Yesterday I had an exchange with Jason Thibodeau in the discussion thread for “Meaningful relationship and propositional knowledge: A response to Justin Schieber (Part 1)“. I’m going to highlight part of that exchange here and then unpack my points further.
Jason began by offering an account of what Justin Schieber might have meant by suggesting that the relationship of infant to parent is “trivial”:
Jason Thibodeau: “This is just a suggestion, but perhaps what Justin meant is that, compared to a reciprocal cognitive relationship, a non-cognitive relationship is trivial. That is not to say that a non-cognitive relationship is meaningless, just not as meaningful as a cognitive one.”
Randal: “Jones has a nonrecriprocal cognitive relationship with her newborn baby and a reciprocal cognitive relationship with the paperboy that drops the Daily Bugle on their porch every morning. To say the former relationship is trivial when compared to the latter is absurd.”
Jason: “The indefinite article tends to lead to ambiguity and you are correct if your point is that I should be well aware of that fact. So, allow me to remove the ambiguity:
“A non-cognitive relationship between individuals x and y is trivial in comparison to a reciprocal cognitive relationship between x and y.”
Randal: “[T]he way Justin frames the issue is a very static and unhelpful way to think about relationship. As I have noted before, hiddenness is a period in a relationship. What Justin would have to show is that a relationship which includes periods where one of the agents is hidden to the other is trivial when compared to the same relationship with no periods of hiddenness.”
* * *
I now want to unpack this final comment. Let’s begin with the principle that Jason proposes:
“A non-cognitive relationship between individuals x and y is trivial in comparison to a reciprocal cognitive relationship between x and y.”
So according to this principle, a mother-child relationship in which the child lacks the ability to reciprocate cognitively (i.e. to communicate through language) is trivial in comparison with a relationship in which the mother-child relationship includes cognitive reciprocation.
Keep in mind that Jason proposes this principle as an interpretation of Justin Schieber rather than as a principle to which Jason himself is committed. That said, my first response to this suggestion is very negative. While I don’t question for a minute the obvious fact that language is a great good that enriches human relationships immeasurably, that does not justify concluding that relationships which lack language are by comparison impoverished to the point of triviality.
Consider an analogy: the relationship of a hearing parent to deaf child. This parent and child lack the good of being able to share a rich range of experience from jointly taking in the sound of the pattering rain on the rooftop to listening to The Beatles while sitting on the tailgate of a pickup. But does that mean that this relationship is trivial relative to a relationship where both individuals can hear?
Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfus), the music teacher in the 1995 film Mr. Holland’s Opus originally thought so. He was devastated when he discovered that his young son was deaf. They would never share sounds like the pattering of the rain or the music of The Beatles. But eventually he came to realize that his son’s inability to hear offered opportunities for a different kind of relationship, rather than merely one that is impoverished. In the following scene from the film, Mr. Holland combines flashing lights and sign language into his musical performance and the result is an enriched experience:
Admittedly a person who lacks linguistic abilities suffers a greater deprivation relative to the general population than one who is deaf. But the principle still applies. Mr. Holland came to recognize the precious, unique gift of his deaf son, and in like manner a parent of a severely cognitively incapacitated child (like the example of Adam that I referred to in part 1) could also recognize profound compensating goods in that relationship. Consequently, it is utterly indefensible to claim that cognitively deprived relationships where one of the agents lacks some capacity (hearing, linguistic ability, etc.) is thereby impoverished to the point of triviality.
This is significant for the problem of divine hiddenness. In the debate Justin invoked the existence of non-resistant non-believers, arguing that if God exists then these individuals should not exist. First, keep in mind that an indeterminate number of putative non-resistant non-believers could, in fact, be resistant, perhaps without even realizing it. After all, human beings are not always in touch with all their emotions and attitudes. (“Jim, why do you scowl every time I mention your ex? I thought you were over her.” “I am over her! What do you mean ‘scowl’? I don’t scowl. I’m fine!”)
I didn’t bother issuing that caveat in the debate for sake of time. Instead, I focused on the additional point that all those who are truly non-resistant could be in some kind of meaningful relationship with God. As I noted, the Catholic Church since Vatican 2 has recognized the possibility of such people (folks that Karl Rahner famously called “anonymous Christians”).
Moreover, in the same way that relationships that include one deaf or linguistically deprived person could nonetheless have compensating goods, so it could be for relationships in which one individual lacks cognitive awareness of the existence of the other.
Finally, let me return to unpack my final point where I wrote the following:
“What Justin would have to show is that a relationship which includes periods where one of the agents is hidden to the other is trivial when compared to the same relationship with no periods of hiddenness.”
Think again of the infant to parent. The infant lacks cognitive abilities that she will acquire later in life. Thus, we need to evaluate the relationship of parent to child not merely based on the current state of extreme dependence on the parent. Rather, we need to evaluate this period as one stage in a developmental whole that culminates in the child sharing a linguistic relationship with the parent.
The same applies to those who may be in some sort of relationship with God at present in which God is hidden to them. God will not always be hidden: we see darkly now, but one day we will see face to face. This is true of the Christian who goes through seasons of questioning and doubt and struggle: the dark night of the soul. It could equally apply to the person for whom God is now hidden more fully but for whom in the future he shall be revealed fully.
Justin is simply not in a place to say that there could not be such individuals. As a result, his argument against God based on the existence of non-resistant non-believers dies on the vine. To sum up, he is not in a place to distinguish genuinely non-resistant non-believers from those who only appear non-resistant. Nor is Justin in a place to demonstrate that those who are truly non-resistant do not now have a relationship with God that is cognitively non-reciprocal but which has compensating goods and which will culminate ultimately in an intimate awareness and knowledge of God akin to the grown child’s knowledge of her parent.
