Against Debate Culture in Theology
Don't Go on Joe Rogan
This past weekend, the popular podcaster Joe Rogan generated controversy by inviting the vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez to debate anti-vaccine activist and long-shot presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines on Rogan’s podcast. The challenge came in response to a tweet by Hotez criticizing Rogan’s role in spreading vaccine misinformation through his podcast.
Hotez refused the offer to debate Kennedy (although he suggested he would be willing to appear on Rogan’s show), claiming that a debate would “turn it into the Jerry Springer show.” Tesla founder and Twitter owner Elon Musk added fuel to the fire by tweeting, “[Hotez]’s afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong.” The involvement of popular figures like Rogan and Musk has contributed to a kind of social media frenzy, and an individual even went to Hotez’s home and threatened him for not debating Kennedy.
Many commentators have supported Hotez’s decision to decline the debate, arguing that debating Kennedy would only legitimize his conspiratorial views (Kennedy has long supported anti-vaccine conspiracies, as well as conspiracies about 5G technology and the unfounded view that medications like Prozac are the cause of mass shootings). Others have argued that the debate format, while popular, is not effective at distinguishing fact from fiction and indeed favors those who speak quickly and glibly, who can appeal to emotions, and who are willing to relentlessly make unsupported claims or even lie. I tend to agree with these arguments.
What does any of this have to do with theology? Nothing much, really. But this weekend, as this was all unfolding, I was also reading Aidan Nichols, O.P.’s The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI. Nichols points out that in his Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (1969; not yet translated into English), Ratzinger argues that the Socratic or Platonic dialogue, in which the truth is discovered through dialectics, is not the primary genre of the Gospel message, but rather proclamation (kerygma). His point is that, contrary to Plato, the Truth is not something already present in the mind that needs to be drawn out, but rather a gracious act of God. Ratzinger is not rejecting the need for Christians to engage in dialogue; instead, his point is that dialogue contributes to mutual understanding of a Truth that comes from without.
An interesting counter-point is the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible; although not exactly an example of Socratic dialectics, it is in its own way a dialectical dialogue between Job and his three friends/accusers. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the Book of Job is one of the few places in the Bible where the goodness of God is a live question. Following Ratzinger, it’s as if the dialogical genre comes to the fore when the foundations of divine revelation are most unsteady.
Socrates’ dialectical method was a reaction against that other form of dialogical reasoning in ancient Athens, debate in the democratic assembly (the ekklesia). Although the ideal was that through reasoned debate the people would come to the truth and embark on right action, in reality, rhetorical skill and emotional appeals held sway. For Socrates, this form of dialogue is aimed at getting one’s way, not at discovering Truth and Justice. Instead, Socrates engaged his disciples with critical questioning and logic, following the argument wherever it led.
Complicating Ratzinger’s argument, Socratic-style dialectics have had a role in the Christian tradition, most notably in the medieval scholastic practice of the disputatio. A medieval disputatio might look like this: In the afternoon, the master would raise a question on a point from his lecture that morning and might cite authorities (scriptural passages or citations from Church Fathers) on both sides. A senior student, called the bachelor, would take one side in the argument and then field objections from other students. At the end, the master would summarize the argument and offer his solution, the determinatio. The basics of this argumentative structure are also reflected in the various commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and summas of the medieval era.
As the Middle Ages progressed, the structure of the disputatio became more complex and diverse. For example, in an unusual style of disputation known as the obligatio, a participant known as the “opponent” proposes a statement called a positum, which a second participant, the “respondent,” either accepts or rejects. Once the respondent has accepted a positum, the opponent then proposes a series of further statements, and the respondent must argue whether each new proposition logically follows from the prior propositions, contradicts them, or is irrelevant. The obligatio trained the participants in counterfactual reasoning (“What must also be true if we posit that x is true?”) and logical consistency. The development of this type of disputation in theology seems to be tied to thinking about divine contingency in late medieval theology and the question of possible worlds.
As Alasdair MacIntyre and others have noted, although sometimes freewheeling, the medieval disputatio was a practice that belonged to a specific tradition (for example, MacIntyre focuses on the Dominican scholastic tradition guided by Thomas Aquinas). The disputatio, for example, presupposed the truth of the Scriptures and the authority of the Church Fathers, and the participants were likewise all trained in formal logic. The disputatio took place in a community that held its members to these norms and engaged in dialectics in pursuit of deeper understanding of the faith.
