Honor among (Scottish) thieves

Dave Armstrong's post raised a question that I have been asking myself for some time: why are Scottish Protestants so ornery? The phenomenon, particularly manifested in anti-Catholicism, appears to generally apply not only to the Scottish Covenanters or Presbyterians, which one might take as the official version of Scottish Protestantism, but also to those of Scottish descent who adopt other forms of Protestantism (see, e.g., Southern anti-Catholicism among Scotch-Irish converts to Baptist or Methodist denominations). It's clearly not ALL Scots or Scots-Irish, but the generalization is not a bad one.

Being three quarters Cajun and growing up in the southern half of Louisiana, Scottish culture is pretty much an enigma. The name "Cajun" comes from the French North American settlement called Acadie, whose inhabitants called themselves Acadiens, shortened to 'cadiens and anglicized to Cajuns. That settlement was in turn colonized by England, who named it New Scotland, Nova Scotia. As far as I know, the Cajuns got along with the Scottish settlers relatively well, as we generally do with people who aren't English colonial governors, and we get along with the Scotch-Irish fairly well even in the modern South. But one still does find anti-Catholicism in any Southern state, including the Scotch-Irish strain thereof, so I have seen it even though I have never understood it.

But I was a little curious as to how Dave, a Scot himself, had none of this anti-Catholic hostility even in his Protestant family. Unlike the folks I describe above, Dave is genial in disagreement, although lacking none of the Scottish strength of opinion. Turns out Dave's clan falls in a certain group of rogues known as Border Reivers, the Scottish equivalent of cattle rustlers and horse thieves, also known as the "riding clans" for their proficiency in horsemanship (an essential characteristic for remaining alive in their line of "work"). The website above provides the following summary:

The Border Reivers were a group of Anglo-Scottish families that conducted raids against towns, farms and even fortresses during some of the most turbulent years in British history. The region between Scotland and England, which includes The Borders, Dumfries and Galloway on the Scottish side, and Cumbria and Northumbria in England, were wartorn and unsettled for more than three hundred years. From the reign of Robert The Bruce to the ascension of James I to the throne of England, Scottish and English armies led punitive expeditions against one another, ravaging the countryside.

These were also years of great treachery, during which many families, noble and common alike, switched allegiances as it suited them. Those families that resided along either side of the border did not know whom to trust, and took the law into their own hands to survive. Alliances developed, like the bond between the Elliotts and the Armstrongs - but so did feuds, such as those between the Kerrs and the Scotts, the Maxwells and the Johnstones, and the Fenwicks and the Elliotts. These families sallied forth against one another, stealing cattle and sheep, burning homesteads, and avenging grievances with utmost violence.

The Border Reivers became so inured to the continual strife in their lives that, when they baptized their sons, they left the right hand unblessed, so that it might wield a sword. That was when they baptized their sons at all. The Border Reivers were not known for their piety. It was said that they would rob Jesus himself if he rode among them. A tale is often told of how a man visiting The Borders asked why there were no churches in the town, to which his interlocutor replied, "Nae, we're all Elliotts 'n' Armstrongs here." Nor were the churchmen any fonder of the reivers. The Archbishop of Glasgow publicly cursed them with a resounding ferocity that still has the power to chill our souls.

Riding their shaggy ponies of Norse extraction, dressed in an assortment of helmets and homemade armor, the Elliotts and their counterparts brought sword and musket to bear against their enemies with neither rest nor mercy. Even when England and Scotland were officially at peace, the raids continued.
...
The era of the Border Reivers ended abruptly when Elizabeth I died and James I was crowned King of England. The Elliotts had often served as mercenaries to Elizabeth, and had harried James's mother, Mary Queen of Scots, on her behalf. Consequently, they feared and resented the Stuart king. In defiance of the new regime, a large party of Elliotts, Armstrongs and Grahams rode into Cumbria, and stole 3,000 sheep. This last hurrah of mayhem took place in 1603, and has been remembered ever since as "Ill Week". Later, more than a hundred of the perpetrators were apprehended, and many were hanged. Many others fled with their families to the Ulster Plantation of Northern Ireland, where they served as a buffer between the Gaelic Irish and their English overlords. The Border Reivers thereafter became the core of that fiercely self-reliant people known to history as the Scotch-Irish.

So it would appear that while the border clans were just as stubborn and contentious as any other group, and probably even more so (the Border had its own law a great deal like that of the American Old West), they also weren't culturally the type of folks to get into a fight on a matter of religious principle. I expect that this brand of cultural pragmatism is reflected in the less anti-Catholic Scottish culture.

Despite having reached the conclusion, I haven't yet reached the punch line. I mentioned above that I was three quarters Cajun, but unsurprisingly for a Southerner, the other quarter is Scotch-Irish. And what is my grandmother's surname, the one that was given to me as my middle name and the one that I gave to my son as his middle name? If you've been paying attention, the name won't come as any surprise; it names the same clan that was the faithful ally of Clan Armstrong: Elliott. Talk about Providence! An Armstrong and an Elliott just happen to meet each other in an entirely different kind of "sheep stealing!" And it also explains why a certain member of Clan Buchanan might be nervous...LOL!

UPDATE -- Turns out the Elliott branch isn't the Scotch-Irish part of Grandma's family. The Elliotts were from England, which would make them "Scotch-English," I suppose. That's assuming they aren't English Elliotts of non-Scottish extraction. But since I bear a Breton name myself, I'll throw in my lot with the Celtic country over the Angles and the Saxons!

Raymond's earlier questions

Raymond Spiotta had emailed me with some questions some time ago, and I kept putting off answering them, but I should really do that now.

First, (this is rather mundane, I'm sorry) - how might one access the archiveson your blog? I asked you a question about Created-vs.-Uncreated Grace, and amlooking to review what you wrote for the purposes of replying to anotherchallenge from my Orthodox priest-friend (who seems to think that the CC teachesthat Grace is created and that the EE distinction is heretical).

No, this is an issue that I've been struggling with for some time. I killed the time archives because I was irritated with keeping around relics of discussions that were more bad than good as well as random thoughts that I didn't think would be of any lasting use. I'd like to do a more subject matter oriented index, but I haven't done it yet. There are only about 200 entries, so I don't think it would be hard, but it takes time, and my head is barely above water in terms of keeping up with my reading and writing on current matters while I am thinking about them.

There is one bit of good news: my anti-library has now reached an acceptable size. This means that I have read almost all of the books that (1) I am going to actually be able to read given by commitments as husband and father while being more or less a pure autodidact and (2) I have strong reason to have a major influence on my thinking. As Michael Sullivan observed (although I can't find the entry in the Mondaology archives), you can always read more. The goal is to at least be able to map my own position onto scholarly argumentation, revising it somewhat as I learn more but retaining an articulable, good faith basis for the positions that I take. There are some major issues on which I am still working (particularly on Aristotelian epistemology, Thomistic infinity, and Scotistic metaphysics), but the good thing is that these are matters that are really intramural questions between Catholics. In terms of intellectual defensibility of Catholicism, I believe that I know enough to know with reliable certainty that its defensibility is undeniable. Catholicism might not be compelling, but almost nothing is. The point is that no one can produce any directly contrary facts or necessary premises, and that suffices for me. So that's a long way of saying that I think I will have more time to address that issue in the near future. :-)

Secondly, is it true to say that man's ratio has not been damaged by OriginalSin? I know this is a very open-ended question, and would just appreciate anybrief thoughts you'd like to express. (What St. Thomas teaches about this issomething my priest-friend considers to be grave in its alleged mistakenness.)

Remember that list I gave of major issues that need to be resolved? Aristotelian epistemology is the real question here, and someone looking at it from the perspective of Platonist epistemology is going to find this grievously mistaken. From that perspective, the ratio MUST be affected by the division of the powers. And St. Thomas would not deny this, but what he means is that the intellect does not cease to receive forms correctly and actually unite the knower with the known. In St. Thomas's view, people know the truth (their intellect works), but they deny what they know, and this is the misuse of their faculties. In the Eastern view, reason deals with dialectic and opposition between powers (the law of non-contradiction), which God transcends, so the notion of natural theology is impossible. The Aristotelian view of knowledge in terms of potency, act, and union between knower and known is so drastically different that it is hard even to articulate what the other view is saying.

Thirdly, I remember reading on Pontifications you asserting that the presence ofthe relic of Ss. Peter & Paul in Rome are a testimony to the perpetual fidelityof that city to the Faith. Do you think you could explain this further, andprovide some patristic support for his idea.

The martyr tradition was extremely strong in both East and West, and it wasn't so much the relics themselves that were of importance except for the testimony that they gave to the death of the two greatest martyrs in Christian history, representing the entire world (Gentiles and Jews). For patristic support, see Pope St. Leo the Great, Sermon 82.

