Silk Road Seminar - Bishop Maximus

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1:11So my friend Bishop Maximus, it is so good to have you here in Rome as part of the Philosophical Silk Road. As you know, you very much provoked this project in a deep way. we were at Aetna together and you took me aside and in a very friendly way but firm you said John I don't think you should talk anymore about the religion that's not a religion but this this thing about the philosophical Silk Road I think that's really good I think that's really good and I've come to be very critical of my previous proposal of the religion that's not a religion because it's very much the Enlightenment engineering attitude towards the sacred which I think is a fundamental performative contradiction.

1:55Your relationship to it is directly counter to what you claim it to be. And then that really gave birth to the Philosophical Silk Road. So I always wanted you invited. Then we were talking and you proposed, because you were going to go to Alexandria and do a colloquium on Clement, and you said, John, Clement of Alexandria should be in the Philosophical Silk Road. He's the first person to really bring Christianity and Greek philosophy together. And we were planning on going to Alexandra. But it became apparent that that would not be safe. And so we diverted to Rome. The Egyptian government would not allow us to film.

2:39Yeah, yes. So, first of all, I want to express gratitude for your presence, for your inspiration for this project, for your support of it, for your flexibility and all very much appreciated. I've been looking forward to this for quite a bit. And you've asked to basically be given an opportunity to prepare a talk. You were actually thinking of presenting at the colloquium and I thought as a way of introducing Clement and getting us into perhaps a little bit more like the epistemological and philosophical aspects of his work and how that might be relevant to the philosophical circle. So first of all, thank you and welcome.

3:19Well, thank you very much, John. And it is both an honor and an extraordinary pleasure to be here, both together with you and here in the city of Rome, which was the capital of the world for so many years. Yeah. And which is a place in which there is so much history, both philosophical and particularly theological. The talk that I've prepared of Clement of Alexandria is for a colloquium that we are holding at St. Fotios Orthodox Theological Seminary. But I wanted to do it together with you because it fits into the theme of the philosophical Silk Road and particularly the question of the relationship between ancient Greek philosophy and Christian theology.

4:11Yes. And Clement of Alexandria was really the first Christian thinker to start the synthesis of ancient Greek philosophy and Christian theology. And so he's a really good starting point from my point of view. And he's also one of the church fathers, if we can call him that. His status is a little debated. but he's one of the one of the church fathers or church thinkers who deals in a very explicit way with the question of epistemology in ways that are relevant to our modern epistemological epistemological concerns so I'm going to read this prepared talk that I have which deals with epistemology understood in the context of faith or or as faith and I think that this will allow us to to springboard into broader discussions of the relationship between philosophy and theology mm-hmm great so yeah we talked about this and you said you would like to do it conference style so we I will wait till you are finished to ask you questions but I do not trust my working memory to hold all the questions I might that might come to mind so I'll I'm not being rude I am going to be just noting down some ideas or points of discussion when you're done please do and I apologize if this may be a little long that's all right I look forward to it all right so Clement of Alexandria faith and knowledge part one faith as presupposition so the question of epistemology, in other words what we can know, how we can know it, and how we can know that we can know it, or what we can know, has been at the center of modern philosophy since Descartes at least, and most modern philosophers have been rather skeptical about human knowledge.

6:15Ancient philosophy however tended to be more confident that we can have true knowledge and that we can use it towards constructive or even transcendent ends. And Christian thinkers in antiquity mostly took for granted this confidence, this epistemological confidence, which is also in accordance with Christian doctrine, which is the reason why they wrote very little about these foundational epistemological ideas. However, these questions are at the forefront of modern concerns. and modern philosophers have made Christian faith and the notion of the supernatural in general one of the targets of their skepticism and really Christianity has been slow to address to address these questions adequately and I think that part of the reason for this is that they were not discussed in in length or at length during the formative periods of Christian doctrine in antiquity.

