Jesus Christ: Our Only Hope
It has been a very busy couple of weeks so as you have seen, we have not been posting lately. My wife and I left Champaign last week amidst a fairly strong wind storm driving windchills to almost -20 deg F. We arrived in San Antonio to spend Christmas at 80 degrees. The wife is kind of partial to weather feeling like winter during Christmas time but she didn’t audibly lament the positive temperature differential this year. I have no complaints
We had planned on getting to see many of our old friends while we are back in SA, but with projects around the house for mom, unplanned events (like tix to the Alamo Bowl last night), etc. I don’t think that we will be doing too well on that account this year…but there is still time (but alas several projects as well).
Last Friday, we accompanied Shelray to the abortuary and that experience got me ta’ thinkin agin. This PP clinic has a “volunteer,” an older gentleman, perhaps in his late 60s whose primary role appears to be to try to intimidate the prolife presence. He would come up to you, stand about three or four feet away from you and look right at you. Not so much in the eye, but almost as if he is looking right through you. He would not engage in any conversation or even respond to greetings.
It occurred to me that he almost seemed intent upon refusing to acknowledge the existence of the human person standing right in front of him. This obstinate act of the will to ignore the evidence of his senses in order to satisfy his agenda seems to be the same fault that allows him to volunteer his time for such a heinous cause.
It is nothing new, I suppose, that men are able to dehumanize others in order to rationalize the treatment of other human beings as subpersonal animals or worse. However, as John Paul II warned, there is a growing and widespread attack against the human person today. This ominous trend reflects what he called a crisis of the human person. He tied this to a lack of faith, saying that without God, man becomes an enigma to himself such that he inevitably will turn against himself. This self-destructive death wish was highlighted by Benedict in a recent locution which gained much noteriety.
I am talking about the breathless reactions of the media to an aside within Benedict’s Christmas Greeting to the members of the Roman Curia. This reaction reflects the confusion he discusses and in fact it demonstrates the exact point that he was making within his text. There is so much in even the brief English translations currently available that could be expounded upon but I will limit my comments to the context of the recent hullabaloo. Most have seen the following text (obtained from the previous link):
…the Church cannot and must not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility toward creation, and must exercise this responsibility in public as well. And in doing so, it must defend not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation belonging to all. It must also protect man against his own destruction. Something like an ecology of man is needed, understood in the proper sense. It is not an outdated metaphysics if the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order of creation be respected. In fact, this is a matter of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, disdain toward which would be the self-destruction of man, and therefore the destruction of the very work of God. What is often expressed and understood by the term “gender” is ultimately resolved in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wants to create himself, and to arrange always and exclusively that which concerns him. But this means living contrary to the truth, living contrary to the creator Spirit. Yes, the rainforests deserve our protection, but man deserves it no less, as a creature in whom a message is inscribed that does not mean the contradiction of our freedom, but its precondition. Great scholastic theologians have described marriage, meaning the lifelong bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, which the Creator himself instituted and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – incorporated into the history of his covenant with men. It is part of the proclamation that the Church must make on behalf of the creator Spirit present in nature as a whole, and in a special way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. It is beginning from this perspective that one should reread the encyclical “Humanae Vitae”: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as consumption, the future against the exclusive presumption of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation.[...]
The essence of this short snippet is that man is created according to the structure of Truth itself. There is a truth about the human person and how he must live…an ecology if you will. Sanity demands that this giveness of creation and the structure of the human person be discovered and conformed to. Insanity, a self-destructive death wish is manifested by those who promote the idea that man is solely that which he defines for himself. This insanity is seen in Satan’s non-serviam, in man’s fall from grace, and in every sinful act of men. However, the insanity is now becoming “common wisdom,” at least at this point among the intelligentsia and the media.
Above B16 is saying no more than the Church has consistently taught and recently, it always receives the same reaction. While the only news here is that the Church still has not defected from the truth, such restatements of perennial Church teachings are now newsworthy. Herein lies the issue. Many of the attacks leveled against the Pope and the Church arise from the mere mention of the fact that man cannot without consequence, through the mere exercise of his will distort the proper structure of creation. Warning about the fact that nature is unforgiving is noteworthy for the fact that it demands public ridicule and scorn.
