Suffering in Crime and Punishment

In the novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky a common point of unification for the particular characters in the story is the suffering that is present in the natural human condition. While focusing specifically on Rodion Raskolnikov, Dostoyevsky does a genius job of illuminating the ways in which characters enveloped in different ideologies – whether consciously or unconsciously – deal with this universal fact of living. I want to look at the ways in which a few specific characters suffer and how they deal with it.

Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov is the daughter of a drunkard public official named. Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov and stepdaughter of Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov. Due to her father’s alcoholism, Sofya felt that her only option to support her family (including three step siblings) was to become a prostitute. Being a devout Christian, the burden of guilt that accompanies her occupation is immense, but it is ultimately by her faith in Christ that she is able to transcend her suffering. Sofya has a firm belief that any sin can be forgiven, which is perhaps best displayed when she finds out that Rodion has murdered an old pawnbroker but is convinced that he can still find atonement for such an evil deed. What is important to note is that Sofya suffers only because is it necessary to do so as she feels a duty to help those in her family, by whatever means. Sofya suffers due to an incomprehensible love toward those around her. This is what causes her to suffer while she is able to overcome it by knowing her sins will be atoned by Christ.

Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, as mentioned above, is the father of Sofya. His main source of suffering is knowing that his drinking is bringing about the demise of both him and his family. When the Rodion first meets him in a bar, Semyon believes that at judgment day God will accept him just because of how pitiful he is. In contrast to Sofya, whose suffering was necessary to help her family, Semyon’s suffering is done by his own hands and for himself. He would take Sofya’s little money she acquired through prostitution that would have been used to pay for his wife and kids but then squanders it by buying alcohol. He suffers for himself and by himself. It is through drink (which brings about more pain) and the belief that he will ultimately have reconciliation with God that allows Semyon to move through life. This may not have been enough because Dostoyevsky is uncertain as to whether Semyon killed himself in the end or not.

Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin wants to marry Rodion’s sister Dunya and seems to be willing to go at any length to do so. He seems to have an insatiable desire to have a wife that will truly submit to him. Luzhin is interested in Dunya because she is extremely attractive and poor. The reason being a poor woman is important to Luzhin is because he wants a woman that would  be indebted to him financially so that she would never cease to do his bidding. Luzhin ends up suffering when he realizes that Dunya sees through this (with the help of himself and Rodion) and his engagement with her ends. His pain is due to the fact that he needs to have power, in this case in the context of a marriage. When Luzhin realizes that not all want to submit to him in his life that he suffers. Like Semyon, his suffering comes about by his own hands.

What appears here even while only looking at three characters is the fact that the types of suffering can be split into two groups: those who suffer for themselves and those who suffer for others. It seems that Dostoyevsky is showing that while suffering cannot be avoided, it is the manner in which one suffers that is important. One should always strive to suffer for others, which is ultimately what Rodion seems to realize at the end of the novel (this is oversimplifying things for sure but this is one piece of his final “redemption.”)

#1 The Death of Society

Man wakes. He sees himself wedged into a realm of objects. While he sees that basic components of himself are constituted by the material, he views himself as distinguished from nature and the other beasts.

At first man realized he was in a world of chaos where everything was dangerous. He found himself to be frail, a grain of wheat subject to the winds of nature. Man begins to reverse these tides as he builds tools and harnesses the natural resources and elements around him in a fashion after his will. This evolves into science where man categorizes and seizes control over all that is foreign he comes into contact with. This project’s success moves him away from him viewing himself in a feeble condition to one of a ruler. It seems to him that he is autonomous; the whole sphere of nature is inert and subject to man’s influence.

While nature has revealed itself as transparent, seemingly fully knowable, other men are not. Man finds himself naturally gravitating toward another creating groups. Without exception in time, certain men find themselves on top as others are put into subjection due to their strength. This structure becomes more complex during man’s progression creating society. As man becomes more clever he learns language. Only more tools are now available to bring the other into one’s mastery. Those at the bottom resent those at the top and create ideas such as religion and morality when discovering that language is their greatest instrument of control. Through religion and morality the social positions invert, serving as a stable foundation for a new type of human organization.