The modern debate typically lacks the context provided by a shared tradition. The philosopher Stephen Toulmin has argued that disagreements on a specific topic may be intractable because they reflect a deeper disagreement on issues presupposed by the disputants. Rational inquiry, according to Toulmin, must therefore dig in and address those deeper presuppositions before it can proceed further (Toulmin’s approach bears a certain resemblance to the medieval obligatio, based it was on exploring how the truth of propositions depends on prior suppositions). In a debate, however, there is usually little time or incentive to address these presuppositions, and the debaters, focused as they are on the issue at hand, may not even be aware of them. Debaters, then, are often talking past one another, even when they are attempting to follow the rules of logical argumentation.
The modern debate, as a practice, is too optimistic about the powers of human reason. It is not surprising that “debating societies” were a product of the Enlightenment. This exalted view of reason ends up making debates ineffective as a way of arriving at the truth. First, in the absence of acknowledged, shared presuppositions, it leads to talking past one another. Second, it likewise does not take into adequate consideration what recent cognitive psychology tells us about the difficulty of dislodging false beliefs that are deeply embedded in a person’s “web of knowledge.” Logic and evidence are often not sufficient; more complex methods of teaching are needed to dislodge false beliefs and replace them with true ones.
In the twenty-first century, the culture of debating societies and high school debate clubs has moved online, leading to an aggressive style of debating found in YouTube videos and podcasts, in addition to live, public events. This new format emerged at the same time that the New Atheism movement (spearheaded by figures like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris) hit the scene, leading to a seemingly endless series of public debates between atheists and Christians over the existence of God. I think this new, less formal, style of debate has led to the growth in popularity of debate culture in Christianity, particularly (although by no means exclusively) evangelical Christianity. The move away from the formal setting of debate clubs and toward debate as a kind of entertainment for popular audiences, however, has diminished the (minimal) commitment to adherence to logic and created a greater temptation to use rhetorical tricks, appeals to emotion, and pandering to the audience.
Therefore, although Dr. Hotez is correct to refuse a debate with a crank like Robert F. Kennedy,. Jr., I think caution is warranted not only because Kennedy is a crank but because of the inherent limitations of the debate format. I think theologians, in particular, ought to be cautious about debating as a method of adjudicating truth claims.
A few weeks ago, out of curiosity, I watched a YouTube debate between the evangelical Christian philosopher William Lane Craig and the Reformed theologian James White, arguing for Molinist and Calvinist solutions to the problem of evil, respectively (Craig’s evangelical defense of Molinism, a theory of divine foreknowledge developed by the sixteenth-century Jesuit Luis de Molina, is fascinating to me; for more on Molinism, see my interview with Eleonora Rai).
Part of the debate focused on which theory could give a better account of scriptural examples of the interaction between divine and human agency. At one point, White argues contra Craig that it is absurd to argue that it took until the sixteenth century for someone to develop a theory that could explain God’s activity in the Bible; rather than imposing a later theory to make sense of the Bible, the Reformed tradition draws its understanding of God’s activity from the Bible itself. It’s a slick rhetorical move, but logically it begs the question by equating the biblical witness with Reformed theology. But given the fast-paced flow of the debate, Craig did not have a chance to respond to this sleight of hand, and maybe wasn’t even aware of what had taken place.
The participants in this debate shared an acknowledged commitment to Protestant Christianity and in general were charitable and focused. The debate was informative, and both participants raised challenging criticisms of the other. Even in this context, however, the debate could not help but devolve into question-begging and fast-talking rhetorical showmanship. I think there is a case to be made that theological argumentation requires a certain slowness, a patience with arguments and sources, and receptivity toward the truth, that is nearly impossible in a debate. Of course, theologians can play fast and loose with logic and evidence in writing, too, but the slow, deliberate process of reading makes it easier to identify and respond to faulty arguments.
So, in conclusion, don’t expect to hear me on the Joe Rogan Experience any time soon.
Of Interest…
Following up on updates in previous editions of the newsletter, at their summer meeting, the U.S. Catholic bishops began the process for updating the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services to prohibit gender-affirming care for transgender persons. The update is based on a document released earlier this year by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine. Moral theologian M. Therese Lysaught offered a thorough critique of the document here.
On Monday, Pope Francis issued an apostolic letter honoring the French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal on the 400th anniversary of his birth. The letter can be found here. Although I am not a huge fan of Pascal because of his association with Jansenism, his reflections on humankind’s openness to the infinite and fulfillment in Jesus Christ are profound and had a deep impact on thinkers who are important to me, like Maurice Blondel and Henri de Lubac, S.J. Pope Francis’s letter does a good job of showing how Pascal was a great soul.