Translating the Five Ways

Atheism, Faith and Reason, , , , ,

Having stood the test of time, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways remain a reliable means by which to prove the existence of God.  The problem, especially in an age steeped in scientistic thinking, is that most people are metaphysically illiterate and unable to really capture the genius behind them and see their great evidentiary power.  This calls for those who can understand the proofs to summarize them in such a manner that even the metaphysical novice can understand.  Better yet, in a sound-bite culture, it is invaluable to provide a single argument that combines all five into one.  Thankfully, there are Thomists in our own age who have done the legwork on this (Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s God His Existence and His Nature and Edward Feser, Five Proofs for God) but their work remains inaccessible to those unschooled in Scholastic Philosophy.  It is in this spirit, that this essay tries to translate St. Thomas’ work into a language that can be readily understood, and more important, presented to unbelievers.

The great 20th Century Thomist, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange summarized the arguments like this:

“All these arguments can be summed up in a more general one, based on the principle of causality, which may be stated as follows: That which does not exist by itself, can exist only by another, which is self-existent. Now, experience shows that there are beings endowed with activity, life, and intelligence, which do not exist of and by themselves, since they are born and die. Therefore, they received their existence from another, who must be existence, life, and intelligence itself. If such were not the case, we should have to say that the greater comes from the less, the higher form of life from the lower, and that the plurality of beings comes from a primary being less perfect than all the others taken together.”

God: His Existence and His Nature Volume I

An Important Distinction

At the heart of each of the Five Ways is the distinction between what a thing is or its essence and that a thing is or its existence.  Once we grasp this distinction, the existence of God logically follows.  Everywhere we look we find things that have not always existed.  No visible being has as part of its nature, existence.  Each being requires that existence be given it by another being.  We call these existence-dependent beings, contingent beings.

One of the common mistakes we make in interpreting these arguments is to look at them as proving a First Cause in time.  But that is not what they do.  They set out to show a First Cause in existence.  Contingent beings, beings who do not have existence by nature, require existence be given them not just when they come into being, but in order to remain in being.  The fact that a thing exists at each moment would not allow for an infinite regress in causes.  But because this is not immediately obvious, we will discuss it briefly.

The chain of causes that we are describing is called an essentially subordinate series.  It is labeled as such because in order for the entire series to hold, the First Cause must continually exercise its causal activity.  Suppose we have a chain ABCD.  C can only cause D because it is being caused by B.  Likewise B causes C.  You could multiply the causes between B and A, but unless you get to a cause, which we are calling A, that is uncaused, then the chain of causation will never occur.  There must be a cause that does not itself require a cause in order for any link of the causal chain to connect.

Recall that this causal chain is not tracing back in time like an ancestral tree where a grandmother ceases to exercise causal power on her grandson, but is horizontal in holding a being in existence here and now.  St. Thomas uses the analogy of a man using his arm to push a stick that moves a rock.  If the man ceases to exercise his free will in moving his arm, then the stick ceases to move and the rock remains stationary. 

Once we eliminate the possibility of an infinite regress, we can see how the proof leads us to God.  If there must be an uncaused cause, a being who does not get existence from another source, then we can say this being’s essence includes existence.  We call this being the necessary being.  More accurately we would say that this Being because his essence is to exist is existence itself.  And we call this Being God or “I AM”.

The Five Ways and the Way

This obviously does not take us all the way to the Christian God as He has revealed Himself.  Reason could never get us there.  But it does, in a certain sense, lead us up to the time of Moses.  God revealed Himself to Moses as Being Itself, “I AM WHO AM” because it was the foundation upon which He was to reveal Himself not just as Being Itself, but Being Who is here for you right now.  Once we grasp that it is God Who doesn’t just create us and leave us to our own devices, but instead holds us in existence at each moment, the Christian message becomes more accessible.  If God is holding us in existence then He must will to do so.  He wills not in some disaffected way, but because He sees our existence as something good.  And not just “our” but mine and yours individually.  He wills it because He loves the good that we are.  We need only open ourselves to the fullness of that love so that we don’t merely exist as creatures but are crowned as sons. 

By adding the Christian conclusions to our philosophical findings, we come to realize why St. Thomas should never be seen as some dry intellectual philosopher.  He saw all of his work as leading us back to God, including his proofs for his existence.  We too may grasp this when we set to succinctly give his reasons for believing, not just to win arguments, but to win souls.  The Five Ways ultimately lead us to the Way Himself. 

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The Permanence of Hell

Anthropology, Church Fathers, Communion of Saints, Devils, Heaven, Magisterium, Mercy, Scripture, , , , , , , ,

C.S. Lewis once said that there was no doctrine that, if he had the power, he would more willingly remove from Christianity than hell.  But he also was humble enough to recognize that were he to do so, it would destroy the very reason for Christianity.  The Good News is really only good when we understand the bad.  Unfortunately, there are many in our modern day who, rather than teaching us how to avoid hell, avoid hell itself by explaining it away.  In its place they have offered a universalism in which all men will be saved.  There are different ways in which this universal salvation is brought about, but one of the more popular versions posits that hell is not everlasting and those who had been consigned there will be given the opportunity to repent and join everyone else in heaven.

According to Scripture, Sacred Tradition and human reason, escaping hell after death is an impossibility.  In Hebrews 9:27-28 we are told that just as Christ died once, we too die and receive judgment once.  Likewise, Revelation 20:10 says that the damned “will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”  That “their worm dies not and the fire is not extinguished” (Mk 9:45) is also taught by Sacred Tradition, not only through the unanimity of the Fathers (c.f. St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Augustine) but also through the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) which declared that the damned “receive a perpetual punishment with the devil”.

The Permanence of Hell and Human Nature

It is when we apply human reason to Revelation about the duration of hell that we begin to understand why it is the way it is.  In our temporal state, our will remains flexible in that it may be changed both before and after a choice is made.  We choose based upon some knowledge and only choose differently based on some new knowledge.  In short, a change in will is dependent upon a change of mind.  Regret only follows upon some new realization.

The ability to change our minds is a uniquely human power, and uniquely temporal at that.  The angels, our spiritual counterparts, are incapable of regret because they can’t change their mind.  Our decisions are plagued by ignorance, their decisions are always fully informed and thus fully consented to.  Their wills remain everlastingly fixed in the decision they have made because they never have a reason to change their mind.  When the soul is separated from the body, we will “become like the angels” in that our wills too will remain fixed in the state they were at separation and we have no reason to change our mind.

As we apply this anthropological truth to the question of the damned, it does not seem obvious at first why they should not desire to change their mind.  Wouldn’t the pains of hell be enough to make them rethink their relationship to God?  The short answer is no and to deny this would begin to tear at the fabric of many Christian beliefs besides the everlasting duration of hell.

A change of mind regarding God in this life requires the action of actual grace.  We are incapable of lifting ourselves out of sin and move towards repentance on our own.  It is actual grace that moves us.  Because it is still my and your repentance however there must be a movement of the will that accompanies the actual grace.  It is possible that the will become so hardened that actual grace no longer penetrates the hardened heart.  Scripture offers us a prime example in Pharaoh.  While Moses pleads with him, his heart remains impenetrable.  The will becomes hardened through its own acts and only a supernatural act of God can undo it.

Why Repentance After Death is Impossible

The soul in hell then is incapable of repentance because there is no actual grace present to move them.  This is not because God withholds it however.  It is so because their will is fixed in a permanent “No!” to God.  There is no actual grace is present because no amount of grace could change their mind.  Why this must be so becomes obvious once we think about it for a second.  This fixity of the will is, in a certain sense, a two-edge sword.  It keeps both the damned in hell and the blessed in heaven.  If a change from evil to good is possible, then it could also be possible that there is a change from good to evil.  In other words, there would be nothing per se that would keep the blessed from crossing over the chasm into hell.  This law of human nature cannot be operative for good only.  As Abbot Vonier puts it, “God has made spiritual natures so perfect that a wrong use of their powers will bring about results as permanent as the right use of them.”

This, by the way, is at the heart of the error that those who believe in “once saved, always saved” commit.  They confuse our temporal state with our permanent state.  The soul is not fixed until death, but they insist that it is fixed once a single choice for Christ is made.

All of this helps us to see damnation as caused strictly by the damned themselves and not as a result of God’s judgment.  It all depends upon the condition of a person’s soul upon death.  Our souls at baptism are reformed into the shape of a cup enabling them to hold sanctifying grace.  This grace, as a participation in the divine nature, is what enables us, upon death, to see God face to face.  It is what makes our souls flame resistant enabling us to stand within the flames of the Consuming Fire.  But our wills, through mortal sin, can also bend our souls so that they are no longer able to hold sanctifying grace.  If our souls are never repaired and we die with them in that shape, then we become permanently incapable of standing before God.  It is the shape of our souls then that determines are everlasting state.

Catholics have grown very fearful of hell, not in the sense that they try to avoid it, but that they avoid speaking of it.  The risk for seeming harsh or intolerant is overwhelming.  The problem is that silence on the bad news makes preaching the Good News very difficult.  Catholics need to rethink their approach if they are to trample down the Gates of Hell and save many people who would otherwise end up there.  This begins by seeing hell for the hell it is and understanding why it must be so.

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The Philosophy of Evolution

Science, , , ,

Tomorrow will mark the 160th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.  Considered to be a formational tome in the field of evolutionary biology, it has in the last century plus become a foundation of the model world.  We find evolution, not just among plants, but races of men.  Survival of the fittest becomes political eugenicism.  We find it in not just animals, but among societies of men who reject the ideas of the past as extinct that needed to evolve to suit the changes in enlightened mankind.  The modern world is, in truth, all in on evolution.  And this might help to explain why it has devolved.  The theory of evolution is bad science and even worse philosophy.

Evolution as Bad Science?

Science, in Aristotelian tradition is thought of in more general terms than we do today. The most general meaning of the term is an organized body of knowledge, resting on first principles, purposed to investigate causes.  This broad definition includes all fields of knowledge from metaphysics to the empirical sciences such as evolutionary biology.  This spectrum of sciences has a natural hierarchy in the sense that it studies not just individual beings (empirical science), but being itself (metaphysics).  Each science must accept certain first principles, givens if you will, upon which the investigation of the causes of things can proceed.  With no foundational truths to build upon, the scientific house is destined to crumble.  The hierarchy allows the lower sciences to draw from the higher to procure their first principles.  For example, physics, one of the lower sciences, depends on mathematics, a higher one, for its first principles.  A physicist in acting to quantify some aspect of reality, could not proceed if he doubted the laws of mathematics.  If he were question the laws of math rather than his own hypothetical law, then he would most certainly be wrong.  He is ignoring the first principles so that the truth can adapt to his theory.

Portrait of Aristoteles. Copy of the Imperial era (1st or 2nd century) of a lost bronze sculpture made by Lysippos

A science then can be bad not just in its method, but in its observance of first principles.  In this way evolution is bad science.  Evolutionary biology depends on the philosophy of nature for its first principles.  The philosophy of nature is concerned with principles of unity in the face of change.  Evolutionary biology, too, is concerned with change, but specific changes in individual species.  Any theory that explains the change in individual species must respect the higher science in order to maintain its connection to truth.  If the evolutionary biologist ignores these principles then he is no different than the physicist who ignores the laws of mathematics.

 The First Principles

What are the first principles that evolutionary biology borrows from the Philosophy of Nature?  There are a number of them, but three will suffice to show why evolution is bad science. 

