PNJ
Thank you for the correction about the Brazos commentaries, I actually found the information myself from the dust cover of Hauerwas’ commentary after I posted.
Also thanks for the quote from Williams, I am sure he is right, there is a recognition that the gospel does describe us and the world but which also makes us see anew.

While reading about antidogmatism I found that the term was used by John Henry Newman and was one of his main gripes with the Anglican Church. Now there is another tale!

George.
Great article on exegesis by the then Ratzinger. I am increasingly impressed by him.

Waterboy
I have enjoyed your conversation with George: the most intelligent discussion on these pages for some time. However, I do have a problem with your relativism. I know it sounds broad minded and inclusive but the fact that other people think differently has little to do with the truth. We cannot constrain our search for truth and beauty because others have trodden a different path.

Bushbasher
You have mistaken the meaning of dogmatic with the popular pejorative. Theology, or any other system of thought, could not exist without its core understandings. These do not need to produce judgment of others, indeed, one of the central doctrines of Christianity is that God loved the ungodly, the unworthy, the ungrateful and the sinner

Well spotted on the Marxist dialectic, George, where "..the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." (Marx) This is quite the antithesis to religious belief and accounts only for what can be empirically derived. And quite so, strictly speaking, there isn't a "logic of Science" but it is rather, along with mathematics, the cement holding the structure of science together.

One could perhaps say, scientists do not arrive at models and theories by application of logic but rather through 'induction' - whereas mathematics is a process of deductive logic. Karl Popper's rejection of classical empiricism, however, had him maintain that as scientific theories are abstract in nature they can only be tested indirectly by reference to their implications. The pragmatic approach of the 'scientific method' therefore will not ultimately resolve or reveal all 'matters'. As Stephen Hawking explains, "No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory."

Dialectical reasoning has the purpose of resolving a contradiction - perhaps a true measure of scholasticism, as the early Latin's intended. This where the ancient classical philosophers and medieval Christian theology met, no doubt, in the early formation of Christian dogma. From what can be inferred from Popper, this dogma will necessarily remain beyond the realm of science, as science can have no allusion to absolutes.

The bottom line is that logic alone can tell us nothing new about the real world. Ditto for mathematics, as Albert Einstein observed: "Insofar as mathematics is exact, it does not apply to reality; and insofar as mathematics applies to reality, it is not exact."

Sellick beings: "Anti-dogmatism is that movement in the Protestant churches that would dismiss the authority of dogmatic theology inherited from the past."

if it looks like a dogmatic duck and quacks like a dogmatic duck ...

george, your a good guy, a good-humored guy and a smart guy. but a metaphor is not an argument, and a poorly thought out metaphor is not even a poor argument.

relda,
I think you are right in principle: for a (pure) mathematician deduction is more important, for a working scientist induction is; nevertheless a mathematician needs induction (observation or just intuition) from time to time to “get new ideas”, and the scientist has to sit down and think about what follows from the theory his observations have suggested. The same about Popper’s criterion of falsifiability: it is a classic but there are instances when it could be misleading. Recent physical theories, candidates claiming to bridge over the disagreements between relativity theory and QM, (strings, M-theory, quantum loop theory), make, I think, the relation between physics, epistemology and (pure) mathematics more complicated than it was in Popper’s time. Nevertheless, I agree that Popper will remain philosophy of science’s Newton.

I an afraid I cannot agree that mathematics tells us “nothing“ about the real world. Had Einstein meant that with his famous maxim that you quote, he would not have devoted his life to a physical theory that was going against common sense observations, and was comprehensible only through rather abstract mathematics. However, it is true that mathematics cannot model, and explain, all manifestations of the material world, and in this sense its applications cannot be exact, i.e. irrefutable. The same as theology and “intellectual consent“ does not tell us “nothing“ about religion and religious experience, it only is not sufficient to account for all aspects of religion, for the whole variety of religious experience.

bushabasher, I agree, except that I never wanted to argue with you. Our differences concerned style, not rational disagreements that could be settled by an argument.

George,
I would agree, our principles are aligned. My issue, however, is more a focus on the ambiguity of mathematics when providing models for reality. As there are mathematical truths which correspond to reality, conversely, there are some which do not. As Richard Feyman said, "Some things that satisfy the rules of algebra can be interesting to mathematicians even though they don't always represent a real situation."

It is quite possible to have a true mathematical relationship, that suggests a particular physical model, and yet the theory may be completely wrong. Theology, incidentally, quite easily falls into this category through creating and studying models of God. As previously said, neither logic or mathematics alone can give us a 'new reality' - they are merely the objects of reality.

Mathematics, as with theology, is a product of human thought and both attempt a portrayal of reality. Aquinas modeled the Trinity on the properties of relationship, knowledge and desire, also derived from Aristotle. Models as such are also inherently symbolic - albeit in their misunderstanding will inevitably lack coherence. Some older and more traditional models may in fact prove inadequate, but perhaps another subject.

Of recent time the modeling, as provided by Quantum mechanics and relativity, describe the basic network structure of the universe, and can be applied at any level of complexity. It would seem, there are more possibilities in most situations than can be expressed in physical messages, giving rise to the evolutionary process of natural selection. Einstein felt the incompleteness of quantum mechanics to be a defect, it is seen here as a clear manifestation of the openness of the universe. It also suggests that no local manifestation of god is capable of intelligent design that is a deterministic progression into the future along a preordained path. As you suggest, there are permutations of a "whole variety of religious experience" quite legitimately out there.

Sells

Relativism is a problem to seekers of certainty but not necessarily to seekers of truth.