now, to take the second point first, lots of classical theists are not Thomists.  And I imagine there are lots of people who might find it worthwhile inquiring whether classical theism and ID theory are compatible whether or not they are classical theists, or Thomists, or ID theorists for that matter.  For knowing how various ideas cohere or fail to cohere with one another is part of the philosophical task.  So, surely it can be “philosophically enlightening” to consider the arguments of those who hold that classical theism and ID theory are incompatible, no? 

To come to my other line of criticism of ID, it is true that my reasons for rejecting the philosophy of nature that underlies ID theory are Aristotelian reasons, and Thomists are Aristotelians.  However, this in no way entails that these reasons should be regarded as “philosophically unenlightening” to those who happen not to be Thomists.  For one thing, you don’t need to be a Thomist to find it of interest whether ID theory is compatible with Aristotelianism.  Not all Aristotelians are Thomists -- for example, many contemporary neo-Aristotelian metaphysicians and philosophers of science are not Thomists -- so that if ID theory is incompatible with Aristotelianism, it isn’t just Thomists who will reject ID’s underlying philosophy of nature.  And as with the relationship between classical theism and ID theory, the relationship between Thomism and ID theory should be of philosophical interest in itself.  (For example, if it turns out that Thomism and ID theory really are incompatible, surely this can be “philosophically enlightening” for those who are drawn to Thomism but don’t know what to make of ID theory, or who are drawn to ID theory but don’t know what to make of Thomism.)

Finally, I have, of course, given arguments -- at length, in depth, and in various books and articles -- for the various aspects of the Aristotelian philosophy of nature.  I don’t say: “If you just happen by arbitrary preference to be a Thomist like me, then you should reject ID theory.”  I say:  “Here are the arguments for why you should accept the Aristotelian position vis-à-vis act and potency, substantial form, final causality, etc.; and since ID theory is incompatible with all that, you should reject ID theory.” 

“Steve,” despite his touching concern for the sound formation of “aspiring Reformed philosophers,” does not answer, or indeed even seem to be aware of, any of these philosophical arguments.  But when a Thomist [or a Leibnizian, or a naturalist, or whatever] offers arguments for a position, it is no good for an “aspiring philosopher” to say: “Well, I’m not a Thomist [or a Leibnizian, or a naturalist, or whatever], so I don’t find all that ‘philosophically enlightening.’”  An “aspiring philosopher” should respond to the damn arguments.  Awful luck for those who would prefer to limit their philosophical investigations to the “admittedly cursory” kind, but there it is. 

I absolutely love this addendum by “Steve,” by the way:

[T]he problem is compounded by the fact that Feser's understanding of Paley and ID-theory have both been challenged. Consider the running debates between his blog and Uncommon Descent.

That’s it.  That’s all he says about the matter.  Do you hear that, “aspiring Reformed philosophers”?  Feser’s views have been challenged!  That never happens to serious philosophers.

“Doctrinaire” Thomism

“Steve’s” second by-his-own-admission-uninformed objection to me is that my Thomism is “doctrinaire,” “purist,” etc.  We shouldn’t be concerned with “expounding or repristinating Aquinas, but in advancing the argument,” sniffs “Steve.”  For “ultimately, philosophy is about ideas.  It doesn't matter where you get your ideas.”  (Unless they’re from Feser, naturally.) 

The funny thing is that “Steve” never actually cites a case where I claim that something is true merely because Aquinas or some prominent Thomist like Cajetan said it, or where I have rejected a claim merely because it deviates from Aquinas or from the Thomist tradition -- which he couldn’t have done even if he’d bothered to give my work more than an “admittedly cursory” reading, because I have never said such a thing.

“Steve” piously avers, as if he were saying something I would disagree with:

From an intellectual standpoint, a misinterpretation can be more useful than a correct interpretation. Suppose you improve on Aquinas by unintentionally imputing to him a better theory than he held. That's bad exegesis, but good philosophy.