But the problem is that as science develops man begins to analyze his own social structures. He sees that religion (and inevitably the morality that is an appendage of it), cannot stand under the scrutiny of science. As man waves the banner of science he crumbles the foundation upon which the order of society stands, not realizing what he has destroyed. Man then holds onto unstable ideologies which cannot contain the floodgates of his nature.

 

 

 

Van Til, Reformed Epistemology-Chapter 2

Source of Van Til’s Work

https://presupp101.wordpress.com/downloads/

History of Epistemology in General

Now that he has shown that establishing an adequate epistemological model is of paramount importance, Van Til now wants to take a look at how humans throughout history have attempted to find certainty.

He begins by viewing pre-Socratic thought, which simply assumed the validity of their knowledge. In this period there were views of philosophers such as Heraclitus who assumed that all was in flux as opposed to Parmenides who said that nature was unchangeable. The great number of contradicting views of reality during this time period led to doubt, causing the Sophists to call attention to the theory of knowledge.

Afterward came Plato whose metaphysics revolved around his theory of forms which were perfect, eternal, and unchanging. He said that the only certainty we can have is of these forms, but not any material object. Any intellectual relationship we have of the material world is simply a belief or opinion. Unlike Plato, Aristotle held that we need to look for the universal in specific things or, in other words, their essence. While Plato held that the forms exist outside of objects, Aristotle’s epistemology focused on particular objects and worked its way to a knowledge of essence. The way in which he does this is through his theory of four causes which allows us to come to an object’s telos. However, Aristotle held to a God who was the prime mover, but besides that, had no relation to the world. This led the Neo-Platonists to create “mediators” which would allow us to approach an unapproachable God.

The Middle Academy held the view that nature is simply unknowable. Augustine wrote against these thinkers, not only claiming that we can have probably knowledge, but certain knowledge.

The early modern period is where serious epistemology began. Here we see Locke create a system where our knowledge is based off of our immediate impressions. Hume took this idea and showed that this empiricism inevitably leads to skepticism, because the ideas we form from the impressions are imperfect copies, making our analytic judgments of those ideas also imperfect. Rationalism made the opposite mistake by stating knowledge is based upon universal a priori principles, neglecting our perceptions entirely.

Kant, in an attempt to unify these two sides, states, “Thoughts without perceptions are empty, while perceptions without thoughts are blind.” Here we see a critique of both rationalist and empiricists. To overcome this dualism he proposed that real knowledge must depend on a priori principles of the mind. But how do we not get stuck in our minds like the rationalists? Kant claims that space and time has no existence apart from mind, subjecting all experiences to the laws of our thinking. All knowledge is synthetic a priori knowledge. However, Kant has to concede that all we can know is the phenomena that appear to us. This means we cannot know things in themselves (in the noumenal realm we do not have access to), so we get locked up into the subjectivity of our experiences. Van Til claims that this is the fundamental error of all non-revelational idealistic epistemology. He states that Kant was correct in thinking that the starting point must be the human subject, but mistaken in thinking that the human subject must be creative and productive in a sense. Kant went too far in thinking that the subject plays such an active role, when all idealism needs is the fact that experience is necessary for something to be real for us. Also, we can know a higher reality through the initiative, not of the subject, but of this higher form itself. Van Til sums it up by saying, “Idealism has willfully shut itself up…It has closed its windows that looked up to the sky.”

Van Til thinks that a correct epistemology is one where experience comes into our consciousness but we do not produce it. He notes that while Hegel and Kant have several stark differences, we must note the unity they shared, which was the emphasis on the creativity of the mind. The rational then is the real and the real rational.  An epistemology that leads to identity is one which necessarily denies error, which we know to exist. It seems that any non-revelational epistemology fails.

 