Question from email on Scott Hahn and original sin

Someone emailed me with a question about Scott Hahn's claim that original sin in some sense was Adam's failure to protect the Garden of Eden, possibly at the cost of his life. I am going from memory here, but if I recall correctly, he said that Satan was implicitly threatening Adam with death and that Adam effectively failed to fight back. I believe that is correct if rightly understood, and my response to the questioner follows in the hopes that it might be useful to others as well.

The idea of Adam having fallen for fear of death is not entirely off the wall. If one views God's command as an implicit promise of eternal life if Adam does NOT eat the fruit, then Satan's contradiction is both a temptation and a threat. The statement "you will surely not die" is a repudiation of God's promise and a promise that Satan will protect Adam's physical life. But like God's promise, it also contains its opposite. Satan is saying "if you eat the fruit, I will protect you, but if you don't, I make no promise of protection." Naturally, the implicit threat is a lie, and Satan knows it is a lie, but it is a choice of who Adam will trust with his life. If Adam trusts God, then he should have no fear that Satan will not protect his lfe, because he should know that God will. But if he does not trust God, then his value of his own created life will cause him to ally with Satan for his own self-protection.

The temptation is Adam's own self-interest, but it also covets God's knowledge because Adam does not want to trust God's ultimate providence. Despite having been given supervision over all of creation, Adam wants more. He wants to have ultimate control over his own life as well, just as Lucifer himself did. Thus, Lucifer is tempting Adam with the same temptation he himself had: to be like the most high (Isa. 14:12-14). The temptation is a false hope, Adam's hope to be like the most high, to own his own life. Adam's act forfeited God's promise of protection, effectively taking responsibility for his own life. Even worse, because he then had knowledge of good and evil, he knew what he had done and was ashamed, but it was too late. He had already put his lot in with Satan against God, setting his will in unnatural opposition to God's predestination of his nature, which is what produces death in patristic theology just as a natural consequence.

I hope that helps to make sense of what I think Hahn is saying. The point wasn't so much that Adam needed to be brave, in the sense of natural boldness as a man might have against a predator, and quailed in the face of danger. The point was that he should have trusted God like Abraham did. And praise God! Jesus of Nazareth did this (Luke 22:42) where Adam would not.

Plug for a Catholic author

I want to commend Matthew Lickona's excellent book Swimming with Scapulars. I just got done reading it, and it is the sort of book that makes you glad both that guys like Matt are out there and that they are capable of expressing themselves in well-crafted prose. Seriously, we need more of his work, and I hope other talented Catholic writers will put their stories to paper like Matt did. Also, read Matt's blog for a sometimes serious but often funny (in that "you've got to either laugh or cry" way) account of being a Catholic pilgrim in a world that Satan is doing his best to claim.

I've added Matt to my blogroll along with A.G. (an Aggie scientist from New Orleans) and a couple of other Catholic blogs that I find interesting. Check 'em out!

UPDATE -- I just realized that I was grossly negligent in failing to add Lee Faber and Michael Sullivan to the blogroll. Mea culpa!

Open letter to Mike Liccione

I drafted the following as an email to Mike to thank him for his perceptive comment on the thread below, but I thought that others might benefit as well. The following is my missive:

I think I have completely got my head around your use of the spirituque now. It appears that the spirituque actually distinguishes the sense in which the filioque relationship is symmetrical from the sense in which it isn't (i.e., solely referring to the distinction between the persons). Filioque is thereby not intended (in the sense of origin) to convey the least sense of asymmetry in the modes of origin, and that is the work that the spirituque does. The filioque in the "from/not from" sense merely says that the poles of each relation are distinct, and it is not intended to say anything at all beyond that. But if it were mistakenly interpreted to imply that the modes of origin are themselves derivative, as in a subordinationist sense, then the spirituque would head off this misunderstanding. It effectively prevents anyone from thinking that the mere fact of relations connotes more, so that there is a sort of derivative divinity implied in "God from God."

I didn't initially see the point, but after Sceptre's questions, I realized that Patriarch Gregory's view was implicitly taking "origin" equivocally as between persons and divinity. In other words, he considered being the "source" of hypostatic existence and the "source" of ousia to be the same process (origin), just at different levels (personal existence, divine activity). But the whole point of the filoque is that nothing whatsoever is implied about the relations of origin other than the mere fact that there are such relations. Yet it appears that the monarchy of the Father at the theological level is understood to say more in the East than it is in the West, since in the West, it merely affirms that there is one and only one "from/from" term (the Father) without any additional connotations. Thus, you and Weinandy have introduced the spirituque to reinforce that the filioque in the West has none of the connotations of the type of relation that it might carry in the East.

The reason this was a light coming on for me is that the ordinary understanding is that the Latin view is the one that confuses personal origin and energetic procession, because Latin only has one word (processio) for what the Greek describes with two. But in terms of concepts, the Latin view is actually more sophisticated, because the Latin makes distinctions in the sense from (ex) is used that the Greek does not make with ek (as in ekporeusis). Thus, the Latin use of the filioque is not confused with connotations of "ek" that make its analogical use inappropriate (which is why the Greeks refrain from using a theological filioque, making it purely economic). It opens up a conceptual distinction that allows both theological and economic uses of the filioque, which the Greek view cannot allow on account of having a more limited notion of origin/aitia.

It really sunk in for me when I was re-reading sections of the Prima Pars for my discussion with Mark Thomas Lickona. The analysis of "ex" in "creatio ex nihilo" (Q.45, a.1, Obj. 3 and RO 3) drove home the conceptual versatility that St. Thomas has with the idea of "from-ness.":

Further, the preposition "from" [ex] imports relation of some cause, and especially of the material cause; as when we say that a statue is made from brass. But "nothing" cannot be the matter of being, nor in any way its cause. Therefore to create is not to make something from nothing.
...
When anything is said to be made from nothing, this preposition "from" [ex] does not signify the material cause, but only order; as when we say, "from morning comes midday"--i.e. after morning is midday. But we must understand that this preposition "from" [ex] can comprise the negation implied when I say the word "nothing," or can be included in it. If taken in the first sense, then we affirm the order by stating the relation between what is now and its previous non-existence. But if the negation includes the preposition, then the order is denied, and the sense is, "It is made from nothing--i.e. it is not made from anything"--as if we were to say, "He speaks of nothing," because he does not speak of anything. And this is verified in both ways, when it is said, that anything is made from nothing. But in the first way this preposition "from" [ex] implies order, as has been said in this reply. In the second sense, it imports the material cause, which is denied.

I realized that if one were to strip "from-ness" of ALL its causal connotations, as Thomas did in Q.45 with the association with material cause and Q.44, a.1, RO3 with efficient cause in mathematics, then one would simply arrive at Anselm's "from." So Brandon is wrong in thinking that this is a unmotivated deviation from the Fathers. Rather, it makes explicit the concept that the Fathers were implicitly invoking by refusing to affirm the filioque in terms of hypostatic origin, as Patriarch Gregory pointed out in his Tomus. It helps to make plain the *reasons* that the Fathers did what they did rather than blindly accepting the dogma. I think this could be of real utility in ecumenical discussions.

One from the comments

Thanks to Sceptre of Orthodoxy for the kind comment for my cousin Julie.

He asks the question:
Jonathan, if I may ask, what is your take on the theological contribution of Patriarch Gregory II of Cyprus to the question of the Filioque? Do you detect a Patristic precedent for his formulation of the Spirit's eternal "shining forth" through the Son? Also, according to Patr. Gregory, could there be any energetic manifestion of the Son through the Spirit? If not, why? What, indeed, does energetic 'procession,' as hypostatically specified, *mean*, if according to Palamas the Energies are common to all the Trinitarian Hypostases?

I do think there is patristic precedent for what he says, and I do think that it is well grounded in the distinction between nature and will as formulated in Byzantine doctrine. In response to your last question, it seems to indicate simply that even the common actions are tri-personal, that they bear a personal stamp even though the energies are not themselves the hypostaseis. I do not think that the Byzantine description is exhaustive or exclusive of other explanations, and that is where I believe Gregory oversteps his bounds.

Regarding the Son's manifestation through the Spirit, the spirituque if you will, I confess to being perplexed by its eternal implications. It seems that at the economic level, there must be this sort of perichoresis. As I understand the Western view of the eternal hypostatic processions, however, it is necessary to pick one or the other. As St. Thomas says, 'Now there cannot be in God any relations opposed to each other, except relations of origin, as proved above (28, 44). And opposite relations of origin are to be understood as of a "principle," and of what is "from the principle." Therefore we must conclude that it is necessary to say that either the Son is from the Holy Ghost; which no one says; or that the Holy Ghost is from the Son, as we confess.' I take this to mean that for the purpose the relations of origin serve in the explication of the immanent Trinity, one cannot simply appropriate the economic activity without qualification, which would tend to confuse the persons and render them indistinguishable.