Yet compare this passage from my book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction:

No great philosopher, no matter how brilliant and systematic, ever uncovers all the implications of his position, foresees every possible objection, or imagines what rival systems might come into being centuries in the future.  His work is never finished, and if it is worth finishing, others will come along to do the job.  Since their work is, naturally, never finished either, a tradition of thought develops, committed to working out the implications of the founder’s system, applying it to new circumstances and challenges, and so forth.  Thus Plato had Plotinus, Aristotle had Aquinas, and Aquinas had Cajetan – to name just three famous representatives of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Thomism, respectively.  And thus you cannot fully understand Plato unless you understand Platonism, you cannot fully understand Aristotle unless you understand Aristotelianism, you cannot fully understand Thomas unless you understand Thomism, and so on.  True, writers in the traditions in question often disagree with one another and sometimes simply get things wrong.  But that is all the more reason to study them if one wants to understand the founders of these traditions; for the tensions and unanswered questions in a tradition reflect the richness of the system of thought originated by its founder.  (pp. 7-8, emphasis added)

But to be fair, “Steve” can’t have been expected to see passages like that, since it would require actually bothering to read someone’s work before criticizing it; and that, it seems, is not an approach to research he would commend to “aspiring Reformed philosophers.”  Apparently, it is Jerry Coyne to whom young Calvinists should be looking for methodological guidance.

“Steve” compares me unfavorably to other Catholic philosophers.  After all, “Geach… did groundbreaking work on Frege” and “Pruss doesn't hesitate to synthesize Aristotelian and Leibnizian insights.”  Since Idon’t try to assimilate Aquinas to Frege, that simply must be because my method is to stick my fingers in my ears and chant: “If Aquinas himself didn’t say it, it isn’t true!”  It can’tbe because I have actual philosophical reasons for thinking that there is more to the notion of existence than is captured by Frege (see Aquinas, pp. 55-59 and Scholastic Metaphysics, pp. 250-55).  And if I am critical of the Leibnizian approach to possible worlds, that must be because I couldn’t find it in the index to the Summa.  It definitely isn’t because I think the Aristotelian conception of modality is actually superior on the philosophical merits (Scholastic Metaphysics, pp. 235-41).

Then there’s all that non-existent work of mine synthesizing Aristotelian and Kripkean insights; synthesizing Aristotelian insights and insights drawn from Karl Popper; defending the principle of sufficient reason, despite its origins in Leibnizian-Wolffian rationalism, against Gilsonian Thomists who reject it as a foreign import (Scholastic Metaphysics pp. 138-40); defending the classification of Aquinas as a kind of dualist despite the fact that many Thomists strenuously disavow that label; and bringing Scholastic thought and analytic philosophy into dialogue (see Scholastic Metaphysics, Aquinas, and indeed most of what I’ve written for the past ten years).  Again, none of that exists.  Or, to be more precise, none of it showed up on “Steve’s” iPhone when he was doing research for his blog post on the subway to work Monday morning.

“Isn't Feser basically a popularizer?” asks “Steve.”  And it’s a reasonable enough question for him to ask, given that he hasn’t actually read any of my academic stuffbut only a couple of blog posts, and thus doesn’t know that the answer is: “No, he isn’t.  Haven’t you read any of his academic stuff?  What did you do, just read a couple of blog posts?” 

Not being a mere popularizer, it seems, involves tossing off half-baked blog posts of your own putting forward sweeping judgments based on what you acknowledge to be a cursory knowledge of the facts.  Ecce blogger, aspiring young Reformed philosophers!  

UPDATE 4/30:  Some readers are wondering why I put quotation marks around “Steve’s” name.  The reason is that “Steve” is evidently not a real person but a spambot, and not a very sophisticated one.  That was obvious enough from “Steve’s” original post, and in a follow-up post and in various spambot-generated combox remarks beneath it, the telltale signs are all there -- oddly robotic repetition of statements that have already been refuted, failure to address what an interlocutor actually said, non sequiturs, etc.  (Triablogue guys, get some better AI software, huh?)

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A second exchange with Keith Parsons, Part I

I’d like once again to thank Keith Parsons, and moderator Jeffery Jay Lowder, for the very fruitful first exchange we had a few weeks ago.  You can find links to each installment here.  Per Jeff’s suggestion, our second exchange will be on the topic: ”Can morality have a rational justification if atheism or naturalism is true?”  Jeff has proposed that we keep our opening statements to 2500 words or less, and I will try to rein in my logorrheic self and abide by that limitation.  That will be difficult, though, given that my answer to the question is: “Yes and No.”

