Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

I recently had the displeasure of running across a post on Rod Dreher’s blog where Dreher had made reference to an internet discussion hosted by Stanley Fish of Terry Eagleton’s new book on the silliness of contemporary atheism. Fish had in this discussion given his own public unmasking of the epistemological naivete of philosophical materialism. A bunch of people who seem to crosspost one another so as to gang up against theists in comment boxes had put together a string of comments attempting to dismiss Eagleton and Fish. Their comments were, as is usually the case with these people, embarrassingly ignorant and shallow.

I decided to enter into the fray, pointing out to these sadly ignorant atheists that the implicit assumption of philosophical materialism or naturalism would, if its implications were truly understood, lead to skepticism of all forms of knowledge. Of course, many atheists tend to presume that science undermines Christian faith. They view themselves as the upholders of reason and science against the obfuscations of Christian belief. Little do they realize that the scientific materialism that they have embraced, in whatever particular form it may take with them, undermines the valid achievements of human reason altogether, including the achievements of science. Atheism, in other words, and not religious faith, undermines science.

Needless to say, my comment was met by blank incomprehension and by evasion. It tended to annoy these shallow atheists, mostly trained in engineering methods but not in the exercise of human reason as applied to ultimate issues. Unfazed by their ignorant and uncomprehending dismissals, I have decided to demonstrate here, in a series of posts, why it is that the embrace of philosophical or scientific materialism must lead ultimately to a skepticism toward all knowledge. I shall demonstrate, in effect, that postmodern relativism is the inevitable outcome of believing that the only things in the world that are real are those entities that are in principle capable of being discovered by modern scientific investigation.

I’ll take as my starting point for this demonstration the philosophy of the great British Empiricists Bishop Berkeley and David Hume. Berkeley and Hume, in the 18th century, were the first to see the problem for human knowledge that comes with assuming that matter in its various forms is the only reality.

Berkeley saw the problem and was thereby led to reject the dogma of modern materialism that physical nature is composed entirely of material substances whose only reality is extension in space (res extensa) or geometrical shape. This doctrine had been upheld by Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Galileo, Newton, and Locke. It assumes that our perceptions are caused by that which is in fact imperceptible. Berkeley realized that this dogma must lead to a denial of the objective validity of human perception and knowledge. He argued, in order to counteract this materialist presupposition, that there is in fact nothing in nature that goes unperceived. All of physical nature is perceived: by humans, angels, and the mind of God. The imperceptible, in his view, is not the cause of the perceptible. Rather, all things are caused by the infinite perceiver: God himself (who does not go unperceived to himself).

Berkeley’s understanding of perception has generally been castigated as a form of subjective idealism. He has been accused of denying the objectivity of the world external to human perception. This is the standard reading of him. In fact, he did no such thing. He argued that the world that we perceive is the world as it is in itself. It is real, but it has its basis in the perceiving (read: knowing) mind of God. He argued that one must reject the reality of  purely material substances if one is to uphold the objective validity of human perception. Louis Dupre has rightly said of Berkeley’s position that it is, like Cardinal John Henry Newman’s 19th century epistemology, a form of spiritual empiricism, not of subjective idealism. Berkeley, unlike the subjective idealists and scientific materialists, upholds a doctrine of epistemological realism. He holds that we really perceive the objective world and that we can really come to know it.

Be that as it may, it is Hume who is the key figure of modern thought because he shows better than any other modern philosopher outside of Kant (on whom Hume was the decisive influence) the despair and skepticism to which scientific materialism must lead if its implications are rightly understood. Hume saw the validity of Berkeley’s insight that if material substances are the cause of all that we perceive then our perceptions cannot possibly put us in touch with objective nature. Hume realized this, but unlike Berkeley he did not come to reject the doctrine that material substances are the only principles of physical nature. He accepted the materialist doctrine and took it to its logical conclusion. He chose skepticism over Berkeley’s intuitive realism.

