Sacraments and Human Nature: Part I - Introduction
Motivated by a combination of materialist presuppositions from believers and non-believers alike, I thought I would do a series of posts on Christian Sacraments from the perspective of human nature.
What is it about Sacraments that so many find difficult to accept? There are many issues I suppose. Some who come from a Sola Scriptura tradition don’t see them sufficiently expounded in Scripture to accept the Catholic teaching.
Others, even some malformed Catholics, reject the idea of matter mediating grace. In our culture matter is what seems most real to many. Nevertheless, an overriding Nominalism or Neo-Platonism in modern thinking seems to bring with it an implicit rejection of the idea that the non-material realm can affect (much less effect) the material world. At the ID lecture a couple of weeks ago (that I mentioned here), there was a biology graduate student who was interested in learning more about Aristotelian causality. He had never heard of it before. As formal causality was being explained to him, he would laugh out loud. This happened several times. His laughs were not deriding but seemed more out of surprise, in the sense of asking ‘but how’? This is similar to the responses that I get when I teach this idea to my undergraduates, for those who actually grasp the implications any way.
Some Reformation traditions, and even some of the same Catholics I mentioned above, who accept the idea of Sacraments admit of varying degrees of realism in the way they work (generally many also want to limit them to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper). For these Christians, in general, the action is focused on the faith of the believer for the giving of grace. Whether the matter mediates grace or not, in their minds it is the faith of the believer more than the efficaciousness of the Sacraments which is required for grace to be given.
Philosophical materialists generally do not grasp the incoherence of their philosophy. For them, discussing anything other than material causes is delving into the realms of magic and superstition. Ironically, if one defines superstition as assigning, in an irrational manner, effects to the wrong causes then superstition is exactly how one ought to describe philosophical materialism.
Over the next seven posts or so, I will try to address these erroneous presuppositions while showing why Sacraments are real, makes sense, and are exactly what one would expect given human nature.
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Can’t wait. Very good topic to address.
Comment by Bryan — May 1, 2006 @ 4:38 pm
[...] Over at Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex, should be good. [...]
Pingback by The Nw/Mw Grandiflora » Blog Archive » Sacrament Series — May 1, 2006 @ 10:04 pm
“For these Christians, in general, the action is focused on the faith of the believer for the giving of grace” — I think this says it all. Of course you must have faith, but the question is, “If the faith is lacking, do you still recieve the graces of different Sacraments, such as in Confession?”
Comment by Andrew S. — May 2, 2006 @ 7:48 am
I hear this term human nature used all the time as if there were any certain definition of it and as if we all agreed on it. Maybe the concept “human nature” itself needs revisiting.
Comment by Caroline — May 2, 2006 @ 8:38 am
Caroline,
Can you be more specific? Do you think that talk of “natures” is generally “outmoded”? Certainly, it is true, post-modern philosophy and analytic philosophy have abandoned the concept. But one can just as easily argue that they have abandoned common sense. The concept stems from an observed reality: that you and I and all other humans share the same basic desires, desires that are specific to humanity. The fact that we can speak of a human being as such implies that we have a common nature.
Have you ever heard anyone define the concept? Because, frankly, in Catholic theology it has a fairly standard meaning, with some minor variations or extrapolations. Do you know the definition of human nature put forth in the Church’s theological tradition and reject it? If so, could you please specify?
Comment by Hierothee — May 2, 2006 @ 10:37 am
Bryan - I hope that it will be.
Andrew - Of course there is a distinction to be made between the grace being bestowed and its fruitfulness (or lack thereof) in the recipient.
Caroline - Therein lies part of the problem. In the Christian West, since William of Ockham rejected universals with his Nominalist cancer, human nature has been cut free from its grounding in the divine ideas. It has been progressively floating free in the modern academy (and subsequently popular thought) and has finally reached it the point of obliteration in our post-modern world where it is has been undergoing is final deconstruction and deontologization. I would agree that modernity/post-modernity must revisit the reality of “human nature” if it is to survive. As Hierothee has mentioned here many times before, the rejection of form has led to our techne obsessed culture’s trajectory toward self-annihilation. But thanks for the reminder that I need to define human nature at the outset of the series.
Comment by David — May 2, 2006 @ 10:44 am