7:20But there is one ancient Christian writer who does lay out a coherent theory of epistemology and it's one that anticipates and even refutes many of the modern arguments for the various forms of skepticism. And that author is Clement of Alexandria. Clement was the the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria at the end of the second century, the beginning of the third century. And he's one of the church fathers or church writers who's most responsible for initiating this transfiguration of ancient Greek philosophy into a vehicle that's adequate or apt for the expression of Christian doctrine, Christian theology.

8:02The core of Clement's argument for Christian epistemology is that all knowledge is based on faith, and that this faith is ultimately the same faith as that faith by which we believe in God, by which we believe in Jesus Christ. Clement begins his argument by noting that all of our thinking and our reasoning and our science is based on presuppositions, which themselves are indemonstrable. So he says, Either all things require a demonstration, or some of them are self-evident. But if the first, by demanding the demonstration of the demonstration, we shall go on ad infinitum. And so demonstration is subverted.

8:52But if the second, those things which are self-evident, will become the starting points of demonstration. In point of fact, the philosophers, in other words, the Greek philosophers, admit that the first principles of all things are indemonstrable. So that if there is demonstration at all, there is an absolute necessity that there be something self-evident, which is called primary and indemonstrable. Consequently, all demonstration is traced up to indemonstrable faith. now that our fun the idea that our fundamental axioms are indemonstrable was developed by aristotle and it's one of the main theories of epistemology it's the school called foundationalism in epistemology but clemen puts it in an entirely new context by showing that our assent to our presuppositions is actually a form of faith.

9:52Modern skepticism finds one of its most paradigmatic expressions in the works of David Hume. And in order to show how Clement's epistemology can be used in addressing modern issues, modern concerns, we will present Clement's arguments in the context of Hume's famous problem of induction.

10:16so this is a kind of a case study that we'll do and in this problem Hume shows that the validity of induction cannot be rationally demonstrated for any attempt to prove it assumes the conclusion and it's thus circular since nearly all thinking is based on induction this problem calls into question the legitimacy of any sort of rational explanation of anything. And many prominent thinkers have attempted to solve the problem with much creativity and scant success, maybe because they were unaware of Clement. So let us accept, for the sake of brevity and in the company of most philosophers, that Hume's problem of induction is intractable on its own terms.

11:05So the question we are faced with then is, given that it is rationally indemonstrable, how do we justify our acting as if induction is true, which we do at every moment of our lives? A common sense response to the problem of induction and in general to indemonstrable first principles is that we cannot live or think or function in any way if we do not assume their truth, which is fair enough.

11:39But that's a kind of a negative argument. And it doesn't answer the question of what is the formal mechanism by which we accept them. Can there be a positive justification? And what are the consequences of that justification, whatever it might be, on the rest of our thinking about the world? This is relevant because the reasons for which we accept foundational principles will surely affect the way that we think about reality in general and our place in it. Because if such reasoning can be accepted with regard to the most fundamental issues, it's no stretch to suppose that it might be applied more broadly to issues that are sequent to those.

12:27In any event, Hume proposes a skeptical and what we can call a practical approach to philosophical reasoning. And he answers that we act as if induction and causality and the rest are true due to custom or habit. And so he explains here, this is a quote from Hume, when we are inclined to behave or to think in some way, not because it can be justified by reasoning or some process of the understanding but because we have behaved or thought like that so often in the past, we always say that this inclination is the effect of custom. And using that word, we don't claim to give the basic reason for the inclination.

13:10All we are doing is to point out a fundamental feature of human nature, which everyone agrees is there and which is well known by its effects. Perhaps that is as far as we can go. Perhaps, that is, we can't discover the cause of this cause and must rest content with it as the deepest we can go in explaining our conclusions from experience. Our ability to go that far should satisfy us. If our faculties won't take us any further, we ought not complain about this." That's Hume's view. Now, the state that we act upon induction based on customer habit does nothing to explain why we do so. It's no more than a trivial declaration of the necessary conditions for our actions.