Hume understood that philosophical materialism implies a doctrine of perception that sees all human experience as rooted entirely in material processes (a doctrine that Alfred North Whitehead would later label “sensationism”). All human experience, if material substances are the sole reality of physical nature, must be caused entirely by material sensory impressions striking our sensory organs. Hume realized, like Berkeley before him, that if the striking and beating of material processes on sensory organs is the objective correlate of experience, then our perceptions must be internally generated ideas in the mind and not gateways to the objective world. How could it be otherwise? The colors, sounds, tastes, smells, etc., that we experience are not what is real in nature. What is real in nature is the bumping and striking of material substances whose whole reality can be encapsulated in mathematical formulas. The experience of the redness of an apple, for instance, is an illusion of our inner ideas. What is objectively real in the experience of an apple is its material or sensory basis: the light frequencies that extend from the material substance of the apple striking, in consecutive fashion, the human eye and optic nerve. These give us sensory impressions in our brain that our mind’s eye contemplates and turns into perceptual realities that bear nothing in common with the material sense impressions in themselves. The infinite array of human perceptions is qualititatively different from these purely material sensations. Yet, only the sensations are objectively, publicly real. The sensations are “primary” or real qualities. The perceptions are “secondary” or imaginary qualities.

This led to quite a dilemma for Hume. Refusing to reject materialist substantialism, he had to assume the existence of two separate worlds: one is the real world outside of perception that is mathematically describable, and the other world is the world that we perceive, a world of fragrance, and color, and beauty — a world that is felt in emotion and expressed in art, and religion, and poetry, but that does not correspond to the world-in-itself. The world of human culture is merely one of expressed ideas of impressions. It does not express the world as it objectively exists in time and space. Indeed, Hume was quite despondent over this situation. When he played the role of philosopher he found himself isolated, much as would later happen with Nietzsche:

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude, in which I am plac’d in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell’d all human comerce, and left utterly abandonded and desolate…I call upon others to join me, in order to make a company apart; but no one will hearken to me. Every one keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm, which beats upon me from every side. (A Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford, 1960, 264, 269)

Many “concretely-minded” Anglo-Americans in our day view such expressions of dread with a wink and a nod, seeing Hume as an exaggarator, or as a bit cracked. But Hume is a greater “agent of truth” than they. He is more perceptive and honest. He has considered the full consequences of the philosophical materialism that he has adopted. He realizes that if matter is the only ultimate reality then the world of common human experience, the world of human discourse and cultural achievement (including science), is nothing but a subjective illusion. And this should indeed shake one to the core of one’s being, if one truly understands or is truly honest.

Kant, originally a physicist who was himself “shaken from his dogmatic slumbers” by Hume, realized that science required a defense of its universal validity in the face of the dilemma of materialism that Hume had exposed. How did Kant “rescue” science? That will be the topic of my next post.

Well, I have just completed my first full week of unemployment.  I think that I had more leisure time while employed.  Unemployment began by waking up to 8 inches of water in the basement Saturday morning before last.  The sumps had stopped running for some reason.  I was able to get them started before heading off to Mass. The water was pumped out by the time we returned.  Tricia spent the morning trying to dry out our files that had been inundated with water while also holding a garage sale.  I spent the morning cleaning up the basement.  We headed out to Chicago to visit some friends in the afternoon and made it back home by 11pm.  That has been one of our more leisurely days.

We are in Dayton for our goddaughter’s graduation, so that is the only reason I have a breather right now.  I thought I would take the time to comment on a topic I have seen in my inbox this  month.  Several articles by several different persons have been forwarded to me about Christopher West and the fallout from his Nightline interview.  He has been taking quite a bit of heat for it.  According to some (Alice von Hildebrand and David Schindler), it is not simply the case that West was taken out of context and misconstrued,  but rather that he has some underlying problems in his anthropology.

First for some caveats and disclosures: I cannot speak as an expert on Christopher West’s interpretation of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, as I have read and/or heard relatvely little of his thought.  However, I have read and heard some and have found that I share some of the concerns being presented.  I know David Schindler.  I took a course from him at the John Paul II Institute which, by the way, served as the inspiration for the title of this blog.  He was also a reader for my dissertation.  I do not always agree with Schindler’s take on John Paul II. I think it is often too heavily read through his “Balthasarian lens.”  However, I do think that some of Schindler’s criticisms are well-founded, and these criticisms will be the focus of this post.  I don’t claim to be the world’s foremost expert on John Paul II or his theology of the body, but I do consider myself to have an above-average expertise, as this was the foundation of my dissertation, and I have taught undergraduate courses on the theology of the body for several years.