Let me explain.  I’ll begin by making a point I’m sure Keith will agree with.  Many theists and atheists alike suppose that to link morality to religion is to claim that we could have no reason to be moral if we did not anticipate punishments and rewards in an afterlife.  I am sure Keith would reject such a line of argument, and I reject it too.  To do or refrain from doing something merely because one seeks a reward or fears reprisals is not morality.  I would also reject the related but distinct claim that what makes an action morally good or bad is merelythat God has commanded it, as if goodness and badness were a matter of sheer fiat on the part of a cosmic dictator who has the power to impose his will on everyone else.  This too would not really be morality at all, but just Saddam Hussein writ large.

So, I reject crude divine command theories of morality.  That is one reason I think it is not quite right to claim that there can be no justification of morality if atheism were true; or at least, what (probably) most people understand by that claim is, in my view, false.  Crude divine command theories simply get morality wrong.  They get God wrong too.

More on that, perhaps, later in this exchange.  But first, another reason the claim in question is not quite right -- or at least way too quick -- has to do with what actually is the foundation of morality, or in any event the proximate foundation.  Like Philippa Foot, I would argue that goodness and badness are natural features of the world.  In particular, they have to do with a thing’s either realizing or failing to realize the endstoward which it is directed given its nature.  For example, a tree, given its nature, is directed toward ends like sinking roots into the ground, carrying out photosynthesis, and so forth.  To the extent it realizes these ends it is a good tree in the sense of a good specimen or instance of a tree, a healthy or flourishing tree.   To the extent it fails to do so, it is a bad tree in the sense of a bad specimen, a sickly or defective tree.  Similarly, a lioness is directed by her nature toward ends like hunting, moving her cubs about, and so forth.  To the extent she does so she is a good or flourishing specimen of a lioness, and to the extent she fails to do so she is a bad or defective specimen.  And so on for other living things.

Now so far this is a non-moral sense of “goodness” and “badness,” but moral goodness and badness are just special cases of the more general notions.  In particular, moral goodness or badness is the sort exhibited by a rationalcreature when he chooses either to act in a way conducive to the realization of the ends toward which his nature directs him, or to act in a way that frustrates those ends.  The goodness or badness of a plant or non-human animal is sub-ethical because they cannot understand what is good for them or will to pursue it.  Our goodness or badness is of an ethical sort because we canunderstand and will these things.  And it is irrational for us not to try to understand and to will them insofar as practical reason is by nature directed toward discerning the good, and the will is by nature directed toward pursuing the good. 

This is just a brief summary of the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) natural law conception of the good, and obviously it raises many questions.  I have developed and defended this conception at greater length elsewhere (such as in chapter 5 of my book Aquinas, in the first half of my Social Philosophy and Policy article “Classical Natural Law Theory, Property Rights, and Taxation,” and in my article “Being, the Good, and the Guise of the Good,” in the volume Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, edited by Daniel Novotný and Lukás Novák).  Keith would no doubt disagree with a lot of what the A-T position has to say, but the point for the moment is to emphasize something else with which Keith might agree.  Just as what is good or bad for a tree or lioness is grounded in the natures of those things, so too is morality grounded in human nature.  Moral goodness, like these other kinds of goodness, is in that way what Foot calls “natural goodness.”  But human nature is something a person can know and understand whether or not he believes in God, just as he can understand the nature of an oak tree or a lioness whether or not he believes in God.  Hence there is a sense in which one could give a rational justification of morality even if he were an atheist.

I say that Keith might agree with this not just for the obvious reason that he is an atheist, but also because, if I understand his views correctly, he is sympathetic to the broadly neo-Aristotelian approach to ethics represented by Foot.  So, if I understand him correctly, there is a pretty significant amount of common ground between us on this issue.  Now let me explain where I think we differ.  First of all, while there is a sense in which morality might be rationally justifiable if atheism were true, I would say that morality could notbe rationally justified if naturalism were true.  The reason is that morality presupposes the existence of what Foot calls “natural goodness,” and natural goodness in turn presupposes the reality of natural teleology, of natural substances being inherently directed toward the realization of certain ends.  And naturalism is simply incompatible with the reality of natural teleology.

To forestall a possible misunderstanding, the reason I say that naturalism and natural teleology are incompatible is not because naturalists deny “intelligent design.”  I am not saying that natural objects are like watches or other artifacts which have functions only insofar as those functions have been imposed by an artificer, so that affirming that they have functions requires affirming an “intelligent designer” of the William Paley or ID theory sort.  That would make the teleology of natural substances extrinsic to them, as the time-telling function of a watch is extrinsic to the metal bits out of which it is made.  From an A-T point of view, that just gets natural teleology fundamentally wrong.  Natural teleology is natural precisely because it is intrinsicto a thing, following from its nature or substantial form.  And you can know the nature of a thing, and thus determine its teleological features, whether or not you believe in God.