Even more perplexing to me, though, are the various accounts that have been given of the relationship, and the strange bedfellows they engender. Michael Liccione and Fr. Thomas Weinandy take the view that the spirituque is a necessary logical consequence of the filioque, however interpreted. Dr. Liccione is clearly a Thomist, so I take them nonetheless to be saying that the filioque has a sense other than the one St. Thomas describes above. In other words, even in affirming the use of "from/not from" as a distinction, the actual modes are still interrelated, and perhaps this is a way of bridging between the level of hypostasis and activity. Hieromonk Alexander Golitzin, an Orthodox priest, suggests the same thing, being that the economic activity of the Son through the Spirit is recognized in the epiklesis of the Eucharist and the Incarnation itself, and he approvingly cites Leonardo Boff's use of the spirituque.

So far, so good. But there is also Neil Ormerod, who approaches the matter from a Lonerganian perspective and who criticizes Weinandy's view as necessarily undermining the conceptual framework of the Trinity, particularly the psychological analogy at the heart of Western Triadology. He criticizes the Cappadocian view among others as being inadequate, but equally rejects the criticism of LaCugna and others who reject the East on Rahnerian grounds. But then another member of Lonergan's school, Eugene Webb, argues that the psychological analogy is itself untenable as a Christian perspective (N.B., I think Ormerod gets the better of him by pointing out that the analogy fulfills its purpose even granting the existence of the error Webb points out, i.e., that Augustine takes self-knowledge as knowledge rather than judgment). Suffice it to say that I think there are two poles, the very ones pointed out by Patriarch Gregory, but it seems that there are numerous ways in both East and West to account for the explanation of how one connects the two. I think that the sorts of conflicts shown above, which are intramural as much as intermural, illustrate that there are a variety of ways of conceptualizing this matter and that we must take care that we are not confusing different views is whatever dialogue takes place. That is why I am hesistant to adopt Patriarch Gregory's concept wholesale and why I think that the fact that his view has been dogmatized in the East need not imply any necessary conflict between East and West.

Please pray for my cousin

My cousin Julie will be undergoing open heart surgery to repair a congenital defect in a heart valve. She is in good health otherwise, but the problem with the valve has recently worsened enough to require surgery.

Historian Harold O.J. Brown

Prof. Brown has been an ecumenically minded Protestant scholar throughout his entire career. While I have strongly disagreed with many of his conclusions about Catholicism and the Great Christian Tradition, he has manifested good will even in his disagreements. I was saddened to learn that his health is rapidly declining. I hope you will remember him in your prayers.

UPDATE -- Sadly, Prof. Brown has now passed on. I hope that God has revealed His face to Prof. Brown to live with Him in all eternity.

I just don't have the words

I'll give you the picture instead.

DUCKS WIN THE CUP!!! DUCKS WIN THE CUP!!!

This joyous occasion gave me cause to reflect that I am a ridiculously enthusiastic sports fan. Compared to the various theological and philosophical minutiae that I usually discuss, I would take a good sporting event any day and twice on Sundays. In fact, it occurred to me that I really ought to spend more time watching sports and less time "contributing" to theological discussions, because, in all honesty, I like sports a lot more.

Anyone who thinks that the discussions on theological matters are more important than sports needs to have his head examined. More people watch sports; more people talk about sports; more people care about sports. And believe it or not, I think that is a good thing, because cheering on athletic competition is really about bringing people together in a concrete way. It ain't natural to elevate the importance of your own bloviating to the point that it should take precedence over fellowship with actual human beings, and sports fandom is about fellowship. This whole blogging/theology bit is a mental exercise that I do, because my brain is of the sort that requires mental gymnastics to stay engaged, but it's not where my heart is.

Some people might be a bit surprised at this attitude, because they don't see me talking about sports a lot. But I view rooting for sports teams a lot like participating in my parish life; it's something that I prefer to do rather than talk about. People who look down on sports are often looking down on their fellow human beings. I'd say the same thing about the liturgical whining about one's parish; the point of a parish is not to be able to separate yourself from fellowship with other human beings you consider below yourself.

So now that I have apologized for being a sports fan, I will point out that as a sports fan, this win has been exceptionally sweet for me. This is the first time I've actually had my home team win it all. Obviously, if the Aggies ever actually won a national championship in anything, that would be the biggest day ever, but they haven't managed it since I started school. I have experienced the exact opposite, i.e., that hideous burnt orange monstrosity celebrating a championship, which only makes me even more sick about that lapse. But barring a successful College World Series run, it's not happening this season. So my only hope has been professional sports.

Unfortunately, I've been something of a sports vagabond my entire life, because I've never really identified with anywhere that I lived. When I was a kid, my primary focus in life was to get the hell out of Louisiana and to somewhere new, so I wasn't going to root for the home teams (yeah, I was immature). I didn't really care for LSU much, preferring the superstar QBs like Eric Zeier and Heath Shuler to the pedestrian Tiger squads. I adopted the Minnesota Vikings as an unofficial team just to irritate Saints fans after the Vikes clobbered the Saints 44-10 in the playoffs. Houston was the closest city with multiple pro sports teams, but I never had any love for the Oilers ("Luv ya Blue!" was just sickening) or the Rockets (who ran afoul of Dad's favorite basketball team, the Boston Celtics, in the finals). I was a lukewarm baseball fan, and the Disastros could never get over the hump anyway. Mostly, I just followed my dad's lead with the teams from his childhood: Astros/Colt .45s, Colts, Celtics, and anybody playing the Cowboys or Notre Dame. Hockey was a non-factor in the South at that time. When it finally started creeping onto TV, I rooted for the Red Wings as an homage to Gordie Howe, who had played for the Houston Aeros.

In college, I had college sports to command my attention, but when I got to Austin for grad school, there was no damn way I was going to root for anybody in that city. But I had a good friend from Michigan, so we formed a little group of Red Wings fans. Evidently, it was good luck for the team, because the Wings broke a forty-plus year drought to win the Stanley Cup both seasons I was in graduate school. That was definitely a good couple of years, but I moved on to Massachusetts, where I rapidly learned to hate anything associated with Boston, including the Celtics. In fact, my revulsion for Boston was so profound that I started rooting for the Yankees with my friend Jordan simply because it was the most anti-Boston I could think to do. As with the impromptu Red Wings group, rooting for the Yankees paid off quick, as Jordan and I were soon to be in Yankee Stadium for Roger Clemens' game 4 sweep of the World Series over the Atlanta Braves. Evidently, I was extremely good luck when I jumped on someone else's bandwagon, but it wasn't ever really MY team. I moved to Dallas, and even though I didn't wish ill on the team there, I never had much love for them either (my relatives were Houston folk, and Houston and Dallas don't really get along). When my wife's Bayou Bengals won a football title to go along with their baseball titles, I was happy, but yet again, it wasn't my team.

But then I move to Orange County, and I finally had a place where I was attached. I fell in love with O.C. and immediately adopted the Angels and the no-longer-Mighty Ducks as my own. I knew I was in it for good when the Yankees came to town, and I had far more affection for the hometown red than the dark blue. I had doubts about whether it would hold up in a conflict with the Astros, but that particular conflict never came. And when I found myself as a former Celtics fan listening to Laker broadcasts and hoping the Lakers won, I knew I had been converted entirely. Now I'm taking my kids to Chavez Ravine, and they've learned to say "Let's Go Dodgers!" It's over.

I thought I was going to experience some conflict when the Ducks clashed with the Red Wings, but it was really no contest. It didn't take a minute from the puck being dropped to realize that I would have been sick if one got by Giguere. And this would have been an easy team to love even if I weren't now a Ducks homer; it's just even better now that I am. You've got J.-S. Giguere, the best goalie in the playoffs, who thought it more important to spend time with his new son Maxime, who was born with a deformed eye and who was in danger of losing his vision entirely. It wasn't until after his son was out of danger that he replaced Ilya Bryzgalov (who did yeoman's work in relief) back in the crease. You've got Teemu Selanne, whose number will definitely be in the rafters when he retires, finally winning the prize after years of trying. You've got Scott Niedermayer, the captain and Conn Smythe trophy winner, who came over to win one with his brother Rob and did just that. There are guys like Sammy Pahlsson, Brad May, and Travis Moen who just come to work. There are kids like Andy McDonald and Ryan Getzlaf. It's just a good bunch of guys with a great team spirit.

So I've finally got it: MY team finally won. And I've got to say that it is just as good as I thought it would be. You people who have never been there (particularly those of you in Phoenix) have no idea what you're missing.

One good turn deserves another

Perry Robinson has answered my answer to the question of why God doesn't just make everyone so good that they don't sin. I said before that I consider the question good, but I don't consider the rebuttal to the answer dialectically successful, which is why I wouldn't be persuaded by the argument even if it were raised not by Perry but by the atheologians he references. I don't consider myself a Thomist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express before, so I will forge ahead in defense of the Angelic Doctor.