14:02And human skepticism here is really less of a humble confession of human limitations than, in my view, an ennoble retreat from the philosopher's duty to investigate and understand. Now, while Clement cannot demonstrate induction or first principles any more than Hume, because it's impossible, as Hume demonstrated well, he does provide a more detailed justification. And what's more important, he can show the coherence of our justification vis -à-vis the rest of our experience with reality. So, the classical Aristotelian believes that the intellect possesses an innate power to recognize natures which act in predictable ways.

14:50And this may be true, but it does not address Hume's contention, which is not that induction doesn't work in practice, but that it cannot be demonstrated logically. appealing to the power of the intellect to recognize natures and principles merely pushes the argument back a step to those principles and to the nature of the intellect exactly and Hume differs from Aristotle here not in acknowledging that first principles are indemonstrable nor that they are recognized from experience but in why experience should serve as an explanation for belief. Hume claims that it's simply so, just is, and we cannot know more about the matter, we cannot draw conclusions from it, we should just live life based on custom.

15:38But Clement of Alexandria, along with other fathers of the church, offers us a deeper explanation. He acknowledges with Aristotle that the intellect is something like a divine faculty or it's capable of divine illumination, however that may be interpreted, that it possesses the ability to recognize natures which are external to it and thus bridge the gap between experience and reason. But he explains in greater detail the activity of the intellect, or rather, by what kind of act the intellect justifies its apprehension of indemonstrable principles. That act is precisely the act of faith. So Clement explains the process as follows.

16:26Faith, he says, is a preconception of the mind. And preconception is a grasping at something evident and at the clear understanding of a thing. And without preconception, no one can either inquire or doubt or judge or even argue. How can one, without a preconceived idea of what he is aiming after, learn about that which is the subject of his investigation? And he who has learned has already turned his preconception into comprehension. And if he who learns, learns not without a preconceived idea, in other words, with a preconceived idea, which takes in what is expressed, that man has ears to hear the truth.

17:08And happy is the man that speaks to the ears of those who hear, as happy, certainly also, is he who is a child of obedience. Now to hear is to understand. If then, faith is nothing else than a preconception of the mind in regard to what is the subject of discourse, and obedience is so-called an understanding and persuasion, no one shall learn anything without faith, since no one learns anything without preconception. Consequently, there is a more ample demonstration of the complete truth of the words that are spoken by the prophet. Unless you believe, neither will you understand. From Holy Scripture.

17:48So Clement continues. Now he's starting to prepare the way for the religious connection. Hope, too, is based on faith. Accordingly, faith is the ascent of the soul to any of those things that do not affect the senses through not being present. Hope is the expectation of the possession of good. Necessarily then, expectation is founded on faith. He who is faithful keeps inviolably what is entrusted to him. And we are entrusted with the utterances respecting God and the divine words, the commands along with the execution of the injunctions. This is the faithful servant who is praised by the Lord.

18:29And when it is said God is faithful, it is intimated that he is worthy to be believed when declaring anything. Now his word declares, and God himself is faithful. How then, if to believe is to suppose, do the philosophers think that what proceeds from themselves is sure? For voluntary assent to a preceding demonstration is not a supposition but is assent to something sure. And who is more powerful than God? or we may say who is more sure than god in other words god being the the most sure thing by by definition uh if he is understood as the basis of all of our ascent and preconceptions establishes our um our seek subsequent chain of thinking upon the most solid foundation conceivable This isn't the ontological argument, because it's not understood as necessary, but it's understood here as something positive.

19:41Unbelief is the feeble negative supposition of one opposed to him, as incredulity is a condition which admits faith with difficulty. Faith is the voluntary supposition and anticipation of pre-comprehension. Expectation is an opinion about the future and expectation about other things is opinion about uncertainty. In other words, about uncertain things. Confidence is a strong judgment about a thing. Therefore, we believe him in whom we have confidence unto divine glory and salvation. and we confide in him who is God alone, whom we know that these things nobly promised to us and for this end benevolently created and bestowed by him on us will not fail.