(That does not mean that natural teleology does not ultimately entail a divine ordering intelligence.  I think it does.   But the reason why it does -- a reason which Aquinas sets out in his Fifth Way -- is more complicated and less direct than Paley and ID theory suppose.  It has nothing to do with complexity, probability calculations, analogies to artifice, etc.  In my view, ID theory has succeeded only in kicking up a gigantic cloud of dust that has badly obscured the proper understanding of natural teleology and its relationship to natural theology.  I have discussed this issue in a number of blog posts, in chapter 3 of Aquinas, in my Philosophia Christi article “Teleology: A Shopper’s Guide,” and at greatest length in my Nova et Vetera article “Between Aristotle and William Paley: Aquinas’s Fifth Way.”)

The reason is rather that naturalism is committed to the “mechanical world picture” (to use Tim Crane’s apt phrase) that the philosophers and scientists of the 17^thcentury put at the center of modern Western thought.  Not every element that was originally part of that picture has survived, but the core of it has.  And that core is the idea that there is in the natural order no irreducible teleology of the sort affirmed by Scholastics and other Aristotelians.  All genuine explanations must, on this view, either be non-teleological or, if they make use of teleological notions, still be “cashable” in non-teleological terms. 

Now, if I may digress for a moment: The idea that the natural order is fundamentally non-teleological is often characterized as if it were a finding or result of modern science, but it is not that at all.  It is rather a methodological stipulationabout what will be allowed to countas “scientific.”  It’s like the rule against traveling in basketball.  It would be preposterous to argue: “In every basketball game played so far, traveling has not been allowed.  So, the history of basketball gives us overwhelming empirical evidence that there can be no legitimate traveling in basketball.”  That traveling isn’t allowed isn’t some inference we’ve drawn, but rather is just part of the rules of the game.  The reason you don’t see legitimate cases of traveling in actual basketball games is that they’ve been ruled out by fiat from the start.  Similarly, the reason you don’t find explanations in modern science that make use of irreducibly teleological notions is not that “science has shown” that there is no irreducible teleology.  It is rather for the completely trivial reason that appeals to irreducible teleology have been ruled out by fiat as “non-scientific.”

Hence the “argument from science” against irreducible teleology, though often tossed out matter-of-factly as if it were obviously correct -- for instance, by Alex Rosenberg, to take a recent example -- is in fact utterly fallacious.  Whether there is such a thing as irreducible teleology in nature is not a question for empirical science to settle, but rather a question for metaphysics and philosophy of nature.  And as I have argued many times, we cannot make sense either of our own thought processes, or of the irreducible causal powers of different natural substances, or indeed of the very possibility of there being any efficient causation at all, unless we affirm irreducible finality or teleology in nature.  (See e.g. chapter 6 of The Last Superstition, chapter 2 of Aquinas, my article “Between Aristotle and William Paley: Aquinas’s Fifth Way,” and chapter 2 of Scholastic Metaphysics.) 

But again, that is a digression, because whether there really is irreducible teleology in nature is something we need not settle for present purposes.  The point for now is just that if there is no irreducible teleology in nature, then there can be no “natural goodness” either and thus no morality.  Here I imagine that Keith would disagree.  I presume -- and Keith, please correct me if I am wrong -- that Keith would say that teleology can be given a naturalistic reduction, perhaps after the fashion suggested by writers like Ruth Millikan.  Hence (the argument would continue) natural goodness, and thus morality, can be given a naturalistic foundation. 

Atheist philosopher and blogger Daniel Fincke has defended a view like this, but as I argued a couple of years ago in a post criticizing his position, it will not work.  To see why not, consider a distinction between kinds of teleology inspired by John Searle’s distinction between intrinsicintentionality, derived intentionality, and as-if intentionality.  Derived intentionality is the sort that the ink marks and sounds we call words have.  The meaning or intentionality of words is real, but in no way intrinsic to the ink marks and sounds themselves.  Instead it derives from the intrinsic or “built-in” intentionality of thought.  As-if intentionality is what is in play when we describe things as if they had intentionality, e.g. when you say of a marble you’ve dropped that it “wants” to roll away.  Of course, it doesn’t really want to roll away, because it is not the sort of thing that can wantanything.  As-if intentionality is not really intentionality at all, but just a useful fiction.