B16 chooses Christmas to mention this most urgent of all problems, that we have lost sight of who and what we are to our own peril. Christmas is most appropriate considering that Christ fully reveals man to himself. Only Christ and the witness to Him can overcome the downward slide we have now begun.
As a society we are losing the sense of what it means to be human, created in the image of God as male and female. The results of which are distortions which lead, according to the Pope, to man’s self-destruction. Those intent upon self-destruction cannot bear to hear such warnings.
Their response is not simply the shrill cries of the confused. They are that but the complaints are calculated to acheive a desired effect. Those suffering from the various attraction and identity pathologies to which B-16 alludes cannot bear to hear the truth and so their aim is to squelch the voices of the witnesses to truth. The strategy is two pronged. The first tine is the now successful attempt to tie sexual pathologies (same sex attraction disorder, sex identity disorders, etc.) to civil rights. Any witness to the truth then is deemed an affront to civil rights and therefore, equated with hate speech. The second tine which has not yet gained ground everywhere but is advancing, is the attempt to paint such witness as in and of itself, an insigation to violence against this now protected “minority “class.” Instigation to violence has long been a universally recognized exception to the freedom of speech granted by liberal societies. It seems that Europe and Canada are soon to succumb to this strategy, that is until they are swallowed by the Islamic civilization that is now rushing to fill the demographic vacuum left by the culture of death.
As the octave of Christmas draws to a close, we are reminded that Christ came not simply to reveal to man the cognitive content of truth but to effect that truth in an ontological and immediate manner. He has come to reconcile man with God and so also to reconcile man with himself, interiorly and interpersonally.
It is only in the power of the Cross, mediated to us through the Holy Spirit in Christ’s Church that we have the audacity to hope that what now seems lost will ultimately end in triumph. Lent is fast approaching and the clouds of evil are gathering. We see Good Friday looming near on the horizon but it is a “Good Friday.” We know how it works out at the end. In Christ is our hope, in Christ is our Easter victory.
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I was recently sitting in a monthly Catholic men’s meeting, kind of a guy’s Theology on Tap thing. The subject of the various state marriage referenda came up (this after Election Day), and one fellow asked in exasperation why it just isn’t obvious to people, from the perspective of natural law, that homosexuality is wrong.
Most of the men present knew my testimony, that by God’s grace I had repented of homosexual behavior (and identity). And I framed my response in that light. I replied to his question by reminding him of the nature of revelation, and of grace. As a man with SSA, I can very easily understand how I could have been swayed by a belief that I was “born this way” and therefore had a right (as all men think they do) to act in accordance with those feelings.
All sexual sins are sins against God, our bodies, nature, and truth. And when any man repents of those sins (be it contraception, complicity in abortion, fornication, adultery, pornography, or masturbation), it is an act of God’s grace, achieved by divine revelation. And as you point out, that is not (merely) a cognitive knowledge, but something deeper. Our culture vacillates between a tyranny of passion and a tyranny of reason. But faith is another kind of knowledge entirely.
So when I turned around, it was completely a divine work. I wish I could say it was due to the beauty and truth of Catholic moral teaching, but initially it was not. My own Catholic formation (despite eight years of parochial school and sacramental prep) was woefully lacking. I am fond of saying I had to be “outsourced” to the Baptists for 15 years to learn Scripture. That scriptural foundation (though incomplete due to its sola Scriptura premise) was at least enough to keep me on the straight and narrow (pun partly intentional) for that time.
Ultimately, it was both TotB and the Eucharist which drew me back to Holy Mother Church three years ago. I have not reflected much on the connection between those two things until just now. We know Him in the breaking of the Bread, and in our human form—His Body and ours. O come, let us adore Him!
So, yes, we do have the audacity to hope. God has lost neither the culture war nor the underlying (and more significant) battle for men’s souls. That Child born in Bethlehem, born according to the flesh, is both the Lover of our souls and the Lord of hosts, mighty in battle.