The question was:
I want to know, qua explanation, if the Catholic model can explain why God has Mary immaculately conceived and free from inherited albeit analogical guilt, why not just skip all of the evil in the world and do this for everyone? Or perhaps more strongly, why not create everyone in a state of confirmed grace?

The question I found interesting was the second one; I'm not sure that the first one is even relevant, since Mary's Immaculate Conception did not prevent her from sinning. But if God can, through grace, infallibly prevent everyone from sinning, then why not?

Perry sets out his position as follows:
I agree with Jonathan that there is a purpose for the possibility of evil, but that is not the same thing as evil having a purpose. The purpose of the former is the possibility of virtue for created agents. A necessary condition for the acquisition of virtue is libertarian freedom, with a Kanian type freedom. That of itself does not imply that evil has a purpose. I’d argue then that the Libertarian then has a principled reason why God could not create persons already confirmed in grace, specifically that it would violate the necessary conditions for personhood. (Moreover, there is a signfiicant difference between God redirecting the outcome of evil intentions after the fact, logically speaking, and evil being even consequently necessary for the occurance of some further good. I can argue for the former without the latter and this seems to be the division I want to make and Jonathan doesn’t.)

The problem for me is that Perry hasn't explained why evil actually exists; he has only explained logical conditions for the possibility of evil and virtue. If the libertarian argues that he has a principled reason why God could not create persons already confirmed in grace (i.e., so that they can acquire virtue), he has not thereby offered a reason for the actual existence of such persons, particularly in light of even the possibility of actually existing evil. Moreover, with respect to actual existence, the very concept of redirecting intentions "after the fact" means that the evil in question necessarily exists per accidens. That means evil is an accidental necessity to the existence even of subsequent virtuous persons. Of course, one could deny necessity per accidens, but that would simply produce more problems of evil (e.g., why didn't God make people vanish from existence immediately upon commission of evil?), not to mention seriously demotivating the discussion (e.g., well, I can't be sure I really know anything at all, because I might have sprung into existence with all of my memories in the last nanosecond, and I might cease to exist right about...). The Thomist account IMHO has the virtue of addressing what the actual condition of existents says, and inferring the logical possibilities from there.

On Jonathan’s view, it is much more difficult for me to see how this is an option, seeing that he denies the alternative possibilities condition (AP) on free will. If all that is required is voluntary action without AP’s constituting volition and/or freedom, then creating agents without the possibility of performing morally evil actions seems a genuine possibility. So, if one subscribes to compatibilist type freedom it seems that it was open to God to create a world where there was no possibility of evil and all and only good acts were open to “free” created agents. If that is so, then the existence of evil impugns God’s moral character or his existence. Either disjunct will place theism in a very bad position in terms of an apologetic response to atheism. Either God is not morally perfect and in fact far less so, or God doesn’t exist at all. Since evil exists God either lacks the motivation to preclude it or he doesn’t exist. The assumed premise here is something along the lines of, a perfect moral agent will always eliminate evil when they are able to do so. I find that a very plausible assumption, but perhaps Jonathan doesn’t. I do because I believe in Heaven.

There's a fatal flaw in the argument: if we're talking about actual evil then there is no disjunct. The "very bad position" obtains regardless of why evil actually exists, so long as the assumed premise that a perfect moral agent will always eliminate even the possibility of evil when he is able to do so holds (I say the possibility of evil because Perry's argument is that, for the compatibilist, since God could have created a world with no possibility of evil, He should have). For obviously, even if the existence of free-willed beings only entails the possibility of evil, the simple expedient of making none of them would certainly eliminate evil, and that is clearly within God's ability to do. That has nothing to do with whether you're predestinarian, libertarian, or contrarian; it's a clear logical argument:

1. A perfect moral agent will always eliminate the possibility of evil when he is able to do so (Premise).
2. God is a perfect moral agent (Premise).
3. Therefore, God will always eliminate the possibility of evil when he is able to do so.
4. God would have been able to eliminate the possibility of evil by creating no free agents (Premise).
5. But evil exists (viz., God did not eliminate evil when he could have per 4).
6. 5 contradicts 3.

Consequently, I don't think that even Perry accepts (3) when it comes down to it, regardless of his belief in Heaven, because he surely wouldn't deny (4). And obviously, (4) is no evil; it is not an evil to anyone or anything not to be created. In addition, the fact that there won't be any evil in Heaven does nothing to cure the per accidens necessity of evil, so it doesn't provide any better explanation for the actual existence of evil in view of what I said above either. Frankly, this wasn't Perry's best work, and I was a bit surprised to see people as enthusiastic over the "collateral to another good" argument as they were. I get the impression that this argument was a kind of lifeline against atheism, as if people were on the verge of denying God altogether when (lo and behold!) in came FREE WILL. Too much of Calvin's gloss on Thomas and not enough Thomas, at least if my experience was any indication!

It's not that I don't believe in the alternative possibilities (AP) account of free will BTW. I simply differ from Perry on what metaphysical conditions count as AP. From my perspective, created being requires composition of act and (passive) potency, and this combination of act and potency renders it literally impossible for any created being to have a "God's eye view" on what is actually possible. We can imagine how things in the real world might vary with quite fanciful creativity, but what we are really affirming when we say "God might have done this" or "God might have done that" is God's utter independence from created being. The "Judas" and "Peter" in "God might have damned Peter and saved Judas" aren't the historically-existent individuals we all know, but conceptual placeholders for an affirmation of faith that nothing exists without God causing it to be so, in a manner entirely inscrutable to us. Likewise, we know that we had alternative possibilities not because of some certain knowledge about some other possible world we might have made to exist (because we could not possibly have "knowledge") but because we have had the actual experience of choosing.

Again, Thomism deals with the condition of actual existence, and one of the areas in which it is most rigorous is denying the pretense of knowledge where it isn't even conceptually possible (see, e.g., Thomas's answer to Anselm's "ontological" argument). Michael Liccione, whose sandal I am not even fit to fasten as I crawl the floor of the arena of Thomism, has explained this as accurately as I can imagine it being explained.

So I think if God could have done that kind of good to everyone, he should have done so. But I just don’t think God could have done so without eliminating the freedom and consequently personhood of every and any created person. Jonathan though does think that God could have prevented every moral evil, but for some reason he didn’t. Jonathan thinks that even though God could have prevented every moral evil, this would not necessarily have been doing humanity a great good.

Why? Jonathan appeals to the “interconnectedness between human beings.” In his following comments, I think he means to say something like the following. Humans are connected in such a way that giving grace or the prevention of evil in one circumstance isn’t such that God can give it equally to all in all circumstances without the loss human uniqueness.

That's a fair characterization of my position. It's difficult to imagine any sort of perfectly equivalent set of finite beings composed of act and potency in an absolutely inseparable relationship with every other such being ever created without thinking that they are all going to have to be uniquely situated, meaning that God must relate to each one individually. It's obvious that God could have done otherwise; He could have created no one; He could have placed everyone in a perpetual state of "pure nature" a la Limbo; He could have done all sorts of things that are entirely unknowable to us. But those are evidently not the world in which we live, and it is clear that God did none of these things. He allowed evil to be part of the per accidens existence, and while we can't imagine any idea why, we do know that He has dealt with different people differently.

I simply balk at this answer. Here are some of my reasons for balking. First, given at least a Thomistic picture of God, and grace as divine life, the grace differs not in God but in the recipient. So in fact the same thing is on his own view is given to each and every person, or so it seems to me.

And part of what differs in the recipient is the person's own experience. That's kind of the point; even if the same thing were given, it wouldn't be received in the same way.

And it seems that the same confirming grace is given at least to lots of people, namely the angels and some humans in the eschaton without annihilating their personal uniqueness. For any two persons who receive divine grace to the same degree and hence experience the Beatific vision to the same degree, their uniqueness remains intact. I think it is plausible on Jonathan’s own principles that there are at least two such persons and so if any two (or more) of them can receive grace in the same way and to the same degree in the same circumstance without eliminating their personal uniqueness, then the interconnectedness of persons cannot be a reason for denying to God the possibility of creating everyone without the possibility of performing morally evil actions.

Unsurprisingly, I think it implausible, and actually impossible, that there are any two people who receive divine grace to the same degree if there are any differences among them. Given individual existence as combinations of act and potency, it seems that there absolutely must be. To have identical experiences of the Beatific vision would require that the individuals be identical as far as I can tell. And it would seem that prior to such difference, there would be no actual capacity to experience the beatific vision for any created hypostasis. That's why I mentioned that one might be kept in stasis in a state of "pure nature" as a hypothetical possibility (albeit an apparently pointless one) rather than the beatific vision. Actual grace always encounters someone in the context of life, real situations.

