Theories of Christian dogma

I have recently become emboldened to speak more strongly on matters of doctrinal development. This is because I believe that discussions on the subject have been dancing around the facts that I consider dispositive of the issue. I find the occasion of Michael Liccione's reply to an objection to be opportune for setting out why I believe the discussion has heretofore allowed so many escape trails to be blazed. Since Dr. Liccione kindly mapped out the battlefield in his earlier post on hermeneutical circles in Chrisitan communions, it remains for me only to deploy the forces rightly so as to cut off the retreat.

I view the following as the key statement in Dr. Liccione's reply:


ML>> I have long argued that a species of induction, namely "abduction" or "inference to the best explanation," is the standard form of DD.


This states the basis for a number of Dr. Liccione's posts on not merely distinctively Catholic doctrines (DCDs) but also supposed "contradictions" in Catholic dogma. By claiming abduction as such an ordinary method, Dr. Liccione also deftly draws out both an explanation of why there must be an authority in order to preserve an objective sense of dogma:


ML>> In general, explanations are evaluated in terms of a certain set of criteria: e.g., consistency (is the explanation consistent with what we already know?), capaciousness (does it cover everything that calls for explanation?), parsimony (does it avoid making assumptions and positing entities beyond what's necessary?) and other criteria depending on the subject matter. But the application of such criteria, though partly objective, is also subjective to some extent. In an ecclesial context, the application relies to some extent on the sensus ecclesiae. The consensus patrum is certainly an expression of the sensus ecclesiae; but is it the only normative one? If so, why? If not, what else is there? I remain firmly convinced that, the more seriously one grapples with such questions, the more reasonable the teaching of Vatican II on DD will come to seem.


But why not simply join the battle plainly at this point? The Catholic hermeneutical circle is the abductive explanation for the objective sensus ecclesiae. The difficulty with claiming this or that doctrine developed by abduction, even if that doctrine happens to be the authority of the Pope, would to me take too narrow a view of the strength of abduction. If we are going to use abduction as a criteria for what to believe in this or that other case, then why not use abduction to determine the best global theory of authority?


In speaking of the physical sciences, Paul A.M. Dirac said at various times during his life that "a theory of mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data," "there are occasions when mathematical beauty should take priority over agreement with experiment," and "it is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment." What Dirac had in mind was the simplicity of the underlying principles, the ease of applying the quantities to physical phenomena being investigated, the flexibility of application to new difficulties, and the clarity of how pieces related to one another. Unquestionably, that sort of "beauty" is likely not apparent to one who has not toiled in physical investigation, particularly with respect to the criterion of "simplicity" (which has much in common with "divine simplicity" in that regard, like Chesterton's report of the woman who said "If this is God's simplicity, I'd hate to see His complexity"). But as in the case of master craftsmen, those who dedicate their lives to crafting mathematical descriptions of physical phenomena can judge quality in ways that seem obscure to the untaught.


A good measure of the beauty of a theory in this regard is the amount of explanatory apparatus one has to deploy in order to resolve phenomena that do not emerge naturally from the principles. Those with many additions are "ugly" in the sense Dirac gives above, and it is more likely that there is some minor inconsistency or error in the theory that works well on its own principles than that the creation of Frankenstein's monster is going to prove better in the long run. That was largely the reason that quantum mechanics, relativity, and thermodynamics were deemed acceptable despite their counterintuitive application to physical phenomena. Consider the opposition from Einstein ("God does not play dice with the universe"), Schroedinger ("I don't like it, and I wish I'd never had anything to do with it"), Michelson (who disbelieved the result of the experiment bearing his name disproving the existence of light-bearing ether), and Boltzmann (requiring a "molecular chaos assumption" in the equation on his tombstone bearing his name, the one he hoped would explain the behavior he was forced to assume). Ultimately, putting something in to "fix" these theories in that regard would have been too artificial (the jury is still out on Einstein's cosmological constant and Dirac's opposition to renormalization, which might just end up being at least partially right).


This diversion into physical law is made not only because it was my primary interest for most of my life but because it is the paradigm case for abductive explanations. And I think it illuminates one of the biggest problems with attempting to look at particular instances of development of dogma rather than the strength of the theory as a whole. In the larger sense, the Catholic hermeneutical circle described above is not merely a theory of the function of the papacy but a far more general explanation of how Christian revelation operates.


On the strength of a very few principles that are not ridiculously controversial in Christian history (that Peter was constituted head of the Apostles, that the Apostolic office is successive in some sense, that there is some succession of the Petrine charism in Rome) along with some relatively simple principles about how this authority operates (communion with Peter's successor is a prerequisite for formal communion with the Church, the infallibility doctrine of Vatican I), one has a consistent explanation for essentially every bit of Christian dogma in a couple of millennia and not only distinctively Catholic dogma. This isn't to say that there aren't counter-intuitive principles at work here; it's certainly not a simplistic explanation. But it is a simple explanation, in that once the work is done to make sure the principles are right, one isn't hunting around all over the place for external explanations of why this or that dogma is held.


But the explanation of those things is not the limit of the theory. What is perspicacious about the theory is its explanation of why things were done in this way as a whole in a way that motivates not only Christian dogma but also metaphysics, science, and morality more generally. That's what I think is truly persuasive (and beautiful) about the Catholic religion. The difficulty I find with even other Christian sects (and moreso with other religions) is that even what we have in common is an explanatory dangler, one of those ugly lashed-on assumptions, in other sects. That is least obvious with those having the most in common with us Catholics (particularly Eastern and Oriental Orthodox), but true nonetheless. Moreover, they look ugly in terms of relying on explanations of facts that are even *more* counter-intuitive than anything the Catholic theory requires, like the lack of institutional continuity with the people preserving Scripture in Protestantism's account and the regional, ethnic character of Orthodoxy vis-a-vis Catholicism (with the concomitant great Western apostasy supported by Franco-Roman conspiracy theories). But I would emphasize with Dr. Liccione that liberal theories are the worst of all in this regard, because they explain and motivate nothing except the ratification of one's own feelings.


To bring out one particular hobby horse of mine (with which Dr. Liccione might not agree), I happen to also think that there are tremendous explanatory problems in any account that relies on Scriptural or patristic authority to the point of conflicting with biological evolution (likely including polygenism) and plant/animal death before Adam. The intrinsic finitude of biological processes, the metabolic nature of cell death and generation, the fossil record, and the like strike me as absolute facts of existence to the point of being undeniable. That is one of those cases where I would have to modify my explanatory apparatus so drastically that the resulting theory would be too ugly for words, a "chimera" in the strongest connotation of that term. In those respects, I think Catholicism clears the hurdle of abduction quite nicely, because it explains death in terms of creaturely finitude without vitiating the larger sense of purpose (exactly as one might expect from a tradition that had been dominated by Aristotle to a greater extent than Plato, but that is another hobby horse that should probably be kept closeted). St. Maximus's notion of fruit falling in Eden without rotting, on the other hand, would require some pretty massive modification.