Van Til, Reformed Epistemology-Chapter 1

Source of Van Til’s work

https://presupp101.wordpress.com/downloads/

The Idea and Right of Systematic Epistemology

The Threat of Pragmatism

Van Til begins the chapter by showing how many philosophers of his day had simply dismissed epistemology as an out of date endeavor. Keep in mind he was writing in 1925-during the age of classical pragmatists. Pragmatists do not fret over the fact that we assume a relationship between our minds and nature because they find epistemology to be useless. Van Til notes that John Dewey has attempted to show this to be true by simply looking at the early modern period of philosophy, beginning with René Descartes,  up until the climax of the modern period with Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This was the golden age of epistemological thinking, but Dewey emphasizes that it seems that no progress was made during it. The rationalists could not adequately make the leap from their minds to nature, while the empiricists could not find a way to convert immediate sensations into analytic judgments that actually give knowledge of reality (Hume admitted this in  Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding). Kant is most famous for attempting to synthesize these two schools of thought, but still left us in the dark, due to the fact we can only know appearances (phenomena) but not things in themselves (noumena). Van Til notes that Dewey’s system is a “negation of idealism.” This is because in his pragmatism thought does not produce universal knowledge concerning reality but rather simply plays a functional role in moving from one fact to another. Assuming anything beyond this creates a deep dualism between nature and mind which is false, according to his view, because when talking about nature, our minds are swallowed up into the term. Also, this nature which we refer to is progressive in the Hegelian sense, so any reconstruction of it will not be fixed. The result is that no universal understanding of it is possible. All is flux, including human consciousness, so that the possibility of using it as a starting point (like Descartes’ Archimedean point) collapses.

Well, it seems that if Dewey (along with his laughing gang of pragmatists) is right then he has officially put the nail in the epistemology coffin, so to speak. But how do pragmatists argue for such a position? They do so by pointing to the laws we find in the sciences. Here, we do not find universal laws that can be applied to all nature. We can only interpret where we are. Newton developed his mechanics which was able to describe anything thrown at him in his time period. People thought that his understanding of space and time was canon, only to be dethroned by Einstein’s general relativity when we were able to make observations Newton never could. The same is happening as we find the incompatibility between relativity and quantum mechanics. Our viewpoint is one of many in a pluralistic universe. For pragmatists, Aristotle’s claim that the pursuit of certain knowledge is the highest goal of life must be rejected, for the goal can never be attained.

Van Til’s Response to Pragmatism

Now let’s look at Van Til’s response to the pragmatic attitude. In simplest form it is that “man has need for objective reality.” Pragmatists insist that we depersonalize ourselves, but doing this requires an adjustment from our natural inclination toward the understanding of the objective. If pragmatism is really pragmatic would we do this? At the heart of the issue is the fact that pragmatism endorses a psychology which wants to dissolve any relationship between epistemology and metaphysics (this relationship plays an integral role in Van Til’s thought). William James’ conception of a “will to believe” shows this break, because he claims that one is justified in believing what they do by the potential good the belief can bring, disregarding whether or not there is objective evidence for the belief itself.  As Van Til states, “Belief is therefore, for James, purely an act of volition.” For James, belief is founded upon only adequate subjective evidence, while knowledge is theoretic certainty. Van Til then presses this, showing how once we find our beliefs to be objectively invalid, we can no longer simply believe in those things because they are useful for a certain end, as James wishes us to think. But, perhaps more importantly, a belief is much more than something that one simply wishes to be true. Rather, a belief is something that one truly believes to be true. Van Til notes that once evidence for a belief becomes undeniable, there is a certain “binding” between that agent and the object of belief. Thus, one cannot simply strip away a belief from its object, for they are too intimately connected. This truth makes the pragmatic project crumble and Van Til claims that this is seen in James’ own project where he constantly employs epistemic and metaphysical claims.

Is Ultimate Certainty Possible?

Van Til has shown negatively through his discussion of pragmatism that one cannot have a view of life which ignores metaphysics and epistemology. But even so, the question which is still posed is, is ultimate certainty possible? If one answers in the affirmative then Van Til states this must be established. To answer this one must first look at knowledge and see if it actually shows a right picture of the objective. However, immediately when this begins to be pondered we find that we are always prone to error. This naturally leads to the question, how do we determine whether a belief is actually certain or in error? But even this question does not delve deep enough because it presupposes that some beliefs are correct. Van Til claims that only Reformed views have seriously answered this problem and that the views which acknowledged error but not universal error have fallen into “epistemic Pelagianism.”

Similar to his criticism of the classical pragmatists, he notes that philosophers like Locke and Kant have tried to look at epistemology separately from metaphysics, which led them to error. He agrees with Hegel who said that epistemology without metaphysics is like exploring an empty machine. Knowledge does not exist without the relationship it has to the objects it deals with. But Van Til warns us of returning back to the periods before epistemology was explored where metaphysics and epistemology were seen one and the same. This is a mistake, because though epistemology does not exist without metaphysics, or vice versa, they still are distinct. Knowledge of an object is not equivalent to the object itself.

