The Well At The World's End

Providence is Golden

2009-11-07T19:47:00.003-05:00

A philosophy professor of mine once told a story from when he was an undergraduate at Notre Dame. He would routinely go to pray at the Grotto (a replica of the one at Lourdes) and began to notice that the leaves surrounding the statue of Mary would turn a golden hue before any of the others showed a hint of their autumn shades. This, of course, was halfheartedly rumored to be a miracle among many of the more pious students; just as the Grotto at Lourdes was the home of a famous miracle. As it turns out, there was a perfectly rational explanation for such a phenomenon: because of the particular formation of the surrounding trees, it just so happened that the leaves around Mary's statue were exposed to more direct sunlight each day than those in the adjacent areas (or something like that). Not much of a miracle in the end.

However, as my professor pointed out, we should in fact be more astonished because of the non-miraculous nature of the phenomenon. That God was able to achieve such a "fitting" spectacle through the precise arrangement of countless natural, secondary causes makes for a more beautiful symphony. The conductor is far more impressive when a wave of his hand sets all of the other musicians in motion as a perfect and harmonious collaboration; than if he were to leave his stand, commandeer one of the instruments, and play a solo piece that drowned out the music of the orchestra.

Pax Christi,

8 Rules Concerning "Grand Narratives"

2009-10-07T00:38:00.006-04:00

1. There is no "view from nowhere": no Archimedean point from which one can narrate. There are no unbiased narrators. There are always influences upon and motivations for the narrator to narrate as he or she does. This, however, does not make one Jean-Francois Lyotard.

2. Grand narratives can be necessary, but no grand narrative can be a sufficient account. Each responds to the pendulum in the history of ideas swinging too far in one direction, and the most a grand narrative can accomplish is to cause it to swing back in the opposite direction. Success is met if the pendulum is closer to the balanced center than it was before the story was told. If a grand narrative is contained in one volume, one can probably trust in its insufficiency.

3. The thesis and supporting arguments of a grand narrative must be exceedingly qualified; and after they are qualified, they must be qualified again. Over-qualification lends the narrative its veracity while to that very degree often robbing it of its force or "grandness."

4. All grand narratives must contain villains, and they will probably be Scotus and Ockham. However, most grand narratives will rely upon all sources except the works of Scotus and Ockham themselves for their claims; and for every criticism that actually applies to these thinkers, the grand narrative will include 20 or so that they are in no way directly responsible for (such as the Enlightenment, totalitarianism, polio, the snuggie, or the Cleveland Browns)

5. Every time a grand narrative makes a definitive claim about when a certain period begins, or when a new concept comes onto the scene of history, there will always be some position, movement, or figure at least 50 years prior to that date which fits its criterion or employs said concept. Similarly, ideas will persist at least 50 years beyond the point at which the narrative concludes they are dead. Period claims are like swiss cheese: the holes are part of their character.

6. An extremely complex web of social, economic, and generically practical concerns always plays a role in the moving and shaking that the grand narrative attempts to record. Any purely intellectual story is necessarily incomplete. However, as the social, economic, and practical concerns of a certain event are thematized, the ability to accurately describe the extent of their impact approaches 0.

7. The social, economic, and practical concerns will never be able to provide a complete causal account of any event in the history of ideas. Seeing only through Marxist-tinted glasses marks the failure to narrate grandly. It is also extremely easy to do badly.

8. Every grand narrative must connect dots across varying contexts. To the degree that the task of connecting dots becomes central, the close reading of texts is given short shrift. Hence the greatest sign of a grand narrative's health is if it invites an army of specialized, close-reading scholars to challenge its dot-connecting and cause it to modify its claims. If it's essential structure remains intact, it is a successful grand narrative.

Pax Christi,

More on Aquinas and his (Pre-modern) Ontotheology

2009-08-07T00:39:00.006-04:00

I have written much on the questions surrounding God and being, particularly in defense of St. Thomas' approach, which I believe is radically different from the typical approach in modern philosophical theology. So far most all of what I have written can be summed up as a meager "what he said" to Rudi te Velde's masterful explication (Aquinas on God: The 'Divine Science' of the Summa Theologiae, Burlington: Ashgate, 2006; pp.88-89). The bold text marks my emphasis.

"In Aristotle, perfection resides primarily in the form and essence of things. To be means to be form or to be determinate. This is why he can so easily rephrase the ancient question 'what is being?' into the question 'what is substance?' (ousia). Thomas remarks, however, that any ousia as such, like humanity or fieriness, can still be considered in the manner of 'not yet in act', thus as somehow distinguished from its 'to be.' A certain form, taken as such (forma signata), can be considered as existing in the potency of matter or in the power of an agent or as known in the mind. According to all these types of 'in-existence' the ousia has an ideal existence in something else, it does not yet enjoy actual existence in itself by reason of its being. Only when it is said to be will the form pass from its ideal in-existence to actual existence in rerum natura. The point Thomas wants to make is that this passing over to actuality is not a mere change of modality which is, as such, indifferent to the perfection residing in the form, but that unless a thing is said to be, its perfection is not (yet) a perfection of its being; its perfection does not make it actually be perfect. This is why esse is siad to be the 'perfection of all perfections'. Any perfection, whatever its determinate character, is a perfection of being.

This is explained further by pointing to the manner in which esse is diversified in things. How should one account for the determinate character of esse as found in this or that particular being? To esse nothing can be added that is more formal, since as principle fo act esse is itself most formal, relating to everything else by way of determining. Nothing can be added to esse which is extraneous to it, because nothing is extraneous to it except non-being. This is the crucial point: the differences of being (such as being white, or being human) cannot be added from outside, since they are differences of being. Even those differences are. This suggests an alternative manner of accounting for the differentiation of being. In each case esse has a determinate and diverse character by the fact that it is the esse received in a nature of a certain kind...The being of a tree is different from the being of a horse. The point now is that those differences (of different natures) are not added from outside to esse, but that those differences are somehow originally included in esse and are 'released' from it. If the differences- that is, the essential perfections of things- are differences of being, then they must differ according to the degree in which they incorporate the perfection of being....From this Thomas concludes that perfections, such as those of life or intelligence, are not so much external additions to the perfection of being but are, on the contrary, 'manifestations' of the perfection of being. And therefore, if a reality is completely determined in identity with its being (ipsum esse subsistens), then being must be present in it according to its full range of perfection, including perfections such as life and intelligence and so on. Thus it appears that in reducing all things, with respect to their being, to the first cause, the categorical differences of being in the sphere of essence are, so to speak, gathered together in their original unity in and as being itself: the simple being of God contains in itself the perfections of all things (of all genera).

I'm quite sympathetic to the concerns and detailed critiques of thinkers like Marion who are battling with idolatrous metaphysical approaches. But it seems clearer and clearer to me that the concern of these critiques never actually reaches the ontological discourse that Aquinas presents. When they speak of "being," they don't end up meaning nearly the same thing. The ways that Scotus, Descartes, and even Heidegger addressed the question of being and God are simply of an entirely different nature from the account that Aquinas gives. So we need simply to ask: granting the legitimacy of the kinds of deconstructions that Marion and kin present, must we grant that Heidegger has the final say on how to think and speak of being? Is it not possible to reclaim a discourse of God and being (an "onto-theology") that does justice to the radically different understanding of it that Thomas presents? It seems to me that until the modern theological critiques can accurately address his unique conception of esse, we have no reason to fear framing our God-language around "being."

Distinctions within being, rather than between being and non-being, provides a new (relatively speaking) way of marking the immanence AND the transcendence of God in relation to creatures.

Pax Christi,

Sic et Non: Thoughts on Henri de Lubac's Thomistic Retrieval (II)

2009-07-15T22:49:00.002-04:00

III. Sed Contra: De Lubac’s Thomism?

As we have observed, de Lubac was not simply providing a novel systematic theology of the supernatural. Restating the authentic doctrine of St. Thomas in a modern context was central to his project. And where his thought ventured beyond the path St. Thomas himself tread, de Lubac understood it to be in the spirit of Thomas and an expansion of his tradition. For almost all of his major claims about nature and the supernatural, de Lubac invoked some textual support from St. Thomas. And it seems his fundamental intuition is indeed correct: Thomas himself was thoroughly Augustinian in his theological disposition, and thus the focus of his thought focused heavily on the actual order of God’s Providence. He did not employ the theology of a hypothetical, “purely” natural order to establish grace as divine gift[1]; nor did he conceive of two distinct final ends for man, two orders of Providence (one on top of the other). An underlying principle of Thomas’s thought, and central for de Lubac, is the fundamental unity of God’s Providential economy: God’s antecedent will for humanity is a governing principle rendering extrinsicism quite foreign to his theological anthropology. For St. Thomas man is created in sanctifying grace; he is so ordered from the beginning.[2]

However, what complicates the validity of de Lubac’s self-understanding is the manner in which he cites Thomas. It is not always evident that Thomas is expressing the ideas de Lubac presumes in the passages he cites. Few provide enough context to actually establish that de Lubac’s interpretation is unambiguously faithful to the Angelic Doctor. But the most substantial problem in de Lubac’s exegesis is his selective reading. De Lubac draws upon the set of Thomas’s texts which emphasize that man’s only end is his supernatural finality: arguing that the knowledge of God’s essence is the end of every intelligent creature[3] and that no desire of this kind can be in vain.[4] De Lubac thus argues that in Thomas’ view the only end “natural” to man is the supernatural end.[5] As the end is what specifies the nature, and man has only one final end, man is essentially constituted by his supernatural finality.[6] Any thought of a human nature without this supernatural orientation is thus technically of a different species, a different nature all together (hence the failed relevance of any “pure nature”).[7]

Yet as Steven Long points out, de Lubac has overlooked another set of Thomas’s texts which clearly affirm the existence of a natural end distinct from the supernatural end.[8] For St. Thomas, it is the natural end, proportionate to natural powers, which specifies human nature as human nature. The example which makes clear this necessity is that of angelic natures. Both men and angels are graciously ordained to the same supernatural beatitude; but if the end specifies the nature, then it seems there is no metaphysical resource to distinguish man from angel. Human nature and angelic nature collapse into one another. But does this admittance of a distinct natural end condemn St. Thomas to modern extrinsicism? Not exactly. The key distinction which de Lubac fails to appropriate but which structures St. Thomas’s entire account is that between final and proximate ends. For de Lubac, any talk of a natural end can only refer to a natural final end, which thus implies a distinct (and problematic) order of Providence and a threatening alternative to the actual order of man’s divine destiny. “Natural end” is thus a category that de Lubac can only conceive of as implicating natura pura: it thus bears connotations of being enclosed and cut off, rather than fundamentally open. However, for St. Thomas, the natural proportionate end is a proximate end only: while specifying human nature in essence, it is causally ordered by God’s grace beyond itself to the supernatural finis ultimus.[9] As proximate, the distinct natural end is entirely consistent with St. Thomas’s teaching that man is ordained (by grace) from creation for one final, supernatural beatitude. It is an end that is utterly transparent to the movement toward the vision of God: no connotations of ontological enclosure attach to it. Such an end does not imply an alternative order of Providence; rather it is an integrated aspect of the one actual order unified by God’s loving intentionality.