Schindler begins with some apparently rather questionable statements that Christopher West has made.  Oftentimes, these questionable statements can seem to be reconciled with orthodoxy when contextualized, but even in doing so, Schindler says that there is a residual problem.  Schindler lists four issues he sees with West’s approach, and also with the substance of his theology.  These Schindler sees as giving rise to what many find vulgar and prurient in West’s approach.

Schindler first lists West’s underestimation of the damage done to humanity by concupiscence.  Schindler refers to his having brought this up to West a number of years ago.  I recall Schindler’s having mentioned this discussion (back in 2003, I think it was).  He mentioned West’s problematic dismissal of the perduring effects of concupiscence and West’s response.  However, I also recall that I did not agree with the way the Schindler seemed to frame the meaning of concupiscence.  He seemed to reify it as some positive reality then, as something that resides in the body.  His statement in the above linked article also intimates this understanding.  Nevertheless, what I have heard from West seems to suggest to me that he does in fact underestimate the impact of concupiscence on the human person.  Redemptive grace in this dispensation does not remove concupiscence, and concupiscence in sexual attraction cannot be ignored.  West seems to forget this, though “Christopher” of this blog, who has recently taken a class from West, indicated that West is reconsidering his take on concupiscence.

I have the impression of West that he seems to consider puritanism as a greater threat than the sexual libertinism of the sexual revolution.  I seem to recall seeing this written by him, but if I am wrong about this, I apologize.  However, if it is true, it would explain many things about his overemphasis on sex which Schindler thinks arises from his lack of a proper sense of the analogia entis (the analogy of being), which takes its archetype in God but never forgets that the difference between God and His creation is greater than the similarity.  Puritanism is a distortion of chastity.  Libertinism is a rebellion against not only puritanism but also against chaste virtue.

West seems to think that concupiscence can and must be defeated.  This is impossible.  Temptation must be overcome and defeated but concupiscence remains for the entirety of this lifetime.  Concupiscence is not an object to be defeated.  Concupiscence is a privation of integrity between the affects (i.e. emotions and appetites) on the one hand and the intellect and will on the other.  The original state was one of integration among these faculties, which we had only because of original grace–but this is how we were created–we were created for grace.  This integrity can be provisionally restored to a greater or lesser extent by cooperating with sanctifying grace, but the proclivity to sin always remains, and so it must not be tempted.  West can seem to dismiss this.  In doing so, it seems that he is falling into the error of presuming upon God’s grace in order to reject the admonition to avoid the near temptation of sin.  God’s grace can transform us if we cooperate it, but in our fallen state this is not a straight path that one can achieve simply through the force of will or by a quietist presumption on grace.

Schindler criticizes West for a lack of Marian sensitivities in his theology of the body. The way Schindler describes this is pure Balthasar and so it is not fair, I think, to consider this a failure. John Paul’s theology is certainly sympathetic with Balthasar’s Mariology, and good arguments cans be made that he incorporated this to some degree in his own thinking.  At most this should be proposed as a corrective to West’s prurience but not a fault in West’s theology.  Hildebrand argued that West loses the mystery of the person by his lack of sensitivity to the dangers of concupiscence.  This I think I have seen.  It is, I think, the reason behind his inability to discern what is inappropriate or vulgar and what is not.

Puritanism and sexual libertinism are both threats.  The former because it set the stage for justification of the latter.  However, both reject the authentic meaning of the human person and the sacredness of the body.  The danger is (and I think that this is the trap that West falls into) that the response of one who suffers from puritanical thinking can look very much like the response of one who has an authentic anthropology and responds out of a desire for purity.  That is, when subjected to sights that might be a temptation both will turn away.  The puritan because he thinks that the naked body is dirty or evil and the wannabe saint because he realizes that the goodness of the naked body is sacred, and in his fallen state he can be tempted to reduce the other to his sexual value.  Furthermore, there is a stewardship for the weaknesses of others that must be observed in order to protect them from temptations.

