The top-five-philosophers meme

In response to a request from Al Kimel, the Pontificator, Dr. Scott Carson has listed his "five top philosophers" and given a reassuringly academic explanation for his selection. Taking that as the occasion to start a meme chain, Al has done the same on his own account, though without the sort of qualifications one can only expect, after all, from a professional philosopher. Since I'm one of the people he's memed, I hereby take up the challenge.

I assume that "top" means "best," at least in one's own opinion. Given as much, my list is the same as Scott's, save for his last entry: Kant. Although Kant is definitely A-list, I came away from my wrestle with him in graduate school feeling intensely disappointed and frustrated. He tries to salvage knowledge from Humean skepticism, but without reconstituting anything recognizable as realism, which means he's lost the game from the start. And many centuries after Judaism and Christianity became generally known in the world, he argued that one can demarcate something called "religion within the limits of reason alone," which turns out to be too thin a gruel to sustain anybody but a German Pietist, which he was. As far as I know, the only Pietists left today are Methodists, few of whom are German and most of whom couldn't tell you what Pietism is.

For Kant, I would substitute Hegel. Some who know me may be shocked by that, and I used to be shocked by it myself. Hegel is voluminous, pretentious, obscure, and the consummate Idealist to boot, which is almost the worst thing one can be in the cosmology of us realists. But I was moved to start reading him in the 1970s as a Columbia undergraduate by two of my professors: Robert Cumming and Sidney Morgenbesser, both of whom thought Hegel absolutely hateful but indispensable for understanding the course of all subsequent philosophy. They were right. To understand Communism, which has had a huge role in recent history, you need to understand Marx; to understand Marx, you need to understand Feuerbach; to understand either, you need to understand Hegel, against whom they were reacting even as they adopted quite substantial elements of his methodology. Moreover, Hegelian Idealism gave rise to British Idealism, against which the movements of "analytical"philosophy and logical positivism were also reactions. Those movements remain the chief influences in Anglo-American philosophy departments, though their hold has weakened somewhat over the last few generations, starting with the later Wittgenstein.

And then there's the religious angle. Hegel thought that all of reality is constituted by the dynamic triad: Divine Idea, Nature, and Absolute Spirit. The first expresses itself, and thus constitutes itself, by giving rise to the second, whose dialectical development will eventually culminate in the third. That sounded enough like the Trinity to fascinate me. Even Hegelian dialectic, which seems to be the very opposite of the perichoresis of the divine Persons, functions very much as an immanentization of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of the cosmic Christ, which in turn reveal God to us. Thus in Hegel's scheme, all negations are "antitheses" of the original "thesis", but without their cancelling each other out. Rather, what is of value in the thesis gets "sublated" by the antithesis in such a way as to re-emerge at a higher level, the "synthesis." Indeed. Life, especially the Christian life which recapitulates Christ's, is very much like that.

I often wondered why no theologian had done anything with that scheme, filtering out what's heterodox and retaining what illuminates. Actually, there was such a theologian, writing even as I was reading: Hans Urs von Balthasar. That's one of the main reasons why he's one of my favorite theologians. But that is another meme.

My Advent penance

...has been to complain less about being a middle-aged, white American male ('MAWAM' for short). Here's why I'm not crazy to complain, and why it's a penance to complain less.

It is definitely PC to regard people like me as among the most privileged on earth. And I grant that most of the lawyers, doctors, business executives, football coaches, and hack writers among us fit into that category. But largely because the rest of us are lumped in with those guys by the politically correct, we get cut no slack by society at large. I myself have been told I could have taken up any of the above professions successfully, save perhaps for football coach; and I suppose that, ceteris paribus, that is true. But then I have an even bigger talent: being interested only in things that aren't lucrative. It's uncanny, really. People who wish otherwise blame me for that, and even people who admire me don't let it be generally known that they feel sorry for me too. Those who do feel sorry, that is.

As a class, MAWAMs are blamed for most of the world's problems, especially the problems of Americans who are either non-white or non-male. (Please note that, in good PC fashion, I said 'non-male', not 'female'. I have no time to deal with a charge of discrimination against whatever newfangled genders are believed to be out there.) Since almost all of us MAWAMs who can work full-time do so—as we must to avoid the street, jail, or the suspicions of stay-at-home moms—we are ineligible for student discounts while too young for senior discounts. Meanwhile, an amazing number of MAWAMs I know, including yours truly, are paying at least half their incomes in taxes and/or child support. A brother of mine pays even more than that. But it goes without saying that nobody sees good reason to feel sorry for us on that account, and it is considered very bad form indeed if we are diagnosable as feeling sorry for ourselves on that account.

Married MAWAMs, who are (inexplicably to me) still the majority, had better obey their wives dutifully if they don't want to risk being kicked to the curb, stuffed in the trunk, and taken to the cleaners. That is because, in the world of no-fault divorce, men are guilty until proven innocent. To verify that, just ask any five men who've been to family court lately. Providing proof of innocence, assuming that's even theoretically possible, takes a better lawyer than most of us can afford.

Then there are the little things that only MAWAMs can appreciate. We have less and less hair where we want hair and more and more hair where we don't want hair. (Thank God for hair-grafting technology; but health insurance doesn't cover that, and women who feel the need for liposuction and/or Botox treatments definitely do not feel sorry for us.) Worse, we are delighted rather than insulted when we get carded for buying a beer; almost any humiliation will do, apparently, to remind us of the men we once were, before we made various mistakes we're still paying for and outgrew our studded belts. Worst of all, most of us can no longer experience the difference between a wedding and a funeral; over the last 25 years or so, the latter have become more festive even as the main but unspoken thought at the former has become: "I give them five, maybe seven years, tops."

As for the Catholic Church, the lot of the MAWAM is no better. A benighted minority of us, for example, would actually like to serve the Church. But most, for one reason or another, are considered either ineligible or unsuited to be priests; and if one is divorced, or married with children still at home, the diaconate is most unlikely too. The only solution for would-be clerics is to grow old enough to be unthreatening without having accumulated, or failed to unload, a lot of baggage. But by then, of course, one is no longer a MAWAM—just a WAM for whom certain things have become more gratifying than sex, which is either non-existent or not as good as it used to be.