In fact, the natural proximate end is a necessary aspect of the actual Providential order, even as de Lubac himself conceives of it. For in deemphasizing St. Thomas’s teaching on the natural end, de Lubac sacrifices the metaphysical precision which his own account requires. In his attempt to maintain the organic unity of nature and the supernatural, de Lubac speaks of the supernatural end as inscribed on man’s very being; as an “essential finality,” and as “ontological” in character. Indeed, in his account of human nature as spiritual, de Lubac acknowledges that creatures like animals and trees are “bound” and “limited” by natural ends; but human spirit in its “natural” orientation to the divine is thought of as an exception to rule of natural ends. However, there is far more of Blondel in this interpretation than of Thomas[10], for it exhibits a misunderstanding of Thomistic natural teleology. If there were really no other end than the beatific vision to define human nature, then human nature would not only be equated with angelic nature, but potentially with divine nature[11]; a metaphysical impossibility.[12] There would need to be some additional principle to specify human nature in distinction from divine and angelic natures, for the final end that they all share is incapable of doing so. De Lubac certainly desires to uphold the “solidity” of nature in distinction from the supernatural[13]; but he fails to see that a distinct natural end is precisely what is required to do just this. We must then question the rather ambiguous use of terms like “ontological” and “essential” to describe the supernatural finality; for these more properly apply to the natural end in Thomas’s view, and it is evident that de Lubac cannot be using these terms in the same sense in which they apply to the natural end without metaphysical confusion. The failure to uphold this end would seemingly imply a dangerous version of intrinsicism in which the only metaphysical principle that could ensure the real distinction between natural and supernatural would be lost!

Even the attempt to distinguish human nature by its inability to achieve the supernatural end through its own powers presupposes an intelligible natural end according to which those powers are defined. In fact, all grace presupposes the natural end in precisely this sense. It secures that upon which grace builds: secures it not in its sterility (as de Lubac thought) but in its integrity. If one were to claim that the proximate natural end were blotted out by the supernatural, and did not endure as distinct within a supernatural ordering, grace would be inherently transmutative of species[14] rather than perfective of it. If the natural end does not endure, then neither does any distinct sense of the term “man.” Grace would not then “prefect man” or “re-order man,” because what constitutes the reality as “man” simpliciter has been dissolved. Grace would actually destroy, rather than perfect nature. It would, metaphysically speaking, render us beings of a different kind. Yet we are called to experience the vision of God as graced humans; to attain the supernatural as transformed humans; to share in the divine nature as elevated humans. If grace is to perfect us as human beings, the natural end that specifies us must endure in its integrity within the order of grace.[15] Anything short of this would equate God’s grace with the cataclysmic Flood that only redeems through destruction. Thus the failure to uphold the integrity of the natural end results in an extrinsicism more radical than that which de Lubac attempts to overcome! For what could be more extrinsic to nature than a grace that cannot even be supper-added to it without destroying it? It seems then in his effort to establish the organic continuity between nature and the supernatural (by positing a supernatural finality to the exclusion of a natural proximate end), de Lubac himself falls prey to either a form of intrinsicism or of extrinsicism, both incompatible with the paradoxical character of the mystery. He thus fails to avoid Scylla or Charybdis, and the true via media that the mystery demands remains elusive.

Having missed the fundamental distinction between the proximate natural end and the final supernatural end, it becomes clearer why de Lubac’s interpretation of St. Thomas’s teaching on other points can be called into question. For instance, Thomas holds that every end has the character of the good, meaning that for a distinct natural end an imperfect felicity proportionate to natural powers is indeed attainable.[16] Contra de Lubac, St. Thomas is able to contemplate the possibilities of a pure nature in a way that is not subject to the modern perversions and yet achieves more than an abstract “similarity” with the humanity of the actual order.[17] Because for Thomas the proximate end specifies the nature, he would not agree with de Lubac that the speculative pure nature would be “another nature” entirely. Rather, the difference between the actual order and the possible, pure one is that in the latter the proximate natural end would not be proximate, but simply final. The natural end would simply never have been further ordered to the supernatural in grace. Yet with regard to essence, the natures would be equally human; just as a horse in this world and a Pegasus in an imagined possible world would both share all of the essential features of the nature “horse,” even though one is elevated to possess something more. Thus, also contra de Lubac, in such an order where the proximate end would be rendered the final end- the last stop, as it were- man would not experience the absence of the beatific vision as a punishment: just as if in our world all horses were elevated by God to be like Pegasus, and we imagined a world where they were not so ordered, a horse’s lack of wings would not be experienced as a privation in that imaginative context.[18]

Further, de Lubac’s interpretation of St. Thomas’s desiderium naturale seems mistaken: the natural dynamism that defines created spirit from all other natures is not for St. Thomas the desire for the beatific vision. It is true that materially the object of that desire is God’s inner being, and it is true that simpliciter, the only thing that will bring rest to the intellect’s natural desire will be knowledge of God’s essence given by grace.[19] However, St. Thomas’s understanding is not reducible to a Blondelian conception of natural desire. What St. Thomas means principally by the desiderium naturale is a function of the natural desire to know the essence of the Cause of finite things. It is thus principally ordered to God, but under the formality of Cause of being. Only when God reveals His essence and through His grace makes the attainment of that knowledge under a more eminent formality a realizable possibility, then is the natural desire elevated beyond its natural horizon (but not before in any specific sense).[20] The desire remains elicited and conditional upon former knowledge that God exists; and the knowledge of God under the formality of Cause provides a properly natural telos to the human spirit where in de Lubac’s account it was missing. Finally, de Lubac fails to adequately acknowledge that the capax gratiae that makes created spirit so distinctive rests in a specific obediential potency; a category that he, like Gilson, dismissed as insufficient to capture the supernatural trajectory of spirit qua spirit. However, this is precisely how St. Thomas conceives of that capacity which for de Lubac is already dynamic. According to Thomas, the possession of intellect and will exhibit a passive potency in human nature: an aptness for elevation that exists only in relation to the active power of God.[21] This capacity is, we might say, not “of” or “according to” nature, but “in” nature: it is that which ensures that man can be elevated by grace and yet remain man. By interpreting this concept too narrowly in a generic sense, de Lubac failed to apprehend this essential distinction between a dynamism that presupposes the activity of grace and one that exists in virtue of nature itself.

IV. Respondeo Quicendum Quod: Retrieving the Retrieval

We have seen then that de Lubac’s exegetical shortcomings, primarily in failing to account for the fundamental distinction between a distinct natural (proximate) end within his account of the supernatural, lead ultimately to problematic conclusions that undermine the success of his retrieval and his attempt to find the middle way demanded by fidelity to the paradoxical divine truth. However, it seems that de Lubac’s intuition in searching for answers in the thought of St. Thomas proves the wisdom of his intention: for it is precisely the distinctions of Thomas’s which de Lubac failed to treat adequately that achieve a way of articulating both the unity and the distinction of the natural and the supernatural. In fact, Thomas and de Lubac completely agree in their intention of describing the Augustinian historic nature: nature as ordained, in reality, to the supernatural. Yet Thomas simply describes the situation with greater metaphysical finesse, because only through his distinction do those words actually mean what they intend. Only if nature is distinguished by a proximate, proportionate end can one really mean something by the word “nature” when describing how it is “supernaturally ordained.” Denying the proximate end results in evacuating the term “nature” of any meaningful distinction from the “supernatural.” It would then no longer make sense to describe nature as supernaturally ordained to a supernatural final end. The sustained integrity of the natural through the affirmation of the natural end is the tool that ensures distinction.

But it does not merely distinguish. St. Thomas’s theology fulfills the Lubacian principle of “uniting in order to distinguish.” Thus the proximate natural end is only ever thought of in the context of the overarching unity of God’s Providential synthesis. Nature is not transmutated by its historical contact with sanctifying grace. Rather it is transfigured as it is upheld in its integrity while at the same time being causally ordered beyond itself to the one supernatural finis ultimus.[22] The relationship that grace has to nature is not, then, in the technical sense, “essential,” or that of an “inscription” on one’s nature. Rather, it appears that for Thomas, in order for grace to keep from destroying nature, it must necessarily be accidental to nature. The same intrinsic metaphysical structure is sustained even in the midst of the effects of sin and grace in the Providential order (sinful man is still man; and graced man is still man). But does this compromise the organic continuity? Is not an accidental relation precisely what is characteristic of the “pure nature” theology?

Sic et non: within Thomas’ framework, an accidental relation need not carry the connotations of compromising unity. “Accidental” need not mean “contingent.” For though it is technically not necessary according to the essence of man; it can easily derive a more eminent necessity from God’s antecedent will for that nature. Thus, from the perspective of faith, the accidental principle can be considered as intimate to man as his hands and his feet. It can, as accidents properly conceived are meant to do, more fully actualize that nature. Perhaps it would be helpful to think of the relationship in terms of proper accidentality: the way we would see having a right hand as intrinsic to man, yet it nonetheless stands “outside of” (extrinsic to) the essence. For if I were to lose my right hand, I would nonetheless retain my humanity. And from the perspective of God’s divine will for creation, having a right hand may be as integral in reality as having an intellect. Grace would not simply “add onto” nature, but would be intrinsic as to unfold into actuality (passive) potencies that lie dormant within nature itself qua spirit. Thus, unity is achieved, but in such a way as to maintain distinction through metaphysical precision.

Such a vision of accidental unity seems to be operative in David Braine’s interpretation of de Lubac. While noting that his chief problem is the ambiguity regarding technical philosophical terminology, Braine believes it is quite easy to separate de Lubac’s intention from his philosophical confusions.[23] Thus he also argues that his attempt to predicate the supernatural orientation (or for that matter sin) of nature is mistaken. What he intends is to predicate such an orientation of man as person in the relationship to a single spiritual community that he shares in virtue of the (accidental) relation of inheritance.[24] The finality does not arise out of human nature qua nature, but rather out of human nature as it is ordered in the divine order of Providence (or, we might say, out of nature but not in virtue of it).

Though it seems that de Lubac has not succeeded where St. Thomas has, in truth it may not be so. There may be ways in which de Lubac’s own retrieval can be retrieved from the burden of its negative conclusions. For instance, Braine suggests a hermeneutic lens with which to read de Lubac’s use of the word “nature” in a fundamentally different sense than the Aristotelian one. It is a more Augustinian sense that has precedent in St. Thomas and sees the primary meaning of “natural” as grounded in God’s antecedent providential will for creation. Thus whatever is given by God is, according to Providence, “natural.”[25] It is the way in which man is ordered by divine Providence that defines what is natural simpliciter, and the way in which man is ordered by his essence is natural only in a certain way (secundum quid). Thus according to Braine, de Lubac can be read such that he is not in fact attempting to restructure the essence of man, but rather is simply using “natural” in an analogous sense. Such a use of nature in the Augustinian idiom seems to be a positive way forward in redeeming the Lubacian perspective so that it becomes more consonant with St. Thomas’s distinctions. For as we have noted, St. Thomas is himself thinking from an Augustinian framework, while not denying the necessary integrity of the Aristotelian sense of nature within that very framework. The analogous terms must be held in tension. And it seems the most important step in retrieving de Lubac’s theological enterprise is moving beyond the technical imprecision of de Lubac himself to a position that recognizes the essential harmony between the Augustinian and Aristotelian “natures.”