It is also important to notice what I take to be a confusion on Jonathan’s part. On the one hand he seems to agree that God could have created everyone in confirming grace, but on the other hand that God could not have done so. This seems to be the motivation in his appeal to human uniqueness. If the latter is true, then the former is not. In which case, Jonathan agrees in fact with me in principle that God could not have created everyone in comfirming grace. What we disagree about then is not if God could have created everyone in comfirming grace but if God created the Theotokos with it and the reasons why God could not have created everyone with it.

Certainly, in principle, God could have created everyone in a state of grace and pure nature. Of course, "everyone" in that account would not be the same set of people that actually exist, and in the case of people who actually exist, He did not. I see no evidence that it would be possible for the actually existing people to have all been created in a state of grace, and that is my point. It is theoretically possible for some collection of people to have been so created, and it is equally certain that those people would be different than the actually-existent people. Actual individuals aren't fungible; they can't be substituted one for the other. That is the reason the Theotokos received what she did; she was the Theotokos, and no one else is. Why God created the universe He did, the people He did, is a mystery thoroughly beyond even the possibility of human comprehension.

Further, there is an ambiguity in Jonathan’s answer. When he says, “the interconnectedness between human beings isn’t such that what grace was given to one or another person in some particular situation could be equally given to all in all situations without substantially disrupting the entire arrangement and diluting the context in which people have experiences that make them unique” does he mean that the circumstances make the experiences unique or does he mean that the circumstances make the persons unique? I am not sure on his own view of the Beatific Vision why he would think that either was the case. Even if the circumstances or experiences were homogenous in terms of being all and only good, how would that preclude a genuine difference in the degree of reception?

I mean both. It seems relatively obvious to me that all finite combinations of act and potency are unique by their existence qua act and potency, so that the instant any individual actually does anything, he is irreducibly distinguished from every other individual in his experience. That is WHY there are differences in the beatific vision, because there are differences between individuals. That is also why the beatific vision can be experienced both with and without the body.

Certainly Jonathan thinks that there is a genuine difference in reception in the Beatific Vision, even though for every agent who has it, it is all and only good qua vision. If that is the case there, why not make it the case for everyone from the get-go?

Because it wouldn't be the same, on account of the people experiencing it not being the same. If the question is why God prefers these individuals in the beatific vision, those others in perdition, and those others he might have made never existing, good luck figuring that out.

Moreover, appealing to the special vocation of the Theotokos I think does no work for Jonathan. It is simply not the case that the Theotokos can’t have her special vocation without evil in the world. This thesis is entailed by the thesis that the Incarnation would have taken place even without sin. If everyone had been morally perfect and bereft of alternative possibilities with respect to moral evil, and the Incarnation still occurred, the Theotokos still would have had her special vocation. If God can create someone confirmed in grace, then it seems plausible that God can do both, namely give in some measure a confirmation the grace he gave to the Theotokos, on Catholic principles, to all and the Theotokos possess a special vocation.

There's the appeal to "would have" for no good reason. I suppose (or could imagine) that there could have been a Theotokos in some other world with her own special vocation, but that world doesn't exist, and it doesn't prove anything about the one in which we live anyway. Again, we can speculate all day about what God might have done, but we have no real idea of what was possible, and what we do know is that the actual Theotokos was born into a world with evil. If everyone had been morally perfect and bereft of alternative possibilities, then there would be a different set of people. It is thoroughly implausible that God could have done both in this world, because in this world, it obviously isn't true.

Again, the confirmation in grace, given to all in the eschaton doesn’t “wash out” all of the differences between persons. Grace does not obliterate nature by anyone’s reading, save Calvinists and Jansenits and grace isn’t opposed to nature or more specifically created hypostases. The only way I see that it could, would be if person and nature were confused (or if God were absolutely simple) so that we’d need some other principle of individuation, namely evil or a defect, to discern persons.


But to take evil as a principle of individuation places us right back at the Platonic hierarchy where the Good is on top and evil its necessary opposite on the bottom. Good is therefore not autonomous with respect to explanatory power and this signals an implicit dualism.

No defect, just potency and finitude. Good is autonomous with respect to explanatory capacity; we just lack the capacity to know how it is, because it is not within our capacity to have God's own knowledge. We affirm things about God by faith despite our ignorance. It doesn't signal dualism to say that one has no explanation for what it is beyond one's capacity to know.

And I think it is just false that what grounds our deeper experience of God is some vague “interconnectedness” but rather the Incarnation itself. Even though Christ recapitulates all of creation in himself, he does not take on angelic nature, but human nature. Jonathan is looking to general principles when he should be looking to a single concrete case.

On the contrary, I seem to be looking at all of the concrete cases, while Perry is looking at only one and making generalities from there. I honestly think parity is being asserted between existent and non-existent individuals (i.e., nothing), and that's what I find intractable.

What differentiates us in part from the angels is not our rung on the hierarchy of being, but the Incarnation. In any case, it seems flat out false to say that if all receive the grace of confirmation, then there’d be no unique persons. Even on Thomistic principles following Aristotle, we can individuate modes or ways in which people all receive the same grace to preserve personal uniqueness. Ultimately, I don’t think such a move works, but it at least is a plausible way of staving off the conclusion that confirmation in grace implies the elimination of personal distinctions.

Given that you seem to accept as plausible what strikes me as enormously implausible given the Thomist understanding of how those modes are ways are individuated, I can't really speak to whether your opinion of the move working actually applies to my understanding. At any rate, I can't see why my particular version of individuation doesn't fall within the Thomist camp.

So, Jonathan I think is still wrong. Creating everyone confirmed in grace does not imply or entail that said persons would be denied the opportunity to “grow and to have their own experiences and to be their own people.” To think so implies that in order to “be their own people” that evil is necessary, which is false.

No, it is more like to be the people that they are. Creating everyone confirmed in grace does both imply and entail that they wouldn't be the same individuals.

Jonathan advocates some other theses that I am confused about. He writes that God not only tolerates evil acts but does so to give the wicked an opportunity to repent. I agree, but I do so on Libertarian principles. Jonathan is not a Libertarian since he denies the AP condition on free will. So I simply do not know what he means by “opportunity” if the wicked are theologically or metaphysically determined to make the choices that they do.

It simply means that they aren't determined in the exercise of their will; it is within their natural capacity of choice. There is no level of created knowledge that could determine the outcome of their choice, not even the person himself, so he is not being "determined." Within his order of existence, he is free. Ultimately, we affirm that God is the cause of the choice, but since we have no idea how this can be, it's not even particularly relevant for questions of AP. It's not as if we can be virtuous before God through our own natural efforts anyway, so the fact that out actions don't meet the requirements of virtue before God doesn't really trouble me.

Jonathan also writes that to give “sanctifying grace” to all would undermine the entire Christian life a la baptism and the Eucharist. Does he think that it did so with the Theotokos? When she was presumably present with John the Apostle and John administers the Eucharist to the faithful in Ephesus, does she take a pass? If she doesn’t then this implies either that she had a deficient Christian life, or none at all, or Jonathan’s thesis is false. (It’s false.) Moreover, why was Jesus baptized if sin is precluded? Certainly we have a concrete case then of someone being baptized even though there is nothing lacking in this person’s life. Presumably the archetype for the Christian life had the Christian life in full measure without defect as a basis for individuation. As an aside, baptism in its fullest form then seems to me to be an act on creation (water), rather than a washing away of corruption. Baptism regenerates because of Christ’s activity in His baptism rather than the baptism doing something to Christ. (this grounds Protestant confusion concerning it, which is assuaged, they think by making it the fullfillment of an empty legal reqirement.) So I don’t think that if everyone were created confirmed in grace it would necessarily preclude the sacraments.

Speaking for Jonathan, Jonathan's thesis isn't what it is being cast as being, since Jonathan didn't in fact write that giving sanctifying grace to all would undermine "the entire Christian life." I wrote that it would undermine the "entire form of Christian life," and I did mean that. The point isn't that people who have sanctifying grace don't need the Eucharist and baptism or won't participate in the Eucharist or baptism. But that is not the ordinary way in which people experience the Christian life, and the form of Christian life is characterized by most people coming to know Christ through the Church, which is a different experience. I am not saying that it is better or that it is worse, but that it is different, and the people who have experienced Christ that way would not otherwise. And I find it ironic that the exact action of Christ's self-sanctification that is the exemplar for the normativity of this sort of experience is getting cited in favor of the argument that it doesn't really matter how one receives grace.

Certainly Adam and Eve were married prior to the Fall. Granted that they did not on Catholic principles possess confirming grace, but they did possess “original righteousness” and they still partook of a sacrament. Presumably Adam was a priest of God as well. Besides, one wonders why Christians have often understood the Tree of Life in the Garden as bearing the Eucharist if moral perfection would render it useless to a deified person.