For most of us our chief role, besides showing up in church and listening to music only sopranos can sing, is putting money in the collection basket. Those of us who actually want to do something may involve ourselves with the Knights of Columbus, a club of MAWAMs always eager for members, and most of whose activities take place far enough away from parish grounds to leave the pastor and the parish staff in a state of bliss that is only heightened when they take the money we raise for them. (The exception to this arrangement of non-propinquity is cooking, greasily, for a few on-the-premises fundraisers called "fish fries" or "breakfasts." The Benjamins do have this way of greasing the skids.) A few MAWAMs, admittedly, get to do things like being lectors, EMHCs, ushers (oops, "ministers of hospitality,") or catechists. But those ministries are now dominated by women, most of whom—I speak from experience here—merely tolerate us. One such woman even confided to me that middle-aged men who do such things must be either (a) bored in their marriages; (b) gay, or (c) current or former would-be priests. I looked around us and thought about that. She was right. And that particular parish wasn't even AmChurch.

Merely publishing thoughts such as these should indicate that I complain elsewhere about what they relate. I have to. I would question my own residual rationality if I didn't. Yet, since I know what reception they are likely to get from most of my fellow humans, my complaints are usually sotto voce, to God alone. As best I can tell, his response is: "The more you complain, the longer I'll make you live." So I've decided this Advent to complain less. A painful penance, that. But given the alternative, it's worth it.

Theological sloganizing

As I use the term, sloganizing is the attempt to trump one's opponent in debate with a clichèd one-liner. One should expect that in politics, where candidates and parties must appeal to the least common denominator; at that level, after all, attention spans are short and the capacity for critical thought low. But in theology, one can and should expect more. So I want to expose certain forms of theological sloganizing that only get in the way of the real thinking we need to be doing in a forum such as this.

Since time is short, I shall deal with just three, leaving others to propose more of them.

1. Lex orandi lex credendi. Like all clichès, that one has an element of truth. Beliefs that are expressed or logically presupposed by the ancient and established liturgical prayers of the churches with apostolic succession are authentic elements of Tradition, and therefore true. The Fathers of the Church put that fact to good use in the controversies that swirled before and around the great ecumenical councils of the first millennium. In theological debate nowadays, however, LOLC is now more often invoked as a slogan to mean its logical converse: i.e., what is not expressed or logically presupposed by the ancient and established liturgical prayers is not an authentic element of Tradition and therefore, even when not false, at least not binding on believers.

That is nonsense. For one thing, LOLC's converse does not follow from it and, quite arguably, isn't even true. And even if it is true, hardly anybody who thus uses LOLC as a slogan offers any argument that it is is true. At this stage in theological history, the slogan is best dropped. It only gets in the way of assessing the truly pertinent arguments.

2. The Vincentian Canon. This one is a bit more complicated. First, I quote the relevant passage from St. Vincent of Lerins:

Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. That is truly and properly 'Catholic,' as is shown by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally. We shall hold to this rule if we follow universality [i.e. oecumenicity], antiquity, and consent. We shall follow universality if we acknowledge that one Faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is clear that our ancestors and fathers proclaimed; consent, if in antiquity itself we keep following the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly nearly all, bishops and doctors alike.

In its immediate historical context during the early 5th century, that served a useful purpose. It was meant to distinguish the faith of the "catholic" Church (the Church kata holou, "as a whole") from that of various heretical sects which also claimed apostolic origin or validity. St. Irenaeus had made a similar move in his confrontations with the Gnostics of Lyons during the late 2nd century. But nowadays, and with unintended irony, the phrase that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all is taken out of its original context and invoked to reject the distinctive doctrines of that church which has called herself the Catholic Church ever since. After all, it is urged, those doctrines are not believed by Orthodox and Protestants, and therefore are manifestly not "believed everywhere, always, and by all." The not-so-subtle implication is that the Catholic Church must herself not be "the Catholic Church" of which St. Vincent spoke.

That bit of sloganizing too is nonsense. For one thing, it begs the question which church counts as "the" Church and therefore as the Catholic Church. If the Catholic Church is the Church, then whatever validity the VC retains today pertains to her, not to those churches which, for whatever reason, lack full communion with her. And even if the Catholic Church is not the Church, her mere existence as Christianity's largest church leaves other churches in no better a logical position vis-à-vis the VC than she is. So let's drop this slogan too.

3. Scripture and/or Tradition contain all those things belief in which is necessary for salvation. There is a sense in which that too is true. I say "Scripture and/or Tradition" because the truth here is often sloganized, and thus obscured, in exactly the same way by Orthodox as by Protestants. The latter will often tell you that we needn't believe anything that is not to be found explicitly in Scripture; the former will often tell you that we needn't believe anything that is not to be found explicitly in Tradition, typically as expressed through the (Orthodox) liturgy. The not-so-subtle implication is that the Catholic Magisterium's claims for itself are at best superfluous and probably hooey.

The reason that bit of sloganizing is nonsense is that the Catholic Church herself shares the belief thus sloganized, but no more needs to than does draw the implication intended by the sloganizers. She grants that, in Thomas Aquinas' words, Scripture by itself is "materially sufficient" as a repository of saving truth. She has become historically savvy enough to recognize that Scripture is itself a normative, written crystallization of Tradition, so that we may say that Tradition—i.e., all that which is "handed down" from the Apostles as belonging to the Church's faith and life—is materially sufficient as a repository of saving truth. But what is materially sufficient is not thereby formally sufficient. Over time, controversies over interpretation arise and certain ideas develop into doctrines, such as the essence-energies distinction and the Immaculate Conception. If Scripture and Tradition alone were formally sufficient, such things wouldn't happen.