Now if there were no intrinsic intentionality (as an eliminative materialist might claim) then there could not be any genuine intentionality at all.  For derived intentionality can exist only if there is intrinsic intentionality from which non-intrinsic intentionality might be derived; and as-if intentionality isn’t real intentionality in the first place. 

But now consider a parallel distinction between intrinsic, derived, and as-if teleology.  Intrinsic teleology would be the sort that Aristotelians attribute to natural substances, an inherent or “built-in” directedness toward an end.  Derived teleology would be a “directedness toward an end” that a thing does not have intrinsically, but only insofar as it is imparted to it by something else.  The purposes of watches and other artifacts would be teleology of this sort.  As-if teleology would be what is in play when we find it useful to describe a thing as if it were directed toward an end. It is not genuine teleology at all, but at most just a convenient fiction. 

Now, the naturalist claims that there is no intrinsic teleology in the sense just described.  That means that all teleology must somehow be either derived or as-if; in particular, a Millikan-style reductionist account of natural teleology would have to say that the teleology of any substance is either derivative from the teleology of something else, or mere as-if teleology.  Yet if there is no intrinsic teleology for things to derive their non-intrinsic teleological features from, then they cannot really coherently be said to have derived teleology.  Their teleology must be mere as-if teleology.  In particular, Millikan-style reductions of teleology in terms of natural selection are really just ways of attributing as-if teleology to biological phenomena. 

But as-if teleology isn’t really teleology at all, any more than as-if intentionality is genuine intentionality.  It is at most merely a convenient fiction.  Accordingly, accounts like Millikan’s don’t really imply that teleology is real but reducible, but rather at best that it is not real, but a useful fiction.  (Searle has made a similar point about views like Millikan’s.)  And in that case you cannot really get natural goodness, and in turn morality, from a naturalistic account of teleology.  The most you can do is argue that it is as if there were teleology in nature, and as if there were goodness in nature, and as ifthere were such a thing as morality.  But to say it is as if morality existed is, needless to say, not to give a justification of morality.  It is at best a justification for pretending that there is morality.  (And could even the pretense of morality long survive if we all knew it to be mere pretense?  To ask the question is, I think, to answer it.) 

So, even if there is a sense in which atheism is consistent with there being a rational justification of morality, naturalism is not consistent with there being such a justification.  But then, most modern atheists are probably atheists because they are naturalists.  And in that case, their atheism is not consistent with there being a rational justification of morality.  Only a non-naturalistic atheism -- whatever that would look like -- would be consistent with it. 

But even that is true only with qualification.  For I would argue that even intrinsic teleology (and by extension natural goodness and thus morality) is ultimately, when a complete metaphysical analysis of teleology is given, intelligible only in light of classical theism.  The reasons, as I indicated above, are those given in the Fifth Way, properly understood and developed.  (Again, see my book Aquinas and my Nova et Vetera article for the full story.)  There is a parallel here with efficient causality.  You can know that things have causal powers, and what those causal powers are, whether or not you believe in God.  Still, as the Scholastic argues, when a completed metaphysical analysis of causation is carried out, it turns out that a thing could not even for an instant exercise the causal power it has -- the power to actualize potentials -- unless there were a purely actual uncaused cause which continuously imparts to things their causal power.

All that raises lots of questions, of course, but I have already gone a little over the word count.  (Feel free to do the same, Keith!)  Maybe we can return to some of these issues later in this exchange.  (I addressed the relationship between theism and morality in an earlier post a few years ago, and addressed the Euthyphro objection in yet another post.  Interested readers are directed to those posts, but for now I must shut up!)

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God’s wounds

The God of classical theism -- of Athanasius and Augustine, Avicenna and Maimonides, Anselm and Aquinas -- is (among other things) pure actuality, subsistent being itself, absolutely simple, immutable, and eternal.  Critics of classical theism sometimes allege that such a conception of God makes of him something sub-personal and is otherwise incompatible with the Christian conception.  As I have argued many times (e.g. here, here, here, and here) nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, to deny divine simplicity or the other attributes distinctive of the classical theist conception of God is implicitly to make of God a creature rather than the creator.  For it makes of him a mere instance of a kind, even if a unique instance.  It makes of him something which could in principle have had a cause of his own, in which case he cannot be the ultimate explanation of things.  It is, accordingly, implicitly to deny the core of theism itself.  As David Bentley Hart writes in The Experience of God(in a passage I had occasion to quote recently), it amounts to a kind of “mono-poly-theism,” or indeed to atheism.