20:30So part two, faith as intentionality and moral judgment. How does this faith, which is clearly religious in context, differ from mere belief? and what more and on what grounds is Clement claiming than Hume's claim that we believe in the validity of induction based on habit. Hume naively assumes that humans will automatically believe what nature habitually presents to them. His definition of belief is minimalistic. Belief, Hume says, is nothing more but a vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object than any that the unaided imagination could ever attain. He makes no mention of the ascent of the mind, nor of any action at all on the part of the one who believes.

21:29For Hume, belief simply happens to a person as a result of external factors. Hume therefore proposes that we have no reason whatsoever to believe that induction or causality is true, but that repeated experience produces irrespective of our will, a firm conception that it is so." This rather spare and depressing picture was in fact shared by certain heretics in antiquity. As Clement notes, he says,

22:20without demonstration while the followers of Valentinus that was another Gnostic group these are ancient heretics assign faith to us the simple us being the Christian church but we'll have it that knowledge springs up of their own selves who are saved by nature from the advantage of a germ of superior excellence this is the elitist part of Gnosticism saying that it is as far removed from faith as the spiritual is from the animal. So the Gnostics placed knowledge over faith and they said faith is for simple ignorant people and we, the intelligent better people, have knowledge. Further, the followers of Basilides say that faith as well as choice is proper according to every interval and that in consequence of the supramundane selection of themselves, the elect, mundane faith accompanies all nature and that the free gift of faith is conformable to the hope of each.

23:29Faith, then, is no longer the direct result of free choice if it is a natural advantage. So, in other words, if we automatically believe simply by the circumstances, then there's no choice involved. Now, Clement's notion of faith stands in sharp contrast to this deterministic version of mental conception. His understanding of faith is rooted principally in free will and moral striving. We must believe that first principles are true in order to think. And this belief involves not merely the passive reception of nature and the conditions that are presented to us, but also our active assent, especially if we should choose to examine the matter.

24:20Wherever there is assent, there is choice and there is a will to make that choice. And where there is choice and a will, there is a value judgment. And where there is a value judgment, there is a moral question. So from the beginning, our relationship to logic and reason must involve at least a moral sensibility. faith is also a more robust notion than mere belief belief is classically defined as ascent to a proposition but faith may be more amply conceived of as belief which is active in life and which makes present to us it makes real to us greater realities than those immediately perceived by the senses and clement explains here faith which the greeks disparage in other words the Greek philosophers, deeming it futile and barbarous, is a voluntary preconception.

25:18We should note that this is very similar to modern-day philosophers who look down on faith as mere belief in some ridiculous fairy tale for the common people. Faith is a voluntary preconception, the ascent of piety, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen according to the divine apostle. That's St. Paul in the epistle to the Hebrews. For hereby preeminently the elders obtained the good report, but without faith it is impossible to please God. Others have defined faith to be a uniting ascent to an unseen object, as certainly the proof of an unknown thing is evident ascent.

26:05If then it be choice, being desirous of something, the desire is in this instance intellectual. And since choice is the beginning of action, faith is discovered to be the beginning of action, being the foundation of rational choice in the case of anyone who exhibits to himself the previous demonstration through faith. and voluntarily to follow what is useful is the first principle of understanding. This is, we might think of this as the proper use of pragmatism. Voluntarily to follow what is useful is the first principle of understanding. Unswerving choice then gives considerable momentum in the direction of knowledge.

26:54The exercise of faith directly becomes knowledge reposing on a sure foundation. And then Clement continues expanding on the voluntary and the moral aspects of faith and explicitly contradicting Hume. He says not only the Platonists but the Stoics also say that assent is in our own power. All opinion and judgment and supposition and knowledge by which we live in a perpetual intercourse with the human race is an assent, which is nothing else than faith. And unbelief, being defection from faith, shows both assent and faith to be possessed of power. If you consider the truth, you will find that a man can be naturally misled so as to give assent to what is false, even though he possesses the recourses necessary to believe in the truth.