All that exists is either substance or accident.  A substance is an individual existing thing, while an accident depends upon a substance to exist.  A tree is a substance, the green of the leaves is an accident.  Trees exist on their own, greenness does not exist except in the trees (and other green substances).  You could take away the green from the leaves and the tree would remain a tree.

Since evolution deals with change, we must also look at some of the first principles related to change.  Change consists in reducing potency to act; some specific potential that is dictated by a thing’s nature is brought into existence through some agent cause.  This agent cause must already have the power to cause the change.  That is, it must be in act.  Suppose a room is cold which means it is potentially warm.  Only something that is actually warm like a burning log can heat up the room.  A log that is only potentially hot could never heat up the room.  This is the principle of sufficient reason.  This principle, in all its variations, deals with cause and effect.  An effect must in some form be in the cause.  In layman’s terms, you cannot give what you do not have.  For an effect to come about, the cause must have the power to cause the effect. 

Third, there is the principle of hylemorphism.  This principle says that all material beings are composed of form and matter.  Form, which is ontologically prior to matter, determines what a thing is.  Matter is the individuating principle, it is what makes the thing “this thing” rather than “this other thing”.

There is also another principle related to the upward movement of evolution.  Material creation proceeds from simple to complex, from the lowest to the highest.  In philosophical terms, there is a hierarchy of being in which the higher beings exhibit perfections not found in the lower.  Stones are not alive the way that plants are.  Plants cannot move and sense the way animals can, even if they have the same vegetative powers.  Animals cannot abstract and communicate the way that man can, even if they can gain sense knowledge of individual things.  As one of the philosophical dictionaries puts it, “in material and living bodies we find an ascending order of perfection in which the higher beings have their own perfections as well as those of the lower level of being. In the unity of the higher being, the multiplicity of the lower beings is virtually present.”  What this means is that although the lower is contained within the higher, the higher is not contained in the lower. 

The First Principles Applied to Evolution

If we frame evolution first as a philosophical problem, then it becomes clear how the first principles apply.  Specifically, it deals with changes not in individual substances, but in the generation of offspring.  The law of generation allows for accidental differences between parent and offspring.  These accidental differences can be based upon both the mixing of genes of the parents and on mutations in the genetic information.  These differences result in an offspring with the same essential form, but accidental differences.  Some of these differences may be biologically advantageous such that the incidence in the population increases.  Still we are dealing with like substances.  Evolutionary biology has a term for such changes and it calls it microevolution.  Microevolution is on solid philosophical groundwork such that if the biological data supports it then we can conclude that it is at least highly probable.

Macroevolution, on the other hand, posits a different sort of change.  Based on random a series of random mutations the matter is changed to the point that a new form is brought about.  This hypothesis comes in conflict with our first principles stated above.  First, the direction of evolution is always upward towards greater perfections.  But this would violate the principle of sufficient reason.  An effect cannot exceed its cause.  If the cause does not include the effect, then it must be brought about by some other way.  A blind animal can give birth to an offspring with sight because she has sight in potency, but no amount of lightning and “primordial soup” can effect sight in the offspring of a being who does not have eyes.  You cannot give what you don’t have. 

This principle is also violated quite frequently when the fossil record is combed for the elusive “common ancestor” and “missing link” that the lower somehow caused the higher.  There is little actual biological evidence for this causal link such that it is much more plausible that are closely situated on the ladder of being.  If nature is a continuous hierarchy then we would expect to see beings that are closely related to each other.   

Secondly, and more fatal for the philosophical backing of macroevolution, is that it posits that matter is the cause of a new form.  It is saying that given enough changes in the matter, a new kind of form can come into existence.  But form always precedes matter.  Matter cannot exist without a form, even if a form can exist without matter.  Once the new form exists, the matter which is in potency to the form, can be reduced to act.  If the new form cannot come into existence without some immaterial Cause, then the only way that macroevolution could possibly be true is if this Cause intervenes at each evolutionary stage to create new forms.  This Cause, because He was capable of creating all forms, would have to be omnipotent and omniscient.  Most would call such a Cause God. 

We can readily see why microevolution often is used in an ideological sleight of hand to cover up what is going on with macroevolution.  If matter cannot bring about a new form, then in order for macroevolution to proceed, God must create new forms.  In other words, Macroevolution, if it is true, then offers proof for the existence of God.  Because it does not conform to the ideological agenda that most who support evolution have, this fact is kept quiet and only material explanations are allowed. 

Good science always requires good philosophy.  Darwin may not have realized the implications of his new theory, but once we apply the Philosophy of Nature to his theory, we quickly find that macroevolution needs not only Aristotle, but God.

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The Social Construct Myth

Anthropology, Church and State, Church Authority, marriage, , , , , ,

Marriage, according to conventional wisdom, is a social construct.  Governed by cultural norms and expectations, the institution of marriage is completely malleable.  This view of marriage was front and center in the debate over same-sex marriage, but the battle against traditional marriage was won long before that when divorce, especially in its no-fault variety, became an acceptable norm.  Divorce, or at least its cultural acceptance, is what changed marriage making it a social construct.  To say divorce made marriage a social construct is to suggest that things once were otherwise so that if we are to grasp how we got here, we might simultaneously find a remedy. 

Anthropological Roots of Divorce

Deeply imbedded within the Western mind is the notion of man as a rugged individual.  Naturally solitary and free, man forms a social contract either to escape the anarchy of the state of nature (Hobbes) or its noble savagery (Rousseau).  All social institutions become “social constructs” in which men and women freely enter and freely leave according to their own will.  From within this paradigm of liberalism, marriage like all other social institutions are “social constructs” in which men and women freely associate and equally as freely disassociate.  Only the State remains a permanent fixture so as to protect the individual from other individuals infringing upon their rights, even if it too is ultimately a social construct.

Civil divorce grew out of the soil of 18th Century liberalism because it, like all other private contracts, was completely voluntary and always in danger of one of the contracting parties dissolving the contract.  In order to protect this freedom, the State adopts the stance of arbiter and enforcer and is empowered to dissolve what was previously thought indissoluble.  Given the power to dissolve, the State must also then have the power to define and decide what marriage is and who should be married.

There is a certain irony surrounding the fact that marriage was not always thought to be a social construct.  The “social construct” viewpoint replaced the natural view of marriage.  For millennia, marriage was considered to be a natural institution that formed the foundation of the family which was the building block of society as a whole.  It is the natural view of marriage that would preclude either divorce or gay marriage.  By combining them into a single issue it avoids reducing the argument to mere biology.

It is not any mere external circumstances that draws man into society, but his nature.  Man is by nature a social animal.  In order to fulfill his nature, he must have a society of other men to do that.  Because they are absolutely vital for fulfillment, the family and the State are natural societies.

In order to grasp this truth, we must also see that men and women fulfill their nature by becoming virtuous.  Virtue is what perfects all our natural powers.  Marriage is the bedrock of virtue.  Only within the framework of the family are both the spouses and children perfected in their gift of self and unity.  It is where the children are educated in the cardinal virtues as they prepare to give themselves in service to society as a whole.  It is where siblings learn how to live as a community of equals.  It is where parents learn to shed ego.   As statistics repeatedly show, those who divorce or are victims of divorce severely handicap their chances at fulfilling their nature.

It is the Author of human nature, and not the State, that is the Author of marriage.  Marriage, because it is a complete union of persons in all their dimensions—bodily, spiritual and temporal—and thus naturally indissoluble.  The State does not make marriage but only provides an occasion for consent and works to protect and promote it.    The State in its role as guardian of the common good, may act to protect and promote marriage, even by dissolving legal bonds between spouses, but is powerless to dissolve the marriage itself.  In truth a civil divorce is worth no more than the paper upon which it is printed.

Marriage, because of its indispensable and irreplaceable role in fulfilling human nature, is a natural institution and not a social construct.  Understanding the roots of the errors that led to its demise helps us to go back and correct them. 

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Cardinal Cupich’s Two-Way Street

Church, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, Ecumenism, , , , , ,

In a commentary in Chicago Catholic posted last week, Cardinal Cupich weighed in on the Pachamama controversy.  The Cardinal decried the removal and disposal of the statues into the Tiber River of calling it an act of “vandalism”.  He defended the inclusion of the “artwork from the Amazon region depicted a pregnant woman, a symbol of motherhood and the sacredness of life” during the Amazonian Synod as an example of the necessary “two way street of inculturation” in which “both the cultures and the church are enhanced in coming to know God.”  In truth however, the Cardinal is defending idolatrous syncretism, a position that is indefensible for a Catholic.

Artwork or Idol?

In an act of sophistry that would make even Protagoras blush, the Cardinal depicted the statues as “artwork”.  One has to wonder why Aaron didn’t think of that when Moses confronted him over the Golden Calf.  His description defies logic and is a great distortion of the truth.  Pachamama is no mere symbol of motherhood and the sacredness of life, but a benevolent goddess of motherhood and fertility that is still worshipped among the indigenous peoples of the Andes.  The peoples, as evidenced by the opening ceremony in the Vatican Garden, still offer worship to the goddess through the statue. 

Each August, the people of the Peru dedicate the month to making offerings and sacrifices to Pachamama.  It is believed that it is necessary to satisfy her hunger and thirst with food offerings.  These offerings are burnt, carrying the prayers of the people in the smoke.  The Pachamama is no mere symbol, but instead a goddess.  The Cardinal is either lying or a fool or both.

Even Pope Francis admits that it was an idol, although not directly of course.  In his apology for the theft and submersion of the statues, he said that the statues were displayed “without any idolatrous intentions”.  No one would question the idolatrous intentions of someone unless the items in question were, in fact, idols.  The Pope’s comment, rather than exonerating him however actually makes what happened even worse.  Worse, that is, if you believe St. Thomas Aquinas.

As an offense against the First Commandment, he thought that idolatry, next to heresy is the gravest sin.  It is an offense directly against God Himself.  Aquinas thought that not all idolatry was equal.  He said that the worst kind of idolatry is, using the Pope’s words, idolatry “without any idolatrous intentions.”  The Angelic Doctor said “since outward worship is a sign of the inward worship, just as it is a wicked lie to affirm the contrary of what one holds inwardly of the true faith so too is it a wicked falsehood to pay outward worship to anything counter to the sentiments of one’s heart” (ST II-II q.94, a.2).  To set up idols without any idolatrous intentions is not only to commit idolatry but to lie as well.  Citing St. Augustine’s condemnation of Seneca for setting up idols that he did not believe in, Aquinas condemned the Pope’s position.

St. Thomas makes another interesting connection in his treatment of idolatry.  Citing St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, he mentions how God turns men over to sins against nature as punishment for idolatry. He says that it is a fitting punishment of the sin of idolatry which abuses the order of divine honor that man would sin against nature as a way of suffering from the confusion from abuse of his own nature.  Might it be that the refusal of the Church to stand against all of the idolatrous elements of New Age spirituality has been met by gross sins of nature, especially among the clergy?  In other words, perhaps the homosexuality that plagues the Church is an effect of idolatry that won’t be rooted out until its cause is also rooted out.

Inculturation?

The Cardinal mentions that this event is simply an attempt at inculturation.  He errs however is describing inculturation as a two-way street.  The Church needs no outside help as She has been given the fullness of truth.  Instead she brings the truth to those who have yet to accept it and explains the truth on terms that are readily understood by her audience.  When evangelizing new cultures she may find elements that can be baptized such that they will make the Gospel intelligible.  She brings nothing back to the Church except the souls she is saving.  Our Lady’s approach (detailed here) to St. Juan Diego and the people of Mexico is a prime example of this.  She borrowed elements that were familiar to them, modified them, and used them to point to the true God in her womb.  The Church learned nothing from the Aztecs.