Given that they do, some authority is needed to resolve the controversies and either authenticate or reject the developments. Of course there is disagreement among Christians about the location and identity of that authority. But the sloganizing of the truth in question distracts attention from the need to consider very carefully the question how to locate and identify that authority. Once one acknowledges that, then whatever answer one comes up with, it isn't going to be that the Catholic Magisterium is superfluous and its claims hooey. Mistaken, perhaps; but worthy of the most serious consideration.

The New Progressive Bible

A sweet parody from The People's Cube. A few "revised inspirational stories":

• The Organic Garden of Eden
• Pharaoh Has Two Mummies
• What Happens in Sodom and Gomorrah Stays in Sodom and Gomorrah
• Noah Builds Ark to Survive Global Warming
• Jonah Saves the Whale
• David Appeases Goliath
• The Bilingual Writing on the Wall
• The Tower of Babel & The Controlled Demolition Theory
• Uncle Samson & The NY Times Reporter Delilah
• Judas The ACLU Lawyer
• Joseph & Mary Celebrate Holiday Season By Donating Fetus To Federal Embryonic Stem Cell Bank
• Government Program Feeds The Multitudes with Five "Whole Grain" Loaves And Two Non-Endangered Fishes

Hat tip to my ever-faithful comrade-in-arms, Diane Kamer.

Catholic update, indeed

When I was in parish ministry, I regularly passed out copies of Catholic Update to the RCIA candidates I was charged with instructing. That was because I found the periodical generally sound and topical as well as convenient. But that was a decade ago. It now appears that the editors are more concerned about keeping their stable intact than communicating the Faith.

What has happened to Fr. Kenneth J. Overberg, SJ, is a sad case in point. He is the author of the Advent 2006 issue of CU, as well as of many older ones. For a withering analysis and criticism of the current one, go here and follow the link to the "brilliant fisk." (The author of the latter blog doesn't provide permalinks; too bad, since he's pretty good.) It now seems that another fine Catholic academic has gone over to the other side. That's the real update; be forewarned. And it's symptomatic of something broader that we must name and face.

Although I'm encouraged by the steady stream of adult converts to the Church—in the U.S., the number averages over 150,000 per year—I am brought back to reality by two facts. One is that we face an internal apostasy that started during Vatican II and has hardened since then. The majority of baptized Catholics in this country do not both know and accept those teachings of the Church that would, if followed, require significant and often painful change in their lives. The very idea is outrageous to many of them. The same goes for some converts, many of whom make the move primarily to please a "Catholic" spouse. For the kind of people I'm thinking about, Catholicism is at best a badge of cultural identity—certainly not a means of real, and therefore costly, union with Christ. And the clergy rarely challenge them, in any meaningful way, to change that. The sex-abuse scandal is a symptom of why things got to that point.

That is why Dr. Philip Blosser's prophetic rant must be kept in mind, especially this:

. . . when you invite someone to become a Catholic, you're inviting him not only to board the Ark of Salvation. You're inviting him to come aboard a shipwreck. You're inviting him to join an association at the parish level whose collective acquaintance with Scripture is piecemeal, whose knowledge of Tradition is negligible, whose hymns are embarrassing, whose religious art has become ugly, whose churches look more like U.N. meditation chapels than sanctuaries, whose ethics are slipshod and often dissident, and whose aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities are so far from being sublime that they often look ridiculous.

Granted the worthy exceptions, that is the reality which largely explains the other sobering fact to be considered: at least as many baptized Catholics are leaving by the back door as are entering by the front. A shipwreck just is going to be abandoned by many on the ship, even if and often especially if they themselves had helped to run the ship aground. Many laity who leave can be readily forgiven, since those in charge of their formation communicated no particular reason to for them to stay. The bigger problem is people like Fr. Overberg and Sr. Chittister: clergy and/or religious who are fully Catholic formally, but only partially so materially if at all. They're the natural leaders, and too many have led the sheep astray.

As I used to say at Pontifications, the Vatican's response to that for the past several decades has been essentially demographic: wait for the hopeless older set to die off, while replacing them with a younger set by attracted by such integrity and beauty as can be routed around the corrupt middle management. Perhaps that's not as bad as the alternatives, which are to do nothing or to do a nasty housecleaning. But I am reminded of the orthodox young seminarian who complained to his spiritual director that the place was riddled with heresy: "Don't worry. In a few centuries that too shall pass." That leaves an awful lot of laity to lose in the meantime.

True rejoicing vs. the clamor for glamor

Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is known liturgically as "Gaudete Sunday," gaudete being the Latin for "rejoice!" That is a divine command which many have no trouble obeying during this season. Yet the usual reasons for doing that are the wrong reasons. People usually rejoice only when they are fortunate: when they enjoy material prosperity, intact families, congenial opportunities in their careers or leisure activities. Ordinarily, that is natural and legitimate; but at this time, rejoicing is commanded as a break in a penitential regimen, so that we might sustain our hope in what we are waiting for. In our culture, no such regimen is observed, even by Catholics; as far as waiting is concerned, the holiday music started playing in public places two weeks before Thanksgiving, and the shopping not long after that. So, how can disciples rejoice in the spirit intended by the liturgy?

I suggest we ponder the state of the Church. As Fr. Philip Powell, OP, puts it, the crowds "clamor for glamor." If, as per Vatican II and the present pope, you suggest some Latin and Gregorian chant in the liturgy, they howl for their shlock: they want entertainment. As the bishops continue to pull punches on contraception, they urge optional celibacy for priests and the approval of buggery: they want more sex. If you give them parish councils, they seek lay participation in the selection of clergy, including bishops: they want more power. They want, in short, the Church to conform to their contemporary American values, which are mostly the fashions now worn by those old characters known as the world, the flesh, and the Devil. In reaction against all that prog stuff, some Catholics insist on attending only an ornate Tridentine liturgy and would prefer to see Vatican II become a dead letter. Such Catholics have little use for Church teaching on war and capital punishment, and also find the hierarchy far too liberal about such internal matters as marriage annulments. For the most part, the spirit of both the prog and the trad wings of the Church is prideful: they want the Church to conform to them, not vice-versa. And then there's that large, squishy middle which treats their parish church like a gas station: they pull in, fuel up, pay up, and pull out, so that they can move briskly on to brunch and/or football. That's why we don't often see regular adult education in American parishes. So, be careful today: next to an active war zone, I can think of no place on earth more dangerous than the parking lot of a Catholic church after Sunday Mass.