Thus, pace Perry Robinson, I think the reason large numbers of converts to Catholicism don't even see the need to investigate Orthodoxy to a great degree is that whatever anomalies might be raised about Catholicism are far more easily explained within the theory than adopting a less elegant theory to explain a few particulars, thereby creating many more. And pace kepha, this IS the normal way I would go about any other mode of inquiry, because I personally think the scientific method (in the abductive sense I described above) has the jury system completely beat in terms of usefully describing reality.


In terms of kepha's argument regarding the reliability of the American adversarial jury system, I think it is probably a toss-up with the inquisitorial civil system in terms of the accuracy of retrospective application of legal principles to past events with some relative advantages depending on the circumstances (individual or corporate defendants, technical nature of the case, etc.). It's not terrible, but it is certainly uncertain enough that people who are probably (and some cases even certainly) in the right still end up paying millions of dollars to settle arguably frivilous suits, which I think indicates that faith in the jury system is far from absolute. And that also introduces a level of self-selection that probably biases the overall reliability to cases where there is really enough ucnertainty that a jury determination is desired, so the reliability of the actual jury system would not necessarily correlate well with its use more widely.


More importantly, determining the legal principles is always left to judges (the authoritative jurisprude, though subject to appeal), and the jury is instructed by the judge how to apply those principles to the case before them. Moreover, the judge tightly controls what facts the jury gets to see, which reflects that people often aren't capable of accurately judging reality in uncontrolled circumstances. We don't have anything like those restrictions in picking and choosing information in most cases with religion (except maybe for children), meaning that the jury system is completely inappropriate to scientific inquiry. On the contrary, even the jury system provides robust support for the sort of scientific, theoretical inquiry, since it leaves matters of law to judges and has a complicated appeals process for assessing the success of these models over significant numbers of cases. Thus, even the example kepha cites implicitly relies on the reliability of the scientific method I have outlined here.

Never mind

I was trying in my last couple of posts to clarify a distinction. But I honestly think now that Zippy has seriously impaired his own power of reason on the subject to the point it is not even worth discussing these matters with him. It's like talking to a liberal. I'd already seen the false victimhood tactic used on me on his blog, but now he's gotten worse to the point of utterly separating himself from any kind of real metaphysical basis on which moral theology is formed.

He's now equated contraception with hatred of children, invented a specious distinction between act and omission to perpetuate his irrational reading of Veritatis Splendor, suggested in analogy to stolen property that a past vasectomy permanently renders someone's reproductive system intentionally contracepted even if the person really changes his mind, and endorsed extremism in opposition to abortion to the point of directly contradicting the Holy See's prudential guidance on capital punishment ("every outlaw abortionist swinging from a gibbet"). He's a wacked out liberal in the guise of a conservative, just like the rad-trads, except he doesn't even have the defense of at least appearing consistent with what was done before. There's no touchstone to reality in any of this; he's just asserting his own positive interpretation as normative without subjecting it to any methodological scrutiny. Like other liberal positivists, he's in the "grip of a theory" with which there is no reasoning.

I don't know what's going on with this guy, but we shouldn't tolerate this sort of wild and unmoored speculation just because he happens to agree with us on the conclusions sometimes, any more than we tolerate any other brand of liberal positivism with regard to Catholic dogma. As I will argue in my development of doctrine post, there is room for healthy speculation, but this is an example of what it isn't.

A physicocausal account of double effect

In response to Zippy Catholic's invitation to come up with a new term for the account he describes in his post, I would submit "physicocausal account of double effects" as an alternative term. The reason for the first change that "physicalist" seems blatantly inappropriate for an analysis that views the physicocausal aspects in terms of the intent (meaning proximate end in this case) for one's behavior. The reason for the second change is that my physicocausal test is only intended to classify effects as directly or indirectly intended, irrespective of whether that causes them to be classified as intrinsically evil.



Zippy's description appears to be correct in the main:

The approach we must reject goes something like the following: We take the decision a person makes to act, figure out the intended end for which he makes it, and construct a physical account from what he does to the achievement of that end. Everything which is a physical cause leading up to his desired result, then, is considered to be intended; anything which is not causally prerequisite to achieving his end, on a physicalist account, is considered to be unintended[* Other language is sometimes used to label what I have labeled intended and unintended. One traditional way is to refer to the intended and the indirect voluntary; another is to say directly intended and indirectly intended. But these are merely semantic choices about how to label things, and do not as far as I can tell change the substance of what we are discussing.].


In order to resolve ambiguity, I would replace "intended end" with "proximate end." In other words, it is the immediate physicocausal result of one's behavior that one desires to achieve and nothing more remote than that. I would also add "permitted" as a synonym for "unintended," "indirect voluntary," or "indirectly intended." Most Catholics (and indeed, most non-Calvinist Protestants) can intuitively grasp that God, even though he sustains in existence the actions of evildoers, merely permits evil rather than intending it. The mundane concept being used for the theological analogous term in this case is identical to the one I have in mind.


So far, so good. Then the picture starts getting murkier:


His act is intrinsically evil if and only if any of the things he intends (on this account of intention) is evil.


First, this account is wrong. On the physicocausal account of double effect, if there is a moral species of act in which the act is intrinsically evil merely by indirectly intending some effect, then the physicocausal account of double effect would simply say that it was indirectly intended, being entirely agnostic about whether indirectly intending that effect is evil or not. It makes no judgments about whether the action is evil or not; perhaps there are species of conduct in which indirectly intended effects make the action intrinsically evil. All the physicocausal account of double effect says is that if the evil effect is intended as proximate end or means, then the action is definitely evil and therefore cannot be weighed proportionally against any good. Note that it doesn't matter whether the action is intrinsically or extrinsically evil, and really, all of this discussion connecting the concept of intrinsic evil to double effect is simply irrelevant.


Second (and this is the reason I say this is murkier), I am not aware of a single species of intrinsically evil conduct that is evil solely on account of its effect. About the only pathological case I could conceive offhand was one with a masseuse who knows a married man is attracted to her, who is repulsed by the idea, but who is in desperate need of payment and so agrees to perform a therapeutic massage in exactly the same professional manner as she would for any client. I would argue that this could be intrinsically evil as adulterous conduct even though the effect could arguably be considered a side effect of what would otherwise be a therapeutic massage, a neutral or good act in itself, because she knows that this ordinary action has a side effect of inflaming the married man's passions. So it could be that knowingly inflaming someone's passions is evil no matter what the direct intent of one's actions are. That would seem consistent with immodesty more generally, since there are probably numerous people who mean nothing by wearing light clothing in warm weather but ought to know with certainty that their potentially innocuous choice will be an occasion of sin for others.