Comment by franksta — December 31, 2008 @ 9:34 AM
As a student of Catholic theology, I would say that the most prominent motif of Catholic moral theology in the 20th century is that of freedom. Maritain, Murray, Rahner, Fuchs, Grisez, etc. all want to extol freedom as one of the most important moral considerations, as central to any theological anthropology, and even as soteriologically significant. Like so many good things, too great a dose tends to make one sick.
There are two different ways of thinking of freedom. There is the freedom that we experience in our fallen state in which we can choose to sin or choose to obey God’s law. Problem is, we all too frequently choose to sin. The real freedom that we are looking for is the freedom that only God’s grace can gain for us, and that is the freedom from sin so that we may cleave to God as the source and sustainer of our beatitude.
Catholic theology has put too much emphasis on this first sort of freedom and not enough on the second, maybe because it smacks of Protestantism. Freedom to dissent (Curran), freedom to self-determination (Rahner), freedom in the political process (Maritain) . . . and the list goes on. Problem is, the exultation of freedom has come with all sorts consequences that we have lost the theological resources to fight. After Vatican II, we can’t just counter the arguments of a woman who wants to have IVF or a surrogate, a teenager who wants to have an abortion, or a gay man who wants to get married with “the Vatican says you can’t, so you can’t.” People don’t take the authority of the Vatican seriously anymore. And the realist in me says they aren’t going to take it seriously any time soon. The freedom emphasis in Catholic theology has trickled down into the pews and it is there to stay, or at least until we see another pendulum swing in Catholic theology.
I have to admit, I would take Barth over Rahner any day, even with my Catholic bias. Maybe what we need to counter this misunderstanding and misuse of freedom in Catholic theological circles is a healthy dose of divine command theory, followed by a reality check about the bondage of the will to sin. I’m not saying that we need to totally become Barthian or Lutheran, but that some of the elements in their theology can provide correctives to areas where contemporary Catholic theology has gone awry.
A minor note to Franksta: I would be careful about calling abortion a sexual sin. Abortion is immoral because it is the taking of a life, not because it distorts the natural sexual order.
Comment by Beth — December 31, 2008 @ 11:53 PM
Franksta – thanks for your thoughts, they are much appreciated.
Beth – the late Servais Pinckaers, OP does a very nice assessment of the distinction he makes between two freedoms which you may be alluding to? He calls them the “freedom of indifference” and the “freedom for excellence.” I did a post on this a couple of years ago: http://cosmos-liturgy-sex.com/2006/08/03/the-tale-of-two-freedoms/. These roughly correspond to your distinctions with perhaps some precisions (which would avoid the implications of the a Protestant nature-grace dichotomy in the context of freedom).
Pinckaers rightly identifies a distortion in the notion of freedom entering Catholic theology with William of Ockham’s voluntarist nominalism. This infected Protestant theology and many Catholics as well. It is the explicit voluntarism of Protestant theology that influences Nietzsche who, when he eliminates God, assimilates the power of voluntarist deity to his ubermensch. This move has affected much of modern thinking in which freedom has moved from an essential means to holiness to an end in itself.
I would argue, alternatively, that only recently has Catholic theology begun to appropriate the place and depth of freedom into its anthropological investigations such that it provide a compelling correction to the distortion of freedom afflicting the current culture. The roots of Catholic disobedience goes much further back than the early to mid 20th century Catholic foray into the meaning of freedom.
Comment by David — January 1, 2009 @ 10:45 AM
Thank you both for your kindness. Of course I agree, Beth, your point is well-made and well-taken. In fact, I don’t believe I am lessening the gravity of abortion to call it a sexual sin, rather the opposite. One thing that is clear from Catholic teaching on life, including TotB, is that there is an intrinsic link between the 5th and 6th/9th Commandments. ISTM the distinction between the contraceptive mentality and the abortive mentality is one of degree, not of kind.
Comment by franksta — January 1, 2009 @ 8:39 PM
great post
Comment by kris — January 4, 2009 @ 8:56 PM
David,
Thanks for bringing in Pinckaers who has, in fact, had a great influence on my way of doing moral theology and my way of reading Aquinas. He is an oasis in the midst of the desert of 20th century Catholic moral theology.