None of this is metanoia, which is Greek for 'conversion', as in conversion of hearts and minds. Since the main purpose of penance is conversion, it's inevitable that there is little penance of the sort that this Sunday is meant to give us a break from. So I've thought about how to change that.

One must of course start with oneself. As I prepare for Mass, I aim to locate and identify those aspects of myself which need conversion, so that I can rejoice that the advent of God the Son helps me to overcome them and become what I was created to be. Since, like most of us, I'm good at kidding myself about my real faults, I shall offer my participation in the hope that the Holy Spirit will lessen my self-deception. He will do that if we get out of the way. The coming of the Son is the light that will illuminate the dark corners of our very selves and prompt conversion if we care to look at them. That's what I'm going to rejoice about.

A lesson from Neanderthal...woman?

Those who've read this blog regularly know that I don't believe in something as fine-sounding but amorphous as "the equality of the sexes." I do of course believe in a certain sort of equality in principle: as rational adults and children of God, women and men are to be held to the same moral standards. That is apparently not as widespread a belief as I once assumed; over the past decade, I've come to observe that women, in many circles, are held to lower moral standards than men. While I would probably get some debate about that, the fact is that even as the feminist movement of the previous generation has mostly achieved its legitimate goals, the sexes are not treated equally—and that's because hardly anybody, whatever they may say for the sake of PC, really wants them to be. I have discussed and given examples of that before, and doubtless my vast readership could multiply them. Even that minority of people who call themselves feminists these days seem to want greater rights and privileges for women than for men, even though the smart ones are politically savvy enough to call that "equality." There's a lesson to be learned in all this.

Ideological feminism, as I was exposed to it in the Ivy League during the 1970s and 80s, was premised on the principle that there should be no presumptive social division of labor between the sexes. Everybody was to have every legitimate opportunity for self-definition and self-fulfillment open to them. E.g., if a woman wanted to be a corporate lawyer, or a man a househusband, that was fine and should be facilitated; and women were not to dress and carry on in such a way as to encourage men to treat them as "sex objects." A lot indeed has changed. To a much greater extent than was thought possible forty years ago, equality of opportunity has been achieved, leading to some corresponding change in results and status. But that has not quite added up to either equality of result or equality of social treatment; the "glass ceiling" is still intact in many sectors, even as many young women now seem to think think themselves empowered by dressing and carrying on like "ho's." People of both sexes seem to recoil instinctively from the prospect of equality of result and status—which is why the once-vaunted Equal Rights Amendment is dead and buried.

That in turn, I suspect, is because people know that equality of result and social treatment, as distinct from moral equality, is almost impossible to achieve and probably wouldn't work if it were. The Neanderthals had little or no social division of labor between the sexes. Remember what happened to them?

What does 'development of doctrine' mean?

That my recent post That Homoousios Again proved to be highly controversial came as quite a surprise to me. But I am no longer surprised: I now see that I was wrong to imply that the target of my criticism, a brief "Pastoral Pondering" by Fr. Patrick Reardon, was intended to reject the very idea of doctrinal development, Catholic or otherwise. Having done a bit of research, I find that Reardon does in fact claim to accept some such idea; and so I tender my apologies to him for holding that he sought to reject any such idea. Yet it remains clear to me that a few of Reardon's statements in the piece in question are logically incompatible with a notion of doctrinal development that most orthodox Catholic thinkers these days, including Joseph Ratzinger, take virtually for granted. My remaining purposes here are to support that intuition and to respond to a view of DD offered by one of Reardon's defenders. I shall do the former partly by doing the latter before it.

In section §8 of its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council said (emphasis added; notes omitted):

And so the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time. Therefore the Apostles, handing on what they themselves had received, warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or by letter (see 2 Thess. 2:15), and to fight in defense of the faith handed on once and for all (see Jude 1:3). Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the peoples of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes.

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.

The words of the holy fathers witness to the presence of this living tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church. Through the same tradition the Church's full canon of the sacred books is known, and the sacred writings themselves are more profoundly understood and unceasingly made active in her; and thus God, who spoke of old, uninterruptedly converses with the bride of His beloved Son; and the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel resounds in the Church, and through her, in the world, leads unto all truth those who believe and makes the word of Christ dwell abundantly in them (see Col. 3:16).

From that, the Catholic theologians to whom I've already referred rightly conclude that it is the official teaching of the Catholic Church that there is such a thing as development of doctrine, in the sense specified. At the same time, it is understood that such development does not entail addition to the deposit of faith, but only a collective "growth" in the "understanding" thereof, which is expressed inter alia in such irreformable dogmatic formulations as the Church occasionally sees fit to issue. What "develops" is not divine revelation itself, which was given in its fullness to the Apostles and which, in its public and binding aspects, ceased with the death of the last Apostle; rather, development takes the form of greater clarity and explicitness in our formulations of the truth contained in the "faith-once-delivered," and therefore a clearer understanding of that faith.

Now in a comment on my earlier post, Fr. Robert Hart of the Anglican Continuum wrote thus:

Development of Doctrine cannot actually mean that the Council of Nicea finally gave us truth never before known, anymore than it can contradict the fact that Saint Basil had only to draw from sources that were (in his time) ancient to teach about the Holy Spirit (scripture and liturgy mainly). So, the new and extreme view of D o D that some have expressed here is every bit as much of an innovation, and a danger, as sola scriptura, in fact the opposite error. The idea that the doctrine of the Trinity, which includes the revelation of Christ's two natures and the Personhood and divinity of the Holy Spirit, has not been the doctrine of the Church from its earliest generation, is an argument I expect from Jehovah's Witnesses, not from Catholics. If Fr. Pat accidentally exposed this radical new definition (shall we say, this development of the Development of Doctrine theory) then I am glad.

