Tag Archives: Moses

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. 

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.

The Church and the Question of Slavery

Church, Church and State, Church Authority, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, , ,

History, it is said, is written by the victors.  Whether this dictum is absolutely true or not can be debated.  What cannot be debated is that history is always rewritten by those seeking victory.  Historical rationalization allows the combatants to demonize their enemies, therefore justifying the annihilation of the culture.  Who can doubt that this has been a weapon in the arsenal of the Church’s enemies throughout the last few centuries?  As of late the enemies of the Church have attempted to rewrite the annals of history in order to paint the Church as indifferent, if not positively in favor of slavery.  In order to show this to be a lie, we must arm ourselves with the truth.

We must first set the stage by examining the world into which Our Lord took flesh.  Christianity arose.  Approximately 1/3 of the population of Ancient Rome were slaves.  All manual labor was performed by them.  In the fiefdom of the paterfamilias they were viewed as human property, essentially chattel, and held no rights.  In this regard Rome was no different from any culture prior to the arrival of Christ, including those encountered by the Jews (more on this in a moment).  Slavery was always viewed as acceptable and absolutely no one questioned the institution.  The only places it wasn’t practiced were those places that could not support it economically because the cost of maintaining the slaves was greater than their output.  This is an often overlooked, but nevertheless very important, point for two reasons.

Ending Slavery as a Practical Problem

First, given that slavery was ubiquitous, ending it as an institution would take power—either physical or moral.  This is why when Moses gives the Law to ancient Israel it says nothing condemning slavery but only how slaves were to be treated (c.f. Exodus 21:26-27, Deut 23:15-16).  And how they were to be treated was far greater than any other ancient culture.  This does not make it right or whitewash the immorality of it, but it does see how God was setting the stage for a moral revolution that would eventually topple slavery in the Christian world.  To condemn it would have been to shout into the wind.  He chose not an ethic, but to form an ethos.  And some of the different Jewish sects like the Essenes caught the ethos sooner than others and refused to practice slavery. 

Those who often try to change history forget that Christianity is a historical religion.  What this means is that God acts within specific cultures and in specific times.  Without understanding the cultural context, we will fail to miss the principles upon which His commandments are founded.  Any criticism of St. Paul for example must first include the cultural context in which he wrote.  To label his household codes (c.f. Col 3:18—4:1; Eph 5:21—6:9) as anything other than revolutionary is to trivialize what he is saying.  He demands that the slaves be treated justly (implying they are people with rights and not property) and that they will have to answer for how they treat their slaves.  While it might be implied that just treatment would include freeing them, he does not explicitly call for this.  This may insult our modern sensibilities towards anything other than absolute freedom, but it is because if the slaves were treated well by their masters, especially in the harsh Roman culture, then they might actually be better off remaining with their masters.  Many of them would have had nowhere else to go.

There is one particular case in which St. Paul did call for the release of a slave because he did have a better place to go (see Philemon 8-14).  Onesimus was a slave who stole money from his master, Philemon, and escaped to Rome.  When he ran into hard times in Rome, he found Paul whom he met at his master’s home in Colossae.  They developed a friendship and Onesimus was baptized.  At this point, Paul tells him he must return to his master and gives him a letter to present to his master.  This is the point where we must read the letter carefully to see what St. Paul was saying.  He tells Philemon that “although I have the full right in Christ to order you to do what is proper, I rather urge you out of love”.  Paul is saying that he could order Philemon to release Onesimus because it is “proper” (i.e. slavery is wrong).  But instead he wants him to release him out of love for his Christian brother.  The only reason he sends him back is so that “good you do might not be forced but voluntary.”  He wants to give him the opportunity to do the right thing for the right reason based upon a fully Christian ethos.

And based upon the history of the Church, Philemon responded just as St. Paul had hoped.  First, because the letter was saved for posteriority, that is, Philemon would not have saved a letter and distributed it if he did not comply with it.  Secondly because we find in the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles that Onesimus was ordained by St. Paul as the bishop of Macedonia.  Onesimus is the first beneficiary of the revolutionary view of mankind set in motion by the God made man.

The Impossibility of Judging Christianity by Its Own Principles

The second reason why we cannot overlook the fact that slavery was ubiquitous in the ancient world is that, in truth, without Christianity slavery would never end.  If we flash forward 1000 years to the end of the first Christian millennium we find that slavery is non-existent in the Christian world.  This condition continued through the Middle Ages so that by the 15th Century all of Europe is slavery free except for the fringes in the Iberian peninsula (under Islamic control) and in certain areas of Russia.  The Muslims were indiscriminate as to who they enslaved—black or white it did not matter.  Once they were run out of Spain and Portugal they went to Africa and joined in the already indigenous slave trade, that is, Africans enslaving and selling into slavery other Africans.  Again, another often overlooked fact that the African slave trade was already an institution long before the Europeans arrived in the late 15th Century. 

With slavery practically eradicated in Christendom, then how did slaves end up in the New World?  The Spanish and Portuguese Christians, living under an Islamic regime for nearly 700 years, had grown accustomed to it.  So when labor proved itself both lacking and necessary in the New World, the Spanish, Portuguese and eventually English turned to chattel slavery once again.  They did this against the very clear and repeated condemnations from the Church.  Beginning in 1435 with a bull Sicut Dudum, Pope Eugenius IV demanded that Christians free all enslaved natives of the Canary Islands within fifteen days or face automatic excommunication.  Over the next 450 years, the Popes unequivocally prohibited the enslavement of any peoples (see this link for a complete list).  With fists full of mammon covering their ears, many of the so-called Catholics simply ignored the Church’s teachings, especially because there was no real way of enforcement.

And herein lies the reason why the facts cannot be overlooked.  The Church’s teaching on slavery as intrinsically evil has been and always will be unchanging.  St. Paul’s Magna Charta of Christian brotherhood in Col 3:26 is forever established.  In this regard Christianity cannot be judged because to judge it, is to judge it based on its own principles.  Put another way, only Christianity taught the evil of slavery and so you cannot judge the principle by the principle itself.  What you can judge and absolutely should judge is Christians themselves for failing to live up to these principles.  For that, many Christians themselves have failed miserably to protect the dignity of their fellow men.  Parents sometimes are blamed for the actions of their children when there is a bad upbringing, but the clarity and insistence of the Church on this issue makes it clear that it was the children themselves who went astray.  What must be absolutely clear is that without the Catholic Church, millions, if not billions of people, would be in physical chains today.  No matter how the usurpers of our post-Christian society may try to paint the issue of slavery, that is a truth they must ultimately contend with.