Thomas Aquinas says that a thing is called “voluntary” (meaning it is done freely) because it is according to the inclination of the will. However, he also says that the will must of necessity adhere to the last end, which is beatitude “for what befits a thing naturally and immovably must be the root and principle of all else appertaining thereto, since the nature of a thing is the first in everything and every movement arises form something immovable” (ST I, Q. 82, art. 1). The way freedom became misunderstood in the 14th c. is that nominalists like Scotus and Ockham took this (i.e. that the will must adhere to the last end) to be antithetical to the idea of freedom. The nominalists conceived of necessity as the antithesis of freedom and instead posited a definition of freedom as “the ability to choose between contraries.” For example, Ockham thought that a person could choose, or will, unhappiness. This concept is foreign to Aquinas who thinks that we will all things for the sake of happiness, even if we will evil things.
For Aquinas, although the will is moved by the last end, which is happiness, it does not desire of necessity any particular thing, except those things which have a necessary connection with happiness, namely God. However, Aquinas says that “until through the certitude of the Divine Vision the necessity of such connection be shown, the will does not adhere to God of necessity, nor to those things which are of God. But the will of the man who sees God in His essence of necessity adheres to god, just as now we desire of necessity to be happy.”
Now, the “freedom for excellence” is the freedom to be happy, to achieve the end that human beings were created for. This can be attained only through revelation of God’s very self, which, although the will is inclined towards, can reject. This is why I think that the nature/grace issue has to be addressed. Our given nature (before sin) still relied on grace for perfect happiness (the revelation of God’s self) but in our state of original righteousness, we naturally accepted this gift of grace. Our fallen state is wont to reject it. The will not being bound to anything of necessity replaces true happiness for all sorts of things like fame, riches, power, and pleasure. We need God’s grace to achieve happiness, even according to our natural capabilities after the fall.
The reason I bring all of this up is that I am convinced that human freedom has been severely damaged by the fall. Because the will is not bound to any particular thing of necessity, we all too-readily replace what will truly make us happy, namely, God’s grace to perform meritorious good works, and we instead pursue other goods. By emphasizing freedom, as Rahner and Fuchs and even the New Natural Law theorists like Grisez and Finnis do, we only feed the beast. We follow the illusion that human beings can naturally pursue the true good, even in our fallen state. Instead we follow the vicissitude of our passions and become ever more enslaved, as Paul says in Romans 1, exchanging the glory of God for the likeness of an image of mortal man.
We need a pendulum swing in Catholic moral theology, in order to bring the Catholic population at large back to the middle. Although I love Pinckaers, I don’t know if more freedom talk, no matter how nuanced, is going to get the job done. We need to start talking about sin and fallen nature so that Catholics begin to realize that when the “choose” such things as a “hook-up” culture or abortion or other sins proceeding from their passions, they are actually not free at all, but enslaved by sin.
Comment by Beth — January 6, 2009 @ 9:27 PM
Daivd,
In your earlier post you write,
“Christian traditions that were founded on Nominalist metaphysics, man is totally corrupt and there is no possibility of a freedom for excellence. For nihilistic, post-modernism there is nothing to perfect except social structures dedicated the cult of choice. Unfortunately, many Catholics fall into both of these camps. To this Pinckaers responds that the need is great to rediscover and renew the understanding of the freedom for excellence to which the Holy Spirit constantly beckons us and offers us the grace to pursue and achieve. Excellence is what the human heart was created for and it is the only true path to human happiness because its end is Christ.”
Yes! I agree that Catholic moral theology needs to renew this idea of a teleological freedom, a freedom FOR excellence, which you rightly say is dependent on God’s grace. My concern is that if you don’t talk about sin and fallen nature, and about how distorted our choices regarding what is good are, you risk ending up in the mess Catholic moral theology is in now where “freedom” trumps all. Freedom and obedience must go hand in hand.