Thus we have seen that de Lubac’s overall principles of attempting to find a theoretical form that upholds both poles of the mystery of the supernatural; his criticism of a perverse form of Thomist extrinsicism; and his proper intention to find the resources for his solution in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas are all aspects of de Lubac’s theology that we must commend. And despite his exegetical insufficiencies and metaphysical ambiguities which led to problematic conclusions, we have found that nonetheless the distinctions of St. Thomas provide a compelling solution and a way to remain faithful to the paradox of divine truth and to the contours of Lubacian theology (in a sense, being more Lubacian than de Lubac!). We might say that with a little touch of Thomism, de Lubac is able to properly fulfill his own aim and give reverence to the mystery of the supernatural.

[1] Braine, pp.558-562

[2] For ease of citation, we will follow Steven Long in drawing all citations of the texts of St. Thomas Aquinas, unless otherwise noted, from the Corpus Thomisticum, S. Thomae de Aquino opera omnia, available in Latin online at http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html. Cf. Steven A. Long, “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature as a Theonomic Principle: Reflection on the Nature/Grace Controversy,” in Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol.5, No.1 (2007): p.133.

[3] Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG), III, 25; Summa Theologiae (ST) I-II, Q.3, a.8. Cf. Long, p.137.

[4] ST I, Q.75, a.6.

[5] The Mystery of the Supernatural, pp.66-67.

[6] Ibid., p.63.

[7] Ibid., p.68, 71.

[8] ex. ST I, Q.75, a.7, ad.1; Questiones de anima a.7, ad.10. Cf. Long, p.137.

[9] Long, p.146.

[10] Voderholzer, pp.122-123.

[11] Long, p.148: “To say that by nature the human will directly aspires to the hidden life of God is to define it as the divine will alone may be defined. All creation is ordered to God as End, but through the medium of the proportionate natural end for each creature, which is nothing other than a mode of being like unto God.”

[12] Divine simplicity implies that there cannot be more than one divine nature; ST I, Q.11, a.3.

[13] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.34.

[14] Long, p.153.

[15] ST I-II, Q.5, a.5, ad.3.

[16] Long, pp.140-141.

[17] Quod. I, q.4, a.3, resp.; Cf. Long, p.134.

[18] De Malo, q.5, a.1, ad.15

[19] ex. SCG, III, c.48.

[20] Braine, p.569; Long, pp.138-139.

[21] De Virtutibus, q.1, a.10, ad.13; Long, pp.162-165.

[22] A brief example may help to illustrate: if I had in my hand a small block of marble, we could say that in simply doing what it is the natural end of marble to do, it was functioning according to a natural end. What if I, from the moment of my finding this block of marble (creation), intended to make of it a rook for my chess set, and (via grace) carved it into a chess piece with the new end of performing certain moves and aiding me in winning a chess match. Does the fact that from the beginning I intended for this piece of marble a “supernatural” end involving the actions proper to a chess piece negate the fact that it is still marble, as defined by the end of what is natural for marble to be? Or is it in fact presupposed by my intention and gracious elevation that it must in fact remain distinctly marble in order to even become a chess piece?

[23] Braine, p.567.

[24] Ibid., pp.548-549

[25] Braine, p.564; De potentia, q.1, a.3, ad.1

Sic et Non: Thoughts on Henri de Lubac’s Thomistic Retrieval (I)

2009-07-15T22:31:00.004-04:00

[Here's a paper I wrote for my class on Henri de Lubac with Reinhard Huetter. Enjoy]

I. Ad Primum Sic Proceditur: Fidelity to the Mystery

For Henri de Lubac, S.J. (1896-1991), the nature of all Christian mystery is one of paradox. The truths of Revelation inevitably take shape before the intellect in a relation of two terms whose profound harmony lies beyond (though not opposed to) the horizons of reason. It is a harmony only accessible in the shadows of faith, and thus it places upon dogmatic reflection the demand to hold seemingly irreconcilable propositions together, according to an invisible synthesis not humanly achieved[1]; for only thus are truths of divine intelligibility properly revealed. Theology is therefore formally paradoxical, requiring that “the believer should combine in thought certain realities that are clearly not mutually exclusive, even though finite human reason often cannot see how these things can be reconciled with one another.”[2] Christ is both fully God and fully man; the Church is both visible and invisible; Mary is both virgin and mother.[3] Yet for de Lubac, the foundational mystery revealed in Christ’s life, which provides the framework within which all other mysteries are received, is the mystery of man’s divine destiny: the mystery of the supernatural.[4] Here the mind must hold in tension the notion of the natural inadequacy of man’s intellectual powers for the vision of God with the fact that he is nonetheless destined from creation for this end; an end he can only desire as a free gift from God.

Confronted with any mystery, however, the intellect is tempted with a deep impatience and is often driven to abandon its vigilance to that harmony by radically favoring one pole at the expense of the other. It develops a rationalizing tendency threatening the “both/and” of the synthesis with a reductive “either/or” which, for de Lubac, constitutes the fundamental attitude of heresy. When de Lubac began writing on the subject of the supernatural as early as 1931, there were before him at least two problematic ways in which the complex character of the mystery was subject to distorting reductions.[5] The first was a form of intrinsicism equated with the immanence of Modernism, as criticized by Pope Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907).[6] Such a vision construes faith, and thus the foundation of all religion, as the outworking of internal sentiment. Accordingly religious belief achieves only a subjective character and the public significance of dogma and worship are undermined.[7] Transcendence is thus ultimately contained within the principles of the finite human spirit: in a sense, it never breaks away from the plane of the natural.[8] Modernist immanence[9] thus represents the reduction of the mysterious paradox by radically equating the natural and the supernatural, making the latter little more than a function of the former (or perhaps vice-versa[10]). It achieves unity without distinction.

The second evident threat to the synthesis moves in the opposite direction: by positing a distinction which forfeits unity, and thus reduces to a purely extrinsic opposition between the terms of the paradox. This is the cardinal sin that de Lubac sees stemming not from modern agnostics, but rather from within the Thomist theological tradition. According to de Lubac, beginning as early as the 15^th century, St. Thomas’s teaching regarding the natural and supernatural was gradually distorted as doctrines that challenged his synthesis (such as that of Denys the Carthusian, 1402-1471) were introduced into the Thomist tradition as interpretations of Thomas himself: the chief perpetrator being the well-known commentator of the Angelic Doctor, Thomas Cardinal Cajetan (1468-1534). Cajetan’s interpretation led to a conception of human nature that is fundamentally “purified” from the supernatural with an existential trajectory and finality distinct from the vision of God. Nature then becomes a self-contained and self-sufficient order unto itself, to which grace must come only as an intrusion, or an order “super-added” on top of it. The supernatural is ultimately little more than “accidental” to nature: contingent and alien to it; opposed rather than simply beyond; depriving the Catholic mantra “grace perfects nature” of its force. Ultimately in de Lubac’s eyes this brand of extrinsicism paves the way theoretically for the birth of modern atheism, naturalism, and secularism.

De Lubac thus attempts to forge with his doctrine a via media between the Scylla of Modernism and the Charybdis of extrinsicism (equally the progeny of modern error). He seeks to articulate a form of theological intrinsicism that faithfully responds to the “double burden presented by the Gospel, of an utterly gratuitous gift on God’s part coupled with the human person’s profound- non-arbitrary- desire for this gift, both of these being present already at the beginning of each creature’s existence.”[11] It is de Lubac’s task in The Mystery of the Supernatural to avoid the former perversion while adamantly attacking the latter.[12] Seeking to reclaim the fundamental unity between the natural and the supernatural, his thought is guided by a principle adapted from a well-known Scholastic maxim: to counter extrinsicism, one must not only “distinguish to unite,” for “to unite in order to distinguish, is just as inevitable.”[13] Far from a self-conscious “New Theology,” de Lubac saw this program as quite the reverse: he was attempting to recover the traditional teaching to which the Fathers of the pre-modern Church gave witness and bring it into contact with the exigencies of contemporary thought.[14] Thus de Lubac’s explication of the mystery of the supernatural cannot satisfy itself with a purely systematic treatment: it is necessarily a historical enterprise aiming to relocate the theoretical context beyond the poisonous structures of the moderniores. His goal is to reclaim a broadly Augustinian perspective of the supernatural that sufficiently counters the dualists while avoiding the excesses of Bajus and his kin. And yet, for de Lubac the faith is never truly old, never of the past, but is “always new.”[15] One cannot deny the presence of genuine theological progress in that novelty, as if the tradition were simply static and one could ignore all thought in the ages between the Fathers and ourselves. De Lubac’s retrieval of Augustinianism is a sic et non: it is not simply the voice of Augustine he wants to make heard, but more so the voices of the 13^th century Scholastics within his tradition. Thus, more properly speaking, de Lubac is seeking an Augustinian-Thomist perspective, enacting a “full return to the thought of St. Thomas and his contemporaries on the subject.”[16]

It is the true teaching of St. Thomas on the mystery of the supernatural that de Lubac intends to rescue from the accretions of Cajetan and the commentatorial tradition after him. We are then compelled to ask: to what extent does de Lubac’s teaching succeed in uniting the more Augustinian intrinsicism with the theoretical clarifications of St. Thomas? And to what extent does his reclamation aid him in faithfully remaining with the tension of the mystery’s paradox? Our affirmation of de Lubac’s response will thus also take the form of a sic et non: we will first briefly outline the general contours of de Lubac’s answer to the extrinsicist problematic; then we will raise questions about de Lubac’s exegetical accuracy with regard to St. Thomas’ distinctions and examine how his metaphysical imprecision in reclaiming the voice of Thomas could lead to conclusions consonant with the very distortions he aims to overcome; finally, we will designate the principles of de Lubac’s theology which remain valid and to which, it seems, St. Thomas may provide a more Lubacian answer.

II. Videtur Quod: Beyond Pure Nature

According to de Lubac, when the natura pura was first invoked in the 14^th century (in response to the reductive Augustinianism of Bajus), it was “aware of its own artificiality.”[17] It was the result of a hypothetical speculation about God’s omnipotence and the potential for God to have created a human nature with its ultimate end separate from God. It did not initially challenge the understanding that the actual order contained a human nature always already ordained to the beatific vision from its creation. Yet in the 15^th century, with the influence of thinkers like Denys the Carthusian- for whom man’s final end lies in contemplating created realities- the former distinction between speculation and reality was blurred. De Lubac points to a change in the conception of nature, which was now defined by an end proportionate to natural powers. In this context, Cajetan proceeded to introduce into the interpretation of St. Thomas a conception of nature radically foreign to his thought, “profoundly altering the whole meaning of St. Thomas.”[18] The important qualifications of Aristotle provided by Thomas’s Augustinianism were forgotten and nature became definitively closed-in upon itself; no “natural” exigency could exceed the bounds of its own order. Nature with the orientation to its proportionate finality became, therefore, self-sufficient; and the fundamental character of the supernatural end was undermined. Nature was thus “purified.”