Answering the question of whether certain knowledge is possible is of greatest importance for a Biblical theist. This is because it deals with objects that are of greatest importance if they exist, many of which we cannot perceive with our senses. If our theology is true we can also account for the noetic effects of sin which leads us to error, as discussed above. Therefore, epistemology is of even more pressing importance for a Christian than for one who holds a non-revelational view.

 

The Need for the Gospel in Practical Apologetics

With boiling blood, I picked up the desk I was sitting at. I swiftly maneuvered over to where he was sitting, desk over my head, and proceeded to club him with all the force I was capable of producing. Perhaps now he would understand how stupid the things he was saying really were.

At least…this is what I was fantasizing about doing in my head. We were in an empty classroom on Wednesday night discussing the moral argument (William Sorley’s version), which goes like this:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

We were currently talking about the second premise and were coming up with a list of objective moral values. Once we made a somewhat exhaustive list, the guy leading the discussion asked “Do we all agree that the things in this list are good, regardless of whether someone believes them to be or not?” The few of us that were in there all nodded in agreement….except the fellow in my fantasy above. He began to talk about why he believed that all of our moral values had some advantage in natural selection, how in the end everything comes down to opinion, and how there is no such thing as right or wrong. Of course, we were not going to let him get away with saying such things. I crafted up a scenario where my girlfriend (a pretty far-fetched scenario, I suppose) was hanging out with another guy, and in my anger I killed her for doing so. I asked our friend whether or not her family had any right to seek justice against me for killing their daughter. To my surprise, he quickly replied with a no; explaining that it is just a construct of our society to care about human rights. This was just the start of 45 minutes of running around in circles, because we had completely different worldviews. I seriously thought that the only way to get this guy to think about what he was saying was to bash my desk over his head and to see if he really thought he had no right to do anything about it. Fortunately, I did not do that, but coming out of that classroom, I had many new thoughts concerning practical apologetics. Here are a couple of my thoughts:

Apologetics Cannot Rely on Philosophical Arguments for Theism

Now, I do really, really appreciate the works of intellectuals who defend arguments that point to the existence of God. These arguments being like the moral argument (the one above), cosmological argument, ontological argument etc. However, I believe that in the place of practical apologetics, these should not be our main source of fire power. While these arguments do have their place in apologetics, most people really do not find these arguments compelling enough to start following the Christian God. All these arguments can do is point to a God like the one we believe in, but ultimately these are not going to create disciples. I think that arguments like these are best used to defend the Christian God from certain objections, but that we cannot stop there when conversing with a non-believer. Also, like the situation above, it is too easy to get tripped up on certain premises. Instead of getting no where, we have to move onto describing what we actually believe. Because even if you do show them that the premise you are defending is correct, that really does not move them in the direction we want them to (closer to the Christian God). While I love watching debates with intellectuals like William Lane Craig and John Lennox, I do not know a single person who has accepted Christ as their savior because of debates like those. These philosophical arguments are very good for strengthening the faith of believers and answering objections to God, but our apologetics should not simply be to show that God can possibly exist.

The Gospel Should Always Be the Focus of Apologetics

So what should we be intentional in doing when conversing with a non-believer? The answer sounds so simple, but it is so often neglected, it is to share the gospel. The Book of Acts has many examples of the early apostles sharing the gospel to both Jews and gentiles. I think Acts 17:16-31 contains one of the clearest examples of how to converse with non-believers. In verse 18 we are told that Paul was in the streets talking to the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of the day. We are not told that he argued with them on their terms, but rather he was “preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.” This led them to letting him speak in the Areopagus, where he began to preach the gospel. In his sermon that he gave there, he started with where his audience was. He started with talking about the idols that he saw in Athens, and then used that as his starting point to proclaim the good news of Christ. This is what we need to be more intentional in doing when we are talking about God with non-believers. Apologetics is completely useless if the gospel is never mentioned. Let us seek to show people the love of Christ instead of trying to win fruitless arguments.

When idols, confusion, and sin I see

I will preach the gospel, relying on thee

No fear in not knowing that words I will say

Your spirit will fall, showing me the way

If just one soul awakened, even if I die

Pure glory to God, in heaven I will cry

Soli Deo gloria