Government and Fallenness

It seems to be a common assumption that government exists because of the fall, not as a symptom of the fall, but as a bandage. The view seems to be that we would have anarchy if the fall had not happened, but because of the fall we need government to restrain us from the more egregious sins.

I disagree. As plausible as it is to suppose that government would be extraneous in a perfect world, this relies on a one-sided view of the role of government. Government exists, not only to secure justice against unrighteous agents, but to impose an order on society which will go beyond not sinning to securing justice which requires logistical support.

Here is one way of putting my claim: systemic injustice can occur without any individual qua citizen sinning. It may instead involve individuals qua government authorities sinning--I am not claiming that systemic injustice could occur in a world which did not fall, but that it could, and likely would, occur in a world which was perfect except for lacking government.

Apart from the fall, it may be that the government would have just been God, and that in heaven we may again find ourselves in a theocracy. My argument does not hinge on this, however, and God may well have seen fit to work through humans granted logistical gifts in an unfallen world just as he has in our fallen world, and this need not involve God's presence being mediated, only his logistical procedures being realized through a human being. Either way, such government would have existed without the fall.

If we recognize that the government has this logistical role, then we must recognize the authority of government to regulate, to tax, to build roads and such. These are all logistical roles. We might argue about the proper shape of regulation, but, granting that we are aided in doing the right thing by having regulations laying down how we are channeling our efforts toward the common good, even a sinless society would benefit from regulations which would ensure harmony between the actions of different individuals and companies.

Consider how important logistical thought is in putting together the simplest event, or in shipping items from place to place. Such logistics do not presuppose a fallen world. My claim is that similar logistical thought would be required in a perfect world, that this logistical thought would need to be performed from a relatively high vantage point on society, and thus that whatever performed this role would be, in function, a government.

Fulfillment

The notion which provides the title for this post finds use in a rather wide spread of "western" thought. Whether or not it finds use outside of thought which the West has drawn from, I cannot say. There are two distinct sources which come into understanding this notion: one is the Aristotelian concept of the fulfillment of a telos, the other is the Biblical concept of fulfillment of a prophetic theme. These are connected concepts, but not identical.

The Aristotelian concept of fulfillment is that of satisfaction. A fulfills something (a telos or desire) B if, and only if, B had specified A, or an item with property P where A has P, as its condition of satisfaction. Thus, a desire for something sweet can be satisfied by chocolate because chocolate is sweet, although a desire for chocolate cannot be satisfied by candy corn. On this notion of fulfillment, something can only be the fulfillment of a desire or something else which has a telos, and can only do so by meeting that telos. A human can only be fulfilled, in this sense, by becoming all that a human is supposed to be, by fulfilling the human telos, by matching the goal specified by one's human nature. One cannot fulfill the telos of a being by altering the underlying nature, for then one is simply altering the being to be a different being. Turning a human into a giraffe does not change the telos of the same being, but eliminates one being and brings another into existence, and this is precisely because the telos changes so fundamentally.

The Biblical concept of fulfillment is similar, but different. It is evident that Biblical fulfillment can apply to things which do not possess inherent teloi, or can apply to things which possess inherent teloi without satisfying their surface level satisfaction conditions. Thus, Jesus can fulfill the law while, on the face of it, breaking the Sabbath. This is because the Biblical concept of fulfillment is a narrative-based concept. To fulfill something in this sense is to bring the story of which it is a part to completion in such a way that the part one is fulfilling is evidenced as important to the plot. This variety of fulfillment not only brings an underlying pervasive telos to satisfaction, but draws together the narrative threads which pointed to it and exhibits them in such a way as to accomplish their sense. The Biblical concept thus adds a narrative component which is lacking in the Aristotelian desire satisfaction account. The Biblical concept does not specify that it is the essence of a thing which specifies the telos to be satisfied, however. This is not to say that the Bible excludes that possibility, it simply does not tend to operate in terms of essences and teloi so much as narratives.

Hegel's reinterpretation of Christianity and drawing of the Creation-Fall-Redemption cycle together with an expressive account of reality brings the Biblical concept into philosophy and begins to unify the Aristotelian and Biblical concepts, but I find the existentialist account of action brings these two concepts together more clearly. Ironically, we can see this most clearly in thinkers like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty whose metaphysics generally seem opposed to Christian metaphysics. Sartre emphasizes that we lay down a past behind us, a sediment as it were, which makes us a certain way which we never at the same time are. One's past defines one, in a way, that is, one's objective being is only how one has been in appearance, yet that appearance cannot limit you. Sartre is opposed to a narrative construal of life, yet emphasizes the way that my past can only be understood in light of the future it gave rise to--if one finds oneself weeping over one's faults, this may be a moment of repentance or of weakness, depending on what one does from there. One's sincerity or insincerity can only be ascertained--only holds, even--in light of how one lives from there.