This theology of natura pura was originally formulated in an effort to safeguard the gratuity of grace and the supernatural end. Yet the result, according to de Lubac, was to posit nature and grace as two complete and parallel species within the same genus. Grace could only thus appear as a kind of superstructure: something additional, something accidental, contingent, and ultimately inconsequential.[19] It could no longer perfect, transfigure, or overwhelm the natural order. Consequently, de Lubac argues, natura pura actually fails to ensure the gratuity of the supernatural. The opposition leads inevitably to the conceptual reduction of the supernatural to the natural plane: figuring it always in terms of the natural, as a copy or a “shadow” of it, because the finite end would always remain primary in concept and reality[20] (one sees here the faint specter of Modernism). Further, the theory would need to demonstrate the giftedness of the supernatural in relation to the actual, historical human nature.[21]Yet in contemplating pure nature, one is in fact imagining a wholly different order in which human nature is defined by a distinct, purified finality. It would then only bear an abstract, theoretical “resemblance” to the concrete nature in the actual historical order and would ultimately only establish the gratuity of grace relative to another nature altogether.[22] One can readily see the ultimate failure to uphold both terms of the essential paradox.

In contrast to this, de Lubac argues that a real gratuity must stem from the acknowledgment that in man there is a natural desire that exceeds the limits of natural potency: a desire for the one supernatural end that nature itself is unable to deliver. It can in fact only be desired as an entirely free gift from God.[23] The self-sufficiency of the natural order must be breached in order to be “real;” yet breached in such a way as to always maintain God’s freedom in offering grace. The operative theological principle behind de Lubac’s entire perspective is the unity of God’s Providential economy (the unity that the theology of pure nature implicitly sunders). “His sovereign liberty encloses, surpasses and causes all the bonds of intelligibility that we discover between the creature and its destiny. Nature and the supernatural are thus united, without in any sense being confused.”[24] It is God’s intentionality for His creation, revealed to man, that provides the organic unity between nature and its pre-ordained destiny in the vision of God: the simplicity of God’s antecedent will underlies the distinct gifts of nature and grace. While the natura pura theory conceives of the relationship Platonically (nature and grace relating as if two substances), de Lubac notes that the more proper analogy is hylomorphic: nature and grace relate as if two complementary principles of one substance, one order.[25] It is in their union that they are distinguished.

In expressing this fundamental unity, de Lubac sees himself as freeing St. Thomas’ traditional teaching of the desiderium naturale for the vision of God, which for de Lubac forms the foundation of continuity with the supernatural in the creature. Human nature is, from the moment of creation, called and infused with a dynamism that stretches beyond natural boundaries. For God has ordered man to a single end: as ordained to beatitude, he is specifically distinguished from all speculative hypotheses. While “pure nature” is defined by its orientation to an end proportionate to its powers, human nature as God has actually created it is defined by its orientation to a supernatural end. This orientation underlies all of man’s conscious, finite acts of intellect and will. It is, in fact, as this nature of created spirit (intellect and will) that a sense of “nature” radically foreign to the pagan philosophical concept is established.[26] For only as spirit, created in the image of God, is the concept of nature properly opened beyond its finite limitations. The natural desire for the beatific vision is thus not incidental and “supper-added,” but rather a property of human nature qua spirit: it is “inscribed” or “impressed” on man’s being, something “ontological,”[27] an “essential finality.”[28] What Cajetan and Suarez after him failed to take account of was the utterly exceptional character of the created spirit which infuses the concept of “nature” with a radically different meaning.[29] And it is through the continuity it provides that de Lubac believes he has successfully accounted for both the unity and the distinction implicit in the paradox of the mystery.

[1] Henri de Lubac, S.J., The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), p.169: “A synthesis indeed; but for out natural intellect, it is a synthesis of paradox before being one of enlightenment.”; and p.171: “Revealed truth, then, is a mystery for us; in other words it presents that character of lofty synthesis whose final link must remain impenetrably obscure to us. It will forever resist all our efforts to unify it fully.”

[2] Rudolf Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac, trans. Michael J. Miller, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), p.118; c.f. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Sister Elizabeth Englund, OCD, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), p.327.

[3] Voderholzer, p.119.

[4] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.167.

[5] Ibid., p.xxxv.

[6] Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis:Encyclical of Pope Pius X on the Doctrines of the Modernists, (St. Peter’s, Rome: Sept.8, 1907), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis_en.html

[7] David Braine, “The Debate Between Henri de Lubac and His Critics,” in Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol.6, No.3 (2008): pp.573

[8] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.xxxv.

[9] This version of misconstruing the mystery was the distortion de Lubac’s position most clearly boiled down to in the eyes of his critics. We will examine more deeply below what foundations there are, if any, in de Lubac’s thought for such associations.

[10] An example of the supernaturalizing tendency can be found in the theology of Michael Bajus (1512-1589). It was in response to his vision of “everything is grace” that many aspects of the Thomistic distortions were likely formed.

[11] David Schindler, “Introduction to the 1998 Edition” in Henri de Lubac, S.J., The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), p.xxvii

[12] For de Lubac, the “separatist thesis” may only have just begun to bear its bitterest fruits; see The Mystery of the Supenatural, p.xxxv.

[13] Catholicism, p. 330.

[14] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.xxxvi: “Faith must provide the needed answer, and must do so before it is too late to be of help to many.”

[15] Ibid., p.18.

[16] Ibid., p.206.

[17] Voderholzer, p.130.

[18] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.9.

[19] Ibid., p.178.

[20] Ibid., p.36.

[21] Ibid., p.55

[22] Ibid., p.60: “You may put into this hypothetical world a man as like me as you can, but you cannot put me into it. Between that man who, by hypothesis, is not destined to see God, and the man I am in fact, between that futurable and this existing being, there remains only a theoretical, abstract identity, without the one really becoming the other at all.”

[23] Ibid., p.94. The datum optimum is fundamentally ordered to the donum perfectum; but never in such a way that the donum is guaranteed or demanded (as Bajus thought), but only freely given.

[24] Ibid., p.99.

[25] Ibid., p.32.

[26] Ibid., ch.7, pp.119-139.

[27] Ibid., pp.79-80.

[28] Ibid., p.81

[29] Ibid., ch.6, pp.101-118.

All Theology Must be Onto-theology

2009-06-23T18:25:00.004-04:00

No, not the Heidegerrian boogeyman. I simply want to point out that there is a crucial problem with the more recent attempts by philosophers and theologians (eg. Marion, Levinas, etc.) to think God beyond the category of being: the inability to see just how pervasive the notion of being is and must be. Now of course many of the thinkers in this line are appealing to the apophatic theologies of the Neoplatonic tradition and their concern that we in no way confuse God with any of the finite conceptual idols that we inevitably construct out of "being." For surely, there is an infinite gulf between God and all of the modes of being that we ever experience (with all of the forms of composition and limitation in the orders of essence, existence, action, etc.). In this light, soemthing like "Good" becomes far more attractive as a primary name for God; and in certain respects, St. Thomas acknowledges this. No problem there. And yet still, unless we are clear, there is a serious problem with the attempt to think God without the mediation of being.

The reason this is problematic is because of a foundational fact of our epistemic condition (we might say, one of our hermeneutical horizons as incarnated intellects). As St. Thomas taught, being is the first concept conceived by the intellect. Not explicitly of course (children do not utter "esse!" before the utter "dada!" or "mama!".....though if anyone did, it was probably Thomas). But rather implicitly. No other concept can be formed without the notion of being attached to it, riding its coattails, or more appropriately, arm-in-arm with it. We might say, it is concomittant with all of our knowledge of.....well, everything.

So on the one hand, our conceptions of being are shaped and limited to all of the finite modes that we encounter (we are primarilly wired to know the essences of sensible beings, composed of matter and form, esse and essentia, etc.); and we do in a certain sense only have to work with being as it is cut-up into puzzle pieces. As differently shaped, limited pieces, they surely will not accurately apply to God by any stretch of the imagination; and thus we must eventually leave them by the way-side.

Yet on the other hand, we remain finite, incarnated intellects even when we try to think about God. And it remains that no matter what categories and concepts we use, "being" will always be analytically first among them, haunting them all. So if we try to replace being with, say, the category of "Good" or "Love" as purer, non-idolatrous concepts for God, we find that being somehow always beats them to the destination, or is always found stowing-away aboard them. This is simply implicit in the actuality of the perfections we wish to ascribe, such as "Good." Imagine if by "Good" we meant "an unreal Good" or "Good that really isn't Good" or "Good that is nothing absolutely." We would not be describing a perfection in its perfection at all. We would be describing a perfection insofar as it is somehow not a perfection. And that has got to be worse than any idol of being. We don't ever want to talk about privations when we talk about God, because there are none in him. "Being" then marks that concept which renders these other concepts in their perfection, in their reality, and not in their privation.

Even look at the way we would inevitably describe the alternative concepts in relation to God: "God is Love and not Being" for instance. We rely on the concept of being ("is") in the very predication of God's supposedly purer perfection. Its just an endless maze and at every turn, we end up finding the concept of being jumping out at us. Not only that, but we find that it is precisely what ensures the intelligibility even of our apophasis. Either 1) negative theology means that God is absolute nothingness (infinite privation) or 2) that God is nothing with regard to a certain sense or form of "being." But absolute nothingness is a phrase we use for what is inconceivable by definition. As it turns out, our language about this and other privations presupposes that we have a concept of being with which to negate. Nothingness is conceptually parasitic, and only to the degree that the concept of being precedes it is it intelligible.

So this would seem to leave option 2 as the only way to proceed. The most "nothing" we can ascribe to God is the denial of any peculiarity of our finite modes of being and knowing (composition). So why not just describe it this way? Sadly, I think, following Heidegger, too many thinkers concede that somehow "being" is entirely exhausted in its finitude. It is by definition a limited concept, encrusted in a certain limited modality. It's not the kind of thing we can strip and purify and remold when we apply it to God. But why would "Good" or "Love" be any different? In truth, we only ever encounter these concepts in finite modes (the good as perfection of things that are perfected; love as an accident of some substance). They are just as much cut-up into puzzle pieces by the world we live in as "being" is. Couldn't we just as easily write a treatise titled "God Without Good" or "God Without Love?"

No matter how they phrase it, folks like Marion do not really mean that we should think of God as nothing absolutely. What they want to describe is a perfection that somehow exceeds our modes of being and knowing, not an eternal void of empty privation. That would be the farthest thing from God imaginable (if we can even say it's imaginable!) . Even the silence and the deconstruction of the mystics implies some actuality which our finite mode of thinking cannot contain: it is a silence about God and not the silence of a tree or a stone. So if anything, the concept of being implicit in every other concept is what ensures that the most apophatic of thinkers conceive of God according to some perfection rather than as an infinite privation. Without it, folks like Marion and Dionysius would be indistinguishable from Atheists who claim that God does not exist, at all, in any sense ("there is no God").