My argument certainly wasn't that removal of sin obviates the utility of baptism, and it appears that the degree of concern over the problem of evil is being projected over to me, since everything I say about individuation is somehow transmogrified in a statement about evil. I'm simply talking about how actual people ordinarily experience the Church, and how a uniform pattern of extraordinary deviations from this pattern would likely undermine the pattern. It really had nothing to do with protection from original sin at all, only the individual mechanism by which actual people had particular experiences. I could turn around now and say "What, baptism isn't good enough for you? Has to be Immaculate Conception as well?," but I hope that people realize that would be just as silly.

Jonathan also speaks of God’s “risk” in creating the kinds of agents and circumstance that he has in mind. If everything is determined and/or there are no alternative possibilities of created agents, I simply do not know what he means by “risk.”

The creation of actual, absolutely unique individuals as real combinations of act, potency, and matter. Nothing more, nothing less.

Lastly, Jonathan counsels us to be epistemically humble with regards to the reasons why God permits evil. I agree, but the issue here isn’t if Jonathan in fact meets the conditions on knowledge for the reasons why God permits evil. The issue is metaphysical and apologetical. Even if it were true that we should be epistemically humble and only hope for meager epistemological crumbs from the table of divine knowledge, it would still be the case that Jonathan and the Catholic (and Protestant) picture faces significant problems, and problems that I don’t think the Orthodox one does. Counseling epistemic humility doesn’t remove metaphysical difficulties and it certainly doesn’t silence, persuade atheists and skeptics, or silence the doubts of one’s own heart.

Well, I have to confess I think it would be silly to attempt to solve problems that I don't consider to be problems for the reason that someone else thinks they are problems. As a metaphysical issue, I have good metaphysical reasons to think that the problem is insoluble, not simply difficult but literally beyond the capacity of human reason entirely (as in trying to know the exact position and momentum of a particle simultaneously). There's no good waiting for meager epistemological crumbs, because they can't be had; even what we affirm by faith is nothing but a denial of our capacity for knowledge. If it's a problem, I will face it with equanimity, since I believe that everyone claiming to have a solution to the "problem" has done so by asserting the truth of a proposition that can't possibly be known or an explanation that doesn't really explain anything (e.g., appealing to the capacity for virtue without explaining why it is that God would want virtuous beings to exist if their existence entails the possibility of evil). I don't think there are any real metaphysical difficulties with Thomism, and I don't consider the persuasion of atheists or skeptics to be all that pressing a problem, given that they can deny any argument on a whim if they are determined. Certainly, in my experience with Thomism, there has never been an atheological argument that has any serious traction.

I think what it really turns on that last element you mentioned: "silenc[ing] the doubts of your own heart." Maybe if I felt even the slightest twinge of doubt, I might at least understand what the problem is. But given my existing commitments regarding science, history, and philosophy, I couldn't really move absent a knock-down argument, and I've not seen anything close to a knock-down argument. It would be weird for me to imagine having to convince myself to stay where I am, because it's the other way around for me: I find it hard to imagine how I could ever be convinced to do otherwise. I guess that's fides quaerens intellectum for you.

But I don’t think we need be that humble, at least apologetically speaking. I think rather what is appropriate here is Socratic humility. Socrates didn’t know what the truth was, but he knew falsehood when he saw it. Given the imago dei and the falsity of Calvinism and Jansenism, I think I can know a bad reason when I see it. I do not need to know what God’s reasons in fact are, I need only be able to properly identify what he reasons weren’t, namely bad reasons. I take answers of the kind of “God just loves some people more” given by Michael Liccone to be a bad reason.

The thing is, at least with respect to the problem of evil and this whole free will deal, I don't think there is a reason knowable by human intellect. I don't know how that turns out to be a bad reason. ISTM that you are taking "God just loves some people more" as having far more positive content than it actually does. That's not an explanation; it's just a description.

And given say Thomistic or Scotistic theological determinism, God could have created a world such that no one ever sinned even wiuthout confirming grace, thereby rendering Jonathan’s defense based on the Theotokos moot. On Scotistic and Thomistic grounds, the elect unto glory do not have confirming grace at conception and yet I see no reason why the elect could not have been theologically or metaphysically determined to always choose the right and why every created agent could not have been one of their number.

Sure. And those people wouldn't have been the same people in the actual world. Until you discard the blatantly false assumption that people are fungible, this whole "God could have created a world..." line is falling on deaf ears.

As to evil, I can’t see any significant difference between what Jonathan offers and what Plotinus does. Plotinus (and Augustine, Hegel, et al) argue that every past evil while evil in and of itself, not only contributes to the good of the whole but goodness if deficient without it. The silence between the notes makes the whole piece of music sound better. I simply balk at the suggestion that my three year old suffering and dying of Leukemia or the children at the Russian school in Beslan who suffered and died somehow makes the whole world better in the end. The Good doesn’t need evil to be the Good. If it did, it wouldn’t be the Good.

The Good doesn't need anything to be the Good. But all that evil that is necessary per accidens is necessary for the existence of all that follows, and in that sense, nothing that follows exists without it. It is part of the individual being that actual individual, and in that sense, it could not be what it was but for the evil. That's not a product of God's need (contra Plotinus), but of ours. We can't exist except as actual act/potency/matter composites, and part of that story is that we are inextricably part of a whole creation, inseparable from it. The fact that you even know about the children in Beslan means that evil is a necessary part of your existence; you aren't you without that happening. That's the cost, the risk, of actual individuality; we aren't in a position to deny that evils are a necessity for the actual individuals living today. And the problem of evil is why God saw fit to create actual individuals despite actual evils, which isn't solved by appeal to the possibility they might be virtuous.

Thoughts on Barth and the Word of God

Drew Johnson has offered some comments on Karl Barth over at Michael Liccione's blog that echo my own observations of how Barth's view of Scripture offers a serious challenge to the Protestant concept of Scriptural authority. Moreover, Johnson argues that it was probably only Barth's hostility to the idea of the analogia entis (which I will call absolute ontological distinction or AOD) that prevented him from following his doctrine of Scripture to its logical conclusion in relating Scripture to Tradition. I would instead say that Barth has simply pointed out a contradiction in the Protestant monergism, where Barth holds his convictions purely. If there is a contradiction (and I believe that there is), then it is in the denial of the analogia entis, which Barth actually holds more consistently than his Protestant confreres.

The real trouble in AOD is that it entails Nestorianism, be it in Christology, the doctrine of inspiration, or any other matter of theology. One you reject union in being, then you have to cobble together union in some other way, and the only real alternative is some sort of external causal domination of one entity by the other. Historically, that was Nestorian-type monotheletism (aka, monoenergism, one operation), which can be pushed even farther to monergism, the work of only one agent. Even though I have no great love for John Romanides, because I think he misapplies his conclusions to the West more generally, his article tracing the Antiochene origins of this belief in Theodore of Mopsuestia is frankly (*groan*) his best work. The connection between Nestorian ontological convictions and monergism seems too clear to even be debatable at this point.

What Barth observed is that if you really believe in AOD, there's no such thing as a medium, because a medium is necessarily not God. So as Drew rightly observes, Barth must push on to a metaphysics of absolute subject (accusing even Calvin of creating an Arian separation between Christ and the Father), and likewise, he must push ahead to an absolute concept of witness. In this, I think he is completely consistent. If there is an absolute separation between Creator and creature, and if the only union between them can be in the external causal determination of one by the other, then it follows that it must always be immediate, so that revelation must always be the direct causal act of God producing a response. If you really want to see irony, read this article (*), which recounts Donald Bloesch's criticism of Barth as "Nestorian," in turn provoking a criticism from the author that Bloesch is Arian/adoptionist. But the author himself makes this charge in the interest of defending a "truly asymmetrical, interactive, unitary God-world-human (historical) redemptive relatedness," which is nothing other than Nestorian-type monergism! If anything, it proves the point that Barth is simply the most consistent advocate of AOD.

Therefore, I would disagree with Drew that this could ever lead to T3. T3 requires a common ontological union with God, effectively making both Scripture and Tradition the same sort of synergistic operation. Barth's view is effectively even a more pure view than T1 or even T0; it is really S0, in that even the actual text of Scripture lacks authority. Again, given his ontological commitments, I think this is absolutely consistent; only God can speak with the authority of God.

Most Protestants try to escape this necessity by a softer argument from miracles (e.g., God establishes a natural order in some lawful fashion and then breaks this natural order, which shows direct divine causation, making miracles the sign of divine inspiration). The problem is that this isn't direct divine causation on the person, and that is the hole Barth spots. Any merely historical argument of this fashion won't suffice to actually create the causal connection between God and man; what makes the witness is the individually caused response to God Himself. Even if God can be bound by His own covenants, it is only in the sense of the promise to that particular person; for each person, only His personal promise is binding.