A two-way street approach to inculturation is just another word for syncretism.  Often masquerading as “ecumenism”, this practice ultimately is about finding creative ways to blend the Church’s doctrines with those of other religions.  It thrives on ambiguity and teeters on heresy.  The problem is that you end up far away from the truth in a way similar to what Chesterton described when he described syncretism as analogous to a man who says that the world is a rhomboid because some people believe that the world is flat and others round. 

It signals a loss of faith, thinking we must compromise to get people to come over to our side.  But the truth has a power all its own such that when it is spoken, especially with charity, it is immediately compelling.  It is also a loss in faith in anything supernatural.  The fact that idols have demons behind them is totally foreign to those of Cardinal Cupich’s ilk.

This is why they find it so incomprehensible that someone would go to the lengths the “vandal” did in attempting to destroy the idol.  It is an act of zeal; zeal for God and hatred of demons.  As St. John Henry Newman puts it, “zeal consists in a strict attention to His commands—a scrupulousness, vigilance, heartiness, and punctuality, which bears with no reasoning or questioning about them—an intense thirst for the advancement of His glory—a shrinking from the pollution of sin and sinners—an indignation, nay impatience, at witnessing His honor insulted—a quickness of feeling when His name is mentioned, and a jealousy how it is mentioned—a fulness of purpose, an heroic determination to yield Him service at whatever sacrifice of personal feeling—an energetic resolve to push through all difficulties, were they as mountains, when His eye or hand but gives the sign—a carelessness of obloquy, or reproach, or persecution, a forgetfulness of friend and relative, nay, a hatred (so to say) of all that is naturally dear to us, when He says, ‘Follow me.’”  It is zeal that destroys idols without destroying the idolaters.  It is zeal that seeks to set the idolaters free.

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Confronting the Problem of Evil

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The Greek philosopher Epicurus may have been the first to articulate it, but he was most definitely not the last.  For the past 2400 years, believers have been haunted by his trilemma: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.  Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”  Epicurus is putting forth the “Problem of Evil” which remains the most repeated argument against the existence of God.  Dressed in various forms, the conditions are always the same—the incompatibility of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and the existence of evil.  Because of its longstanding quality, believers of every age, our own included, must be prepared to answer this challenge.

Navigating the gauntlet begins by defining our terms, the first of which is evil.  In our time there is a tendency to see evil as some positive force in the universe locked in a cosmic battle with good.  Viewed as something, it seems to have a power all its own.  But evil is no more of a thing than blindness is a thing.  It is not a something but a nothing.  Just as blindness is a lack of sight, evil is a lack of a good that should otherwise be there.  Both exist, but neither has any being of its own.  Instead it exists in the form of a deprivation.  In fact, blindness in the philosophical sense of the term is an evil; a lack of sight in a being that should otherwise see.  Evil only exists as a parasite to some good and has no existence of its own.

Whence cometh Evil?

This philosophical hair splitting is necessary because it addresses Epicurus’ question “whence cometh evil?” and demonstrates how God can be all good and there still be evil.  God, as Creator, gives being to all things.  He is, in an absolute sense, the cause of being.  God cannot create non-being, not because He isn’t omnipotent, but because “create non-being” is nonsense.  To create is to give being and to create something with no being is a contradiction.  God’s omnipotence does not suddenly make the intrinsically impossible, possible.  God could no more create evil than He can make a square with three sides, omnipotent or not.

If we are to take the world as it is, that is a material world with a multitude of creatures, we could see why a certain amount of evil might be logically necessary.  We call these evils physical evils or evils suffered.  These types of evils are not privations per se, even though they can be causes of privations.  They are simply incidences where two goods collide.  When the good of the lion’s preservation meets the good of the lamb’s, the lamb tends to get the short end of the stick.  Physical evils are always connected to a good directly.  The lion’s self-preservation is a good thing, even if the lamb’s demise is not. For God to remove such evils is not simply to make our world better, but to make an entirely different kind of world.  Whether that world would be better or not can be debated, but the presence of physical evil is no argument against God’s omnipotence or omnibenevolence because one could readily imagine that same God guiding all interactions such that they work out for the good of the whole.

Moral evils, that is, evils done by rational creatures, are by far the more difficult to explain.  There are no goods in conflict, only a failure to do what is good.  The moral agent deliberately introduces disorder into what should otherwise be good.  Exonerating God from responsibility for these evils is a bit more challenging. 

God is not just the Creator, but the sustainer of creation.  That means nothing happens without His somehow being a cause.  He is not only the cause of a man, but a cause of His free will activity.  Related to the topic at hand, God is not the cause of the man’s choice, only his power of choosing.  The man cannot choose without God, but what he chooses is up to him. 

Recall that God, through His omnipotence, can do anything that does not imply a logical contradiction.  God could have made a world in which a man might choose freely but always choose good because there is no contradiction.  But He did not.  Instead the world we inhabit allows for free choice that can include evil.  This is allowed because God’s will in creating is to create a world such that His goodness is most fully made manifest through the goods of His creatures.  One can readily see that there are a multitude of goods that would never be made known were it not for the ability to choose what is evil: courage, forgiveness, mercy, justice to name just a few.  If through the designs of divine Providence God wanted to make His creatures participate in these real goods, there must be some evil present; not just physical evil, but moral as well.  Eliminate all evil, and you drag goods with it.

Why the Argument Fails?

This is why the argument ultimately fails.  One may readily admit that there are a multitude of evils present in the world, but not without admitting that there are many cases in which goods that would not otherwise be created are made present.  So, the good trailing on evil is proof not of God’s non-existence or His weakness, but of His goodness and power.  As Aquinas puts it, “‘Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.’ This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good” (ST I, q.2, a.2, ad.2). 

Once we define evil for what it is metaphysically, that is a “no-thing”, we realize that it is only God Who is All-Good and All-Powerful that can create good ex nihilio.  The fact that good does come from evil shows that to be the work of God Himself.  So, the Problem of Evil, rather than leading us away from God, actually leads towards Him.   

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Taking Down the Firewall

Apologetics, Church Authority, Communion of Saints, End Times, Last Things, Protestantism, Purgatory, Scripture, , , ,

When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral, the Augustinian priest ignited a firewall that continues to separate Catholics and Protestants down to this day.  At the heart of his question was the abuse of indulgences, but he ultimately attacked the firewall upon which the doctrine was built—Purgatory—in order to make his point.  Unfortunately, the debate still rages today, not necessarily because of Purgatory itself but because of all of the ancillary issues attached to it: Atonement, Penance, Tradition, Development of Doctrine, and Authority.  In an age of exaggerated ecumenism, we tend to ignore those doctrines like Purgatory that ultimately lead to division.  Ignoring the truth is never a good idea, especially when the truth is a practical one.  Purgatory is perhaps the most practical of doctrines; many of those who don’t believe in it now will experience it first-hand in the not too distant future.  But it also is important to have a ready explanation for it because it is also a “head-pin” doctrine; knock it down and many of the aforementioned obstacles will fall with it.

The most common argument against it is that it is not Scriptural.  We have spoken any number of times in the past about the rule of faith being implicit within Sacred Scripture and the need for Tradition to make it explicit.  In other words, doctrines like Purgatory need not be explicit in Scripture only implicit.  We will not traverse that well-worn path yet again.  It is mentioned because we need not necessarily have this discussion regarding Purgatory.  If we dig a little deeper into Scripture then we will find that Purgatory is a common theme, so much so that we can offer a strictly Scriptural defense of it.

St. Thomas said that, when arguing with an opponent, we should always argue using terms and sources of authority that they agree with.  For example, when discussing some aspect of morality with a non-Christian, we should not cite the Bible but instead Natural Law.  We can certainly show how the Bible agree with that source of authority, but to obstinately stick to the Bible when they think it mythical is foolish.  A similar thing happens with Catholics and the doctrine of Purgatory.  Second Maccabees (2 Maccabees 12:39-46) clearly points to a belief in Purgatory.  The problem is that Protestants don’t accept that book as inspired.  By referencing them it seems to only prove their point that Purgatory is a Catholic fabrication, yet it still remains the go-to texts from the Old Testament.

St. Francis de Sales and the Argument from Scripture

Throughout post-Reformation history, there is perhaps no one better than St. Francis de Sales at converting Protestants.  Some estimate that he was responsible for over 70,000 conversions in his lifetime.  It is therefore instructive to look at how he presented this divisive doctrine.  He did not argue from Tradition or even mention 2Maccabees, but instead gave a strict Biblical defense using Protestant accepted texts.  Given his success rate and the fact that most of these texts are rarely cited, it is educative to review what he said (Catholic Controversy, Appendix II).

It without saying that Catholics and Protestants both agree that Christ’s Blood is the true purgatory.  But the question still remains how and when that purgation is applied.    For the saintly Bishop of Geneva and the thousands he converted there was a simple reasoning process: if there are passages which speak of purgation after death then there must be a place (call it Purgatory since the name is never given us) where this purgation occurs for purgation can happen neither in hell (where “the worm does not die” Mk 9:48) or in heaven (where “nothing unclean may enter it” Rev 21:27). 

St. Francis begins where many of the Fathers of the Church, those who spoke the great Amen to God’s Revelation, began, in Psalm 66.  There the Psalmist speaks of being led out into the spacious place by passing through fire (Ps 66:12).  Likewise, Isaiah 4:4 speaks of being cleansed by a spirit of burning. 

St. Francis also refers to Christ’s teaching on the Sermon of the Mount where he cautions about the punishments attached to anger (Mt 5:22-26).  Our Lord suggests different levels of punishment, with only the latter meriting hell.  For the other two, Jesus speaks of a prison of sorts that one can leave saying, “truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny” (5:26).  Building on this theme, St. Paul refers to a man who is saved “as through fire”  (1 Cor 3:11-15).

Praying for the Dead

All of this points to a time and place of purgation, but, absent a connection to Tradition, one could argue that this purgation occurs in this life.  The problem with that interpretation however is the abundance of Scriptural examples of people praying for the dead.  St. Francis begins by referring to David’s prayer and fasting for Saul and Jonathan after their deaths—”And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the people of the LORD and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword” (2 Sam 1:12).  Likewise, we find St. Paul praying for his departed friend Onesiphorous (1 Tim 1:16-18).

He also explains two other often problematic texts by referring to Purgatory.  The Mormons often justify their habit of literally vicariously baptizing the dead by referring to Paul’s text in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians (1 Cor 15:29).  St. Francis says that when Paul speaks of being baptized for the dead he does not mean it in the literal sense, but as an exhortation to offer sufferings for the dead.  He says that St. Paul is using Baptism in the same manner as Christ did when He speaks of His baptism of afflictions and penances undertaken in Luke 12:49-50—I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!  There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”.  Notice how Our Lord references to a fire in this rather clear passage.

Perhaps his most convincing passage prooftext is the last one he refers to: Philippians 2:10.  St. Paul says that that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth”.   In particular, St. Francis is concerned with a proper interpretation of those “under the earth”.  To assume that refers to those in hell would contradict Scripture— ”For there is no one in death, that is mindful of thee: and who shall confess to thee in hell?” (Ps 6:5, c.f. Isaiah 38:18).  Instead those “under the earth” refers to “holy souls in Purgatory”, that is the Church Suffering.  St. Paul’s hymn is making reference to the Church in all her members in heaven, on the earth and in Purgatory.  Ultimately then, there is no firewall between the Church’s members nor should there be between Catholics and Protestants.