Comment by Beth — January 6, 2009 @ 10:10 PM
For more of my thoughts on freedom and free will in particular, see my blog post I wrote in order to avoid taking up so much space commenting on your post.
http://everydaythomist.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/some-notes-on-free-will/
Comment by Beth — January 6, 2009 @ 11:50 PM
Beth,
I think that we are in general agreement though perhaps not with respect to emphasis. You are certainly correct that we cannot understand our current situation without reference to the fall and to sin. This is integral to an adequate anthropology as John Paul the Great said and B16 recently reaffirmed. However, engagement with the current culture necessitates (imho) beginning with the common reference point of freedom as there are many areas of agreement with the modern emphasis on freedom. Chesterton, the master debater, was good at using the common areas of agreement as a way of disarming the defensiveness of his interlocutors and getting them to listen as he then proceeded to show how they did not take the truth they possessed far enough.
I suggest that showing, phenomenologically, how one can verify from his experiences that freedom is in fact a means rather than an end is a compelling approach. I think that Karol Wojytla’s philosophical anthropology found in his Person and Act (or Acting Person if you will) is the most compelling for today’s students. His anthropology is grounding in Thomist metaphysical anthropology but supplements it with phenomenological tools that engage the universal attributes of the dynamic acting person . I have taught morals classes in a variety of environments (erstwhile Catholic and public universities, to committed young Catholics, in adult catechesis, ) and have found that while a few respond to beginning with an emphasis on man’s fallenness and sin, most do not. I think that the reason that they do not is that modern culture conditioned them to be legal positivists and to be skeptical toward any suggestions of limitations on their distorted view of freedom. Even for Catholics, they have been raised with a caricature of Catholic moral teaching as simply a list of don’ts and to be fair I suppose that arising from the manualist tradition, the emphasis was on behaviors to avoid without always providing the same emphasis on pursuit of the authentic good.
Your notes summarizing Thomas’ view of free will are very good. However, I would suggest some precisions. Your reference to ST I, Q. 83, a.1, ad. 2 – here I think that your reading of Thomas’ response does not take into account the context. What Thomas is doing in this article is that he is trying to show that even with God as Primary Efficient Cause, man can still have free will. Thus, when he says that free will is not sufficient, he is saying that for anything that man does, God must first move him. I think that this is confirmed by obj.3 which he links to obj. 2 and then the way he responds to it. I do think that Luther and Thomas are very far apart on this. For Luther, nature itself ontologically deformed, it is radically corrupt. Admittedly, he is not a systematic thinker and does not employ the precisions available in Aristotelian/Thomist metaphysics and so is at times inconsistent. Nevertheless, for I think one can argue that Luther would say that there is a discontinuity between the nature of Adam and Eve pre and post fall. For Thomas, nature is not changed in itself as it cannot if Adam and Eve are to be the same persons. Rather, something extrinsic to nature–i.e. grace–has been lost. Nature is damaged because grace maintained the faculties in an integral state. In the fallen state, the will still operates as it did, as you say, with an infallible appetite for the good which the intellect presents to it. However, the intellect is “darkened” and is more often inclined to present to it an apparent good that satisfies the inclinations of the animals aspects of human nature than the authentic good which brings real happiness/joy. We should also distinguish between actual grace which is available to all human beings and sanctifying grace which is only given to those in a state of grace. Sanctifying grace is required to heal the disintegration of the rational faculties and the various affects that came with the fall. It is also required to elevate and perfect the natural efforts toward virtue. Thomas certainly saw that man, unaided by grace could achieve a certain natural virtue but it could never be perfected and certainly could never be redemptive. Luther would reject this. Thomas makes the distinction that men can do natural good unaided by grace but he cannot do supernatural good without grace. I know that this demands further precision and I have gone on long enough. Perhaps I might suggest, a good discussion from a variety of authors on the relation between nature and grace and man’s desiring the Good would be Nova et vetera’s 2007 edition (Vol 5., no. 1).