Despite my profound disagreement with Barth, I highly commend his work to Protestants, because he is by far the most consistent advocate of what Protestantism entails. Frankly, if all Protestants were Barthians, then we could have a REAL discussion about what separates Catholicism from Protestantism, because then everyone's respective metaphysical commitments would be clearly and consistently articulated. Imputed justification and sola scriptura are both really the same monergistic understanding of the creature/Creator separation, and we could then have an argument over which metaphysical description is true: divine/human monergism (subdivided into the Barthian Nestorian-type monotheletism or the Lutheran Monophysite-type monotheletism) or divine/human synergism (Eastern or Western). Forget the whole question of fathers and councils, to which Protestants don't really give authority even when they read them per Dr. Liccione's argument, and instead have a discussion of what metaphysical commitments regarding God are coherent. If we could have that discussion openly, apart from the historical baggage, THEN we might actually have a meaningful dialogue.

* UPDATE -- I forgot to include a warning about the abominable application on page 17 of Einstein to "the Nicene homoousion, reflecting unitary, interactive relatedness, identity-in-difference. And so too is such a stratified model reflective of the incarnate Word-inscripturated Word relationship." Clearly, this guy has not read David Bohm's Wholeness and Implicate Order and does not fathom the pantheistic implications of what he is saying! Again, sloppy metaphysical concepts lead to sloppy theological applications.

The lifeblood of Christianity

Before I get started, I have to ask for prayers for Madeleine McCann, the toddler abducted in Portugal. Every parent knows that brief flash of horror when you lose sight of your child in a crowd when you've turned away for a few seconds. I can't imagine the torture of losing them for good. Please pray also for this Orange County family, who lost their three children when a big rig hit their minivan while they were stopped in traffic on the freeway.

In view of these sorts of things happening lately and work consuming a lot of what is normally free time, I have been spending what moments I have left with the kids. I have a finely balanced system for timing my writing in between work and kids that is probably best described as "controlled avalanche," and this usually produces some things worth saying as ideas mulling around the subconscious gradually crystallize into some expressible form. Getting them down is an essential process, because otherwise, I will be juggling them mentally until I get something written down, and that becomes progressively more stressful as time goes on. But sometimes I get SO busy that there aren't even enough spaces in the schedule to fill in the snowmass with good quality powder. And rather than subjecting people to a river of slush, I prefer to spend time on responses to other people's ideas, which I can draft more quickly. The good thing about doing that is that such discussions have a habit of overflowing into new ideas for writing, as they have recently (see my comments on this thread over at Michael Liccione's blog). That means it's just about time to shake the slopes and see what comes down.

That idea of "overflowing" is itself part of the theme I'd like to establish. Just like the case of writing itself, creativity can't result from confined systems. There has to be an overflow from experience, and by "overflow" I mean the pressure that reality exerts on one's thinking to keep it active and responsive. That pressure is real, and the attempt to confine that pressure is ultimately futile. The only question is whether your conceptual outlook is sufficiently flexible to adapt to new experiences; otherwise, it will just break. I strongly believe that Christianity is the only mode of life capable of actually responding to reality in this way, not fleeing from contact with reality (which intellectually impressive systems like Hellenism, Hinduism, and Buddhism often do) nor trying to hold together the pieces of a machine that is obviously broken. The entire history of Christianity, East and West, testifies to a tenacious grip on reality where other conceptual frameworks have lost it. Christianity clings to reality even at its most awful, which makes it the only true consolation in the worst of circumstances (and it is hard to imagine worse than the ones with which I introduced this post).

The most startling testimony to how important confrontation with reality is to Christianity is the fact that Christianity itself breaks under the pressure of reality when it loses this adaptability, as one can see in Evangelicalism (see also my comments here) and in the anti-Western Orthodoxy Drew Johnson, Michael Sullivan, and I confronted over on Michael Liccione's blog. The temptation for Christianity is always toward Gnosticism, the ultimate escapism, but this is also intellectual suicide. Speculative theology, using the mind to apply theology to reality, has always been the lifeblood that keeps Christianity from Gnosticism, and it remains so today. This is the fundamental truth recognized in Pope Leo XII's Aeterni Patris, which acknowledged St. Thomas Aquinas's paradigmatic role in preserving this ancient method of the Fathers. The problem with Gnosticism wasn't speculative theology per se, but this ungrounded speculative theology detached from reality. And I'd like to think that even outsiders to the apostolic churches, like Gagdad Bob and the Maverick Philosopher, are nonetheless drinking from the true fount of divine wisdom in their resistance to such unreal philosophies.

Anyway, the point is that this mental, speculative engagement is part of what keeps the blood flowing in the Christian community. If the faith is starved of its ability to seek understanding, the organism dies. The faith may have been once delivered to the saints, but if its modern-day adherents are simply curators for the faith, which they experience but do not change, then what is being preserved is not the apostolic faith. Life requires overflow, and overflow manifests itself in the creation of dogma. That is how Catholicism shows itself to be the Church; it continues to announce dogma in continuation with the same process. Christian churches that cut off speculative creation of dogma are ceasing the process that gave them life, and eventually, they die because of it.

UPDATE -- In line with the theme of this post, see this comment I wrote at Sacramentum Vitae.

Prayers requested

UPDATE -- Oddly enough, this whole story about Fr. Rob Johansen turned out to be some sort of hoax. I suppose that it can never be a bad thing to have lots of folks praying for you, even if one isn't actually in distress, so I wasn't too concerned about passing it on. But, if you were worried, worry no more.

The "stuff" theory of revelation

In a combox at Dave Armstrong's blog, I had a discussion with a Protestant who had some anxiety about oral tradition as compared to written tradition. He was arguing that written tradition, because it was not subject to as much transmissional variance, should be the only form of revelation trusted. I characterized his view (a characterization that he accepted) and offered my own in the following response:
You are thinking of the Apostolic teaching as "stuff," material. That's why we're talking past each other. I'll summarize what I see you as saying, using this term "stuff" (which is something like "information," but not quite for reasons that I hope to explain).

The reason that you are making such a big deal about transmission is that you see the goal as taking the "stuff" the Apostles left us and making sure that the "stuff" stays the same, not adding new "stuff" that could be mistaken for the old "stuff" or losing any of the old "stuff." So you think they wrote this "stuff" down so it wouldn't get lost (since in oral transmission, "stuff" gets lost) and told people not to lose this "stuff" so that you can compare new material X to the "stuff" to make sure that it isn't incompatible.

With respect to 2 Kings [22], you are saying that Israel failed at its job of "stuff" protection. It was a good thing that the "stuff" was in writing, because otherwise the failure would have meant that the "stuff" was lost.

With respect to Catholicism, then, you see it as relying on "stuff" that was not properly Apostolic, hence the "stuff" that Catholicism is labeling the Apostolic "stuff" is not really the "stuff." Instead, the new "stuff" should be judged against the original "stuff," and what is contradictory should be thrown out, while what is new should not be passed off as Apostolic "stuff."All that sounds completely reasonable as a concept, and it is equally clear (at least to me) that it could not even possibly be true. This entire "stuff" concept is based on the notion that inspiration is some inherent property, like color or hardness, so that you can just look at the "stuff" and perceive it. That's the source of your romantic (but, alas, incredibly implausible) claim that the Word of God would be known as such simply by looking at it. But given that I consider this claim false, I cannot accept your account of the Apostolic deposit as "stuff."

So if it isn't "stuff," what is it? This is the celebrated distinction between material and formal sufficiency. Inspiration is a property of intended function, so that something is "inspired" as being intended for use according to a specific formal rule.

One of the major differences between the Old and New Testament is understanding. The Israelites were more or less keeping Scripture blindly, but the Church has the understanding (formal awareness) to develop by the gift of the Holy Spirit. You're effectively holding the Church to the Israelite rule (hang onto this, and don't change anything), but that rule was only established in the way that it was because Israel was a mere shadow of the Church. In effect, Israel was holding Scripture for the Church; the inspiration of the prophets was looking forward to the Church. So the reason that they were simply told to hold it and not to tamper with it was that they weren't the intended audience (at least not qua Israel, although certain righteous men were blessed with some insight into the true meaning). They were only the shadow by which the true Church would be identified.

What I would say is that if you are going to advance this "stuff" theory, then you need to articulate exactly what the "stuff" is, how it is perceived, how it gets transmitted, etc. Then show how this "stuff" theory is consistent with the "stuff" itself and how it plays out in history (did the Fathers have this "stuff" idea?). It seems to me that this concept of "stuff" is badly corrupting the discussion between Catholics and Protestants. (Protestants seem to think of material sufficiency as "stuff" and formal sufficiency as being able to see what the "stuff" is, which is clearly not what Catholics teach.) Catholics consider the "stuff" theory completely unbelievable as an account of divine revelation, so we need to come to some understanding before getting past that point.