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Arguing for God’s Existence Through the Degrees of Being

Atheism, Evolution, Faith and Reason, , , , , , ,

According to the First Vatican Council, it is an article of Faith that the existence of God can be proven using reason alone.  This declaration shows just how much faith the Church has in reason and philosophy.  It is an endorsement for the metaphysical endowment that God has given to man in the form of his own intellect.  The timing of the Vatican Council’s declaration is not accidental; reading the signs of the times almost 150 years ago, the Council Fathers saw that faith in reason was in decline and so the Holy Spirit thought it necessary to remind us of our metaphysical prowess.  Their message remains a clarion call for us today.

Among the many proofs for the existence of God, the Church has given a special pride of place to the Five Ways of St. Thomas.  These proofs ably combine metaphysical thinking with common experience to lead us to back to God under five different attributes: the Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused Cause, the Necessary Being, the Most Perfect Being and the Orderly Governor of Creation.  This does not, mind you, replace what God has revealed, but instead acts like a preamble to faith or a preliminary motive of credibility that paves the way for the invasion of grace and true Faith.  These proofs have proven to be irrefutable.  Those who have tried have only shown themselves unable to understand them.  It is therefore vital that we be able to present these proofs in an intelligible manner.  In the past we have explained the First Way so that in this essay we will present what is the most metaphysical of the Five Ways, the Fourth Way, often called the Argument from Degrees of Being.

Before getting to the actual proof, it will be helpful to review the metaphysical principles that St. Thomas employs because the modern mind habitually assumes that all value judgments are subjective.  But objective reality is otherwise.  But in order to grasp this, we need to introduce the medieval concept of the Chain of Being.

The Chain of Being

In an egalitarian age that is unable to decipher between the value of man and beast, the Chain of Being might strike us as odd.  It posits that the world is not just a blob of different stuff or a random collection of atoms, but instead an ordered hierarchy of beings.  The ordering is not based upon subjective preferences, but upon objective standards.  A man’s best friend really does have more value than Man’s Best Friend; John is objectively more valuable than Fido. 

Merely saying so does not make it so however.  Instead we must look at why John is more valuable than Fido.  We say that one creature is greater than another when it has more perfections, that is more being.  A geranium has life and can grow and thus has more perfections than a Plymouth Rock.  Fido has life and the capacity to grow, but also the power of locomotion and sense knowledge.  John too has vegetative powers and sensitive powers of Fido, but also the power to reason.  John is more valuable than Fido because he has more perfections.  And because he has more perfections, he has more being and occupies a higher place in the Chain of Being.  We can say that John is objectively more valuable than Fido accusations of speciesism not withstanding.

It is better to be than not to be.  Put another way, a thing must exist before it can be good so that whatever has goodness must have being.  The reverse is also true: everything that has being also has some goodness.  This is the case because being and goodness are convertible meaning that we can examine being under the aspect of goodness. To be is good and to be more is to better.  Good is related to the perfection of being.

Being is not within a category, but instead transcends all categories because it contains all categories.  The same applies to goodness in that it transcends all categories because it applies to all of them.  This is why we refer to goodness, along with truth and beauty as transcendentals.  Truth is a transcendental because all being is in a sense knowable.  The more being a thing has, the more knowable it is (and the hard it is to truly know).  In that sense we can also say that a plant is more true than a rock.  Likewise with beauty which, in a certain sense, combines goodness and truth so that the objectively beautiful exhibits integrity, harmony and clarity.  To avoid repeating what has been said before, I point the reader to this link on beauty.

Aquinas’ Fourth Way

With our feet planted on this metaphysical foundation, we can now evaluate St. Thomas’ argument.

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But “more” and “less” are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

ST I, q.2, art. 3

St. Thomas begins by referring to the aforementioned Chain of Being.  What he then goes on to do is say that if we predicate a transcendental property to any being, then there must be “something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being.”  This might not be intuitive based on our foundation so we will spell it out more explicitly. 

Although creatures have various degrees of being, none of them are the cause of their own being.  Each creature is limited in their being by their nature or their essence and thus they must receive their existence from another (this is the First Way).  This cause of being cannot itself require a cause but instead must have maximal being, that is, it must be of their essence to exist.  This Being, we call God Who calls Himself “I AM”.

Meeting an Objection

It is worth looking at an objection because it helps to clarify the argument and illuminate St. Thomas’s genius.  It would be a misreading of the argument to assume that St. Thomas is saying that all things that exist in degrees must have a maximum.  He is partly to blame for this because of the example he used with respect to fire and heat.  Heat need not have an absolute maximum.  Treating it as simply an example of a closed system in which a fire is the source of all heat, makes the example more intelligible.  Many people, including theists, make this mistake.  But none make it with as much flair as Richard Dawkins did in his book The God Delusion when he said that “You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness.  Therefore, there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker.”

Dawkins’ cleverness stops at his example.  Unable to see anything without his scientistic glasses, he can only see the flaw in St. Thomas’ example and is unable to grasp the underlying logic.  A bad example does not invalidate the principle.  Dawkins and his kind do not grasp that the argument is not about beings in particular, but being itself.  St. Thomas is focused only on the transcendentals—” so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being”—and not on particular created things.  Those things that share or participate in a limited way of being, goodness, truth and beauty must be caused by a Being that is essentially and maximally good, true and beautiful.

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Saint John Henry Newman and Chastity

Communion of Saints, Defending the Faith, Friendship, Homosexuality, Moralilty, Sexual Ethics, Sin, , , , , ,

In the days leading up to now St. John Henry Newman’s beatification in 2010, NPR’s All Things Considered turned its consideration towards the question as to whether the Cardinal may in fact have been gay.  Never one to miss the opportunity to promote the LGBT agenda, Fr. James Martin retweeted the article on the eve of Newman’s canonization saying, “This doesn’t imply that the man who will become a saint tomorrow ever broke his promise of celibacy. And we may never know for sure. But his relationship with Ambrose St. John is worthy of attention. It isn’t a slur to suggest that Newman may have been gay.”  Although no one in the Church hierarchy is likely to correct Fr. Martin, it is both a slur and manifestly false to suggest that the saint may have been gay.  A comment such as this is not only disingenuous, but reveals the lavender glasses that color everything that Fr. Martin says and reveals his animus for true Catholic teaching.  In the 2010 NPR piece, Fr. Martin was interviewed and offered that, “It is church teaching that a gay person can be holy, and a gay person can be a saint.  And it’s only a matter of time before the church recognizes one publicly.”  This reveals a serious flaw in his thinking and shows why he is ultimately unfit to minister to those people who struggle with same sex attraction. 

The Saints and Heroic Virtue

The second step in the process of canonization is to be declared Venerable.  This declaration, which, in Newman’s case, occurred in 1991, declares that the man exercised all of the virtues, both theological and natural to a heroic degree.  The point of such an examination is to show how deeply grace had penetrated the man’s life enabling him to practice the moral virtues with ease and the theological virtues eminently.  Among these natural virtues, chastity plays a key role meaning that, in Newman’s case, the Church has declared that he practiced chastity to a heroic degree.  And herein lies the problem with Fr. Martin’s hypothesis, both regarding the new saint and any canonized saint in the future: you cannot exercise chastity to a heroic degree and also be gay.

This may seem rather harsh, until we examine the nature of virtue in general.  The role of virtue in the moral life is to habitually order our faculties towards their proper end.  These powers of the soul “train” the lower faculties to respond in accord with right reason.  The man who struggles with disordered anger, or what we would call the vice of anger, by developing the virtue of meekness not only is able to keep himself from angry outbursts, but actually so governs his feelings of anger that it is only felt when it is reasonable to do so.  A similar thing can be said about all of our other vices or disordered inclinations including Same-Sex Attraction.  Just as meekness roots out any disordered anger, chastity roots out all disordered manifestations of our sexual faculties and orders them towards their proper ends.  The man who is truly chaste would no longer experience SSA.    

Notice that I did not perform any of the usual moral hairsplitting that many people make regarding this topic between homosexual activity and the vice of SSA.  While this may have some value in assessing personal culpability, it has no place when it comes to the virtue of chastity.  To employ such a distinction, such as Fr. Martin does in this case only serves to muddy the moral waters making chastity harder, not easier.  It all stems from an error in thinking that chastity and celibacy are the same thing.  But they are most certainly distinct.  Celibacy has to do with restraining the exterior actions.  Chastity has to do with properly ordering interior inclinations.  A man may be celibate without being chaste, but an unmarried man cannot be chaste without also being celibate.  Fr. Martin seems to suggest that St. John Henry Newman fell into the former category—celibate without being chaste.  To suggest that a canonized saint wasn’t chaste is a slur, especially given that the Church has declared him to be a man of heroic chastity.

Deep down, Fr. Martin knows all this.  This is his motivation for trying to change the designation of SSA from disordered to differently ordered.  If it is merely that there is a different ordering, then the chaste person could in fact experience SSA.  But if it is disordered then it will be rooted out as the person grows in chastity.  There is no reason why a person who struggles with SSA (or to use Fr. Martin’s designation of gay) couldn’t become a Saint someday, but it will only happen after they have removed that vice (and all the others) from their lives.  In fact, there may already be some Saint that had this difficulty at some point, but to suggest that we might someday have a gay saint is like saying that we already have a fornicating Saint in St. Augustine.  St. Augustine is a Saint because he became chaste and rooted out all the sexual vices he had in his soul. 

Blinded by the Lavender Light

All of this reveals why Fr. Martin is ill-suited to minister to those who have SSA.  All he can see is gay.  In examining the life of John Henry Newman, it is quite obvious that he deeply loved Fr. Ambrose St. John.  But it is only someone who sees all things in a lavender light that would mistake the love of friendship with erotic love.  The aforementioned St. Augustine, on losing a friend said:

I was amazed that other mortals went on living when he was dead whom I had loved as though he would never die, and still more amazed that I could go on living myself when he was dead – I, who had been like another self to him. It was well said that a friend is half one’s own soul. I felt that my soul and his had been but one soul in two bodies, and I shrank from life with loathing because I could not bear to be only half alive; and perhaps I was so afraid of death because I did not want the whole of him to die, whom I had love so dearly.

This seems very similar to what Newman said at the loss of his friend “I have always thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or a wife’s but I feel it difficult to believe that anyone’s sorrow can be greater than mine.”  Would Fr. Martin have us believe that St. Augustine was gay or bisexual?  Or is it, that he is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging that there is a proper, non-sexual love between same sex persons in friendship?  One of the ways in which chastity is increased in the person with SSA is to acknowledge that to the extent that his love for the other person is real, it is really a disordered love of friendship.  Once this is realized the person is able to develop a healthy and ordered love for the other person.  What makes Fr. Martin unsuited then to help these people is that he would not admit to the true love of friendship.  Otherwise he would not make such a stupid comment about St. John Henry Newman, but put him forward as an example of how those with SSA might purify their love for a person of the same sex through authentic friendship. 

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Beginning at the End

Heaven, Last Things, , , ,

In the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the novel’s protagonist Arthur Dent journeys to a distant planet and meets an alien race.  He finds that this race has built a supercomputer that successfully calculated the meaning of life as the number 42.  Despite the absurdity of the response, a deep truth emerges.  The truth is that there is an objective answer to the question of what the meaning of life is and it is happiness.  In recognition of this fact, the Catechism quotes St. Augustine’s state that we “all want to live happily; in the whole human race there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it is fully articulated.”  