Referring to Reardon, Hart concludes:

Still, D o D was not his target.

I have already conceded the point that Reardon did not intend to reject the very idea of DD . My concern here is with what Reardon and Hart actually do.

As is so often the case, a distinction is badly needed. It is one thing to say that the realities expressed by the doctrine of the Trinity were known to the Church before the Council of Nicaea, which is clearly true. Anybody who denies that must accordingly deny that God revealed to the Apostles all that he intended to reveal to the Church, which would be incompatible with traditional Christianity. But it is another thing altogether to say that the doctrine of the Trinity itself was known to the Church all along before Nicaea, which is equally clearly false. What the Church had received and "handed on" in the beginning was materially the same as the doctrine of the Trinity, but not formally. Thus, the formal definitions propounded by Nicaea I and the other, subsequent ecumenical councils of the first millennium, which collectively comprise the doctrine of the Trinity, made more explicit what had been less so in the earlier sources, without in any way discovering truth not somehow contained in those sources.

Now the distinction I've drawn, it seems to me, is exactly what some of Reardon's statements fail to observe. Thus, concerning Nicaea I, he wrote:

It is important to observe that the use of the word homoousios did not “clarify” anything about God. It added no new light or intelligibility to what was already revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. The purpose of dogmatic definitions is not to throw further light on what is, after all, the fullness of revealed truth. The purpose of dogmatic definitions is, rather, to confound heretics. Dogma serves to “focus” revelation in the sense of declaring what is “not in line” with revelation. Of itself, however, a dogma adds nothing new. Hence, it is wrong to imagine that Nicaea’s declaration clarified revealed truth. It did not. Nicaea told us absolutely nothing beyond what the Apostles had declared. Indeed, the Nicene Fathers went to some lengths to insist on this point.

If all that's meant by the above that Nicaea's formulations did not contain any truth "beyond what the Apostles declared," that is true as I've already indicated. But if it is meant that Nicaea's formulations did not express truth more clearly than the Apostles had, that is false. And that's just what Reardon seems to say.

Thus he says that the purpose of dogmatic definitions is not to "clarify" the faith but to "confound heretics." But how, exactly, are heretics to be confounded by statements that are no clearer than the original profession? The point of definitions such as Nicaea's is to be more specific about the unchanging truth, in such a way as to make clearer that aspect of the truth which the heretics deny. That is why, apropos of Jesus Christ, Nicaea added to the Apostles' Creed the following:"eternally begotten of the Father: God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of the same substance as (homoousios) the Father." The heresy of Arianism would not have become so widespread if it had been clear to most Christians that Arianism was incompatible with what the Church had always believed. The main purpose of Nicaea I was, accordingly, to make clear precisely what had not been so clear. And it did so precisely by formulating the faith-once-delivered in new terms that did not augment its content, but only its expression, and therefore the understanding of it.

What had led me to make my initial error about Reardon's intentions was that the point I've just made seems so obvious to me that anybody who denies that Nicaea "clarified revealed truth"—which is just what Reardon did deny—is denying that doctrine develops in the way I've been maintaining. So, since he seems to uphold some idea of DD, I'd like to know what it is. I haven't seen it thus far.

The Thrill of the Chaste

OK, I admit it: I think Dawn Eden is ab fab. (I also admit I'm so uncool that I don't even try to update my slang; but I'm sure Dawn would understand if she knew.) She has now written what, as far as I know, is the only book for single females past the age of majority explaining why it's good for them to avoid premarital sex.

Of course I tend to love whatever apostolate Jewish converts to Catholicism take up. Especially if they're New Yorkers.

Development of Doctrine East and West

Dr. Scott Carson gives me some backup. And I didn't even call for it! Thanks, bro.

Ancestral Sin vs Original Sin

Orthodox theologian Ephrem Hugh Bensusan doesn't think certain of his co-religionists give fair treatment to "Western" understandings of original sin. And the caricatures, he suggests, harm Orthodoxy's doctrinal sense too. A most illuminating and ecumenical article.

Hat tip to the Pontificator.

A million here, a million there....

The defense of the Faith against atheists has taken a strange new twist these past few weeks. In his latest article in that vein, political writer Dinesh D'Souza defends his much-criticized statement in an earlier article that "Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history". It's gotten to be something of an Everett-Dirksen-style numbers game: a million dead here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real casualties...

I find the whole debate rather beside the point, in an almost Kafkaesque sort of way. When I look at the violent conflicts in the world today, I see that in some cases religion has something to do with it, and in others religion has nothing to do with it. In point of fact, greed, ethnic hatred, and lust for domination are and have always been the strongest, most common motives for mass killing. Sometimes, religion or an ideology with quasi-religious force is used to rationalize such motives; sometimes it isn't. That is the real answer to what has become a stock atheist charge.

That homoousios again

One of the many things I dislike about Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, which I tried but failed to finish, is that it gives development of doctrine a bad name. Its account of the Council of Nicaea's definition of Christ's divinity amounts to saying that, by a slim vote, the bishops of the Catholic Church decided that Jesus was and is divine, when that had not hitherto been the faith of Christians. That account, which Brown marketed as fiction yet really believes is true, really is fiction. Indeed it forms an easy target for Fr. Patrick Reardon, editor of Touchstone and a prominent Orthodox speaker—too easy, I'm afraid. In a brief and enjoyable screed, Reardon skillfully uses Brown as a foil against which to propound an equally simple, if not equally false, view of doctrinal development: basically, there ain't none. I don't think that will quite do either.

Here is the main part of Reardon's December 10 "Pastoral Ponderings", available only to subscribers:

What the Fathers of Nicaea voted on was not the divinity of Christ but the teaching of the priest Arius, who had recently promulgated the idea that God's Son, who assumed our humanity in Jesus, had not been God's Son from all eternity. There was God the Father before there was the Son, said Arius; the Father and the Son were two separate beings, the One prior to the Other.