I also made a couple of additional comments regarding Old Testament deviations from the rule of faith and the advantage of the New Covenant:
In terms of this "stuff" theory, one advantage of the Church over Israel is that it has its own regulative function (i.e., the Magisterium) to prevent deviations from the Tradition. When Israel blew it, God Himself directly intervened to get them back on the straight and narrow, either through righteous men (like King Josiah himself and the prophets) or through punishment. The Church has the Holy Spirit working in Her already, so the corrective feature we see in 2 Kings is internal, not external. Thus, it is reasonable to think that Israel could fail where the Church cannot.
...
The failure in the New Testament churches (as opposed to Israel, which lacked the Holy Spirit and required external correction) comes from people breaking away from Christ's unity into division and heresy (1 Cor. 1:10-11, 11:18-19), while the faithful maintain unity (Rom. 12:16, 16:17-18; Ephesians 4:1-6; Phillipians 2:1-2; 1 Pet. 3:8).

In response to these comments, someone emailed me to inquire whether there were any Catholic books providing more explanation of this idea, because the "stuff" theory that I described appears to be more or less the orthodox theory of inspiration and revelation as most Protestants understand it. That seems consistent with the Protestant with whom I was having the dialogue accepting the "stuff" theory I outlined as an accurate description of his view. Obviously, it is a serious impediment to Catholic/Protestant dialogue if we do not even understand each other's positions on the most fundamental issue of how God communicates with human beings, because the discussion of every other theological issue is framed by this issue. Consequently, I thought I should present an answer here for public consumption.

As a general matter, the articulation of how to methodologically handle revelation came during the conflict between the Catholic Church and modernism (including its associated skepticism, in both Kantian and Humean form). It is important to recognize that Scripture is simply a special case of Tradition in the Catholic view, so both Scripture and Tradition are implicitly being discussed here. However, the general conclusions were dogmatized by the Catholic Church with respect to Scripture in Dei Verbum. The historical examination of this matter within the Church is surveyed in Aidan Nichols, OP, From Newman to Congar, a worthy excerpt of which can be found here. I agree with Nichols's conclusion that while there might still be questions over how any specific solution deals with questions of pluralism, hermeneutics, and reception, the general parameters of how to approach the matter appear to have been resolved.

The two books from this clash with modernism that I've found most suggestive are Maurice Blondel, Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma (printed together by Ignatius Press under the combined title) and Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology. Both are controversial among the more conservative Thomists and students of scholasticism, and I understand why. But I think these are valuable because they rebuke the post-Kantian theological method with the faith of the Church. They don't talk about Scripture directly, but what is important to remember about Catholic thought is that Scripture is simply a special case of Tradition. And I do recognize that any detailed analysis of Tradition must wrangle with the problems that Nichols mentioned: pluralism, hermeneutics, and reception. But what I would suggest is that they have at least offered a framework in which they can possibly be solved through tenacious examination of the contingent events in the history of the Church.

Viewing John Henry Cardinal Newman as a forerunner of this approach, I think it sells him short to think of him as Hegelian. The sort of theorizing Newman does starts from exactly the same place: that one's hypotheses about the regula fidei are not tested in one's head, but by applying a method that allows them full contact with reality. There's an inherent rejection of the Kantian critique of knowledge, because it assumes both that things can be known in themselves and that this knowledge directly impacts what theological alternatives are permissible. Revelation, then, is not directly from God's mind to our mind (which is how the post-Kantian view would necessarily see it), but it is, like natural knowledge, hard-earned conceptual knowledge about real events. It is grace, but not grace that replaces our normal operation of intellect. Rather, it elevates the operation of that intellect in a harmonious way to see an object beyond its ordinary limits (effectively, a mediated realist account of knowledge, which is all Blondel's particular "method of immance" really is).

By way of contrast, I believe that many non-Catholic thinkers (and I am particularly thinking of Thomas Reid, Herman Dooyeweerd, Cornelius Van Til, John Locke, and numerous Humean skeptics) conceded too much to Kant, more or less accepting Kant's critique of knowledge and attempting to show within that perspective that it could be answered. (N.B., As one might gather from my list, I have a theory as to why Calvinism is particularly vulnerable to this affliction, but I want to stick with discussing the Catholic view for now.) People like Blondel and Lonergan demonstrated that Thomist/scholastic ideas, rather than being naively accepted, could be deployed to show where the Kantian critique was fundamentally erroneous. Conservative Thomists like Garrigou-Lagrange (and even less conservative Thomists like Etienne Gilson) thought this sort of justification according to external methods put too much "up for grabs" (and one could cite examples like Loisy in which it did; thence arose the bitter conflct between Garrigou-Lagrange and Blondel). But in the end, I think Blondel, Lonergan, et al. were vindicated in their endeavor to argue for Thomism against modernism. I've located an article by a like-minded author that makes out a case for this view.

At the bottom line, I think the "stuff" theory of revelation is more or less the Kantian anxiety made flesh. To be true or certain, there has to be this real instance of mind-to-mind transmission from God. When these things get tangled up with phenomena, they lose their noumenal purity. Revelation is pure idea, and it must be preserved as such. Note that this is by no means an exclusively religious idea; it can also be found in jurisprudence in the form of legal positivism endorsed by, e.g., Robert Bork. But for those who view even the initial events (e.g., the delivery of revelation, the passage of a law) as themselves being mediated and only imperfectly or partially modeled as pure ideas, such notions of preservation are difficult to swallow, and the associated fears of "error," the "wax nose" anxiety, and the like seem chimerical. They are vain attempts to preserve something that was itself only a creature of the imagination, an unreal ideal, when the focus should instead (according to the Catholic perspective) be put onto the reality in which these things operate. The reality is what maintains unity through the synergistic action of the community as members of the Body of Christ, of which even the delivery of the apostolic deposit is a part.

In the Catholic view, laws and revelation were intended to serve a unitive function in a community to allow no conflict between the members, so it is at some level meaningless to speak of "error" in that function (if it fails, the Body of Christ, ergo Christianity, ceases to exist in reality). As Dei Verbum makes clear, there are truths in both what the original authors assert (the positive content of Scripture) AND in concrete reception of particular texts within the Church:

11. Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture
have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.(1) In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him (2) they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, (3) they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted. (4)

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings (5) for the sake of salvation. Therefore "all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind" (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text).

12. However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, (6) the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.

To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to "literary forms." For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. (7) For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another. (8)

But, since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, (9) no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God. (10)

Effectively, this implies that the Apostles have given their consent to have their own intent clarified according to the Church's dogma, just as a legislator implicitly gives consent to have disputes resolved according to judicial procedure and the like. This is why you will often see even a Catholic exegete like Raymond Brown of Joseph Fitzmyer point out that something was not necessarily intended by a Scriptural author as a historical matter, but nevertheless, it is an acceptable dogmatic development not contradictory with the original intent because the historical meaning of the passage (as best we know it) does not manifest the intent to foreclose such an interpretation. Naturally, one might speculate what would happen IF such a contradiction were ever to arise, but one ought not based one's commitments to beliefs about reality on what might happen absent some concrete demonstration that the possibility is real.

This does, of course, render something formally binding that could not possibly be binding according to the "stuff" theory, but recall that the Catholic view is that the Apostolic deposit included a specific commission to make such matters binding in a manner consistent with the spirit of the initial deposit (even to the extent of accepting additions to Scripture, such as the the additions to the book of Daniel, as sharing the same spirit of inspiration). In our view, even the original revelation was deposited under the same conditions, not having been intended to be "pure idea" even when it was first left to us. There's not a fear of Scripture functioning in this way, because that's what Scripture was made to do in the Church (as opposed to Israel, Her antitype in this respect).

Obviously, this only holds given apostolic succession of Tradition; if the chain of formal authority were broken, then even Scripture itself would lack binding authority on this theory. It is not the case, incidentally, that we Catholics assert the need of a Magisterium simpliciter. Rather, we assert the need for a Magisterium on our theory of revelation, which is a different matter. I've seen the accusation bandied about that some Catholics (including Newman himself!) have converted out of some misguided quest for epistemic certainty to assuage their angst over their own personal doubts and struggles. At least in my personal experience, that badly misunderstands what is being asserted. Instead, the argument is that it is the only consistent position that allows development of doctrine to have the same binding force as revelation itself (foreclosing "private judgment" in the Church). Given the real experience of the Church, it seems highly implausible that development of doctrine does not have such force (viz., history is a denial of the "stuff" theory as limiting what is irreformably binding to the "pure idea," the "stuff," of Scripture). Thus emerges the Newmanian dictum: "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant." Obviously, one might quibble over exactly what sort of authority is required or what degree of division is acceptable, and this is the dispute between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches. But both staunchly maintain that the facts rebut any hypothesis of formal continuity with the Christian Church of ages past without some way of formally declaring irreformable de fide dogma.