The reason I bring this up is as follows:

Basically, this account of intrinsic evil takes the principle of double-effect to apply to all acts, and elevates the double-effect requirement "the bad effect must not cause the good effect" to the status of a rule which determines whether or not an act is intrinsically immoral.


Even without doing further work we can see that this approach is fundamentally question-begging. Rather than applying the principle of double-effect to an act which is not intrinsically immoral, this approach applies the "bad effect must not cause the good effect" rule - which in reality only applies to acts which are not intrinsically immoral - in order to conclude that the act is not intrinsically immoral.


Furthermore, this account of intrinsic evil renders the requirement "the act must not be evil in its object" nonsensical. If the rule "the bad effect must not cause the good effect" is the very thing which tells us whether the act is evil in its object, then the inclusion of the additional requirement that the act must not be evil in its object is superfluous nonsense.


In the first place, this is simply false, because the physicocausal account actually includes both intended ends and means, not merely means. But the bigger trouble is that it seems to presume "the act must not be evil in its object" is NOT superfluous. That is debatable for exactly the reason I stated above: namely, I can't think of any clear case in which a species of intrinsically evil conduct is defined so that merely indirectly intending an effect makes the conduct intrinsically evil.


To put the point more plainly, "double effect" analysis simply codifies what St. Paul says regarding not doing evil so that good may come of it, so that if evil is being done, then no good effect can offset it (and that applies with regard not only to intrinsic evils but actions that are evil by intention or circumstance as well). In other words, it specifies conditions in which proportionality cannot be applied, thus restricting what can legitimately be called a "double effect," and it then requires proportionality even in those cases. That's precisely why there is a well-known 3-point formulation of double effect analysis:


1. Intentionality. The good effect and not the bad effect must be intended.
2. Causality. The good effect must not be caused by the means of the bad effect.
3. Proportionality. If (1) and (2) are met, the bad effect must not outweigh the good effect.


There can be additional details to these analyses. In particular, the causal prong is often evaluated by the "if by a miracle" test, more aptly described as the "test of failure" to determine whether a particular effect in the causal chain, if removed, would terminate the chain of causality. But those three requirements are the basic conditions for "double effect."

Sometimes, an alternative formulation is given with another step:

0. The act must not be good or morally neutral, nor intrinsically evil, in its object.


Now, it isn't clear to me that there is even one case where an act is classified as intrinsically evil for intending the evil effect as neither ends nor means but only as indirectly intended effect. But as a strict matter of logic, it could be the case that such a class exists, meaning that (0) might not be entirely superfluous. Or perhaps it is simply intended as a clarification in cases (like the masseuse above) where an argument might be made that the evil effect is indirectly intended, in order to forestall rationalizations. In any case, (0) is certainly a step that is so rare in catching any scenario not already caught by (1) or (2) that one could argue that it is very close to superfluous, to the point that some moral theologians don't even consider it necessary and rely on the 3-point test instead.


What is important to realize is that the physicocausal account of double effect is directed only to steps (1) and (2), and all it says is that if (1) or (2) is met, then the action clearly cannot be evaluated under double effect. It is agnostic as to step (0), and generally, it is agnostic as to whether the act in intrinsically evil or not, because that doesn't matter for double effect purposes anyway. If it's an evil act, whether extrinsically or intrinsically, it can't be done for the sake of any other good. What is absolutely clear, however, is that (0) is not some sort of separate test for moral object or intrinsically evil conduct with (1) and (2) pertaining solely to ulterior intention or circumstances. If anything, that's exactly reversed. (0) is only directed at catching those few pathological cases that are not already caught under (1) or (2).

More or less, double effect, which applies to any action that is evil intrinsically or extrinsically, should not be confused with the determination of whether something is intrinsically evil. You might need to look at remote intentions to determine if something is intrinsically evil (as in the case of theft), and you might need to look at remote intentions to determine if an effect is proportional under double effect. But just looking at remote intentions in both cases does not make the analysis identical.

A simple misunderstanding?

Zippy Catholic has put a finer point on the parameters separating his view from my own, and I think it will clarify several misunderstandings to understand where it is right and where it is wrong. But there is a threshhold interpretational question that must be resolved first. It is stated in a previous post thusly:

This objection is problemmatic. Veritatis Splendour tells us: One must therefore reject the thesis ... which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species — its "object" — the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made ... .

If we cannot determine the object of the act without considering the intention for which the choice was made, then Veritatis Splendour is self-contradictory, with all that that implies -- basically the encyclical is a meaningless jumble of words with enough apparent meaning that people can make it appear to say whatever they want it to say.

In the linked post it is stated this way:
But beyond that, Veritatis Splendour tells us that we must reject any moral theory which makes it impossible to qualify as morally evil the choice of certain concrete actions or kinds of behavior apart from any consideration of the intention for which the behavior was chosen.

I titled this post a "simple" misunderstanding, not to say that the diagnosis of the problem has been "simple" but that if the disagreement is what I think it is, then it turns on single interpretive question upon which every single disagreement with my position has turned.

The question is simply this:

What proposition constitutes the negation the following equivalent propositions from VS?

Those equivalent propositions are:

"it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species — its
'object' — the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts,
apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or the
totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned"

or the equivalent formulation of the proposition

"it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species the
deliberate choice of certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts, without taking
into account the intention for which the choice was made or the totality of the
foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned"

Let us begin with the glaring interpretive difference on the term "intention." My definition of the term, which I think is quite reasonable given the modifier "for which the choice is made," is that this is an ulterior intention, which could also be called a further intention or a remote intention or motive. Since John Paul II uses the term "proximate end" to describe the intent to perform the act according to the species, I would argue that this "intention" excludes the formation of the will required for the act to be what it is. In other words, I would maintain that the threshhold intent required for the choice to be some kind of species is simply part of the "choice," as contrasted with the intention for which the choice was made or the totality of the foreseeable circumstances.

There is, however, a countervailing interpretation that could be invoked to maintain that the choice of behavior is just the choice to do some particular concrete physical action irrespective of why one takes the action (the latter "why" being interpreted as intention). Thus, if the particular concrete physical action is done with some foreseeably certain effect immediately resulting from your physical action, then your chosen behavior necessarily includes the choice of that effect, irrespective of why one does it. Suffice it to say that I consider this interpretation wrong, but let's take is as being correct for the sake of argument.

Given the latter interpretation, one might take this proposition to mean that one can always classify intrinsically evil behaviors AS intrinsically evil apart from consideration of intention or circumstances. But I argue that this is a far stronger claim that is entailed by the denial of the propositions demanded by VS. Indeed, all one needs to be able to say to deny these propositions is that there is even one case in which is it possible to qualify an act as morally evil according to its species irrespective of the intention for which the choice was made or the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act. I will refer to the former formulation as the "strong denial" and the latter as the "weak denial." I maintain not only that the "weak denial" is all that is required by VS but also that the "strong denial" is a false proposition that cannot be maintained.