The question before the council was whether or not this novel teaching of Arius was compatible with what the Apostles taught in their preaching and their Gospels and Epistles found in the New Testament. Jesus was not the matter of debate at Nicaea. Arius was.

The bishops at Nicaea looked carefully at what Arius had published and then asked themselves a simple question, "Are these ideas of Arius compatible with what we find in the tradition and writings of the Apostles?" And they answered, after some animated deliberation, "Well, actually, no. In fact, heck no, we'll be darned if they are."

The reasoning at Nicaea went like this: In Jesus of Nazareth we recognize God's Son. This is why we address God as Father, just as Jesus taught us. If, as Arius said, there was a time when God did not have a Son--some point after which God became the Father--one of two things had to happen. Either God was essentially, inwardly changed (which Nicaea recognized to be impossible), or the Father created the Son. If it was the latter case, then the Son is a created being, of a nature different from God, a being outside of God, a creature not essentially different from the rest of creation.

Now this was a very serious inference, the Nicene Fathers continued to reflect, because a great deal was at stake. If this Son is just another creature different from and outside of God, a creature pretty much like ourselves, then we human beings are still in our sins, because the death and resurrection of Jesus could not have saved us. According to the New Testament, after all, our redemption was “expiated,” was "purchased," by the blood of Jesus (Romans 3:25; 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; 2:13; Colossians 1:14,20; 1Peter 1:19; Revelation 5:9). Now, if our redemption was something purchased, surely no one but God could pay the price. The very name Jesus means "the Lord saves." The Nicene Fathers perceived, then, that the teaching of Arius touched on the matter of our redemption. This is why they made sure to say that God's Son "became man for us men and for our salvation."

God and Jesus, therefore, are distinct (since the Father sent the Son), but they are not separable. Since there was never God the Father without His Son, then the Son must be as eternal as the Father. Otherwise, the Son would essentially be a creature, someone who had not existed before God made him. That, said Nicaea, is what the Apostles taught, and that was the reason the priest Arius was dead wrong.

To express their condemnation of Arius on this point, the Fathers at Nicaea formulated a new expression, saying that the Father and the Son are not two different beings. They are not separable. They are "of the same being"--homoousios in the Greek language that they used at the council. There can be no God the Father, they declared, without God the Son; otherwise the Father is not really the Father.

It is important to observe that the use of the word homoousios did not “clarify” anything about God. It added no new light or intelligibility to what was already revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. The purpose of dogmatic definitions is not to throw further light on what is, after all, the fullness of revealed truth. The purpose of dogmatic definitions is, rather, to confound heretics. Dogma serves to “focus” revelation in the sense of declaring what is “not in line” with revelation. Of itself, however, a dogma adds nothing new. Hence, it is wrong to imagine that Nicaea’s declaration clarified revealed truth. It did not. Nicaea told us absolutely nothing beyond what the Apostles had declared. Indeed, the Nicene Fathers went to some lengths to insist on this point.

So, nothing whatsoever was clarified by the introduction of the metaphysical formula: homoousios. (Many would agree; but not, I suspect, for Reardon's reasons.) All the fierce debate within the Church that had occasioned the Council, and all the fierce dissent from the Council that led, within less than a generation, to the majority of bishops being Arians—all of that was due just to the refusal of some to see and assent to what had been understood and taught throughout the Church from the start. The homoousios, that model of clarity and simplicity, pellucid to any believer, was just the thing needed to restate the obvious and thereby confound those willful heretics.

Fiddlesticks. I happily grant, as indeed I must grant, that the (true) assertion that the Son is homoousios with the Father added nothing to what had been revealed to the Apostles. That is not at issue. The question is whether the formula amplified the Church's collective understanding of what had been revealed to the Apostles. Of course it did. It does not merely tell us what is "not in line with revelation"; it gives a more formal, and thus clearer, meaning to what was always materially the faith of the Church. That is precisely what made it useful in defense of orthodoxy. It is not merely apophatic, either syntactically or semantically. It would have been neither necessary nor useful if it had been so intended.

But the anti-DD folks, who were once as common in Catholicism as they still are in Orthodoxy, will have none of that. Any suggestion that, in Vatican II's words, "there is growth in understanding" of revealed truth is—well, if not exactly anathema, then dangerously close to the Brown agenda. Since the fullness of revealed truth is possessed by the Church from the start, heresy must be due to bad faith, not to mere confusion.

Well, no doubt some heretics are in bad faith, just as some non-heretics are. But I must say that I do not understand the insistence that new doctrinal formulations, such as the homoousios, are nothing new, as if only bad faith could block assent to them. What they refer to is nothing new, to be sure; but their usefulness consists precisely in conveying truth more clearly in face of confusion. That's why I like them. If they didn't do that, they wouldn't even be useful to the orthodox.

He's got me thinking again...

At the dedication of a new parish church in Rome today, the Pope remarked: "...to prepare for Christmas means to commit oneself to build 'God's dwelling with men', a task from which no one is excluded. Every one can and must contribute so that this house of communion is more spacious and beautiful."

No one is excluded. As sinners, we all either forget that sometimes or, if we work for the Church, assume our role in it is greater than it is. Yet our repentance is itself part of the work of building, and even the humblest members can contribute more greatly than the ones who devote their lives to it. Even babies, the mentally handicapped, the terminally ill, and the comatose, for example, can and do contribute if we let them. There are people who, apparently, can do little or nothing but receive; but how they receive enables us to see Christ in them if we show Christ to them. During this season, as we prepare to celebrate God's dwelling among us in the flesh, let us keep in mind that no stone need be left unused in the building.

Turkey and Regensburg: the same pope

An Arab Jesuit explains how and why.