To see the truth of this, we must begin by examining the nature of man himself.  We begin with the simple definition of Aristotle that man is a rational animal.  Like all animals, man acts with a purpose.  However, because man is also rational, truly human acts are not only done for a purpose but also proceed from deliberation and are freely chosen.  In other words, everything we do is oriented toward the attainment of some freely chosen end. 

Upon examination of human acts, one finds that man acts for the attainment of a myriad of ends.  However, to say that there is a single meaning or purpose to life is to say that there is a single end behind everything that man does.  How can one say this without contradiction?

St. Thomas addresses this question in the Summa Theologiae.  He proves that man has an ultimate end that motivates everything he does and that all men have the same end. 

He begins by proving that man has a last end in a manner that is parallel to his argument for the existence of God as the first cause.  He argues that there cannot be an infinite regress of ends without a final end.

Next, St. Thomas shows why this final end is that which motivates all of man’s actions.  This ultimate end must fulfill all our desires.  Everything man desires is desired in terms of this final end even though we may only be subconsciously aware of it.  Each and every good that is pursued derives it goodness from its relation to the ultimate good.  

Finally, St. Thomas argues that because all men have the same nature (i.e. the same human essence that equips them for human operations) all men must have the same goal.  This goal is complete human fulfillment which is referred to as happiness or beatitude.

Happiness is the ultimate end of life because it fits each of the criteria.  Everyone desires to be happy and it is desired only as an end in itself.  Nobody desires happiness for the sake of something else.  Happiness is the motivation behind every decision and action.

Even though it seems that everyone agrees on the idea that happiness is the meaning of life, nearly everyone disagrees as to what is the ultimate cause of this happiness.  So the question of what this happiness consists in must now be addressed.

The Contenders

To address this question, the Angelic Doctor looks at eight possibilities.  By looking empirically at human nature, he comes to a single, final end through the process of elimination.

He begins by looking at riches and finds that wealth is merely a means to an end.  It is “sought for the sake of something else, namely as a support of human nature (natural wealth)” or as “means to exchange those natural goods.”  Like other bodily goods, it also cannot be used to obtain spiritual goods and thus cannot fulfill man in his totality.  The goods of the body are subordinate to the goods of the soul and therefore cannot be the supreme good.

St. Thomas then looks at honor, fame and power.  We must be in possession of happiness and we do not possess honor but receive it from without.  With fame we find that the controlling source is outside us while power is no more than the capacity to do something.  Happiness is a state.

St. Thomas then looks at pleasure but notes that it always accompanies something else.  Thus, pleasure is an accident to happiness and not the source of happiness.  Likewise he looks at the goods of the soul such as the intellectual and moral virtues. Although happiness resides in the human soul, its source is outside of it.

And the Winner Is…

What this means concretely is that happiness cannot be found in the will because it remains the goal of the will to desire the good and unite man to it.  It is not the power through which goods outside the soul are experienced.  This can only happen in the intellect.

Man, through his power of abstraction, is able to unite to the essence of a thing through knowledge.  The thing known becomes united to the knower, it literally becomes a part of him.  This is why the Bible often uses knowledge as an analogy or euphemism for the marital embrace.  When the intellect comes to know God in the Beatific vision, that is to “see Him as He really is” it is fully satisfied because it knows God and all things through Him.  Faith is a preview of this, but ultimately passes away when vision is granted.

All of this “dry” philosophy would be little more than an intellectual exercise unless it didn’t also change our view of the world. After all, St. Thomas is only demonstrating what the Faith already teaches. We were made for God. But by showing the reasonableness of the Faith, it makes it very practical. This ought to teach us to put first things first. As free creatures, everything we do either moves us closer to God or away from Him. We need to examine each and every one of our actions against this measuring stick. It was St. Ignatius, in his Principle and Foundation who put the practical aspects of this proof most succinctly:

For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things as much as we are able, so that we do not necessarily want health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long rather than a short life, and so in all the rest, so that we ultimately desire and choose only what is most conducive for us to the end for which God created us

In conclusion, thanks to reason enlightened by faith, we are able to come to the conclusion that all men seek the vision of God as their ultimate end.  Like the Angelic Doctor, we pray that our rational justification match his answer to the voice asking him what he wanted as his reward: “Only Yourself Lord.”

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Accepting Polygenism

Creation, Evolution, Magisterium, , , , , ,

Benjamin Franklin once quipped that nothing was certain but death and taxes.  If Mr. Franklin were alive today, he would add evolution to the list of certainties. The theory has become fact and has won uncritical acceptance from nearly everyone, Catholic or not.  Having become adamantine, this theory has broken Adam’s family into pieces with dire consequences both for the Faith and for the world because of one particular aspect, polygenism.  Polygenism, put simply, is the belief that, rather than tracing our human origins back to a single couple, we came from multiple couples.  Rather than look at each of the different theories in particular, we will examine the idea based through philosophical and theological lenses.

First it is worth mentioning that the Magisterium has cautioned the Faithful about accepting polygenism in any of its forms.  In his 1950 Encyclical, Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII spoke of the liberty the Faithful have in discerning the origins of the human body.  But,

“When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own”

Humani Generis, 36-37

It takes a bit of theological gymnastics not to read this as a blanket rejection of polygenism, but nevertheless some theological contortionists have posited that the door is still open.  What is clear however is that any polygenetic theory would have to maintain two truths about Adam.  First, that there are no men on earth that did not take their origin from him.  Secondly, we cannot see Adam as somehow an icon or symbol for a bunch of first parents.  Hard to imagine that any theory of polygenism could maintain this since it seems to assert its opposite, but even if the Pope did leave it open, there is no theory as of yet that meets this criteria.

Pius XII mentions the theological interest in the question as it relates to Original Sin.  It leaves open the possibility and historical reality of an unfallen race at various time points throughout history.  Even if all mankind eventually fell, there would have been a time when unfallen and fallen men lived together.  That means there may have been unfallen men who were conceived of unfallen parents.  This would then call into question the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by which Our Lady is said to have received a “singular grace”.  It also leaves open the possibility that men died without falling and thus would not be in need of redemption.  If all men did not sin in Adam then all men are not redeemed in Christ.

This is not the only way that polygenism tugs at the thread of the seamless garment of the Faith in ways we do not initially grasp.  It also puts in jeopardy the dogmatic truth of the special creation of Eve.  It is a matter of dogma taught through the Ordinary Magisterium, and first affirmed Pope Pelagius I in 561 and reaffirmed by Pope Pius XII in the aforementioned Encyclical that Eve was literally created from the rib of Adam.  This belief is protective of the equal dignity of men and women because they come from the same origin.

It turns out that polygenism not only leads to inequality between the sexes but between races as well.  The evolutionary model rests upon a progressive view of beings.  Things are always adapting and getting better.  From a philosophical perspective, evolution is the tool by which the rungs of the Ladder of Being are being added.  Beings on the same rung are equal in dignity, those above or below have more or less dignity.  Human beings are equal in dignity because they occupy the same rung of the Ladder of Being.  Under the model of polygenism this ceases to be the case.  With different evolutionary origins, different races occupy different rungs on the ladder.  In short, it gives both biological and philosophical justification for some human persons being more equal than others.

This is why the Francis Galtons, Margaret Sangers and Hitlers of the world have always loved the Theory of Evolution.  It justified their eugenic madness.  Under polygenism, some races would necessarily be inferior to other races.  This would justify their extermination and there would be no disputing them.  This is why Pope Pius XII thought it necessary to safeguard not just Revelation, but man’s unique place within visible creation against the threat of uncritical acceptance of Evolution.  Ideas have consequences and all of us, especially Catholics, need to be more critical in their acceptance of the Theory of Evolution.

Before closing, it is worth mentioning that many well-meaning Catholics accept polygenism because it seems better than accepting incest among Adam and Eve’s children.  Rather than revisiting that question here, I will simply point you to a previous post that deals with that objection.

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In Defense of Philosophy

Culture, Defending the Faith, , , , ,

Carl Linnaeus was an Eighteenth-Century Swedish Biologist who first adopted the binomial nomenclature for naming organisms.  In so doing, he dubbed man has homo sapiens or “wise man”.  If Linnaeus was to have witnessed mankind’s evolution, not through random mutation, but through political correctness, he might dub him homo insapiens instead.  Modern man is a lot of things, but wise is most certainly not one of them.  For all of the supposed progress that modernity has offered, the threat of a new Dark Ages remains a real possibility.

Linnaeus’ choice of the participle sapiens to describe man was a recognition of the fact that among all of the species, only man has the capacity for wisdom.  It is, in a very real sense, his specific difference.  But it is only a capacity and not a biologically determined inevitability.  It is his destiny, but only if he accepts it as his vocation.  He must both value it, pursue it and come to love it.

Wisdom and Philosophy?

In order to do this, we must first admit that most of us don’t know what wisdom is.  The wise man knows the right ordering of things; not just some things, but all things.  He knows what the first things are so he can put them first, what the second things are so you can put them second, and so on.  It is only by acknowledging and choosing according to this order right order that he can be truly fulfilled.  Wisdom isn’t “no” but “instead of”.  To put it in philosophical terms, wisdom is to judge all things according to their final causes or purposes.

Accepting his sapiential vocation means that man strives to become a lover of wisdom.  He becomes a philosopher, not because he enjoys esoterica, but because he is a man.  Man can no more avoid being a philosopher than he can avoid thinking.  He will see the world according to his own first principles.  The choice then is not about whether he will be a philosopher but about his philosophy.  Will it be as Chesterton puts it, “thought that has been thought out” or will it be the “unconscious acceptance of broken bits of some incomplete philosophy” that comes in “nothing but phrases that are, at their best, prejudices”?

The Antidote to PC Culture

Ultimately then, Political Correctness in all its forms is perhaps the greatest threat to mankind today.  I say this without any danger of succumbing to hyperbole.  By serving as a substitution for thought, it threatens to make us into something less than human.  At the heart of wisdom, and therefore of any philosophy, is the question why.  We cannot order anything without investigating causes.  When a philosophy forbids, or at the very least, avoids that question, it becomes a danger to us all.  Usually very reserved in his language, GK Chesterton, playing the role of prophet warns of dire consequences:

The best reason for a revival of philosophy is that unless a man has a philosophy certain horrible things will happen to him. He will be practical; he will be progressive; he will cultivate efficiency; he will trust in evolution; he will do the work that lies nearest; he will devote himself to deeds, not words. Thus struck down by blow after blow of blind stupidity and random fate, he will stagger on to a miserable death with no comfort but a series of catchwords; such as those which I have catalogued above. Those things are simply substitutes for thoughts. In some cases they are the tags and tail-ends of somebody else’s thinking. That means that a man who refuses to have his own philosophy will not even have the advantages of a brute beast, and be left to his own instincts. He will only have the used-up scraps of somebody else’s philosophy; which the beasts do not have to inherit; hence their happiness.

The Revival of Philosophy–Why?

So many Catholics feel helpless in the face of modernity, especially as the detritus of secular philosophy continues to overflow into the Church.  Whatever the solution, it is clear that no solution will be viable without a cadre of right-thinking Catholics.  Only the Scholasticism of St. Thomas offers a complete and coherent explanation of reality that is able to refute political correctness in all its subtle forms.  Our enemies, much quicker than us to realize this, have successfully suppressed his thought for several generations.  Chesterton thought there needed to be a revival of philosophy, I am saying there needs to be a revival of a specific philosophy.  It is time that the Church and all in it sit and the feet of St. Thomas and learn how to be truly wise.