When inadvertantly subjected to experiences that can lead to lust, one does indeed have the obligation through self-mastery to overcome the temptation.  However, one also has the obligation to avoid the near temptation of sin.  It is ill advised, indeed it can be sinful, to  subject oneself purposefully to anything with which Satan or our simple fallenness can use to draw us more easily into sin.  Everyone is different.  Men and women are tempted differently.  Men tend to reduce women to their sexual value for the sake of pleasure.  Women tend to reduce men to the latter’s ability to meet their need for complementary bonding and personal fulfillment.  Among men, however, temperament, experience, history of subjection to pornography, etc. all factor into what can lead to temptations and how difficult it is to master oneself in this regard.  One may not sin in a misguided attempt to attain self-mastery. Neither may I assume that what I can safely be subjected to is the standard for everyone.

West’s use of images that offend the sensibilities of many good Catholics seems to be motivated by the fact that he thinks that puritanism is the root cause for their offense.  He needs to be reminded that puritanism is a relatively recent phenomenon and that chastity and purity are age old virtues.  While it is true that some cultures are not offended by things sexual that do offend others (a point I recall West often making), one must not draw conclusions based upon superficial assessments.  Lack of offense does not imply purity in reception.  Cultures in which men and women are both publicly naked must not be assumed to show that public nakedness is a possibility for a society that wants to achieve purity.  In fact, these cultures rarely show a high regard for women and their sexuality.

Ok, enough blathering and back to the question: is Christopher West’s interpretation of theology of the body dangerous?  First, I will say that I wish that this discussion could go on in private because it serves to give comfort and aid to dissenters and can undermine a good apostolate that West has developed, albeit, one that is in need of some course corrections. However, with respect to the question,  I suspect that for some people it can be.   I do think that in many ways he has done very much good, and I have no way of knowing how much that his disregard for concupiscience may have caused damage to those misled by it.  I do hope that he will take the public criticism to heart and find someone who can help him to correct his misinterpretations.  Our culture needs it and so does the Church.

Comprehensive sex education?  Planned Parenthood’s research and education arm, the Guttmacher Institute now recommends the following:

Health care providers and health educators should discuss withdrawal as a legitimate, if slightly less effective, contraceptive method in the same way they do condoms and diaphragms. Dismissing withdrawal as a legitimate contraceptive method is counterproductive for the prevention of pregnancy and also discourages academic inquiry into this frequently used and reasonably effective method.

Does anyone remember the Consumer Reports assessment on Planned Parenthood condoms several years back?

The numbers* are indisputable, and it speaks volumes as to the mindset of the people who elect law makers who reject the common sense approach to abstinence only education. It’s an indictment of  the twisted will, which rejects the biological evidence which reveal the child’s brain is not yet equipped or developed enough to make adult like decisions.

I came across a planned parenthood news letter (pdf page 12) which attempted to prove that “comprehensive” sex education was superior to abstinence only education, based on their own generalized and vague abortion statistics from a handful of  “cherry picked” states. To test their theory, I ran the latest abortion numbers from All the states which reported to the CDC in 2005. I compared the teen abortion rates of the (17) states which reject abstinence only education funds with those ( 31) which accept them, using the 2002 census estimation. I discovered that the 2005 abortion rates for teens were 46% higher in states which reject funding for abstinence only when compared to those which accept them.

AZ, CA, CO, CT, IA, MA, ME, MN, MT, NJ, NM, NY, OH, RI, VA, WI and WY (fund rejecting states) need to stop playing politics.

Interpret from this what you will, but the numbers are just too big to be ignored.

(The Effectiveness of Abstinence Education Programs in Reducing Sexual Activity Among Youth – 2002)

* Updated with corrected numbers

I have been teaching a Christology class this semester using Fr. Roch Kereszty’s Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology as one of my primary texts.   I like Kereszty because I think that his synthesis of Christology around the concept of communio is effective and comprehensive.  I agree with his approach on a host of issues.  However, as we reach the end of the semester, I am brought again to the issue that confronts a number of Communio theologians. This is the question of God’s suffering.

Like Balthasar and others, Kereszty begins by embracing the Catholic position that God cannot suffer in His immutable divine nature.  But like Balthasar, he argues that this does not rule out Father’s being “personally” affected, for example, by His Son’s death.  Kereszty uses the term vulnerable for God in the sense that the Father leaves Himself vulnerable to His creation and to being personally affected by the sinfulness of His creation.  He argues that this is the only way to do justice to the explicitness of the Gospel parables.