So to put it simply, we as finite minds always grasp the concept of being first in any movement of knowledge. As human intellects, we can only conceive of everything through the concept of being. So attempts to think something, in this case God, without the concept of being seems to result in an attempt to abandon our inescapable hermeneutical limitations: in short, to think God as something other than a human thinker. It is an attempt to alter the order of knowledge that is inscirbed into us. But one could only do this by becoming a different kind of being with a different kind of knowing. Surely the extent to which we can know God must conform to the order of knowing that he inscribes into human nature and not to a struggle to negate it. I fear that too often modern negative theologians mistake negating the order of knowledge with exceeding it. They also fail to recall that theology is a human science, even negative theology. Ironically, sometimes the language of being can be far more theologically reserved than the attempt to get beyond it!

Here's the ontological Scylla and Charybdis all theologians are dealing with: If we rely on being-language, we certainly avoid any sense of applying a privation to God, but the perfection we signify tends to be limited to the finite modes of being we encounter, and we risk applying limitation to God. If we rely on nothing or non-being langauge, we certainly obliterate any risk of applying modal limitation to God, but we have suddenly opened the doorway for privation to slip back in, because we have obliterated all that distinguishes perfection from privation in our thought and talk. So its the danger of limitation or the danger of privation.

If one grants that being is intrinsically finite, then limitation will never look like a safe passage because being will always dead-end in some finite thing. But Thomas would simply ask: what compels us to assume such strictures? What if we suspend this presupposition? What if being is, actually, analogous: neither intrinsically finite nor infinite?

Grant this, and I think limitation, though always formidable, is the more managable foe. A theological ascesis can more easily purify language of the finite modes of these perfections; it seems far more dangerous to render vulnerable their very "perfectionness." It is easier to smash an idol than to make something out of nothing.

While most of the modern negative thinkers have thought that St. Thomas and those following him have not gone far enough in their apophasis, I think it rather the case that he has put his finger on the far more successfully negative approach. As long as we take seriously modal negations as the very heart and soul of conceptual mysticism, then this need not be a "wimpier" form of apophasis. It is simply a more precise, more prudent form, insofar as it is apophasis through the mediation of the concept of being. In this sense, all theology, even negative theology, must be Onto-theology; or else risk devolving into a nihilistic atheism.

Pax Christi,

Leibniz: Can't Touch This

2009-06-10T23:42:00.004-04:00

I've read selections from the Leibniz's Monadology multiple times in the past, and I will undoubtedly have more to write on this later when I will be studying Leibniz a bit more in depth. But my hunch is that the metaphysics of the monad is a good example of what happens when one tries to address questions of substance and accidents with the blinders of the Cartesian ego tightly affixed. When the "clarity" and "distinction" of ideas (and the imagination) become the filter of all possibility, one begins to articulate a world in which substances are reclusive principles, metaphysical "shut-ins," quarantined from everything outside their doors. In an interesting twist, the distinctions drawn in our musing give birth to an exile in reality, and the intimate union between subject and accident in act which is precious to Aristotelian and Thomist realism becomes the fantasy: such things only seem to be hand-in-hand (but in truth, its all a prearranged dance of cosmic harmony, where things come only so close to touching)! Leibniz may have been trying to overcome a Cartesian problem, but by conceding so much to the fundamentals of the Cartesian turn, he doomed himself from the get-go. Repackaging occasionalism never offers anything close to an adequate description of how things really interact. That should never be appealed to, even as a last resort. It's like Sisyphus concocting more effective ways to get the boulder up the hill. Good luck, buddy!

The Monadology strikes me as a lesson why we should never presume to conflate logical possibility and real or actual possibility. One's head only dictates the full range of possibilities when one has already agreed to strip everything else of its stake in the real.

It marks a failure to think from the between, where mind and being flow into one another; where they interact on a two-way street, and do not lock each other out.

Pax Christi,

Candidate for Worst Analogy...of All Time

2009-06-10T22:53:00.003-04:00

A lot of virtual ink is spilled over the notion of analogy around here. It is important to me and my comrades both as a tool of good reasoning and as the manner in which the metaphysical relationship between God and creation is most aptly articulated. So I thought a new game might be fun: try to come up with a worse analogy than this set of gems...

Abortion doctor LeRoy Carhart compares the murder of Dr. Tiller to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (as well as to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Lusitania). Pro-life protesters are thus compared to the KKK. Quoted in the Washington Times (linked above)...

"I think there is absolutely no difference in putting a cross in front of a person's home because of what race they belong to than there is putting a cross in front of our homes because we do abortions."

I mean, wow. Such rock solid reasoning truly astounds. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised: the abortion debate brings out some of the most heated exchanges, and since comparisons to Hitler and the Holocaust have been throw around by the Pro-life side, I suppose it was a matter of time before those on the other side came up with something of equal inflammatory caliber. But while the Hitler analogies are certainly inflammatory, they don't suffer from the vice of being one of the worst analogies I have ever heard.

Luckily, MLK's niece, Aveda King, has responded to the comparison eloquently, noting that the basis upon which Cahart wants to compare them actually serves to drive them ever more radically apart; making even the thought of such an analogy simply laughable.

Maybe this was taken out of context. Maybe Dr. Cahart moonlights as a standup comedian?

Pax Christi,

A Note on Neoplatonic Champagne

2009-05-30T18:39:00.005-04:00

Neoplatonic emanation has traditionally been a sticking point for Christianity. Despite some of its unifying metaphysical strengths, it seems to render created being necessary, as though God's nature requires that the diversified chorus of finitude pours forth from his lips. Suddenly, a core aspect of the created/uncreated distinction is trivialized.

The big players in the Christian tradition who sought to reap the fruits of Neoplatonism have dealt with this apparent conflict.

To put it simply, when it comes to intentionality or necessity: we must not conceive of the emanation of finite being the way a great and mighty waterfall trickles down into a river below that branches off into countless tributaries and streams. The waterfall would not be what it is if gravity did not exact this necesssity on its emanation. Or rather, it would be like every time you bought a bottle of champagne, it burst open and poured out onto everything, as you speedily try to plug the top in your unexpected panic.

God's emanation is far more like when one, celebrating an acheivement in great joy (perhaps celebrating one's own beautiful nature), shakes a giant bottle of champagne and pops the cork, allowing its bounty to flow forth into the countless and variously shaped glasses of one's guests, held out at different heights below it. And imagine, of course, that somehow this giant bottle of champagne never runs out....

Pax Christi,

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

2009-05-30T18:09:00.006-04:00

For the Aristotelian, a severed hand is not really a hand at all. It is detached from the substantial form that secures its function and identity as hand. Apart from this, it is only analogously called a hand, much in the same way we would call a prosthetic replacement a "hand." Without the living, informed body, the severed hand is far more like a prosthetic hand or a claw or even the sculpture of a hand than it is like an organic, living hand.

Similarly, for the Aristotelian, the polis and the common good are naturally prior to the individuals that partake of them; much in the same way that the unified, substantial body is prior to its hands and its feet. It seems apparent then that in many accounts of Modern autonomy, philosophers are proposing that hands are truly hands when they are lobbed off of their arms. Body parts precede the unity of the body. Yet when Modern man is cut off from the common good and the intrinsic "political" aspect of his nature and his end, can we really call him "man?" Or is he in reality closer to a manequin or a sculpture?

Obvisouly Modern man, even in accepting such a vision of autonomy, is not cast out of human community the way an exile or a hermit might have been sundered from the polis in Aristotle's day. Now as then, people still grow and develop and depend upon the specialized skills of others in their communities. So it would be more like a bunch of severed body parts trying to move together in imitation of a real and living unified body. Imagine the child of some deity trying to create a human doll out of a bunch of dead human body parts. It's actions, it's movements, would in effect be no more than those of a doll: what Aristotle would classify as an artifact. What we have then in the extreme accounts of Modern autonomy is an argument for a political Frankenstein.

Are we willing to refer to Frankenstein (the monster) as "man" in the same sense as we would use that word of, say, Dr. Victor Frankenstein?

Pax Christi,

Kant vs. Copernicus

2009-05-13T15:10:00.002-04:00

An Easy Essay in the Spirit of Peter Maurin, inspired by William Desmond

Kant (1724 – 1804) vs. Copernicus (1473 – 1543)

Before Copernicus, it was thought that
The sun revolved around the earth,
That man was the center of all.
But Copernicus was a revolutionary,
Whose perspicacity, like none other,
Keenly peered into the
True nature of revolution, and declared
The earth revolves around the sun.
Man was no more the center of all,
But, instead was held in the embrace of a world
Full of things whose intelligibility would lead man
To ever higher realms of existence.

Before Kant, it was known that
The earth revolved around the sun,
That man was not the center of all because
There was a world of things surrounding him.
Kant assumed the position of “revolutionary,”
And declared that he had discovered a new center –
The transcendental subject, and its conditions for thought.
Man was pushed back into the center, and all things
Were now subject to man’s cognitive dominion.
Man now held the world in his fragile embrace,
Imposing intelligibility upon things that prove themselves
To be more and more recalcitrant to man’s dominion.

But if Copernicus realized man was not in the center,
And if Kant pushed man back into the center,
It is odd that Kant declared his movement to be
A Copernican Revolution.

Uhhhhhhhhhh-Oh!!!

2009-04-27T13:58:00.002-04:00

So today, all academic obligations for the semester are satisfied. The Lord has truly risen! I've been intending to comment more, or perhaps to think through the issue via blog, concerning the Notre Dame- Obama drama. I wanted to address specifically JB's comment about eating with sinners and tax collectors. However, for the moment, I simply had to draw people's attention to this!

I've had trouble articulating my thoughts on this issue before. Sometimes discussions with friends make me think my resistance is just nuts; other times the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. But Glendon's reasoning here seems to me eminently reasonable. It seems to point to two of the major points underlying my own stance: a commencement is not the occasion for this kind of thing; and an honorary degree is really the meat of the problem. Not to mention I think ecclesial obedience should be a factor in this discussion as well.

I'll post more on this soon. But for now: Sh*t, meet fan!

Pax Christi,

Pascha

2009-04-12T22:25:00.004-04:00

The meaning of the Resurrection lies, rather, in Jesus' passage to a form of existence which has left death behind it once for all (Romans 6:10), and so has gone beyond, once for all, the limitations of this aeon in God (Hebrews 9:26; 1 Peter 3:18). In contrast to David, but also to those whom he himself raised from the dead, Jesus is withdrawn from corruption (Acts 13:34), he lives for God (Romans 6:10), he lives 'for evermore' and has 'the keys of Death and Hades' (Apocalypse 1:17ff). This event is, as has rightly been said time and again, without analogy. It pierces our whole world of living and dying in a unique way so that, through this breakthrough, it may open a path for us into the everlasting life of God (I Corinthians 15:21ff).