Al Kimel's reflections on ordination

Ordained a week ago as a Catholic priest, the Pontificator has now posted his reflections. Though I'm sure there's more to come in due course, this is meaty enough. Unsurprisingly, he sums up his feelings with a quote from Newman: "...even what a person has before he is a Catholic, being grafted on a new stock, becomes new, and he is like a Jew become Christian."

Overcoming depression during Advent

It is well known that this time of year sees an increase in depression. Some of that seems explicable by the ever-shortening daytime as we approach the winter solstice on December 21. Appropriately, its acronym is 'SAD', for 'seasonal affective disorder'. And some people are genetically predisposed to depression on other grounds. But I believe that a great deal of depression is spiritual in origin even if physical in some aspects. So is the remedy, to the extent remedy is to be had.

Part of the spiritual cause this season is the mess we've made of the season, which I've discussed before. Instead of acknowledging our spiritual poverty and darkness, which is often enough culpable, and waiting for the Lord in prayer, penance, and hope, we party and consume for weeks before the feast of his incarnation. Some of that can be good for those who have what they need, especially love; yet it usually sharpens the pain for those who do not. One of the best ways for the former group to celebrate is to ease the pain of the latter. Some try and succeed, if only because they've been there and can relate. But some who try fail because they are not attuned enough to the sufferer, or even to their own suffering, to be of help; and many do not try at all. Either way, the best way both to ease the pain of others and to deal with one's own pain is to revert to the heart and allow nobody one can influence, starting with oneself, to settle for less.

I mean "the heart" in the sense intended by Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of Communion and Liberation, who died last year. I shall come at that indirectly.

At an intense CL meeting yesterday near Charlotte, I was most struck by this passage from a meditation by the current leader of the movement, Fr. Julián Carrón:

Unless we use our heart, unless we compare everything with our heart, our "I" is weakened as we said, the personality of the "I" is annulled, and we become more and more fragile and confused before everything. Life, which is given us for the adventure of knowing more and more the meaning of everything, for judging everything with the needs of our heart, becomes more and more confused.

That is pretty much what had happened to me by the fall of 2000, when I got so depressed as to require hospitalization. With and after that, I lost just about everything I cared about—save for Christ. For a good while, hardly able even to think, I could not judge "with the needs of the heart." Explaining why doing so is necessary, not merely possible, answers the objection that I'm sure occurs to some readers, viz., that "judging everything with the needs of the heart" is self-deluding subjectivity and emotionalism.

I had assumed, as do many ostensibly committed Christians today, that the needs of my heart were irrelevant: bound to be left unsatisfied in this life, they weren't worth trying to satisfy. I had become resigned, trying to settle for what I thought was my duty, taking for granted that duty had little to do with what I really wanted but had failed to convince myself I didn't really want. But people who do that number on themselves are bound to become alienated sooner or later. Many, of course, do a serviceable job of deceiving themselves about that for a while, maintaining the deception through work, drugs, sex, consumption, domination or manipulation of others, or some combination thereof. But knowing those tools were stopgaps at best, I didn't use them; naturally, the deception came undone sooner rather than later. And I could not live with the truth. The alienation was so thorough that I got too depressed to function. My heart was crushed: the "personality" of my "I" was "annulled." I was so confused I could not say anything helpful to myself anymore, and none of the people around me knew what to say either—including priests, and including the shrink who treated me successfully with physical means. I knew of course that duty should not be shirked and doing one's duty can entail a kind of deep renunciation. The crucifix tells us that if nothing else does. But I had forgotten that unless the commitments one makes correspond to one's heart, one eventually loses the integrity necessary not only for keeping them but also for being who one is created to be. One is lost.

The heart is that innermost aspect of ourselves which comes from God. It is the desire and the corresponding capacity for truth, beauty, and goodness in those forms which one is created uniquely to seek and show. What makes the heart objective, and hence judging by it reliable, is that such truth, beauty, and goodness actually do exist; but especially given our fallenness, only Jesus Christ can truly satisfy the desire and fulfill the capacity. Born in a stable, crucified, and risen, he is the font and summit of all truth, beauty, and goodness. But the satisfaction he brings cannot even begin if one treats him as a mere historical figure, or a theological abstraction, or the hero of a comforting myth. They happen only if one encounters his Person, surrenders to it, and thereby chooses to be taken over by it. Only if, in short, one becomes "his" in an embrace more passionate than the sexual embrace, which is but a carnal anticipation of it. When that happens, "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). In our Holy Father's words, there exists "a new subject, I but no longer I." Then one can start judging reliably with one's heart and meeting one's true needs.

By waiting for the Lord in my spiritual and financial poverty, I have been granted the needed encounter with him. But like all us sinners, I don't always renew the corresponding surrender. It is my prayer this Advent that I do so; indeed, I pray constantly that I might be able to say Galatians 2:20 for myself, without deception. That, not my online work of blogging, is what enables me to avoid another major depression and walk forward in hope. My recommendation to all who face depression this season is take a step back from the partying, the shopping, even the concerts, so as to beg for that encounter if one hasn't had it and to renew one's surrender if one has. For the unfortunate, no gift this season could be as great as those.

The logic of hate

I was listening today to an NPR interview with Robert Satloff, author of a book on Arabs who helped Jews during the Holocaust. The transcript, they say, will be on their Web site shortly. What struck me was not that some Arabs, mostly North Africans due to the ebb and flow of World War II, showed such courage and selflessness in hiding Jews from the Nazis. There is good in everyone, and heroes from every race involved in the struggle have been found and documented. What hit me in the gut was that the heroism of those Arabs seems to actually be an embarassment to their descendants.

In the case of one family, the story has been retold so that it was not Jews but German soldiers escaping capture who were helped. In some others, the story is simply dismissed as untrue or, if true, not to be discussed in polite company. No stratagem is left untried to minimize or deny that Arabs, who are Muslims, helped Jews. This phenomenon is clearly part and parcel of the general effort in the Muslim world to deny or minimize the Shoah. Satloff offered the inescapable and chilling explanation for that.