As to the "weak denial" being an adequate negation of the principle, this follows simply from modal logic. "Impossible" simply means "not possible in any case," and the negation of "not possible in any case" is "possible in at least one case." So if we affirm that it is possible in at least one case to qualify a behavior as intrinsically evil (i.e., the weak denial), then we have denied the proposition.

I do, in fact, affirm that there are cases in which simply willing to do the behavior can be classified as intrinsically evil, completely irrespective of intention for which the behavior is done or the totality of foreseeable consequences. The clearest case is any sexual act of a type that is intrinsically sterile. There is no possible rationalization and no possible circumstance under which that act can be anything other than intrinsically evil. Likewise is the case of artificial contraception done for the purpose of regulating the number of births. Therefore, I affirm the weak denial.

As to the "strong denial" being false, we can take the case of theft, an intrinsically evil behavior which is the taking of property contrary to the reasonable will of the owner. Whether the owner's will is reasonable in opposing the taking of property must necessarily involve the use to which the property is planned to be put. This is because if the intended use of the property being taken is, for example, to avert starvation, to protect houses from being destroyed by flame, or other similar motives, then an owner's will to resist the taking would not be reasonable. Consequently, "theft" simply cannot be assessed according to its moral species, which includes evaluating the "reasonable will of the owner," without considering the remote intention for the use of the property.

Consequently, even on the variant interpretation of the term "intention" that I reject, it does not follow that anything more is required than the weak denial.

Now I can take this argument one step further, and argue that the variant interpretation is the one that actually makes nonsense of the meaning that VS intends to convey. The reason that I say this is because theft is an example of intrinsically evil behavior cited as what cannot be done even for good motives. But theft hardly qualifies as behavior that can be classified as intrinsically evil irrespective of the reason it is done, since the use of the property is essential for knowing whether it can be classified as theft in the first place! Consequently, the interpretation of VS that says that intrinsically evil behavior must be subject to classification based on the concrete choice of bodily action with all of its certainly foreseeable consequences irrespective of why that choice is made would render the case of theft completely irrelevant, since it clearly cannot be classified as intrinsically evil without regard to remote intention. It requires us to think that VS refutes the universal proposition, then digresses on to some other class of error completely distinct from the one being condemned, and then proceeds to flip willy-nilly between the two for the rest of the encyclical.

This is why I have always followed the rather conventional belief that "intention for which the choice is made" refers to an intention extrinsic to the "intention" (more specifically, "proximate end") required to classify the choice according to moral species. If you need to know why someone does something to determine whether it is evil, then that doesn't count as "intention." Taking property, for example, is a physical action that could be intrinsically evil but that cannot be determined as such without accounting for the remote intention of what one intends to do with the property. You can't even classify the proximate end of the action absent some reference to remote intention, since the intended use of the property is an essential element of what one is doing in choosing to take it and thus what the chosen behavior is in itself.

That suffices for the present point. I could (and plan to) subsequently argue that foreseeably causing the death of an innocent is precisely the sort of act that cannot be classified as intrinsically evil without reference to the reason one is using the means that cause the death, much like the taking of property cannot be classified without reference to why one is taking it. But there remains an intervening concern about double effect, and I will argue that my interpretation makes sense of it.

Blessing from the Elliott family reunion

Handwritten among my grandmother's notes:

*** BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION ***
July 4, 1958
On The Henry Elliott Farm, seven miles southeast of Glenmora, La.
[NOTE: My grandmother's children and grandchildren still spend time at this century-old house to this day, including many a summer weekend of my youth. -- JP]

Nine of the ten surviving children and their families and grand children met for their annual barbecue of beef from the farm, including also roast beef, rice and gravy, corn bread, potatoe [sic] salads and cakes with cold drinks, also watermelons. Since the children's only surviving uncle Marvin Dyer who usually gives the invocation was not present[,] the following was given by Laurent J. Savoie, a brother-in-law [my grandfather -- JP]:

Bless us, Oh Lord! As we stand before Thee, in this gathering of good fellowship.

May we be granted the wisdom and foresight to maintain harmony and brotherly love among ourselves and our future generations as was the wish of our ancestors. And may the future years make it possible to continue to unite all the members of this large family; and may the ones who have departed rejoice this day in Paradise. These things we ask in the name of Jesus, Amen.

*** END TRANSCRIPTION ***

I'm happy to say that all of my grandmother's children (and most of their children and their children's children) got together at my parents' house over the holiday.

The last letter from my great-great-grandmother

I came across the following letter at my late grandmother's house. I wanted to preserve the text online, so it wouldn't be forgotten. It was written by my great-great-grandmother Hannah Amanda Nash Dyer to my great grandmother Mary Ella Dyer Elliott, the wife of Henry Machen Elliott. I have maintained the line spacing and the spelling and punctuation faithfully from the original.

Letter postmarked Cheneyville, LA, Apr. 16, 1918 at 3 P.M. The three-cent stamp bears the image of George Washington

"My last letter from Mother" is written above the address "Mrs. H.M. Elliott, Pawnee, Louisiana" ("Box 54" is in the lower corner).

*** BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION ***

Cheneyville, LA
April 16, 1918

Dear daughter,
I need to write
you a few lines this eav.
I am at Marvins cant go
home Jack taken sick
last Saturday eavning about
9 O'clock in the eavning
with a hard chill. his
feevor went to one hundred
an six by 12 or 1 O'clock
Sunday evening at 6 he died.
we are all under Quarien
tined I am so nervous I
cant write to think I am
in such a fix the Doctors will
not let me leave hear
[overleaf blank]

2 [second leaf] until till the
Danger is over I may
never get away. The Lord
knows & dont I hope and
trust he may pray for me and all the reast
that that we may miss
the terrible disease
minnigitis. it is an awful
thing. Marvin Willie
Machen & other men
is gone out through [Bee-
rier?] Creek hills to
burry him at the Paul
grave yard. Could not
carry him to Glenmora
Machen house is under
Quarintine I dont now
how many more

3 [overleaf] George Raborn
has got the Same
disease. Taken it first
The Doctors think maby he
will get well. They have
had 6 Doc with him.
Marvin had two. Jack
died so quick. no chance to
Save him. Marvin called
Machen to get the Doc
he went in had no Idier
what he was getting into
it taken the second Doc to
find out what was the
matter so to day the two
big Army Doctors from
the Hospittle came hear
and taken the marrow from
Jack's Back bone after he

4 [third leaf] had been dead 15 hours
and they came back and
said it was a genuine case
of spinal minnegitis. So
they went to work and
taken evry ones Culture
and we all have to use
a Spray 5 times a day in the
mouth and nose. if that
dont keep it off we will
all bee in an awful bad
fix soon Machen had 2
sick all last week Walter
and Irene Walter is in a
bade shape. poor Mach is
worn out. before Jack got sick if the Doc dont
kill out the germs before
we get sick it is good by