27:45Now, if faith follows necessarily upon circumstances, in other words, it's deterministic, the person, he who has not believed, not being the author of his unbelief, will not meet with a due recompense. Because he that has believed is not the cause of his belief. And so the entire peculiarity and difference of belief and unbelief will not fall either under praise or censure, if we reflect rightly, since they're attached with the antecedent natural necessity. Proceeding from the Almighty, here in the case of those who make this a divine predestination. And if we are pulled like inanimate things by the puppet strings of natural powers, willingness and unwillingness and impulse, which is the antecedent of both, are mere redundancies.

28:38For my part, I am utterly incapable of conceiving such an animal as has his subpetencies, desires, which are moved by external causes under the dominion of necessity. What place is there any longer for repentance of him who is once an unbeliever, through which comes forgiveness of sins, so that neither is baptism rational, nor the blessed seal, the chrismation, nor the Son, nor the Father? But God, as I think, turns out to be the distribution to men of natural powers, which does not have voluntary faith as the foundation of salvation. So this view, this deterministic view essentially makes God part of the world and simply the nature of necessity of the functioning of the world.

29:32Accordingly, faith may not, with any more with reason, be disparaged in an offhand way as simple and vulgar belonging to anyone. For if it were a mere human habit, as the Greeks suppose, it would have been extinguished. But if it grows and there is no place where it is not, then I affirm that faith, whether founded in love or in fear, as its disparagers assert, This is the common attack on religion that we scare people into believing. It's something divine, which is neither rent asunder by any mundane friendship, nor dissolved by the presence of fear. For love, on account of its friendly alliance with faith, makes men believers.

30:17And faith, which is the foundation of love, in its turn introduces the doing of good. Therefore, volition takes the precedence of all, for the intellectual powers are ministers of the will. Will, it is said, and you shall be able. And the Christian who has true knowledge, the real Gnostic, for him will and judgment and exertion are identical. For if the determinations are the same, the opinions and judgments will be the same too, so that both his words and life and conduct are conformable to rule. And the right heart seeks knowledge and hears it. God taught me wisdom, and I knew the knowledge of the holy.

31:02Again, quoting Holy Scripture. Faith, as described in the scriptural and the patristic testimony, which is outlined here by Clement, is therefore a moral choice to accept as true that which cannot be rationally demonstrated. but which, when believed and acted upon, makes possible the full experience of reality. Faith thus understood is an immeasurably superior justification for acting as if induction is true than mere custom habit or repeated experience. We must act as if induction is true in order to have any rational thought. But if we conceive of this as faith, and it is no mere bowing to the inevitable, but it is a profound, meaningful, and coherent connection to every level of reality.

31:59Clement, in fact, affirms that this faith elevates the soul of the person who pursues it. He says that faith, therefore, and the knowledge of the truth render the soul, which makes them its choice, always uniform and equitable. For congenial to the man of falsehood is shifting and change and turning away. But to the true Christian of knowledge are calmness, rest and peace. Part three, faith as transcendence and revelation. show. Clement does not envision faith merely as an escape route for epistemological justification. I like that. He views it as a transformative act that progressively reveals ever higher levels of reality.

32:50He says that there are body and soul, the five senses, speech, the power of reproduction, there's the intellectual or the spiritual faculty, whatever you choose to call it, the nous, and we must, in a word, ascending above all the others up at the mind. As the mind ascends from material realities to abstract realities, it senses that there are yet others that lie beyond, and which are connected to the fact that we cannot understand the ultimate principles of reality through a reason or demonstration. The very fact that we must have faith and that faith is an uplifting and a manifesting power of something beyond reason leads us into those aspects of reality that lie beyond the powers of sense perception and rational demonstration.