Merleau-Ponty is more sympathetic to a narrative understanding of life. His thought operates in terms of Gestalts. That is, he thinks in terms of wholes which are composed of parts in dynamic relation to each other. In this way of thinking, the whole can only be understood in terms of its parts and vice-versa. Applied to a life as a whole, then, there is a kind of unity which is to be attained, and that unity is a unity which must be constructed by living in such a way that one's life forms a narrative whole. For Merleau-Ponty as for Sartre this narrative whole does not pre-exist our construction of it, but unlike Sartre, the narrative has validity to it. One's past thus makes a certain demand on one's present and future to be such that the whole life forms a unified whole and not merely a set of moments one outside the other, as Sartre seems to claim all lives essentially are.

This narrative notion of life as being such that it ought to be unified presses us towards a Biblical concept of fulfillment. Yet Merleau-Ponty has not abandoned the Aristotelian concept, either. The essence has been replaced by a dynamic of forces which seek equilibrium and that equilibrium specifies a telos. This is a telos of self-maintenance, but self-maintenance as the kind of being one is, and thus this notion draws in the narrative concept of fulfillment because it endorses Sartre's idea of sedimentation. If we sediment ourselves, then that becomes part of who we are which must be maintained, any break with it must itself have a place in the narrative unity we are making of our lives.

From this vantage point, there is another kind of fulfillment which we can make out in the Bible. I do not think it is ever called fulfillment, but it is, itself, fulfilled in light of this concept of fulfillment I am drawing out here. Take the story of Abraham and Isaac or the story of Job, or really any of the stories which mirror Christ's cycle of life, death, and resurrection. In all of these stories, an inner reality is expressed, sedimented, proved. Abraham's faith is proven to the highest extent, it is given opportunity to express itself and sediment itself as a part of his life. Job's faith, likewise, is expressed in his life in a way it could not have been otherwise. In these stories we find God desiring to make evident what is only visible to himself. Even in Creation we see God wanting to make himself visible to others. Abraham fulfills his faith by offering his son. Job fulfills his faith by holding fast to God in suffering. In this way, we can see these events as generous gifts of God both to those who went through the trials and to us. For them, they are fulfilled by fulfilling who they have become in a hidden manner. For us, we are granted to see what only God could see before.

There is a general principle which I draw from all this: whatever exists is proven to exist in the way it exists. This can be applied as a principle of metaphysics, epistemology, or value-theory. What is good is proven good, what is real is proven real. The notion of proof here is correlative to the notion of fulfillment. I could equally say: whatever exists is fulfilled. This is a very Hegelian claim, but it does not require the rest of Hegel's metaphysics, and fits well with existentialist thought as well as Christian thought about the eschaton, when Christ will be proven Lord of all and all things will be made right.

This does not mean that it is fulfilled in the straightforward Aristotelian manner. It does not mean that everyone will one day have their telos satisfied completely. Rather, there is a narrative dimension which also applies. Those of us who have faith in Christ, who participate in his death and therefore also in his life, will be fulfilled in our narrative and fulfill the narrative which Christ has lived ahead of us. Yet this ending which we look forward to is tied to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and that narrative must be made our own. This is not to say that we must act perfectly like Christ or forego Christ's ending, but it does mean that we must recognize our lives as narratives in his mold. We can only claim our lives as of our own writing in ways which we also live as moments, not of sincerity, but of weakness. Our sins must take a particular role in our narratives, and Christ must take his place as Lord of our lives. The unrighteous, on the other hand, will receive their due punishment in order that their actions may form a narrative which fulfills the nature of injustice. If this attempt at explaining how this principle does not give rise to universalism makes little sense, do not worry. It is a single paragraph tackling a subject on which books are written.

Objections to Heaven: Eternity and Memory

This post is, roughly, a response to an old post by the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel about the choices we would have for our memories if we lived forever. He concludes that post with "Either amnesic infinite repetition or a limitless range of unfathomable alien weirdness. Those appear to be the choices." He puts the argument well, and it is a pretty easy read.

Now, heaven puts us in this exact situation: we expect to live forever, and we expect to remember it all. This premise excludes "amnesiac infinite repetition," leaving "a limitless range of unfathomable alien weirdness."

Amnesiac infinite repetition (henceforth: AIR) results from the universe having a finite number o possible states. Finite number of possible states results from having a finite amount of stuff, which can thus be arranged in a finite number of ways. Limitless range of unfathomable alien weirdness (LRUAW) results from denying AIR: if there is not a finite amount of stuff, then there is an infinite amount of stuff, thus put together in an infinite number of ways, and those ways must gradually diverge from normal.

It might seem that we can dodge LRUAW by supposing we merely increase the number of atoms of recognized kinds. This keeps the universe from repeating, but it does not help our experiences from repeating. Assuming the range of our senses stays the same, the area in which the non-repetition of states matters is an area centered on us with a range equal to that of our longest range sense. It also requires the potential states of our brains to not repeat, and thus our brains will have to grow to immense sizes over time.

A Christian might accept LRUAW, noting that we will be ever increasing in our knowledge of God, who is infinite and thus inexhaustible. The alien weirdness will be, at least in part, God's. So alien weirdness is not, per se, a problem. It is actually part of what Christians claim heaven will involve.