5 [overleaf] I am afraid to severel
of us. I am so nervous I
cant sleep or eat but wee
have got to stay hear live
or die I had no Idier of such
a thing when I left home I
am sorry I left home when
I did Loney[?] was out there
and I came home with him
and now I cant help my
self. Ella if I die there
is money in Lealony[?] Bank
Go after it. Some of it will
bee for you. Mollie and
Baby is hear. Sceard nearly
to death to think my whole
family ecept you are hear
exsposed to such a dreadful
disease & it is awful

6 [fourth leaf] I am sorry for Jennie
and Marvin to have to
give up ther last little Boy
They need him. they will need
his help Jennie said tell
Milton all the schools
near are stoped. There was
an areplane passed over
hear and come to the
ground at Loyd and the
whole Country run to see
rise again it was on the
ground all Knight George
Raborn was there and
taken sick the next day is
the trouble with a good many
it is so bade. if we can
all miss it with the treat-
ment I will thank the

7 [overleaf] Lord the reast of
my days. may the Lord
help us I pray. Ella
I want to see you but
I cant. hope I will
live to see you again
may the Lord be
with us all I pray.
[script changes]
[14 or 17?] well I sleep very well last
eat breakfast. I am going to get out
in the yard to day: get fresh air. if
wee havent got the germ from Jack
I think I think maby the spray
will keep it off hope so. Dr Smith
will let hear this week if any in
the family has got the germ. I will
let you hear soon as I can. Your
Mother Amanda Dyer
*** END TRANSCRIPTION***

This was to be the last letter she wrote to her daughter Ella. Hannah Amanda Nash Dyer died four days later: April 20, 1918. But Machen Dyer, Virginia "Jennie" Kennedy Dyer, and John Marvin Dyer all survived and lived to old age, as did Mollie and Irene. In fact, Marvin was the protagonist in a much more amusing family story I also heard this week, which I would also like to preserve.

It turns out that Marvin Dyer went on to become a deputy sheriff [possibly U.S Marshall] in Glenmora, La. And it also turns out that Ella Dyer Elliott's husband Henry Machen Elliott had a sister Ella Eliza Elliott, who married one Calvin Grantham (pronounced "GRANT-HAM," not "GRAN-them"). "Uncle Calb," as my grandmother called him, was apparently quite a character. He was a short man with bright red hair and a matching red handlebar mustache, who also had a fondness for drink. To a woman, my mom and all of her sisters came up with the same image for the stories they heard of Uncle Calb: Yosemite Sam. Much like Yosemite Sam, Uncle Calb would get roaring drunk on Saturday nights and ride his horse down Main Street shooting a pair of pistols in the air, and Uncle Marvin would be responsible for rounding him up and dragging him to jail to "sleep it off."

For some reason, I find it comforting that the man who had to confront the loss of his child and mother within days of each other ended up being an honest-to-God "white hat" for a small town. I don't think it makes the narrative above any less chilling, but the fact that Marvin went on to be a good man ought to count for something. At least, I hope it does.

Full Circle

I feel like this election is an ending for me. I named this blog "Crimson Catholic" because Harvard was the place where I first felt the impetus to seek some real truth. The primary motivator there was seeing the number of people with great cognitive ability who had no reason. By that, I mean that they were philosophical nihilists, sheer relativists unable to provide any reason for what they believed. And when I saw that, it horrified me. I had never articulated what gave meaning to the life, and to be fair, I had always taken God for granted. But at least I did bear that glimmer of natural philosophy that recognized that there was something greater that was the source of existence and meaning for everything that existed. I knew that such there was such a thing as God, and I knew that ignoring him inevitably meant that human life would be worthless.

Barack Obama is literally the bext example of the sort of man that I feared. Morality and theology are "above his pay grade," as he foolishly said in my former home, and worse, in a building dedicated to God. That is what I heard over and over again at Harvard, that we could not "legislate morality" or "force religion on people." For all of the intelligence that this once-Christian institution supposedly embodies, some of the stupidest people in the world can be found there. Pagan irreligion is one thing; mindless anti-religion against even the most fundamental tenets of the natural law is another thing entirely. Slaughtering innocent human beings in genocidal proportions, something that the most ignorant pagan should be able to see as evil, is a matter beyond the competence of this supposedly intelligent man.

But something has happened since then, and it is a great blessing. I have received a peace that surpasses all understanding. My worries and fears over men like Obama have been quieted, not because Obama is any better than I thought, but because I now have a hope beyond these things. There are evil men in the world, but my treasure is in a place where they will never touch it. In defeat in this world, we build a stronghold in the next. So what if evil men seize the power of law? God, the Creator, the source of everything that is good, was killed as a criminal. He proclaimed forever His victory over injustice.

"For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:3-4)

Before I was afraid. Now faith gives me the same eyes as David, so I pray with him his Psalm:

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want;
he makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

You can be all flame

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba,
as far as I can, I say my [daily] office, I fast a little, I pray
and meditate. I live in peace as far as I can. I purify my
thoughts. What else can I do?”

Then the old man stood up, stretched his arms towards
heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he
said to him, “If you want, you can be all flame.”

That was the conclusion of the homily at my sister's wedding yesterday. The priest giving the homily, who had studied the Desert Fathers and Mothers extensively, prefaced the quotation with the observation that it would have been inconceivable for the author that his text would have been quoted in the 21st century at a wedding of all places. Nonetheless, he correctly noted that the recognition of the sacramental quality of marriage makes it eminently appropriate. I concur that I cannot think of a better wish for the newly-married couple than that the grace of the Sacrament will brighten day after day.

I am optimistic that this will be the case, particularly because I believe they will have someone special interceding for them. My new brother-in-law falls into a rare category, in that he is the son of a married, Latin-rite Catholic priest. Alas, Fr. John succumbed to cancer about two years ago, but I have no doubt that he will give his special solicitude for the union of Kristin and Michael. And as a ex-Marine and Black Sabbath fan, Fr. John will certainly be a formidable opponent for any demons that might beset them!

If any reader wishes to offer prayers for the newlyweds, for the repose of Fr. John, and for the comfort of his widow Carol, please know that they will be appreciated.

Toil (Thinking about Entropy)

Genesis 3:17-19 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you,`You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you;and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Colossians 1:28-29 Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ. For this I toil, striving with all the energy which he mightily inspires within me.

I've heard it said that God selects the patron Saint at Confirmation whose help you will need the most, even if you don't know it yet. I chose St. Joseph as my patron in honor of my father and my late father-in-law, but I had little cause to think that the patron of workers would be the one I would always need most and call on repeatedly in times of trouble. He has been faithful in giving assistance to me, many times when I had not been nearly so faithful in my own devotion. And I need his help often, because work is always a struggle for me.