Only the wise man is truly free.  He moves about unhindered within the range of reality, seeing and using everything in its specific place.  This is why the attack on perennial philosophy is actually an attack against man’s freedom.  Controlling a man’s thoughts, controls the man’s actions.  Political correctness is enslavement to groupthink.  A man who is truly a freethinker, that is one who thinks freely about how to use his freedom, is impossible to control.  He sets his sights on the highest things and pursues them with love and zeal.  He is a philosopher in the truest sense of the word and enjoys the freedom of right action that always flows from right thought.  The future of mankind very much depends upon our decision to be homo sapiens.

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Angels and the Sexes

Angels, Anthropology, Apologetics, beauty, , , , , , ,

There is perhaps no topic that St. Thomas Aquinas is more closely associated with than angels.  Dubbed The Angelic Doctor, both because of his angelic purity, and because of his thorough compilation of the Church’s teachings on the angels, he is a reliable teacher on the topic.  We can turn to him and find the necessary principles that will enable us to answer any question we might have, including the question as to why angels always appear as men in Scripture. 

One of the things that St. Thomas does is to help us see beyond on modern prejudices because he appeals to universal principles.  There is a modern tendency, especially in an age of exaggerated gender equality, to attribute it to patriarchal repression.  But there is more to it than that and it begins by turning to Aquinas’ negative definition of an angel as that which is “understood to be incorporeal” (ST, q.51, art.1).  Lacking bodies, are neither male nor female by nature.  Nevertheless, because matter makes the invisible visible, the angels use a body to reveal themselves. 

Where the Body Comes From

To say that they “use” a body leads us to a necessary digression.  The angels do not rob a grave nor perform something like a good possession, but instead draw together the matter necessary to create the physical appearance of a human body.  “Appearance” because it is not truly a human body because its proper form of the human soul.  Although they do not have a body by nature, they do, by nature have the power to move matter in accord with their will (assuming Divine approval of course).  Making a body then would be perfectly within their natural powers.

This “body” serves solely the purpose of revealing the angel and allowing him to communicate with humans on their level.  In this way, the angels are in the image of God, given the power to use the material to make the non-material intelligible to us.  This is why we can never look upon their choice of body as an accident of social convention or a concession to patriarchy.  Instead it is chosen for a purpose, namely to reveal the angel, in both his nature and personality, to men.  This purpose helps set the tone for an explanation as to why the bodies are always male. 

Angels, because they lack materiality, also lack, philosophically speaking, potency.  The angel is pure intellect, always being in act of knowing a loving.  If they cease to think and love, they cease to exist.  Likewise, being immaterial, they “live” outside of visible creation.  This means that angels are always the initiators in their interaction with mankind.  Men cannot beckon them (this is why the angel will not tell Jacob his name) nor conjure them up.  They must always come on their own accord.  In “coming” they enter into the physical world from the outside.  They must come from outside of visible creation and enter into the physical world.  Finally, angels are by their mission, the militant protectors of mankind.  They are warriors assigned to battle the evil spirits in their assault upon mankind.

The Body Reveals the Personality

If the angel, in forming a body, wants to convey both his nature and his personality, then how should he present himself?  To convey personality, he must choose one of the sexes and not just an amorphous blob or non-personal type matter.  To convey his nature, he must choose one or the other.  To see which one, another slight digression is in order.

The sexes, male and female, are meant to reveal masculinity and femininity.  The masculine principle is always the initiator, always the one who comes from the outside.  The feminine principle is always passive and receptive.  The masculine is, viewed philosophically, acts as the efficient cause in reducing the feminine from potency to act.  Likewise, the masculine is always the protector and warrior of the feminine. 

Angels, by choosing to appear with men, are revealing that they have initiated the conversation with men, and that they have come from outside of visible creation.  The Heavenly Host is an army arrayed in battle to protect us.  This militancy is best portrayed by being a man.  It is for these three reasons that angels always appear as men in Scripture and why we always speak of the angels that we don’t see as “he”.

In the book of Zechariah, there is a story of how the prophet was visited by an angel.  In that regard, it is no different than many other cases in Scripture of similar visitation.  It is unique however because at first glance it appears that a female angel (actually two) makes an appearance.  There is reason to think however that these angels are actually demons.

The prophet is visited by an angel who points out to him a basket that contains a woman whom he identifies as “wickedness”.  He closes the basket and then the angel raises Zechariah’s “eyes and saw two women coming forth with wind under their wings—they had wings like the wings of a stork—and they lifted the basket into the air.  I said to the angel who spoke with me, ‘Where are they taking the basket?’  He replied, ‘To build a temple for it in the land of Shinar. When the temple is constructed, they will set it there on its base.’” (Zech 5:9-11).  These “two women”, some posit, are angels.  But the destination, Shinar, which is where the tower of Babel was built (Gen 11), later referred to as Babylon, tells us something different.  Throughout Scripture, Babylon is always presented as the city of the devil and thus they are carrying wickedness back to its biblical home. 

Devotion to the Angels and Angel Statues

All of that being said, why does it matter if they appear as both men and women or only as men?  It matters because angels are not just hypothetical beings but real people who play an active role in the world of mankind.  It becomes then a matter of discernment, giving us a principle by which to distinguish between an angel of light and an angel of darkness.  Given all that we have said, it is not surprising that exorcists and demonologists find that only demons appear as women and that they caution us to avoid a feminine spirit.  This is not to suggest that women are evil, (for the demons also appear as men) only that femininity does not properly convey the nature of the angel.  The demons operate on deception and seduction and thus we should not be surprised that these is one of the means they use. 

It isn’t just discernment that matters, but also devotion.  Devotional art ought to portray the object of devotion as it truly is.  It may abstract away certain pieces (like the excess blood of Christ on the Cross) but it must remain true to the object itself.  In other words, devotional art ought to imitate nature because it helps to foster a deeper devotion.  This is why we should be cautious in accepting the modern tendency to depict angels as female in art.  The angels themselves are artists and they have chosen the male body to portray themselves.  Masculine angel art helps to foster true devotion to the angels because it depicts their true characteristics more than a female art would.  In this way, that is because it has claritas, the masculine angel is always more beautiful than the feminine. 

If it is really true that only demons appear as women, then these aesthetic objects may in fact be idols, fostering devotion to devils instead.  Devotion is always directed from the heart to the object.  In this way it has a power of forming our hearts to love the object of our devotion.  A poor depiction of angels, or even one that is really demonic, can eventually do harm to our spiritual life.  This is why it is always better to foster devotion based on what we do know, namely that angels always take on masculine form, then to speculate, and risk offering devotion to something far more insidious. 

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Kindred Spirits?

Defending the Faith, Protestantism, Saints, Scripture, , , , , ,

Summing up why Sacred Scripture matters, St. Jerome once proclaimed that “ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”  The famously acerbic Doctor of the Church knew that the Word Made Flesh could be found on every page of the Bible and therefore dedicated his life to studying the Scriptures and producing accurate translations of the books of the Bible.  Living in a time when many of the versions had become corrupt due to poor translation and copyist errors, he learned Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic just so that he could create the most accurate translation of the ancient books.  So gifted was he in this area that the pope at the time, Pope Damasus, asked him to produce an “official” translation in Latin that became known as the Vulgate.  It is this translation that remains the official translation of the Church to our day.

Like much of what the somewhat contentious Jerome did during his lifetime, his work was not without controversy in his day.  Little did he know that this controversy would be felt a millennium later when a former Augustinian monk stumbled upon some of his early thought and used his arguments to justify his own position.  The bulk of Jerome’s work was done when the Church did not have an official canon—official in the sense that the Church had authoritatively spoken as to which books were part of the Bible and which weren’t.  It was not until 382 that Pope Damasus produced a list of the canon that was later affirmed by the Council of Hippo (393) and the Council of Carthage (397).  Nevertheless, there was still widescale agreement among the Faithful as to which books could be used in the Liturgy (which was the home of Scripture) and which couldn’t.  There was still some question about a few books like the Book of James, Revelation, the Letter of Clement to the Corinthians and the Didache, but most agreed that the former two belonged and the latter did not.  But before officially closing the canon, Pope Damasus sought to produce an accurate translation of the entire canon of Scripture so that the Church could have a single collection of the books to rely on.

It is important to note however that the debated books never included what has become known as the Deuterocanon (or Apocrypha in Protestant circles).  This name, Deuterocanon, was used to distinguish books of the Old Testament that could be used for argumentation and evangelization with Jews from those that couldn’t.  For the Jews, once they realized that their books were being coopted by the Christians, had begun to build a wall around their Scriptures and rejected all those books that were not found in Hebrew.  A list that included the seven books (Baruch, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, Sirach, Judith, Wisdom, and Tobit) and parts of two others (Daniel and Esther) of the Catholic canon.  But the Church still viewed both sets of books as inspired and we find those books included among all the early lists of the approved Scriptures by the Church Fathers. 

Jerome’s Line of Reasoning

The agreement in the Early Church regarding the Deuterocanonical books was unanimous except for one man—St. Jerome.  For Jerome made a mistake in his thinking, a mistake of which the aftershocks are still felt today.  As he gathered up the various translations of the books, he found that the copies of the Septuagint, that is, the ancient Greek translation of the books of the Old Testament, were various and not wholly consistent.  Translating them without finding an “official” text proved difficult to say the least.  He also found that the Hebrew texts, what he called the Hebrew Masoretic (HM) texts, had been widely circulated for several centuries and were much cleaner and consistent.  From these two facts, Jerome came to an incorrect conclusion.  He thought that the HM texts were the “correct” ones and not the Septuagint.  He called this the principle of “Hebrew Verity”.  And since the Deuterocanon did not appear in the HM texts he also concluded that they were not inspired.

Flash forward 1100 years and Martin Luther, whose theology, especially on indulgences and praying for the dead, is clearly contradicted by these books, is looking for a reason to throw these books out of the Canon.  He stumbles across Jerome’s reasoning and latches on to it.  The story of how he removed the books has been covered previously, so we won’t rehash that here.  What we will cover however is that Jerome was wrong in his line of thinking and therefore Luther merely resurrected his error and passed on a stunted Canon to his Protestant progeny.

Why Jerome was Wrong

We know that Jerome was wrong for two reasons.  The first is related to the findings in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  This sacred library was discovered in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds and contained the earliest translations of many of the books in the Old Testament.  These translations precede any of the earliest translations we had up to that point by almost 1000 years and precede Jerome’s HM text by almost 500 years in some case.  Why this is significant for the discussion at hand is that among the books that were found were the books of the Deuterocanon.  And not only were they in the library, but there were Hebrew and Aramaic translations.  These translations, as well as the translations of the other books that were found, are closer in substance to the Septuagint and not to the HM texts.  In short, the Dead Sea Scrolls show that Jerome erred in thinking that just because the HM texts were consistent, they were correct.  The problem was that the parts of the Septuagint were actually preserving the original Hebrew better than the currently existing Hebrew and the Dead Sea Scrolls show this.

While Luther might be excused for not knowing this, the second reason should have convinced him.  The reason we know Jerome was wrong is because Jerome said he was wrong.  In a letter Against Rufinus he said,

“What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the Story of Susanna, the Song of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us.”

And this ultimately helps us to uncover not just the error Luther made but his motivation.  For he cites St. Jerome as his authority, but then does not do what Jerome did.  For Jerome, even though he had personal reservations against those books being included in the official canon, still translated them, and ultimately deferred to the authority of the Church.  He knew that his personal opinion could err, but the Church could not, especially when it comes to the Canon of Scripture.  He knew that a fallible list of infallible books leads to an absurdity, one that tugs at the seamless garment of the content of faith until it entirely unravels. 