But we still have to deal with the expanding brain problem. The obvious solution would be to hold that our memories will not rely on neural connections but on our souls. This is logically possible, but falls afoul of views I hold about how we should extrapolate from our current situation to heaven. That is, in heaven, we will have resurrected human bodies, and these bodies will work as our current ones were meant to work, albeit perhaps ratcheted up a bit. That is, our resurrected bodies will operate on the same principles as our current ones, but in sanctified and perfected form. Currently, memories require neural connections, thus our memories in heaven will require neural connections.

The number of neural connections needed will approach infinity very slowly over time. It does not matter how slowly they increase, however, since we will have forever. The only way I can see to solve this problem is to conjecture that we will offload memories from our brains onto something external to ourselves. So, here are two offloading proposals.

First, it may be that we can store ever-expanding brains off-site. Perhaps our entire brains or only part of them. There need be no problems with resurrection brains taking over, since God can create extra space for the brains. The offsite brains might be able to communicate with our onsite bodies via whatever science fiction mechanism or divine assistance one likes. A variation on this would use a silicone mainframe to replace our offsite brains.

Second, we might simply purge some of our memories every now and then. Since God has them at his disposal, being omniscient, we can re-access them from him whenever we and he pleases. Perhaps we might even be able to share processing power with God or each other, allowing us to hold more in our own working memory than before (as many of us hope).

Both of these solutions are a little weird. Either one, however, solves the problem of ever-expanding brains for ever-expanding memories. There may be other solutions, but I am at least satisfied that I have provided a defense against the objection.

Objections to Heaven: Ends and Interest

In heaven, we will be completely satisfied. We will experience no lack. And this state of joy will continue forever. To many, this sounds incredibly good. Others, however, object either that it would not be good or that it is impossible. In this and the next post, I want to present and address two of these sorts of objections. The first objects to the goodness or possibility of experiencing the absence of lack. The second objects to the goodness of eternal life. Both claim that the posited good would be boring.

We must understand the objection before we can answer it. So, what could be wrong with eternal bliss? The argument begins from the general claim that our lives are structured by ends. Everything we do, we do for the sake of fulfilling some end. Heaven, as a place of total satisfaction, would be a place where there were no unfulfilled ends. Thus, there would be nothing structuring our lives, nothing to motivate us to do anything. To act in such an environment, it seems, would be senseless. Because we would, by hypothesis, have no unsatisfied ends, there would be no purpose to any action, no end which we could achieve by so acting.

Some existentialists argue that it is in virtue of ends that anything in the world even shows up for us. This can be understood intuitively by considering skilled perception. There are some things--graphs, computer code, car engines, etc.--which appear as a mere jumble to the unskilled observer, but to someone who can do something with the thing, it appears as meaningfully structured. The existentialist claim would be the more general claim that this is how perception in general works: that everything we see, we see in virtue of how it may be used or how it resists use. So the existentialist version of the argument we are considering would claim that, not only would a state of total satisfaction be dull, it would also be impossible to experience.

I think this is a decent argument. I think we can respond well to it, but it takes some thought about how actions are structured by ends. Particularly in contemporary culture, where the means-end relation is understood primarily as an external relationship, that is, where the ends are understood to require the means only contingently and the means are understood to be means to their ends only contingently, this kind of objection to heaven is likely to be intuitively compelling to many. Likewise, as our culture understands good stories to necessarily involve overcoming one's own failures and defeating evil, the absence of failure and evil strikes many as dull.

How do we respond? Let us begin with the structure of means to end which the argument assumes. The argument we are defending against supposes that means need ends in order to get going. So far, I have no objection. The problem arises when we suppose that the end which is being fulfilled must be one which is taken as unsatisfied. I mentioned in the previous paragraph that, as a culture, our instinct is to regard ends as external to means. There are also ends which are internal to their means. Let me explain these more thoroughly.

Some activities we do are related to their ends in a contingent manner: I go to the grocery store to get food, but my aim is just the food. If there were an easier way to get food, given all my aims, I would have no problem getting my food some other way. On the other hand, there are other activities which we do for their own sake. When I play chess, I may play for the sake of having fun--an external end--but I may play for the sake of playing chess. If I am playing chess because I want to play chess, because I enjoy the game of chess, then the only way to satisfy my end is to play chess. I cannot get around the means to get to the end. I can make different moves, but I cannot play a different game and satisfy the same end. This latter variety of activity is called "autotelic" that is, having its end (telos) in itself (auto).

There are two kinds of autotelic activity: infinite and finite. A finite autotelic activity is like chess: the activity has an end point. The end point of an autotelic activity is internal to the activity: checkmate in chess, for instance. An infinite autotelic activity is one which does not have an end point. An unending dance or song, for instance, might be performed for its own sake, in which case the reason for stopping would have to come from outside the activity.

My response to the argument that eternal satisfaction is incompatible with activity and thus dull is, then, to say that, in heaven, there is an end which is eternally satisfied and yet eternally motivates us to do good as infinite autotelic activity. This end is to glorify God, to image him, and to do his will. We will be eternally satisfied because we will be doing this in every moment, and thus there will be no lack in the satisfaction of this end, and yet it is an end which requires activity of us if it is to be satisfied. It is simply that we will never fail to perform the means which are required by the end.