When I say work is a struggle for me, I don't mean that I have difficulty doing it. Indeed, my problem tends rather to be the opposite in clinging to a problem with such ferocity that I will suffer burnout and exhaustion long before releasing it. Currently, my frustration level is high because I am on a forced vacation because of a company shutdown; I would rather take my vacation in a more efficient way at a time more sensible for my workload. That's my personality; I'm actually irritated when I don't get the chance to work when I want to work.

But here's my problem. It's not that I like working so much; what I like is getting things done. The exasperating part is that somewhere things are not getting done, and that is why the curse of toil really feels like a curse to me. That's because the curse of work isn't just that you work, but that your work is meaningless and unproductive. Per the theme of this series, things are falling into disorder all around you, and the vast majority of what you do is just maintaining some semblance of structure in the fall into chaos. But the real illusion here is just that you are actually getting anything done, even in those rare instances when you perceive yourself as making progress.

So Ecclesiastes says:
Eccles. 2:18-26 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me; and who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a man who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by a man who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and strain with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of pain, and his work is a vexation; even in the night his mind does not rest. This also is vanity.

There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the man who pleases him God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and heaping, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Now, I do very much enjoy being with my family, sharing the company of friends, taking food and drink, and benefiting from the fruits of labor, and I firmly believe that these are the sorts of things for which one ought to be working, rather than simply working for the sake of doing so. I have to thank St. Joseph for numerous not-so-subtle reminders to keep me on the straight and narrow in that regard. St. Joseph has a reputation for having a rather literal way of granting requests, even unstated ones. I once read a story of nuns at a convent placing a torn picture of a handyman in front of a statue of St. Joseph in a prayer for someone to perform sorely needed repairs, only to have a handyman show up the next day with one arm missing, the very same one that had been torn from the picture.

My recent reminder for spending too many hours working was one of the worst illnesses I've ever had, a flu-like bug that left me barely able to walk from bed to bathroom for three days. What I've learned from this is that toil itself is a lesson in entropy and our fundamental inability to create except as co-partners with God. It is exactly when our powers fail, when we have nothing left to give and nothing to keep, that we gain the greatest benefits. With my personality, that's a hard lesson, but it's being beaten into me slowly and surely.

I've started weightlifting again for the first time since college, something I had been putting off in favor of "intellectual hypertrophy" (a term appropriated from Bill Vallicella) for many a year. I think I had been resisting that move for exactly the same sense of frustration and exasperation I mentioned above. It just doesn't seem right that you should have to spend TIME just maintaining your body in that way, that it doesn't just fix itself and work perfectly. But that isn't the nature of the world anymore, where one's labor is perfectly purposeful and physical exertion clearly fits into the picture. Instead, exercise works like everything else. It's not those reps where you're throwing up the weight that matter; instead, you're going for that magic point aptly termed "failure." That's the last set, the one where the weight is going up and suddenly your muscles just stop and all of your will and focus and everything else can't get that stupid piece of iron to move one more millimeter. That's the one that makes all the difference.

To reach one last facet of this notion of toil, this entry deals more with my reasons for blogging than anything I've ever written before. Having had occasion to think about this particular theme of work the last several months, what with the forced bedrest and struggling to control the arc of dumbbells that didn't seem so heavy when I first picked them up, I finally figured out what blogging had done for me. See, I started posting on the Internet and later blogging as an attempt to actually do something productive in an attempt to replace the utter lack of purpose I experienced doing legal work. Nothing against corporations or law firms generally for those people who like that sort of thing, but the disconnection from actual human beings left me completely cold and unmotivated toward a career in which I had invested three years and six figures of debt.

Being "on fire" after Confirmation in a way I never had before, I used that energy to study and spread the faith. And this served as a kind of emotional crutch to keep me going when I was sinking into despair. But what I have finally realized, years after the fact, was that this was St. Joseph teaching me another lesson. As much as I felt that blogging was for some purpose, that I was solving some problems or making some things clearer, it was really when I was most incapable of bringing people around to my way of thinking that I was learning the most. So when I was pushing against someone who was completely intractable, not moving them an inch, someone else would benefit completely beside my intention with respect to my dialogue partner. What I wanted to do was to advance the dialogue on a number of points, but I've almost invariably found the dialogue to be in the same place as when I entered it, yet it seemed somehow that I found greater peace in the fact. I think that is probably what the best apologists understand, in that they recognize that they are in some ways simply providing resistance in a kind of passive way, letting God do his work rather than being in the business of compelling belief (Dave Armstrong and Mark Shea in particular seem to be those sorts of guys), but it takes a while to absorb that sensibility.

Having reached something of a plateau that regard, I wonder what I will do. In weightlifting, you switch your exercises around to work new muscle groups in new ways to attain balance in your training. I feel like I am at the point of needing to do something different, since I appear to have been drawn to apologetics, metaphysics, and the science of theology in some sense to learn that they cannot do what I first set out naively to accomplish with them. My sense is that I need to preach even more than teach, but I'm not sure exactly how I will go about doing that. But for the first time in a long time, I feel at peace with both the uncertainty and the freedom, and having learned my lesson to some extent, I believe that I will simply enjoy it. Thus ends the series, and I believe that I will take an indefinite break from blogging while I ponder these things.

A filioque footnote

I interrupt my soon-to-be-completed series to provide this footnote to Mike Liccione's filioque VIII post. Fr. Giulio Maspero is one of the foremost experts on Gregory of Nyssa among contemporary scholars, and he first came to my attention as one of those rare priests having a scientific background equally formidable with his theological learning (he has a Ph.D. in quantum physics, and his work was in an area of personal interest: stochastic quantum mechanics).
At any rate, I think he has the best take I have encountered in the scholarship re: Gregory's use of dia tou yiou, and I reproduce a brief excerpt from one of his works here with the hope that it will entice people interested in this subject to read the entire work. I've transliterated Greek text in what I hope to be an understandable way; footnote citations are omitted, and bolding is mine.

The conclusion is that one cannot understand the significance of the dia tou yiou
if one does not pay attention to the personal characteristic of the Spirit: the one who united the Father and Son and who leads to unity. For, with a beautiful expression of B. Forte, the Spirit is the "us in person of the divine communion." Thus, one can affirm that, in the context of Nyssian thought, the Spirit as syndetikon is the exegesis of the dia tou yiou, from which it can never be separated. This should be the most original contribution of the present study: this connection is almost totally passed over in the literature, which is principally dedicated to the study of the divinity of the third Person and, in the few cases in which his procession is treated, one gets often sidetracked in polemics of verbal Byzantinism.

Thus it was seen, that the base of the whole Nyssian construction is the continuity between economy and immanence: the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Son cannot be solely limited to the economic sphere.

It is probable that this development of Gregory's Trinitarian doctrine is due to the great value that he places in creation and to the purification of the remnants of Origenistic intellectualism that still slowed down Basil's pneumatology. For the Spirit is, at the same time, the One who brings to completion the dynamic of intra-Trinitarian union and who attracts and unites man and the world to the Triune God, inserting them in his vortex of life and love.