But it is not only generic theism to which the critics of classical theism fail to do justice.  It is Christiantheism specifically to which they fail to do justice.  One way in which this is the case is (as I have noted before, e.g. here) that it is classical theism rather than its contemporary rival “theistic personalism” that best comports with the doctrine of the Trinity.  But to reject classical theism also implicitly trivializes the Incarnation, and with it Christ’s Passion and Death.

Theistic personalists are, as I have said, explicitly or implicitly committed to regarding God as an instance of a kind.  Their core thesis, to the effect that God is “a person without a body” (Swinburne) or that “there is such a person as God” (Plantinga), seems to give us something like the following picture: There’s the genus person and under it the two species embodied persons and disembodied persons.  Disembodied persons is, in turn, a genus relative to the species disembodied souls, angelic persons, and divine persons.  And it’s in the latter class, it seems, that you’ll find God.  Perhaps he is for the theistic personalist a unique instance of this kind, though how this relates to the doctrine of the Trinity is not clear.  (Is God, for the Christian theistic personalist, three persons in one person?  Presumably not.  What, then?  Are there actually three instances, though only three, of the species divine persons?  No wonder Swinburne’s position on the Trinity seems to amount to a kind of polytheism.  Some thoughts on Plantinga and the Trinity from Dale Tuggy here -- be sure to read the comment by Dale in the combox.) 

For the theistic personalist, then, the biblical assertion that “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” seems to amount to something like “a certain instance of a species within the genus disembodied persons acquired a body.”  Now, when you think about it, that’s essentially the plot of Ghostbusters II.  Not as bad as the critics took it to be, I suppose, but hardly the Greatest Story Ever Told.   And it doesn’t get much better if you add that the “person without a body” in this case “exemplifies” “great-making properties” like omnipotence, omniscience, etc.  What you’ve got then is at most something like a sequel that ups the ante, the Incarnation as a movie pitch:

Fade in: We meet God, a divine person who’s at the top of the game.  Think Olivier in Clash of the Titans, but invisible and with something even cooler than the Kraken: we call it ‘maximal greatness.’  I think we can get Anthony Hopkins, though maybe he’ll worry about typecasting after the Thor movies.  Anyway, God’s an Intelligent Designer too, like Downey, Jr. in Iron Man but with angels.  We’ll show him making bacterial flagella and stuff -- CGI’s pretty good now, so it’ll look realistic.  Now, here’s the twist: He takes on a human body and comes to earth!  It’s The Ten Commandments meets Brother from Another Planet.  We gotta go for 3D on this…

Well, we’ve seen that movie a hundred times.  Horus was incarnate in the Pharaohs, Zeus changed into a swan, the Marvel Comics version of Thor took on the human guise of Donald Blake, and so on.  If God were, as theistic personalism claims, “a person” and “a being” alongside all the other persons and beings that populate the world, then he would differ only in degree from these other gods.  His Incarnation would be more impressive than theirs only in something like the way having the president of the United States show up at your costume party would be more impressive than having a local city alderman show up. 

Now for the classical theist, God is not “a being” -- not because he lacks being but on the contrary because he is Being Itself rather than something which merely “has” or “possesses” being (in “every possible world” or otherwise).  Nor is he “a person” -- not because he is impersonal but on the contrary because he is Intellect Itself rather than something which merely “exemplifies” “properties” like intellect and will.  (As I have put it before, the problem with the sentence “God is a person” is not the word “person” but the word “a.”)  Describing God as “a being” or “a person” trivializes the notion of God, and it thereby trivializes too the notion of God Incarnate. 

For the classical theist, what the doctrine of God Incarnate entails is that that which is subsistent being itself, pure actuality, and absolutely simple or non-composite, that in which all things participate but which itself participates in nothing, that which thereby sustains all things in being -- that that “became flesh and dwelt among us.”  That is a truly astounding claim, so astounding that its critics often accuse it of incoherence.  The accusation is false, but those who make it at least show that they understand just how extremely strange and remarkable the claim is -- and how radically unlikethe “incarnations” of the various pagan deities it is.  You can plausibly assimilate the incarnation of the “God” of theistic personalism to those of Horus, Zeus, et al.  You cannotso assimilate the Incarnation of the God of classical theism.  It is sui generis.