It is not much of a stretch, especially when we read their writings, to see that Jerome and Luther were kindred spirits with one huge exception.  St. Jerome has the humility of a saint and deferred to the authority of the Church.  Luther had the pride of devil and decided to set himself up as his own authority.

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On the Possibility of Miracles

Apologetics, , , , , , , ,

The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, better known as the Jeffersonian Bible, was compiled in 1820 by the founding father of the same name.  Using a literal cut and paste method, Jefferson extracted sections of the New Testament that he thought presented Jesus as a great moral exemplar.  Left behind are only mentions of the miracles He performed, including the Resurrection, and any passages that even have a whiff of his divinity.  The famous tinkerer could find no reasons to believe in the divinity of Christ and the operation of the supernatural so he imposed his naturalism upon the texts of the Bible.  Although he hid it away for fear of reprisal, there are many, even inside confines of the Church, who openly adopt and preach naturalism. 

Naturalism

Simply put, naturalism is the position that all that exists is nature.  It usually goes hand in hand with scientism, that is, the belief that the only field of knowledge is empirical science.  Within this philosophical framework the supernatural is a priori excluded such that there must be a natural explanation for everything.  This would include the divinity of Christ and miracles.  Rather than scientifically investigating the possibility of miracles, they simply conclude that miracles are impossible because they are impossible.  As we shall see, however, the miracles of Jesus are in fact quite possible.

CS Lewis makes a helpful distinction in categorizing the miracles of Jesus into two very broad categories: miracles of the Old Creation and miracles of the New Creation.  The former are those miracles in which, seemingly, the laws of nature are altered.  The latter are those that pertain to the laws of supernature.  As an example of the former we could have the changing of the water into wine and of the latter, the walking on water.  Both however respect nature and are no mere suspension of natural laws.  The super-natural always builds upon and assumes the natural. 

Using the Miracle of Cana as an example, let us examine whether or not such a miracle of the Old Creation is possible.  But before doing so, a disclaimer of sorts must be made.  The goal of this discussion is to show that miracles are possible and if possible then probable.  This is not a definitive proof that any particular miracle, including the changing of water into wine, actually happened.  That must be taken upon faith.  Instead the goal is more modest and that is to show that there is nothing irrational about believing in miracles, and, in fact, it is irrational not to believe in their possibility.

Returning to our example, let us examine what is happening.  A substance, namely water, is being changed into another substance, wine.  Change is a reality within the natural world and occurs everywhere we look so there is nothing per se out of the ordinary here.  All substantial change is governed by the enduring principle of matter.  In each substantial change, the matter takes on a new form; water gets into a grape seed and the matter becomes the grape vine which then bears grapes which undergo another substantial change through the process of fermentation and become wine.  So, we see, using the laws of substantial change, it is quite possible that water becomes wine. 

The Lord of Nature

This is not to explain away the miraculous, but to set it in its proper context.  Properly speaking the miracle is not in the change itself, but in the rapidity of the change.  Christ is revealing that He is the Lord of Nature and so it is fitting that He would respect the laws of nature and yet show His mastery over them.  He is the Sovereign King of Creation and thus He can do all things.  He came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it means not just the religious laws like the ritual washing that made the stone jars necessary, but also the laws of nature as well.  In fact, He uses the miracle as a sign that it is His power over nature that also gives Him the authority over the religious law. This mastery over nature is precisely what lends credibility to His claims of divinity and is the reason why He always uses some form of matter in His miracles rather than just creating it out of nothing.  The fact that He also produced a superabundance of 520 liters of wine shows how His absolute mastery.  A similar thing can be shown with the other miracles such as the multiplication of the loaves. 

What about the miracles of the New Creation, those like the walking on the water and the Resurrection?  How can we reconcile these?  Here again we must admit that we cannot prove them, but we can show how the follow from the possibility of the Miracles of the Old Creation and how they are not a repudiation of the laws of Nature.  If we view the miracles of the Old Creation as signs, motives of credibility if you will, then we can say that these miracles of the New Creation are the fulfillment of those signs.  They are meant to show that the laws of nature are not what is altered but man and his relationship to nature that is altered.  Water is still wet and still permeable, but man is given power over it.  Peter, a mere man in the process of becoming a new man, is able to walk on the water as long as he kept his eyes fixed on Christ.  Death, a natural consequence of man’s material being, no longer can hold him.  In both cases the laws are still in place, but man himself has changed.  Previously governed by the material laws because of his material body, he is governed by the laws of a spiritual body.  Spirit asserts its dominance against matter. 

We see now that we must admit at least of the possibility of miracles of Jesus and any philosophy that eliminates them by definition is necessarily false.  There is nothing contrary to the character of nature that would preclude them.  To eliminate them a priori means that you must in some way deny some of the attributes of nature itself.  To eliminate the possibility of the supernatural in this case means a denial of the natural as well.  The only way they could be excluded is if God did not allow them, a question that the Naturalist is not even willing to consider.

Not surprisingly most naturalists are also atheists (or at least deists).  In other words, they form their philosophy based on their belief, rather than as true scientists who would allow the data to take them wherever it goes.  In other words, they invent a philosophy to fit their belief rather than fitting their belief to a correct philosophy.  One may not know whether Christ was God or not, but to eliminate the possibility of the miraculous ultimately is unreasonable. 

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The Fountain of Youth and the Resurrection

Anthropology, Resurrection, , , , , ,

Legend has it that the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León stumbled upon Florida while searching for the Fountain of Youth.  The mythical spring would restore youth to anyone who drank or bathed in its waters.  His personal records make no mention of his search, but nevertheless popular history has attached the fountain to his name, often as evidence of a backward time.  But if we replace magical fountains with technology, then the quest at least, does not seem so doltish.  The fountain may not exist, but the desire to remain forever young remains a part of the human psyche.  Mass vanity?  Perhaps.  But if we dismiss the desire too quickly, then we are in danger of missing a message from our hearts that points towards the One Who is the fulfillment of every desire.

A quick word first about vanity.  Vanity or vainglory is not wrong because it seeks glory.  We were made to receive glory.  Vainglory is wrong because it seeks glory in the wrong things, in the wrong way or from the wrong person.  Glory is meant to be received from God in reward for the good that we do for the right reason.  To seek it in other ways is ultimately empty and unsatisfying and thus leaves us perpetually searching for what ultimately proves to be a mythical satisfaction. 

St. Thomas on Perpetual Youth

Reading St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae can be intimidating, but those who are willing to brave the raging intellectual waters are often struck by his common sense.  Related to the topic at hand, he takes a common sense approach about the state of our bodies after the general resurrection.  Building off the promise in Ephesians 4:13, namely “until we all attain to…mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ”, St. Thomas points out that man will rise again at the most perfect stage of nature (ST III, q.81, art.1).  Because perfection does not come to us all at once, there is a defect in human nature in time.  First there is the defect of childhood in that they lack maturity and bodily strength.  Secondly there is a defect in old age brought about by the diminishment of bodily strength and faculties.  These two defects meet at a single point in which growth terminates and just prior to the movement towards defect begins.  This point, St. Thomas calls a “youthful age” and it is when we are at our strongest bodily.  This is the same youthful age that the Fountain of Youth is attempting to capture.  It is the same age that the bodily resurrection will capture for all eternity.  This desire in our culture to stay forever young is really a twisted-up desire for our bodily resurrection in which we will attain to “the extent of the full stature of Christ.”   

Because Christ Himself rose at the youthful age of 30, and our resurrection is a share in His, we will all arise in our bodies of a similar youthful age.  But, before closing, we would be remiss if we merely glossed over the fact that Christ was struck down at what would be considered the strongest age.  This ought to bring both pause and praise because the age in which He was strongest was also the age at which He could suffer the most.  To cut a man down in His prime requires the greatest effort.  His gift of self to mankind was more complete at 30 than it would have been at any other age and helps explain why it was fitting that He be that age. 

The desire for perpetual youth in this world is vanity, not because it seeks the glory that comes in youth, but because it seeks it in the wrong way.  The desire is a pointer that extends beyond this world to tell us that it is only by dying to self with a youthful vigor that we can actually become younger.  Perpetual youth only comes from the One Who won it for us by giving Himself away during His youth.  Fully untwisted, the Fountain of Youth and all its present day manifestations become a true north for us to fix our desire on its proper object.  Only by sharing in Christ’s passion do we share in His youthful resurrection.

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Hope and the Mystery of Evil

Atheism, Last Things, Mercy, Theology, , , , , , , , , , ,

Atheists, at least those who are honest, often cite the problem of suffering as their main obstacle to believing in God.  They reason that if there is a loving God, then there wouldn’t be so much suffering.  A believer may counter with the burden of free will, but that really only accounts for the moral evils in this world.  What about the natural evils, those like we see in the wake of hurricane, where suffering and death seem to be everywhere?  The problem facing the believer is how he can explain a mystery, that is the mystery of evil, to one who does not yet have faith.  And so, the unbeliever goes away with only more reasons for disbelief.  But if we are to give them reasons for belief, then we must be willing to dive into this question a little more deeply.

Evil and suffering are, as we said, a mystery.  The word mystery comes from the Greek word mysterion which literally means closed.  Mysteries, at least in the sense we are using it here, are closed to the rational mind.  The human mind, unaided by revelation, can not even conceive of the mystery.  Once it is revealed, it becomes intelligible, but the light of full understanding cannot be seen.  The mystery of evil is one such revealed truth that, absent the gift of divine faith, is completely incomprehensible.  No amount of reasoning about suffering and evil could ever bring us to the point where we could conclude that “all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Hope and the Desire for Justice

Even if we could intellectually assent to this truth, it remains elusive because it is also the foundation of the theological virtue of hope.  Like faith, hope is a gift and not something we can earn.  It resides in the will and acts like a holy fortitude that enables us to habitually cling to the truth of God’s Word even in the presence of manifold evils.    It is in “hope we are saved” (Romans 8:24).  At every corner, the believer is tempted to despair, that is, to give up on the fact that God always fulfills His promises so we should not be surprised when the unbeliever, who lives without these supernatural gifts, finds no seeds of hope in this world. 

Lacking supernatural faith and hope, it would seem that the unbeliever’s ears remain permanently closed to any possible theological explanation.  It only seems that way however when we ask an important question.  Why is it that the unbeliever expects things to be otherwise?  The answer, once it is uttered, turns the issue on its head.  What makes evil and suffering so bad in the mind of the unbeliever is that it appears to be indiscriminate; favoring, if anything the guilty more than the innocent.  Peeling back a layer of his thoughts he will find that, like all men, he has an innate desire for justice.  This desire, even if it is unacknowledged cannot be stamped out.  He finds within himself a fundamental paradox—”there is no God and yet I expect justice.”

Every true desire that we have has an object.  We experience hunger and there is food, we experience loneliness there are companions, we desire knowledge, there are things to be known.  We could go on and on listing our desires and find that each matches to some object.  Justice however remains mostly elusive.  We certainly believe there is an object, or else all the political machinations in which we try to create a utopic paradise are pointless.  But those objects have proven to be woefully inadequate.  It is reasonable then to expand our horizons. 