The summit of Gregory's pneumatology is then, precisely the recognition of the personal characteristic of the Third Person: he who leads to union, in immanence as in the economy. He is the syndetikon, the bond. His mode of being God, his mode of containing the unique divine essence, is the holos einai: that is, to carry to unity, to constitute a whole. This syn- of syndetikon recalls immediately the syn- in the syneklamponta of the Son with the Father: in this way it is shown that the fundamental category is intra-Trinitarian koinonia. B. Forte cites 2 Cor. 13.13 and auspiciously notes that, precisely due to his personal characteristic, in the greeting use by the primitive Church koinonia was attributed to the Holy Spirit.

In this sense, the accent moves to the Trinity as union of love. In the communion of the Father and the Son, which point one to the other, on the real level as on the logical level, the Spirit is not a complement, a simple extension toward the economy, fruit of an almost subordinating conjoined spiration. The Spirit rather unites the Father and the Son in as much as Spirit of the Father and of the Son.

Trinity and Man: Gregory of Nyssa's Ad Ablabium (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae series, vol. 86, Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2007), p. 184-85.

Fr. Maspero goes on to make the explicit connection to Latin theology on pp. 185-87:

So, in the Nyssian dia tou yiou the accent is placed on the tou yiou, on the communion of the Father and the Son, and not on the pure passivity of the dia. The same phenomena will be reproduced in Latin theology, where the nexus amoris eliminates the danger of dialectically and logistically opposing the Son to the Father, in generation as well as in spiration. The nexus amoris shows, in fact, that in the Filioque the accent is on the Filio and not on the que. With the same operation the dangers of "theological filioqueism" are eliminated, which, with an almost rationalistic coldness, dissects the Trinity, separating Paternity and Filiation from Spiration and Procession.

Such a deformation would lead to negate the Trinitarian reciprocity of the Spirit in relation to the Father and the Son. In fact, from a purely logical viewpoint, only the Father and the Son are in relative opposition. The temptation is then born to move from the logical level to the real one, affirming that, while the Spirit is relative to the Father and the Son, united in the unique spiration, one cannot say however that the Father and the Son are, in their turn, relative to the Spirit.

In synthesis, in Latin terms, l'unus Spirator is unus precisely by the Person of the Spirit, who is the union, the syndetikon, of the duo spirantes, united and distinct in their proper Paternity and Filiation by their mutual Spirit. Spiratio is, in fact, the unique respiration of love of the Father and Son: to be Son does not only mean to receive all from the Father -- to be his perfect Image but also to give to the Father perfect glory, to give everything back to the Father. It is in this manner that the Son manifests the Spirit in his Filiation to the Father, who is in this way fully Father, receiving his own glory from his own Son. This is the circular dynamic of glory seen in the [Adversus Macedonianos, De Spiritu Sancto]. But, at the same time, since it is proper of the Son to give to the Father all glory, it is the Son who sends the Spirit in the economy, extending into time the eternal movement that characterizes him as Person, to attract all to the Father. The Spirit is then like the eternal 'regard' of the Son to the Father, which for love of the Father himself reposes on creation and is extended as the gaze of the Crucified Christ, that fascinates and conquers. Gregory's equilibrium is, thus, perfect.

Therefore, while confronting Nyssian pneumatology with Latin doctrine, two considerations are necessary: on one side Gregory purifies the category of 'cause' of the temporal dimension and of substantial inferiority, transforming it into a notion that signifies fundamentally 'origin'. Thus the Nyssian aitia is notably closer to the Latin principium. On the other hand, it is also necessary to consider that Occidental pneumatology does not intend, with the Filioque, to introduce a second cause in the Trinity. The key point is the consideration of the Spirit as bond of union in the Blessed Trinity.

In my opinion, Fr. Maspero closes some important gaps in the pioneering work of Fr. David Balas, and Fr. Maspero does a great deal to correct the misinterpretations of Latin theology and Gregory's work as a result of the "verbal Byzantinism" described above. Upon reading his work, one will not doubt that he supports his position with close textual analysis, and I must again commend the study of this excellent work for those who wish to grasp the complicated issue of the Spirit's procession from the Son.

Qurbana (Thinking about Entropy)

Matthew 9:13 Go and learn what this means, `I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

None of our Lord's words in the flesh drive home to me the theme I have attempted to convey in this series as much as these. As I have repeated throughout this series, we cannot help but destroy; the only question is whether what we break down is offered to a higher order. But our sinful condition, deprived of the assistance of God's grace, is such that much of what we do is stupid, pointless, or evil, an act of sacrifice to our cherished idols rather than God.

This is why sacrifice has always been inseparable from Christian worship, so much so that many rites call it qurbana or qurbono, which means "offering." In a world in which we can do nothing right, the only thing left that we can do is to abandon ourselves entirely to God. There is no other source of hope or meaning in human existence but to give our lives to Christ. This is the pure offering (Mal. 1:11) prophesied in the Scriptures. This is the offering foreshadowed by offering the lives of animals within the blood back their Creator to be consecrated in His holiness. This is what is taught in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which says (Hebr. 9:22-23) "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these." To approach God's holiness, one must render to God the things that are God's (Matt. 22:21), to "continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name" and to "not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God" (Hebr. 13:15-16). As St. Paul says, "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Rom. 12:1). And elsewhere he says of himself, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain," (Php. 1:21) and "Even if I am to be poured as a libation upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all" (Php. 2:17).

Nor can we forget that it is only in Christ that we are able to make this qurbana "for there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony to which was borne at the proper time" (1 Tim.2:5-6). Just as Christ is the eternal mesites (Mediator) of the divine Love in the Trinity with the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son as the bond of love between them, so does Christ through offering of Himself on the Cross establish the bond of love between God and man, so that we may becomes one spirit with Him. So also testifies the Epistle to the Hebrews: "Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant."(Hebr. 9:15). The Letter goes on to say:

For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him (Hebr. 9:24-28)


The Epistle to the Romans says:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:1-4).

And the Epistle to the Colossians testifies also:
He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities -- all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Col. 1:9-14).

We offer our entire lives to God through the Holy Mysteries, particularly those Sacraments of Initiation into the Church: baptism in which we are buried in Christ, confirmation in which we are sealed in the life of the Spirit, and the Eucharist, which is the qurbana of the Church as the one Body of Christ.

Rom. 6:3-14 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Rom. 7:1-4 Do you not know, brethren -- for I am speaking to those who know the law -- that the law is binding on a person only during his life? Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Rom. 8:10-18 But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh -- for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Col. 1:21-26 And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints.

Col. 2:9-3:4 For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, taking his stand on visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" (referring to things which all perish as they are used), according to human precepts and doctrines? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting rigor of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

1 Cor. 6:14-20 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two shall become one flesh." But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Gal. 2:19-20 For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Thus is the entire pattern for Christian life defined:

Matt 19:16-22 And behold, one came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments." He said to him, "Which?" And Jesus said, "You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The young man said to him, "All these I have observed; what do I still lack?" Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.