I suppose that I would question justifying the Father’s personal affect based upon parables which are by their nature, implicit any way.  A genre like a parable that applies to God one must be cautious not to apply anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms to God.  Nevertheless, the issue of divine Personhood and its analogy to human personhood is one that is under treated theologically and so I would not want to rule out of hand some sort of distinction between what can be predicated of the Persons in contradistinction to the nature. The caveat of course, is that this distinction but be logically consistent with an immutable divine nature and it must not demand temporal qualities in God, nature or Person. However, I suspect that what we have here is simply a lack of precsion between the good that humans experience as changing emotion and their perfect, immutable archetype in God.

I do not believe that Kereszty, as I think is also the case with Balthasar, does an adequate job of analyzing the phenomenology of personal affect or its relationship to known metaphysical categories so as to ensure he is being consistent in his thinking.  It seems to me that his making the distinction between affect of diving nature and affect of divine personhood does not immunize him from the charge of logical inconsistency.

Let us take the term vulnerable.  Etymologically this term means the capacity to be wounded.  Woundedness is nothing other than a deprivation of being.  Kereszty accepts that this woundedness could never touch the divine nature but I do not see simply making the distinction between personhood and nature does any good here.  One still must assert that there is some sort of possible deprivation in the divine Person if he is capable of being wounded.  I do not see how this can be asserted.  The Person is not separate from His nature.  In fact, the Person is a relation of opposition in the divine nature.

Furthermore, to assert that a divine Person may be affected by limited creation, that He may “experience” temporal, limited creation which arises from the love of the divine Persons and so has nothing that they already do not have seems to violate the law of non-contradiction.  To experience means to draw out of, to be affected by experience means to draw something new out of something else but there is nothing new that creatures can give even to the divine Persons.  Thus, the claims of divine personal affect and experience of creatures seems to assert that creation both comes from God and does not come from God at the same time and in the same way.

When we discuss the divine Persons as Relations we have metaphysical categories for assessing how affect can be considered consistent or not with immutability.  There are two ways of relating: ontologically in what the scholastics called real relations and accidentally in what are called logical relations.  In God there can be no accidents.  What does this mean for His relation to His creation?  Well, the relation between God and His creation has to be a logical relation but it is so in a way does not predicate an accident in divine nature.  God is not affected by His creation though His creation is affected by God.  The mutability in this relation is then, one way–only the creature changes.  Notice that this is not with respect to divine nature.  Divine Persons are Relations and the Personal relations to creatures are all logical.  These are not, as Kereszty implies, simply arbitrary philosophical a priori but they are self-consistent, tools of thought that authentically describe the real world and God as He has revealed Himself.

However, God does relate in a way that is volitional.  We will call these relationships.  God chooses these from all eternity. God wills eternally and immutably.  His will does not change.  Vulnerability is a relational term.  Kereszty allows this vulnerability because God wills it but what can God’s willing vulnerability really mean?  How can His creation affect Him, even if He chooses to allow it, in a way that does not end up in a logical inconsitency or just as badly, as an eternal negative or positive affect?  That is, since God acts eternally, if He were to be affected in a negative way that would be an eternal act which would affect Him eternally.  In either positive or negative cases, He would still be drawing something from His creation He did not have and so He would have to be drawing from some higher principle–meaning He would not be God.

I do not see in attributing affect or vulnerability to the divine person while not to the divine nature, any way to remain logically consistent.  I suspect the problem is two fold.  One is the attempt to viscerally jolt their readers into not underestimating the intensity of love and compassion that God has for man.  The other is to fail to adequately assess the differences between finite experience of infinite archetpyes and the affect of the fall on these experiences.  Suffering is a privation of being.  It may be inevitable in fallen human love but it is not inextricably attached to it.  God even in His Person cannot suffer other than the Son, and only the Son, and then under the rubric of the communication of idioms.  The fact that the Father is not affected by His creation does not imply indifference.  This is a faulty attempt at analogy between human experience and the divine reality.  God created out of intense love and compassion and He never changes.  He is not affected in the sense of there is nothing we can do that can reduce this passionate, intense love for His creation.  That is the key and the real drama that I think these Communio scholars are intending.