Comment by David — January 7, 2009 @ 10:52 AM
David,
Thank you for such thoughtful comments. I also think that we are in basic agreement but differ on emphasis. My original reason for writing against freedom (or seemingly against freedom as a starting point) is that your post emphasizes obedience to the teachings of the Church, which “has taught what it has always taught” and I think that trying to uphold a modern idea of freedom at the same time as an optimistic view of human nature is going to eventually undermine obedience, which it has done. I do think that Thomas is less optimistic about human nature than you portray him. He doesn’t think we are totally depraved (like a Luther or a Calvin), but he does think that after the Fall, we need need grace to do even that which is in our natural capabilities. My impression is that Thomas thinks that in the state of pure nature, man could cooperate with operative (sanctifying) grace but in the fallen state needs assistance from God to do so. Since cooperating is an act of the free will, I take him to mean that free will needs grace to do what it needs to do.
I am a doctoral student right now in moral theology (getting ready to take comprehensive exams) and I can’t help but notice that Catholic moral theologians are overwhelmingly opposed to obedience to what the church teaches, especially after Humanae Vitae, emphasizing instead the conscience of the individual and the importance of human freedom to make moral decisions. Maybe John Paul II’s writing will win out in the end, but note: none of his writings are on my comps list except for Veritatis Splendor. I have not had a class where any of his writings were required, except VS. In fact, I know very little about John Paul II’s writings after six years and two schools of theological and philosophical work.
For my own purposes, and as a more conservative Catholic morally, I have turned to recovering Thomas Aquinas’ relevance for contemporary questions. I am not trying to apply his conclusions to moral problems as some modern versions of Thomism have done, but rather, recover his system and his larger structure for talking about God and human beings. This is what my blog, I hope, will help me accomplish in the long run. But after comps, I will look into John Paul II’s writings.
Comment by Beth — January 10, 2009 @ 8:28 AM
Beth,
Thanks for responding. I did see that you were working on your PhD at BC in moral theology. It is certainly the case that a good percentage of Catholic moral theologians in the last 40 years or so have been and advocated disobedience to the Magisterium but you, fortunately, represent a turn around of this problematic trend. I am most pleased that even at a school such as BC which does not seem to value its authentic Catholic identity, that it can still produce faithful Catholic theologians. I would encourage you to study JPTG’s anthropology. I will say that I think that it is the most helpful and integrative anthropology among contemporary thinkers (I focused on that for my dissertation). I think that it provides a most important way forward in moral theology that can help to build upon Pickaers’s ground breaking synthesis. Both JPTG and Pinckaers are Thomists who employ phenomenology, a tool which if you are not familiar with, I would recommend you spend some time getting to know about when you can. I would recommend Robert Sokolowski’s Introduction to Phenomenology. Can I ask which other school besides BC did you attend? I assume that was for your MA?
I think that you are correct that we our views are sympathetic with one another other than emphasis…which is a good thing. I would, however, like to better understand how you view Thomas’ position on man’s need for additional assistance after the fall. Certainly, I will agree with you that he is very aware of the compelling nature of concupiscence. In fact, he even posits that it may not be possible for a man not to sin at least venially during marital intercourse. However, when you say that man needs assistance it is not clear to me what you mean by assistance. Do you mean actual grace or sanctifying grace? In some sense, man always has assistance in terms of actual grace. God always beckons us to the good. There is also the assistance of final cause which draws us to the ultimate good as well, though not in the same way as actual grace. These are open to both Christians and non-Christians and available before and after the fall. If sanctifying grace is required, then we would be left with untenable theological situations one would demand that all people who choose good, whether Christian or not, would be to use Rahner’s term “anonymous Christians.” In other words, this would seem to be indistinguishable from universalism. Otherwise, we would have to say that every act of a someone not in a state of grace by definition would be evil. Recall that Thomas says that every actus humanus is moral.
I could agree with you if you are saying that Thomas believes that man now requires sanctifying grace in order to overcome concupiscence. However, if I understand you correctly to be saying that he needs grace (actual or sanctifying) even to be moved toward the good, then I would say that I do not know how this can square with his position that the will in infallibly oriented toward the good (apparent always, sometimes authentic). I am always interested in correcting and/or gaining greater precision in my understanding of Thomas’ anthropology so I greatly appreciate your willingness to carry on this conversation.
God Bless
Comment by David — January 10, 2009 @ 4:03 PM