This line of reasoning is not unlike CS Lewis’ argument from desire, except that it points towards an event—the Last Judgment.  The Last Judgment, the moment when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead, will be first and foremost an event of justice.  Every injustice will be set right, every wrong righted, everlasting crowns given to those who suffered injustice and everlasting shame to those who doled it out.  The judgment of history will be corrected and “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”  Justice will be served. 

The Final Judgment as a Beacon of Hope

In short, the desire for justice is meant to serve as a signpost pointing towards the truth of eternal life.  Pope Benedict XVI calls this “the most important motive for believing in eternal life” in Spe Salvi, his second encyclical:

There is justice. There is an “undoing” of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgement is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favor of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing.

Spe Salvi (SS) #43

Following this line of reasoning a little further, we see that the unfulfilled desire for justice in this life becomes a beacon of hope for the next.  It is according to God’s Providential design that justice will be lacking in this world precisely to spur our desire for the next.  Revelation then becomes the venue where desire meets object.  The heart testifies and Revelation answers.

Based on this view, the Pope wants us to correct our view of the Final Judgment and see it in the light of the Good News.  “The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope” (SS, 44).  When we see it as part and parcel of the Good News as a response to man’s universal longing for justice, its evangelical power can be unleashed.

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Healing Our Speech Impediment

Moralilty, Redemption, ,

If our sole criterion for judging the seriousness of particular sins is the number of times it is mentioned in Sacred Scripture, then most certainly sins of the tongue are among the most dangerous.  St. James describes the danger in rather stark terms: “The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna” (James 3:6).  Of course, he is reiterating what God gave to Moses in the Eighth Commandment which calls out our post-edenic speech impediment. But in our own age, because of a marked preference for verbosity over veracity, we ought to re-examine his warning lest the gravity of the tongue drag us into Gehenna.

Man has always struggled with simply following rules—not in the sense that he doesn’t follow them, but that he chooses how he is going to follow them.  This is both the gift and burden of freedom.  We can use these rules as boundaries or we can use them runways for freedom.  We can find out how to stay within the strict letter of the law or we can learn how to use them to truly thrive.  The choice is up to us, but the Church always leans towards the side of freedom.  She gives us not just rules, but also reasons.  She teaches ethics so that we can develop ethos. 

On Telling the Truth

This is especially true when it comes to truth telling.  Moralists have argued for centuries as to what constitutes a lie.  Even the Catechism has had to change its definition since it was first released in 1992.  The point is not that rules are unnecessary—there can be no gray without black and white—but that unless you understand why telling the truth is so important, you will always be trapped in a casuistic web.  Truth telling matters because the truth matters.  The truth matters because it is God Who through His Provident care has set reality as it really is.  It is He Who has willed, directly or permissively, things to be the way they are.  To distort that is to usurp God as God and to alter reality such that it is the way I want it to be.  There is no color coding of lies, white or otherwise, because lying is first and foremost an offense against God’s Fatherhood.

Most people know a lie when they tell one, but sins of the tongue encompass so much more than just lying.  It is the gray areas that often and unwittingly cause the most problems.  There is gossiping, excuse making, calumny, slander, flattery, and detraction; all of which are just as, if not more, common than just straight up lying.  This is because there seems to be no clear rules governing them.  But once we look at the telos, or purpose, of our capacity for speech, we find a set of guiding principles emerging.

Among all the visible creatures, speech is the most distinctively human powers.  Other animals may speak, but none can truly communicate.  Our speech allows us to make visible what is otherwise invisible.  Speech allows us to communicate not just facts or theories but our interior.  It gives us the power to tell others exactly is going on inside of us.  So important is this fact, that Our Lord also mentions it in a discussion with the Pharisees.  “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts…” (Mk 7:21).

Truth and Communion

But speech is not just for us to download our thoughts, but it is given to us for communion.  Made in the image of God, the Triune God that is in perfect communion through the Word, our speech is meant to be a power in which we give what is most intimate, our thoughts.  But falsehood cannot bear the weight of communion, so that true communion can only happen when there is communication in truth.  It is this last statement that animates the two guiding principles for the use of our tongue: truth and communion.

Truth is paramount for the reasons already mentioned, but not every situation calls for truth telling.  Some situations call for truth withholding.  Truth withholding is really about truth protecting, that is, protecting the truth from those who do not need to know it (detraction) or those who will exploit it for evil.  Even in those cases it is never permissible to lie, even if you must exercise a mental reservation or suffer for remaining silent.   But we often struggle with deciding whether someone needs to know and for this we can rely on the principle of communion.  Will what I am about to tell lead to a communion of persons or destroy it?  If I were to tell my neighbor that their babysitter is a drunk then that would be protective of the common good.  If I were to tell the babysitter that my neighbor wears a pink tutu then it would not.

Before closing there is one further point that need to be made related to speech and rash judgment.  Earlier I compared speech to downloading our thoughts.  Speech can also be a means by which we govern our thoughts.  When we speak it has the effect of solidifying our thoughts because there is now someone else who knows what I know.  But when we keep the thoughts to ourselves, it has the effect of causing us to examine them more carefully and gives us time to offer a corrective.  Speaking our thoughts sets them in stone.  Silence leads to true thoughts. 

Herein lies the promise of freedom when we learn to not just avoid lying, but use our speech well.  It leads us out of the captivity of our minds and into the glorious freedom of seeing and loving the truth.

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Jumpstarting Reform

Devils, Eucharist, Fasting, Spiritual Life, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , ,

In the opening chapter of his short book, Letter to a Suffering Church, Bishop Robert Barron calls the scandal within the Church “a diabolical masterpiece”.  The Bishop’s point is that everything that has happened within the Church over the last half century has been clearly and methodically planned out such that the sulfuric stench cannot be overlooked.  Bishop Barron only mentions this insight in passing as he attempts to instill hope in those who have suffered greatly as a result of the latest scandal. It is befitting, however, if we are to fully come up with a plan of reform, that we linger just a while longer on this fact.

First, we must admit that as ghastly as the abuse crisis has been, from within the satanic strategy, it is but a means to the devil’s overall plan to destroy the Church.  What this means is that if we focus only on the abuse crisis then we will be putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.  This is not to say that we do nothing about it or that we do not address it directly—band aids are necessary treating wounds, but only after the source of the wound is treated.  And the source of this wound in the Church is exacerbated by the fact that we deny that someone is actively working to destroy the Church.  It is the steady refusal over the last half century to admit of the Church’s militancy.  The Church is not a field hospital, but an army.  It may have field hospitals, but it is not the Red Cross.  It is an army because it is at war and its battleground is dominion of human souls.

Breeding Soft Soldiers

This repeated refusal to admit of the Church’s militancy has not changed the fact that she is Militia Christi, but it has made the soldiers soft.  The Church may be feminine, but she is not effeminate.  There is no more visible sign of effeminacy than sexual vice, especially of the kind that many clerics are accused.  But this softness affects not just the clergy but the laity as well.  We are the “soft generation” that is doomed to be the “lost generation” if we do not tighten up formation.

Notice that I did not say the softest generation, for there are far too many generations in the Church who have fallen prey to softness.  Church historian Roberto De Mattei describes the story of the Sack of Rome in 1527 as a “merciful chastisement” because reform in the Church had stalled and it served to jumpstart it. “The pleasure-seeking Rome of the Renaissance turned into the austere and penitent Rome of the Counter-Reformation.”  His point, although only implicitly made, is that chastening, either divinely or self-inflicted, is always a necessary pre-cursor to reform.  Softness must be rooted out one way or the other.

Like any army, once the enemy is clearly identified, a battle plan must be drawn up.  Since this is first and foremost a spiritual battle, we must use spiritual weapons.  Every renewal in the Church has come on the heels of a small remnant that committed to using these weapons and specifically aiming them at the enemies of the Church.  When the Church becomes soft, it is these three weapons, prayer, penance and mortification that are eschewed.  So, if we are to re-enter the fray, we must grasp the hilt of these three swords and wield them against our enemies.

Prayer

The mention of prayer is not meant to insinuate that people are not praying.  It is to direct our prayers towards a very specific intention—to strengthen and protect the Church from her enemies.  This intention is best fulfilled by praying with the Church in her two “official” prayers—the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.

I have written many other times about the necessity of regularly, that is daily and not just weekly, participating in Mass so I won’t belabor the point yet again but lead with a simple question: what sacrifice in your life do you need to make so that you can become a part of Christ’s saving mission begun at Calvary and continuing at the altar of your local parish?  The Eucharist is an infinite source of grace that Christ is just waiting to pour out upon those who offer it with Him.

The second form of prayer is one that I have not discussed much in the past and that is the Divine Office.  Commonly called the Liturgy of the Hours, it is the prayer of the Church that is offered seven times a day.  Seven is no arbitrary number, but the Church’s answer to the fact that “though the just man falls seven times a day, he will get up” (Proverbs 24:16).  This getting up and returning whole-heartedly to God by singing to Him His songs of praise in the Psalms and Canticles and recalling His saving acts throughout history.  The Liturgy of the Hours are by their very nature penitential and thus perfectly suited to our times.

Those in the clerical state are required to pray the Liturgy of the Hours under the pain of sin.  Many unfaithful priests do not.  The laity can pick up the standard voluntarily and run with it, keeping those unfaithful priests, many of whom are directly responsible for the sad state of the Church, in their intentions.  And because it is a free gift and not required it is most pleasing to God, even if due to our state in life it requires a great sacrifice to pray seven times.  Desperate times call for heroic sacrifice.  If it seems daunting find someone who can pray it with you or teach you, or read one of the recent books written to draw the laity into the Divine Office.

Penance and Mortification

These two terms, penance and mortification, are often used interchangeably.  Grasping the distinction is important only insofar as it relates to our intention.  Penance is reparation for sins committed, mortification is like pre-pentence in that it is aimed at rooting out the weaknesses that cause us to sin and have to do penance.  In practice they should go hand in hand.

Sins of the flesh and the demons who specialize in them are specifically targeted by fleshly penance and mortification.  “These can come out only with prayer and fasting”.  Fasting is the “fleshly” penance par excellence because it trains the Christian soldier to control all of his fleshly appetites.  It is the antidote to the softness that has hamstrung the Church.  It is no wonder that we no longer hear about it from the pulpit or that the Church does not require it more often than twice a year.  We need to be giving more and offer it in reparation for the Church’s soft sins.  The upcoming battle will require tremendous sacrifice and only those who have trained themselves to forego what is necessary in favor of the “one thing that is necessary” that will persevere.

There are many ways to fast and all are good.  The point is to start by making sacrifices at each meal and add from there.  You will find a method that fits with your state in life.  The method that St. Thomas recommends amounts to skipping one meal a day and that principle seems to work well although the combinations are endless.  One that works very well for the laity because it is the least disruptive to family life is from dinner to dinner.  You eat dinner on day 1 and then eat only two tiny meals during the day and then have a full meal at dinner the next evening.  The point is not to kill yourself but to offer something to Jesus.  When this intention is kept in mind, you will find that your desire to be generous with Jesus quells any hunger pains.   

There are other bodily mortifications and penances that are helpful, especially when we think about those practices that make us soft—cold showers, sitting upright in a chair with both feet on the floor, setting AC/heat at a level where you are slightly uncomfortable, rocks in shoes.  The point is to directly attack our need for comfort in a spirit of penance.

St. Paul was perhaps the greatest cultural reformer and a pillar of the Church.  One could argue that his success was attributed to the fact that he had a clear understanding of who he was fighting against and armed himself spiritually for the battle.  “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against…the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12).  If we want to jumpstart the reform of the Church, then we should likewise enter into the spiritual battle.

 

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