For this reason it is superficial in the extreme to think that the story of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection bears any interesting relationship to the various dying-and-rising deities of pagan mythology.  The story of Christ is as different from theirs as classical theism is from belief in one of the various pagan pantheons.  Hence, to think that calling attention to these myths is an embarrassment to Christianity is as frivolous and point-missing as the “one god further” objection to theism in general is. 

Thus do we see yet again how crucial classical theism is to a sound Christian apologetics.  But its significance is no less crucial for Christian spirituality.  The “God” of theistic personalism was already “one of us” -- an instance of our genus if not of our species -- before he took on flesh.  The God of classical theism most definitely was not.  Indeed, unlike the “God” of theistic personalism, the God of classical theism, the only God worthy of the name, is immeasurably different from any creature -- “Wholly Other,” in the apt phrase popularized by Rudolf Otto.  And yet he became one of us anyway.  It is because of this -- because Christ is so radically unlike us in his divinenature, so “Wholly Other” -- that his having become so much like us in his human nature is so incomparably profound and moving.  We will not understand the Incarnation, and we will not understand the divine lovefor human beings that it evinces, if we conceive of that divine nature in anthropomorphic terms.  Is God’s love for us like the self-sacrificing love of a father for his children or the love between brethren or friends?  Indeed it is -- except insofar as it is incomparably greater, incomparably more self-sacrificial, than those merely human sorts of love.

Nor does even the thought of God’s having become man -- mind-boggling enough as that thought is when properly understood -- entirely capture the depths of that love.  For the second Person of the Trinity did not take on the body of an Adonis, or of an emperor.  He was a carpenter in a backwater province of the empire, having “no form nor comeliness… no beauty that we should desire him,” who suffered and died as other human beings suffer and die.  He not only lived as a man, but lived as most men have to live, with all their weaknesses and defects, albeit without sin.  As Aquinas writes, he did so in part precisely to make it evident that he really was God become man:

It was fitting for the body assumed by the Son of God to be subject to human infirmities and defects…  in order to cause belief in Incarnation.  For since human nature is known to men only as it is subject to these defects, if the Son of God had assumed human nature without these defects, He would not have seemed to be true man, nor to have true, but imaginary, flesh, as the Manicheans held.  And so, as is said, Philippians 2:7: "He… emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man." Hence, Thomas, by the sight of His wounds, was recalled to the faith… (Summa theologiae III.14.1)

In his book Our Idea of God, Thomas Morris notes how, according to some philosophical theists, God is too grand even to know about the humbler parts of reality:

There is one ancient view according to which it would seem beneath the dignity of a perfect being to even bother to attend to certain details in the world.  On this conception, it would be inappropriate for a being of God’s exalted status to acquaint himself intimately with dirt, hair, mud and filth, to cite only a few standard examples…  [T]he fastidious deity of Plato’s Timaeus… must have lesser gods interposed between himself and the squalor of this world as buffers to guard his eminence from any taint of cognitive pollution. (pp. 85-86)

Now classical theism, when worked out consistently, in fact should lead us to reject such a view.  For classical theism entails that nothing -- most certainly including dirt, hair, mud and filth -- could continue in being even for an instant if God were not sustaining it.  He can hardly be said not to know about these things, then.  But the doctrine of the Incarnation goes far beyond that.  It asserts that God not only knows about “dirt, hair, mud and filth,” but out of love for us took on human flesh -- with its hair, and with its susceptibility to getting dirty, muddy, filthy. 

Nor does even that entirely capture the depths of his love.  For Christ did not take on human flesh only to get rid of it as soon as he could; nor did he even restore that flesh to perfect integrity as soon as he could.  He retains the flesh with its wounds perpetually.  As Aquinas writes (quoting Bede), among the reasons for this are:

"that He may convince those redeemed in His blood, how mercifully they have been helped, as He exposes before them the traces of the same death" (Bede, on Luke 24:40). (Summa theologiae III.54.4)

He who is Being Itself, pure actuality, and divine simplicity -- has, now as on the Cross, holes in his hands, holes in his feet, a gash in his side.  With these wounds, Christ says to us: I am one of you, now and always.  They are a valentine to the human race, given to us on Good Friday, on Easter, and forever.

For some other posts related to the Easter Triduum, see:

The meaning of the Passion

The meaning of the Resurrection

Putting the Cross back into Christmas

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