It goes like this: if the Shoah really happened as Western historians say, then there is a clear need for a Jewish homeland. There is indeed such a homeland: the state of Israel, which exists on land that the Jews possessed long ago. But that entity is illegitimate, and there can be no need for what is illegitimate. Therefore, the Shoah didn't really happen as Western historians say. If the Jews did suffer during that war, they suffered no more than anybody else and less than some. It doesn't matter that the very word 'genocide' was coined to describe what the Nazis sought to do, and nearly succeeded in doing, to the Jews. That genocide is a myth.

The logic is impeccable. Like that of the textbook paranoid schizophrenic who believes he's Napoleon, it is utterly unconfused by the facts, which are systematically interpreted to support the basic premise. But in a way, it's worse than schizophrenia. For the premise doesn't need such support. It is supported by the Muslim presumption that any and every inch of land once gained for the House of Islam—even the sliver known as the Sha'aba Farms, disputed between Israel, Syria, and Lebanon—forever belongs to the House of Islam, so that any non-Muslims who come to rule it are usurpers. Sweeping the whole Shoah business under the rug is a logical epicycle that doesn't so much establish the premise as defend it, half-consciously, from reality. The result is a hate that is stronger than love of family, never mind love of virtue.

This is a case where religion breeds hate. We in the West are not unfamiliar with that, to be sure. But the Shoah taught us that the anti-Judaism which had plagued Christianity from its very beginning was morally unacceptable. There is no excuse either for anti-Semitism, which would include Arabs and others as well as Jews. The Muslim disease about Israel is a sign that that religion needs a similar wake-up call. One wonders whether they will ever hear it.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Since my boss refuses to give me a few hours off to make it to some scheduled Mass for this feast—the choices are all between 7 AM and 5:30 pm, all "impossible"—I thought I'd make it up to Our Lady by posting about her feast on its eve.

This feast is one of my favorites. It forms one leg of that triad of feasts which, by highlighting aspects of God's favor to Mary at the beginning, middle, and end of her earthly life, shows us what are all called to be. Her status as Mother of God is the paradigm of how the disciples of her divine Son are to bear him into the world by surrendering their hearts to God; the Assumption is a proleptic anticipation and figura of what all the definitively saved shall be. But from the start, she was prepared as a fitting vessel for her Son by being kept free of all "stain of original sin," to use the words of the dogma's definition. What baptism does for each of us at some point in our lives, God did for her directly from the very beginning. Mariology shows us, in perfect form, the vocation of the Christian. By thus signifying, Mary the Mother of the Church helps to bring about what she signifies. Like the Church herself, she is a sacrament.

Like all other distinctively Catholic doctrines, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (DIM) is widely misunderstood, largely because of that "stain" idea and its history. Before I move on to the dogma's practical import, I want to clear up what I see as the major misunderstanding.

The Council of Trent defined:

If anyone says that the transgression of Adam injured him alone and not his posterity, and that the holiness and justice which he received from God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has transfused only death and the pains of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul: let him be anathema. For he contradicts the Apostle who says: "By one man sin entered into the world and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned" (Romans 5:12).

St. Augustine interpreted that passage from Romans as implying that the "sin" which the first man introduced into the world involves the personal guilt of all who are descended from him. That interpretation has been very influential in Western theology. Yet gradually and inexorably, the Catholic Church has repudiated it. Thus CCC §405:

Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin—an inclination to evil that is called "concupiscence".

Therefore, original sin is distinct from the first sin as its consequence on the one hand, and from concupiscence on the other hand, which is one of its chief consequences. It is a state of alienation from God that we all inherit from our first parents. Mary's preservation from the "stain" of original sin consists primarily in her never having existed in that state. She was always kecharitomene, "full of grace," and grew ever fuller with every choice she made. We are called to do the same.

But how can we identify with Mary? Isn't she "too perfect"? She is and always will be the greatest of the "saints," God's holy ones. None of us will ever be as great as she in the Kingdom of God. But that is not primarily her doing. Sure, she cooperated with the Holy Spirit with her fiat and all her other choices, as we are expected to. But her special privileges were neither earned nor able to be earned. That should be a great comfort to us. Even as we stumble and struggle in our spiritual combat, we can know that God will fill up what is lacking in those who persevere—just as our own suffering can and should "fill what is lacking" (Colossians 1:24) in the divine suffering that made our salvation possible. By the Mother of God's intercession, that can be more than enough.

The filioque II: continued

I opened discussion of the filioque last Saturday with a rough proposal for harmonizing Eastern and Western approaches. Prof. Scott Carson was thereby moved to dedicate to me his own discussion of the issue, which is essentially an explication and defense of St. Anselm. Both essays are essential background for this post. So, let the unmotivated beware.

That said, I was intrigued Jonathan Prejean's comments on Scott's post. To avoid taxing my vast readership further, I sum up his point as follows.

The East's main objection to Anselm's approach is that it applies a notion of dialectical opposition to the sphere of "theology"—i.e., talk of God in himself—that is appropriate only when discussing the realm of "being", i.e., the created world of limited beings. Hence the traditional Byzantine insistence, evident especially in the influential sixth-century writer Pseudo-Dionysius, that God is "beyond being." But in the Western tradition, God is beyond being only in the sense that he is not one being among others, as if he fell under the ordinary categories of being. Being in that latter sense is what the scholastics called ens commune. God clearly is not "a" being like that. But God is not beyond being because God is Being Itself, ipsum esse subsistens, from whom all beings are derived. Ens commune is being by participation; Being Itself is not. So the question is whether that fact permits an Anselm to reason as he does.

Obviously I believe the answer is yes, and in fact I accept Anselm's argument. But I truly wonder whether arguments of that kind are helpful ecumenically. It's a "deucedly clever argument" indeed, but it raises broader issues that cannot be usefully discussed in the context of a particular doctrinal issue such as the filioque. So, I suggest that work continue along the lines I suggested in my first filioque post, which Photios Jones has been kind enough to do in the combox and at his own blog.