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p.194.

Christos Aneste! Alethos Aneste!

Pax Christi,

Sabbatum Sanctum

2009-04-11T13:45:00.003-04:00

This ultimate solidarity is the final point and the goal of that first 'descent,' so clearly described in the Scriptures, into a 'lower world' which, with Augustine, can already be characterised, by way of contrast with heaven, as infernum. Thomas Aquinas will echo Augustine here. For him, the necessity whereby Christ had to go down to Hades lies not in some insufficiency of the suffering endured on the Cross but in the fact that Christ has assumed all the defectus of sinners...Now the penalty which the sin of man brought on was not only the death of the body. It was also a penalty affected the soul, for sinning was also the soul's work, and the soul paid the price in being deprived of the vision of God. As yet unexpiated, it followed that all human beings who lived before the coming of Christ, even the holy ancestors, descended into the infernum. And so, in order to assume the entire panalty imposed upon sinners, Christ willed not only to die, but to go down, in his soul, ad infernum. As early as the Fathers of the second century, this act of sharing constituted the term and aim of the Incarnation. The 'terrors of death' into which Jesus himself falls are only dispelled when the Father raises him again...He insists on his own grounding principle, namely, that only what has been endured is healed and saved.

That the Redeemer is solidary with the dead, or, better, with this death which makes of the dead, for the first time, dead human beings in all reality- this is the final consequence of the redemptive mission he has received from the Father. His being with the dead is an existence at the utmost pitch of obedience, and because the One thus obedient is the dead Christ, it constitutes the 'obedience of a corpse' (the phrase is Francis of Assisi's) of a theologically unique kind. By it Christ takes the existential measure of everything that is sheerly contrary to God, of the entire object of the divine eschatological judgment, which here is grasped in that event in which it is 'cast down' (hormemati blethesetai, Apocalypse 18, 21; John 12; Matthew 22, 13). But at the same time, this happening gives the measure of the Father's mission in all its amplitude: the 'exploration' of Hell is an event of the (economic) Trinity...This vision of chaos by the God-man has become for us the condition of our vision of Divinity. His exploration of the ultimate depths has transformed what was a prison into a way.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), pp. 164-165, 174-175.

I wish you all a blessed Holy Saturday, and a joyous Easter.

Pax Christi,

Notre Dame, Country, God

2009-03-20T19:04:00.008-04:00

Today it was revealed that President Obama will be the commencement speaker for the 2009 class of my beloved alma mater, Our Lady's University. He will also be receiving an honorary law degree. My initial reaction was that my class of 2008 had been deeply betrayed: we fought tooth and nail to get Stephen Colbert, the greatest satirist of our age (and a Catholic); and despite a near unanimous preference among the student body, the University big-wigs shrugged their shoulders and claimed not to carry that kind of clout. We ended up with Cardinal McCarrick and a different president: Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), both of whom turned out to be terrific speakers.

But it didn't take long for my feelings to turn to rather serious dissappointment. I can take a certain kind of pride in the historic nature of Obama's election, and I am sympathetic to his ambition to reshape countless aspects of the country that have been far from flourishing for the last eight years (though the jury is still out on much of the "how"). On the so called "life-issues," however, President Obama stands in stark opposition to Catholic Teaching: on issues that are fundamental and the morally heaviest. I need not rant about the centrality of the abortion and embryonic stem cell issues for an acceptable culture of life and the pursuit of a comprehensive common good. These things should be clear.

Obama has simply proven to be abominable, even monstrous, on such issues. So I wonder what it says when a Catholic university that is supposedly invested in maintaining its identity as a Catholic universitas, invites a commencement speaker who, despite his prominence, is so obviously in opposition to Catholic teaching; and has arguably more power to affect contrary policies than any other person. We might immediately say that Notre Dame need not be endorsing everything the President believes by simply inviting him to speak. And along the same lines, I do not believe that those who voted for Obama necessarily incurred sin as if they formally supported everything he does. But my gut tells me that a Catholic university has a certain obligation when it comes to figures who very publicly oppose Church teaching. It seems we missed an opportunity to show publicly how intolerable Obama's stance is on life-issues is to the Church and the academy.

Imagine if there were a very well known politician who was currently riding a wave of popularity for his promises of social change, financial stability, education reform, foreign policy overhaul, whatever. But this politician was deeply committed to reintroducing the "legal right" for every white man or woman to enslave any African American, as they so "choose." Or worse (and perhaps more apropos): this politician was pushing hard to enshrine the supposed "right" for non-Jewish Americans to murder Jews as they see fit. Or maybe toddlers of any race, for that matter. You get the analogy. If this were the case, wouldn't we have an instinctual problem with a Catholic university inviting such a person to receive an honorary degree and give a speech? Despite the relative good he may have done?

Personally (and pessimistically), I fear this may be more a result of Notre Dame succumbing to the pressures of being a wannabe Ivy-league institution, trying everything it can to run with its "aspirational peers." I fear, as others have, that this requires the school thinking of itself too much as an American research university (or, as Peter Casarella has said, a "multiversity") and not enough as a Catholic university. The famous mantra of fidelity, "God, Country, Notre Dame," would seem to be inverted to "Notre Dame, Country, God." Ralph McInerney has expressed similar concerns about the size and focus of Notre Dame in the past. Kevin Hart, who also had a rich conception of Catholic higher education, fled for UVA in the night. And the university has come under the critical gaze of MacIntyre on more than one occasion (and the mission of the Catholic university is one of the only things he is interested in teaching students about nowadays).

I would like to think that this event is a sign of Obama's willingness to enter into dialogue with the Church and be shaped by its concerns. But somehow I doubt that's the case...

What do people think?

Pax Christi,

Happy Feast of Patrick!

2009-03-17T12:27:00.003-04:00

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession
of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I arise today through the strength of Christ with His Baptism,
through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.

I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim
in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels,
in hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets,
in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors,
in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of Heaven:
light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire,
speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,
stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.

I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me,
God's host to secure me:
against snares of devils, against temptations of vices,
against inclinations of nature, against everyone who
shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.

I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):
against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose
my body and my soul,
against incantations of false prophets,
against black laws of heathenry,
against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry,
against spells of women [any witch] and smiths and wizards,
against every knowledge that endangers man's body and soul.
Christ to protect me today
against poison, against burning, against drowning,
against wounding, so that there may come abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the
Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

Amen.

Pax Christi,

Machiavellian Agnosticism

2009-03-09T15:09:00.013-04:00

Today one of the (in my opinion few) praiseworthy acts of the Bush administration was overturned by President Obama's executive order on funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush's policy wasn't even perfect, and now the problematic contingency of something like an executive order on this issue comes to light. I could rant for hours about the loss of a common understanding of natural law, the common good, a shared moral culture, and basically all of the conceptual and practical resources required for an ethical appeal to something more fundamental than the whims of positive law. But I'll spare you...most of it.

One aspect of the issue that really grinds my gears is the rhetorical framing game that's going on. MacIntyre once noted that one of the deepest flaws of modern political culture is that "professional" politicians and their parties often actively discourage the kind of communal reasoning about the proper ends of politics itself. Too often they succumb to Machiavellian tendencies, framing the debates ideologically and supressing the most relevant questions from even being raised. The political gerrymandering between the parties on "life issues" is a testament to this, and today the news stations were flooded with it.

The way commentators have been spinning the issue is a bit frightening. Much of what I heard has tended to portray this as something like an issue of "science verses religion," as if the discourse of science were offering us one ethical judgment derived from the scientific method (this stuff is good), and revealed religions were offering us the negative judgment in stark contradiction to scientific methodolgy and simply as a tenet of blind belief. Underlying all of this is the problematic assumption that common moral reasoning, rational conclusions about the goodness or badness of human action, is simply an impossibility. Moral opposition here is thus part of the fabric of essentially irrational faith commitments that people are legally free to have. Yet this seems to suggest that non-believers have no good reason- no resources, in fact- to have any ethical problem with it. Why? Because the science part shows us that we can likely cure the sick if we follow it, and therefore it seems to provide some moral guidance.

Frankly, I'm not sure why the scientific part of this is even in the spotlight. It is not an aspect that should even enter the debate (because nothing scientific is being debated by rational people!). When it does, we have the voice of an empirical truth-seeking metholdolgy being employed to weigh-in on judgments that are simply "above its pay grade." Of course then what is really being imposed is a presupposed anthropology and ethics which avoid the critical gaze that an environment of common moral reasoning should be designed for. Use of the language of "science" in this kind of discussion then becomes frighteningly equivocal: shifting back and forth from referents about empirical data on the one hand and evaluative moral judgments on the other. What's scary is that when the discourse of scientific research is not complemented by a proper discourse about human action and human ends, and science is used to try and fill the void, we end up with dangerous beaurecratic logic: the question of means will eclipse questions of ends, and suddenly the utilitarian value of curing countless numbers of suffering people will eclipse the moral weight involved in killing countless unborn children in order to achieve this. This may be no problem for a Scientism, but has little to do with science per se.

The result of all of this is of course that the most relevant question is skillfully avoided: whether or not the embryo that is destroyed to fuel the research is a human life. The more we can avoid making any explicit judgments on this issue, the less the terms of the debate will be understood, the less common moral debate can happen with the promise of common understandings, and the more ideological, hidden presuppositions about ethical value can remain behind the curtain, exerting their influence through manipulation.

Just listen to the talking points: what is emphasized, how questions are dodged and redirected, what stats are used. Note especially how the proponents attempt to appropriate their opponents' supposedly essential "religious" logic, by noting that their faith is one that respects life and encourages us to heal the sick by using this knowledge; without, of course, ever addressing whether they are taking life in order to acheive that oh so pious end.

The nail in the coffin for me was when one CNN anchor (a light in the rhetorical darkness) was bold enough to ask the only question that really mattered of his guest, a congresswoman in favor of the President's move. After her few attempts to duck and weave, he asked: but is this a human life, or only a potential human life? To which she responded: that is "above my pay grade." Here she echoes the now infamous words of President Obama on the abortion issue (which is really the issue in question here). And what this represents is a remarkably clever but remarkably monstrous kind of agnosticism. It is the queen of moral anti-reasoning and rhetorical inconsistency.

If I lived in a country like our own which (now) recognizes that NO man or woman has the right to enslave other human beings; but for some inconceivable reason (maybe extreme ignorance), I believed it to be "above" my epistemological "pay grade" to determine whether or not African Americans are in fact human beings; one would assume that I meant the jury is out, and while it is possible (in this messed up world) that they are not human, it is also certainly possible that they are. If I am committed to African Americans being even potentially human, it wouldn't make much sense to enact a bunch of Jim Crow laws or even policies protecting the right of whites to enslave them, in effect acting as though they were not humans with the same human dignity. By enacting such policies, the commitments entailed by my actions grossly betray the commitments and judgments I expressed through words. So while I say the jury is out, my actions imply a swift verdict, judge, jury, and executioner.

This isn't rocket science. If someone pleads ignorance about what is and is not a human life, but then strongly pushes policy entailing that these things are most certainly not human lives, that is monstrous deception. Anyone who claims that the jury is out, but drops the guillotine, is simply lying, and lying with a purpose.

This is clearly a kind of agnosticism designed to aid a Machiavellian, ideological policy judgment. It is an agnosticism that does not extend beyond words. It is an agnosticism that simply makes no sense. The only truly relevant question here, and the only one that can actually make it a debate, is whether or not in order to get the stem cells you are in fact murdering young human beings. A judgment on this is necessary, and it is either explicitly declared or it is deceitfully hidden. To follow the analogy: there is no policy move for the agnostic; there is only room for the atheists and the theists.

The other problem is that the implications of the judgements is, perhaps purposely, never fully illustrated. Let's use todlers. Say, for the sake or argument, that I was able to grow a batch of ten 3-year old children that sprouted up from the ground; but only one was adopted by parents and the rest will slowly die within a month. Their hearts are all amazinly strong and have the unique ability to adapt perfectly to any body they may be placed in without any signs of rejection by the host body; and in fact, those hearts can be used to clone millions of hearts just like them; but once the children die, the hearts are no good. It sure would be a shame to let those hearts go to waste especially when there are so many suffering people in need of hearts. But...how to get them. Can we harvest those hearts without, by definition, taking the lives of 9 innocent three-year olds, i.e. murdering them?

That is the question everyone must grapple with. Even if folks (like Peter Singer perhaps) say "sure, no problem," at least they've addressed the issue consistently, rather than suppressing it. This would then allow us to argue about the coherence of different ethical systems, and from this dialectic come to radically more informed conclusions about issues like this. At least people would know what is at stake...

For any ethic that houses notions of intrinsically evil actions, the murder of innocent children is an action that can never be ordered to the final human good, and thus no matter how good the result (curing countless millions), or how grim the circumstances (the kids are going to die anyway, no matter what), its never morally acceptable to take the children's lives. And this is a completely reasonable conception of morality! It is not nonsense or something only indoctrinated believers would be willing to accept. It is something that, given a culture that encourages it, reasonable people can grasp and debate.

Pax Christi,

Zombies in Bethany

2009-03-05T20:37:00.005-05:00

Though not related to my other exegetical hijinks, I was translating parts of John 11 today for my Greek class and came across a rather disturbing discovery.

In the story of the Raising of Lazarus, Jesus proclaims in a loud voice in front of a large crowd His great confidence that the Father always listens to his prayers (John 11:41-32), and that He boldly told the people to open the tomb so that the crowd will come to believe that He is indeed sent by the Father(v.42). In effect, he says "I know you basically do whatever I ask you all the time, God; but for the sake of these people standing around, let's make some magic happen, huh? Let them know that I'm your number one man." One could interpret Jesus' words here as being rather presumptuous...

And as it turns out, this may have caused things to go horribly wrong. Everyone knows the story as it is often told: that Jesus calls for Lazarus to come out and he stumbles forth, still wrapped in his burial cloths, and Jesus says: "Loose him [lusate auton], and allow him to go away/home" (John 11:44). Jesus has successfully completed a resucitation miracle and sends the man on his way. BUT: The verb luo actually means both "to loose" and "to destroy"!!!! So by following the former meaning, exegetes have horribly misunderstood what is really happening here. This is not the story of a successful miracle, but rather the story of a botched miracle.

It's clear to me that the Father is playing a rather nasty practical joke on Jesus here: seeing that Jesus calls upon Him with all of those expectant eyes watching, the Father only restores Lazarus to an undead state, not to life. So when Jesus sees Lazarus stagger out as a freaking ZOMBIE, he and the entire crowd are struck with fear and Jesus shouts:

[AHHHH!!!!] DESTROY him (lusate auton) and get him out of here!!!!! (kai aphete auton hupagein)

How embarassing for our Lord and Savior...

Pax Christi,

Orthoidos

2009-03-01T06:57:00.003-05:00

When writing upon the Triumph of Orthodoxy for Vox Nova this week (the post can be found here) I came to the realization that I needed to use a word, but didn't know of a word to use, and so invented one: orthoidos. The word relates to the transcendental of the beautiful in the way orthodoxy relates to the truth and orthopraxis relates to the good. I used the word eidos, Greek for form, thinking it was best suited for the task at hand (for it comprehends more within its domain than eikonos would).

I described the word itself in footnote 4, saying:

Ortho-eidos. As with the good and the truth, the concrete realization of orthoidos can differ according to circumstance; just as the concrete form of truth is found in the correctness of a statement at a given time and place, so the concrete form of the beautiful is found in how fitting a form is as it is used at a particular time and place. Thus “It is raining,” can be correct or incorrect, depending upon the time the statement is made, so a specific form of eidos, such as a specific architectural design, could be legitimate at one place, and, through a change of circumstances, not something which would be proper to reproduce. Changes in how we live will affect the forms of the buildings we construct, and what is appropriate at one time will no longer be the case later. This can be shown by the fact that we no longer need build walls to defend cities.

Anyone know of a word of similar thought and content, or did I create one of the theological missing links?

Pistisism and the Gospels

2009-02-25T14:51:00.006-05:00

N.T. Wright argues rather persuasively in his What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company, 1997) that the Apostle to the Gentiles was not the ambitious and creative "founder" of Christianity, eclipsing and misinterpreting what Jesus had originally intended to be little more than vague moral guidelines. Rather, Paul was more so a faithful "herald of the king," bearing a message in remarkable continuity with the Jesus tradition.

Well, the light of truth continues to shine upon me as it now seems quite clear that Paul's great teaching of "Justification by Faith Over Christ" was not created by Paul out of thin air, but was rather a teaching Jesus Himself seems to have taught; recorded for us in the theologies of the canonical Gospels.

As we learn from Paul, "Faith" (pistis) is not an attribute or an activity "of" people, but (like Sin) is a cosmic, elemental, transpersonal force. Except unlike Sin and Death, it establishes humanity in the proper covenant relationship with God. In the Gospels, when faith is mentioned, we see that Jesus' relationship to it is radically different from what we normally hear.

The agency of miraculous saving acts is actually attributed to Faith, not Jesus:

Matt 9:22: But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy FAITH hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.

This same pattern occurs in Matthew 9:29 and 15:28, Mark 5:34, 10:52, Luke 7:9-10, 7:50, 8:48, 17:19, 18:48. Mark 2:5 (Luke 5:20) reads:

When Jesus saw their FAITH, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.

As is clear from this passage and its parallels, the only thing that Christ "does" is see that Faith is already healing the sick man. He is just a remarkably observant guy, and his amazing sensitivity to the mysterious saving action of Faith is often mistaken as a sign that he is the agent. However the message of the Gospel is clearly different: Jesus is simply more aware than everyone else of what's really going on, and his attempts to point this out seem constantly to end in misunderstanding. Scholars have been scratching their unkempt heads for decades and decades about Mark's motif of the "Messianic Secret": why is it that Jesus seems to discourage people from proclaiming him as Messiah? NOW it is all so clear!!!

Jesus is more like a really good spectator than an athlete: he is most often described as "seeing" faith, not causing it or doing things because of it. Note the passages in which he is said to either "find" or "not find" Faith:

Matthew 8:10: When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

See also Luke 18:8.

One might notice that it sure seems as though Jesus is ascribing agency to Faith, but specifically to the individual's faith: "your faith has made you whole." This would seem to imply that faith is, after all, a kind of quality or action "of" individual people. However, as in Paul's letters, the truth is revealed when we realize that the evangelists did not use the pronoun sou ("your") here as a Possessive Genitive, but rather as a Genitive of Subordination! Hence, the REAL translation of a passage like Luke 18:42 (and its parallels) reads:

And Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; Faith OVER/HAVING DOMINION OVER YOU has made you well."

Salvation is a result of the cosmic power of Faith man-handling the believer into slave-like submission, dominating the sin out of him or her. The 1st century Judeo-Christian world was all about apocalyptic cosmic struggle, and here it is evident that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet: attempting to unveil to the world the saving action of Faith, even Faith over him.

Pax Christi,

The Sun of Righteousness

2009-02-22T07:24:00.005-05:00

Just as when these clouds surround the sun, instead of blocking it out, add to its beauty, so when the clouds of sin surround the Sun of Righteousness at Calvalry, His glory is made even more manifest. All things work for the greater glory of God!

Oriental Orthodox in Ecumenical Dialogue 4

2009-02-22T03:57:00.002-05:00

IV Some Final Reflections and Questions

Despite all the praiseworthy advancements that the Oriental Orthodox have made in their dialogues with the Eastern Orthodox and the West, there are still considerable problems and obstacles that need to be addressed. Early in the 1990s it looked like the Oriental Orthodox would achieve communion with the Eastern Orthodox churches. The plans were in place so that both sides would mutually lift the anathemas which divided them, and then they would have an official celebration of communion together by leaders of the churches. However, that has not yet occurred. In 2001 the Coptic and Greek Orthodox Patriarchs of Alexandria, having noticed that restoration for communion had not been achieved, found that they therefore needed to address practical pastoral issues, the chief of which was the issue of mixed marriages by those within each other’s churches.[1]

It has also been revealed that unity will require more than a top-down approach to communion. It will require more than just official dialogues and agreements between the leaders of the churches: it will require the acceptance and understanding by the laity of the different church communities. Efforts have been made to help bring this about, for example, in 2002, the Middle East Council of Churches decided that there is the need “...for the publication in local languages of three Christological agreements signed by the two families of Churches [Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, note mine]...”[2] While the union of the Oriental Orthodox with the Eastern Orthodox churches remains a much more likely possibility than with the West, this kind of activity is also needed within the Oriental Orthodox-Western Church dialogues in order to help solidify the advances which have already been made.

On the other hand, one can look at these pauses and begin to wonder how successful these dialogues will actually turn out to be in hindsight. Looking at historical examples, one can find many failed or short-lasting attempts at unity. Even in the time of St. Cyril of Alexandria, one can note that St. Cyril made an agreement with John of Antioch that looks reminiscent of the theological dialogues of our day. We can see that it was not soon after the death of St. Cyril, however, that controversy once again arose, with the result of the split at Chalcedon. As such, dialogue can be fruitful, but there is the need to make sure that the bonds of unity are stronger this time, so that it does not end up yet another historical example of where good will alone does not help keep a reunited Church.

Another question that needs to be addressed is whether or not the new definitions and agreed statements will be found to be acceptable by both sides. Once again, history provides us clear warnings of what can happen, when definitions are made, accepted, and then, when re-examined, are found insufficient theological strength to hold the union together. Probably the greatest example of this was the development of monothelite theology in the seventh century. By stating that Christ only had one “will” and one “energy,” the Byzantine Emperor and Patriarch thought that this would appease the Oriental Orthodox, which in fact it did. But it was only a short-lived reunion with the Armenians and Coptics, and some could even suggest because it was only made by a Christological word-play.[3] We must also remember it has not been merely theological problems that have to be addressed. While the Christological issue is central, we must see that the real problems behind the original schism must not be overlooked or forgotten. It is easy to see how different Christological positions often talk around each other, without recognizing the unique understanding each of the members in the dialogue possess. When an agreed Christological statement is made, it must be asked: do both sides actually understand that statement with the same intention? What is being done to make sure both sides do so? Have we truly learned from our mistakes as to the significance of culture in how it shapes our own understanding of the words said in agreement, so that it might look like there is an agreement that has been made, but we will find out, in time, as with before, that the true disagreement still remains?

Yet, we must take the positive action between the churches as a good sign. Peter Bouteneff asked, “Do we really want unity, with all the joys and also the challenges and strains that arise from an increased diversity?”[4] All indications say the answer is yes. We live in a time and an age which will work harder to make sure unity can be achieved and sustained. We can look at the Christological debates of history with hindsight; we can look at the disputes, and better understand their root causes, and work to overcome them. But, I think the question of whether we want this unity will be answered by the kind of struggle we make to create it and keep it. Instead of creating a simplified theological statement that can be ambiguously interpreted by different sides we should continue to work and confront the true social-linguistic confusions that remain. Even if the theologians and leaders of the churches can understand the theological agreements which have been made, this understanding needs to be better explained to others, especially to those who fear the ecumenical movement.[5] Those who fear a “false union” need to be shown that they really have nothing to fear, otherwise, if they are not convinced, it is quite possible they will work from within the churches to prevent the desired unity. In the end, we must ask, will good will prevail and allow the churches to be united in love, or will division continue to rule by the dictates of fear?

Footnotes
[1]Petros VII and Shenouda III, “Pastoral Agreement” (2001).
[2] Middle East Council of Churches, “Oriental Orthodox Patriarchs to Build Grass-roots Support for Inter-Orthodox Rapprochement,” MECC News Report, vol. 14, no. 1 (Summer 2002). Journal on-line. Available online http://www.mecchurches.org/newsreport/vol14_1/orthodox.asp. Accessed September 8, 2003.
[3] John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 36-7.
[4] Peter Bouteneff, 166.
[5] As an example to the concerns of many of the Orthodox for “false union,” see the introduction to Ivan N. Ostroumoff, The History of the Council of Florence. trans. Basil Popoff (Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1971). According to the introduction, the Council of Florence should be mentioned whenever talk of ecumenical union is underway – because it represents the fear that councils and reunions forced upon the churches from them can be false unions abandoning the “true faith.” Often those who look to the ecumenical movement with distaste within the different churches do so out of such fears (the fear of accepting heresy), and they use such historical examples to encourage others to follow them in this fear.

A Whole New Heresy

2009-02-18T22:15:00.002-05:00

In New Testament studies here at Duke, Richard Hays carries a lot of clout. Hays struck academic gold with his thesis that the forms of "Pistis Christou" as found in Galatians should be translated as subjective genitives rather than objective genitives: the "faith of Christ" rather than "faith in Christ." This, of course, has theological implications for the doctrine of justification, and NT scholars have been fighting over whether the pieces fit the puzzle ever since. Intro classes here make sure to instill a sense of the eminent intelligibility of the thesis. So far, I find it convincing...

But not THAT convincing. In fact, a (very) brief glance at my Greek syntax book has opened my eyes to the real truth of the phrase. I plan to make my millions with a new trailblazing thesis that unveils what Paul REALLY meant by that phrase.

As it turns out, Hays was only partially correct. Paul was actually using a subset of the subjective genitive known as the Genitive of Subordination. It specifies that which is subordinated to or under the dominion of the head noun, and is characteristically used with nouns that lexically imply rule or authority. Well I says: faith certainly implies authority! If it is to be both the foundational principle of doctrine and of our life in the Spirit, then it sure as hell seems pretty authoritative to me!

Consequently, Paul's phrase doesn't read "faith in Christ" or even "faith of Christ," but rather "faith OVER Christ." Faith actually rules over and dominates Jesus in the scheme of justification. Paul's gospel is truly revolutionary: it prioritizes faith to such a degree that Jesus Christ is actually subject like a servant to faith! Faith, not Jesus, fills the shoes of Death and those other elemental powers that rule over the cosmos. Paul's supposed disagreement with the "Judaizers" is actually a red-herring. He agrees completely with them that Christ Jesus is definitely not the source of justification; its just that faith is way better than the Law at being better than Jesus.

Believing in Christ actually leads to faith taking its proper place over and above Christ: Galatians 2:16 thus reads:

"nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith OVER/HAVING DOMINION OVER Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith OVER/HAVING DOMINION OVER Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified.

Eat your heart out, works-righteousness! I figured this brand of heresy would be called "Fideism," but sadly that name was taken. Maybe "Pistisism."

So while you're all collecting the wood to burn me at the stake, I'll be burning in the scholarly spotlight with a wave of career-making new publications.

Cracking Open the Nutshell

2009-02-18T19:37:00.009-05:00

Brendan has raised some thought-provoking questions in response to my attempt to present- in a nutshell- what's at stake in the analogia entis. With a teaching this complex, doesn't any bare-bones presentation risk giving birth to a legion of mistaken reductions; allowing the "monsters of concision" to feed on precisely what is left unsaid, or perhaps on what is said without adequate explanation?

In truth, I think the issue of the analogia entis cannot be presented in a nutshell without being in danger of countless reductive conclusions. In my opinion this is the case because 1) analogy is one of the most complex and most fundamental around; and 2) because the univocal mind always has a certain seductive power over us, such that seeing things through a univocal lens will always be a strong temptation. In light of all this, it seems far more likely that any simple explanation of the issue demands a certain back-and-forth and supplementation, progressively sharpening our understanding of it with a certain dialectic. Without this, the way we use language of being will always be heard improperly, and thus nothing will really be said. It's something like a theoretical pendulum, always in need of a push back in the other direction until it finally balances out. In short, it demands that the nutshell be cracked open.

As it turns out, the discussion of whether being is adequate to God or to creatures (in the way I laid it out) presupposes quite a bit about how the terms under discussion are being conceived. Lacking these presuppositions, the dichotomy between God and creatures (as it were, fighting over being) tends to cloud the fact that here we should not, and, I think, ultimately cannot, use the language of being as if we had a definition of it. In other words, it clouds the fact that being is intrinsically analogical (really and notionally).

We might approach the issue, as so many thinkers have, by assuming that being is primarily what marks the difference between us and God: being is proper to God and therefore it cannot be proper to us (resulting in the devaluing of our finite substantiality); or being is proper to us and therefore God must be thought "without" being (ultimately threatening to obscure the relationship between God and creation). Scylla meets Charybdis, and both sides attempt to uphold their primary emphases while figuring ways around their potential flaws. However, the more foundational problem is that such a dichotomy already concedes ground to a univocal vision of being: as if here "being" were functioning like a universally common concept, a "quasi-essence," a grand category, a pure "quality" or the "greatest common denominator" of things, etc. The dynamics of being here are those of genus.

However, a fundamental aspect of metaphysics for Aristotle and Aquinas is the denial that being is a genus. Simply put, differentiating things that fall under the same genus requires the addition of a principle that is external to the genus (specific difference). But here we run into a metaphysical wall: the notion of "extrinsic principle" does not adequately map onto the notion of being, precisely because the only "thing" that can be extrinsic to being is nothing. But, as is obvious, "nothing" can't function as a separate, differentiating principle, thrown into the mix with being (because IT'S NOTHING!). Therefore the kind of differences relevant to the discussion of ontology cannot be thought "outside of" the notion of being, but must rather be intrinsic to it; they must be differences OF being. The unity of being is not like that of an abstract, univocal genus, but is inherently a unity-in-difference.

The denial that being is a genus, and the realization that it is intrinsically plurivocal, completely reorients how we use our ontological language. In this context, with this understanding of being, we can say things like "being is proper to both God and creatures," without presuming that we are talking about some quality they both share, or some generic category they are both lumped under (onto-theology). What our vision implies is not that univocity leads to one speaking too much about the difference between God and creatures; rather, it fails entirely to speak it at all. With a generic conception, if we attribute being to God, any space between equality and nothing disappears, and thus all difference is ultimately conceived nihilistically. Vice-versa, if man claims being as his domain, God can only be an abyss of nothing, and any space of relation to Him vanishes: we then have a kind of nihilistic god-talk, and seemingly Nietzsche's vindication.

Further, analogy is not the attempt to overcome difference, but precisely to speak that difference at all. Analogy is the only real form that the difference takes. Being is not generic, but transgeneric. And when we speak about transgeneric realities (also good, wisdom, life, etc.) as "common" to both God and creatures, an idolatrous equation is actually not implied in our utterance. This means that when we speak about God as the "only reality that fills-out what we mean by 'being'," we are not implicitly denying the being of creatures. In this context, the ways of expressing the difference between God and creatures (uncreated and created, pure act and limited act, simple and composite, Esse Ipsum Subsistens and entia, etc.) really do all the work that so many other thinkers want the language of “being” and “non-being” to do. In fact, they do so far more adequately by avoiding the extremes of obscuring the relationship between God and creatures.

Because of being's transgeneric, non-univocal character, statements like "God has a monopoly on being" don't make a whole lot of sense; being is not the kind of thing one could have a monopoly on (given the fact that there are more than one thing in the world). But if we do say such a thing in this metaphysical context, we are actually pointing toward that which most fully embodies being. Within analogy, claims of monopoly refer to the primal instance, the point of "focal meaning" which provides the intrinsic unity that holds between all the various instances of things that are. For instance, in the order of action, substance is more adequately called "being" than accident is, because accident only "is" derivatively of substance. Likewise, in the order of being (esse), the most adequate is that which exists through itself alone, in an entirely unlimited, unqualified manner: that which just....plain....IS...(God). Composite beings (creatures, by definition) only exist derivatively, dependent upon that which IS unconditionally. Thus the unity subsisting between all the different things that we call "being" derives from the fact that all are ordered to the most fundamental and primary "instance" of being: God. And only in this way, does my former talk about God as the only one "worthy" to be called "Being" have any meaning.

That is a little more of what I think is at stake in the analogy of being....in (or out) of a nutshell.

Pax Christi,

Do you know who it is?

2009-02-17T17:16:00.004-05:00

"He recognizes a natural and inexpungable metaphysical exigence to think beyond, to think the ultimate, even if we are denied "legitimated" theoretical knowing of its nature and being. Recall, for instance, his distinction between a "boundary" and a "limit." In our search for univocal knowing, there springs up an equivocal longing for what epistemically is denied to us. I see him bordering on a supreme tension: committed to respect what he saw as the limit, and yet impelled to think at the boundary of the limit, and indeed beyond; pulled on the one side back with the limit, driven out from finitude on the other side, but driven out without the relatively secure univocities of the former.

He is between finitude and infinity, though he often masks that intermediacy in a manner more intent on securing coherent univocity within the between, and letting the equivocal darkness beyond take care of itself. In truth, however, these two sides cannot be kept from each other in an uncontaminated purity."

Who is this person?