Luke 14:26-33 "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, `This man began to build, and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace. So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

But if the only offering that we can make is uniting ourselves to Christ in the Spirit, the worst that we can do is to spurn the opportunity to make an offering of ourselves. So Jesus says it succinctly: "Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come" (Matt. 12:31-32). His words are echoed in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries. A man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace?" (Hebr. 10:26-29). Be mindful of the warning of St. Paul, who says "By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith, among them Hymenae'us and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Tim. 1:19-20).

For this reason, Scripture constantly enjoins us to use our time wisely, since even in merely subsisting in existence, we are destroying something and wasting time if we do not put what we have broken down to another, better use. As the Gospel of Matthew puts it, "I tell you, on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matt. 12:36-37). Numerous examples of this call to watchfulness can be found, particularly in those Scriptures read during the season of Advent. In a way, the Son of Man is always here, coming on the clouds to judge the sins of the world according to the condemnation of sin in the flesh on the Cross (Rom. 8:3; cf. 1 Pet. 4:6). Thus, the Scripture says that not even a generation passed from Jesus's time on earth before this was realized (Matt. 24:34), and while it was most graphically illustrated in the temporal judgment and destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, the power and judgment of God is now constantly shown in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Early on in the life of the Church, this was believed to refer to the imminency of the temporal Second Coming, but with the lessons of history, we realize that this is a constant fact of Christian life. Each Christian personally lives at the end of the age and passes on to the next, and each one faces his particular judgment that will eventually be summed up and recapitulated in Christ at the end of time (1 Cor. 15:20-28).

In addition to this sense of constant watchfulness as temporal beings, we have been given one gift in particular that exemplifies sacrificial self-giving and participation in divine work even at the natural level. That gift is the gift of human sexuality. Even though our rational activity is in the image of God and all sins against nature debase our rationality and lower us to the levels of beasts (2 Pet. 2:12), no particular human act is so intrinsically suited to God's use than the one that makes us coworkers in the special work of divine, creative love (viz., the special creation of the human being, body and soul). It is precisely because the generative power is the most purely sacrificial act that the misuse of this gift is one of the gravest offenses against God. Sexual sins are acts of anti-sacrifice, taking what is by nature ordered to cooperation with God and seizing it for one's selfish use.

Those who dismiss the tradition of Christianity to condemn sexual sins as being based on crude biology completely miss the connection Jesus draws between mercy and offering to God. It isn't a question of human life actually residing in the seed, as if spermicide were homicide, but in recognizing the nature of sexuality as an offering to God and its importance in His creative work. Even if one were to dismiss the numerous explicit references to the gravity of these sins made by the Apostle Paul, it would miss the forest for the trees to think that Jesus didn't address them. To say, for example, that "Jesus never said anything about homosexuality" is to miss the necessary implications of His teaching about charity and sacrifice, His explanation of marriage, and His condemnation of adultery. It is not without cause that the Jewish tradition condemned "wasting the seed." Just as in the case of wasting time, the sense is having this power given to us for a specific purpose that can be squandered, a lesson writ in the very nature of finite being.

I have had cause to think of this perhaps most seriously since I recently completed my thirty-third year. At this point, Jesus had nearly poured out His entire mortal life. And as my wife pointed out to me, "doesn't it make you feel bad when you think about how much Jesus had done by this age?" Indeed, it does, and it should. Most of my life has been spilled out to no purpose, as I am sure many people have experienced. But I find some comfort in the teaching of St. Augustine that God can save even this, so that even what we have wasted can yet be turned to our good and redeemed in the man who perceives God's purpose and ordo for creation. And I have hope in this: that even though we are built to die, Christ has made death the door to the Holy of Holies, the path to God.

Killing the Meme Softly

I wanted to have a bit of fun in between the more serious mood of this "Thinking about Entropy" series that I should finish shortly. Hence, I'm adding my contribution to Arturo's meme. But I am not tagging anybody, because I don't feel like thinking that hard right now about who would actually want to fill this in. I'm not following the rules, so there! >:P

1) What I was doing ten years ago
Engaging in a prolonged, intensive liver workout that happened to coincide with graduate school in physics. More specifically, my friends and I were following the Red Wings Stanley Cup run and consuming prodigious quantities of beer and Mexican martinis (residents of Austin, TX, will recognize the latter).

2) Five [non-work] things on my to-do list:
a. Build our IKEA kitchen table (how has IKEA not made the "Stuff White People Like" list?).
b. Learn Latin, koine Greek, and Thai.
c. Read the New Testament in at least one of those languages.
d. See Elton John in concert on Saturday.
e. Root for the Ducks and Lakers in the playoffs.

3) Things I would do if I were a billonaire
a. Quit my job and hang out with my kids all day.
b. Pay off all of the family debt.
c. Buy a place in Dana Point with an ocean view that is close enough to walk to church.
d. Move my parents, brother, and sisters out to California.
e. Donate some ridiculous amount to my parish, to Catholic charities in Orange County, to the 12th Man Foundation, and to the physics departments at Texas A&M and texas university.

4) Three bad habits:
The Falstaff trifecta: Sloth, gluttony, and drinking.

5) Five places I have visited:
TJ; Montreal; South Bend, Ind.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Miami, FL

6) Five jobs I’ve had:
Movie theater usher (best kid job ever!); cleanup of construction sites in Louisiana in the summer (best job for convincing you to stay in school); teaching assistant; research assistant; patent attorney. What's weird is that is probably every job I have ever had.

7) Five snacks I enjoy:
At the risk of reinforcing one of my bad habits...
a. Chips and salsa, ideally with a frozen margarita w/ salt and a sangria floater to wash them down.
b. "Mmmm, donuts." My favorite kind is chocolate covered and "custard-filled" in Krispy Kreme parlance. Where I come from, they didn't have Bavarian creme, so we called them "creme filled."
c. Beignets. I had to mention them separately to distinguish them from donuts. I freely confess to being a beignet snob. I can't stand it when someone drops powdered sugar on a sopaipilla and pretends it's a beignet (not that I've got anything against sopaipillas, but come on, people!). And I don't like to eat beignets with inferior coffee.
d. Twix, the only candy with the cookie crunch and the staple of the long workday.
e. Edamame. I had to put that one in just to note that I don't eat only junk food.

8) Five places I’ve lived:
This will look like cheating, but it says "places," not "cities."
a. Louisiana. Spent my whole childhood in Lake Charles with the exceptions of brief stints in Metairie and Houston and summer outings in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
b. Texas. In descending order of likeability, College Station (aka, Aggieland), Austin, and Dallas.
c. Massachusetts. The one I'd most like to forget. I find it hard to believe that I was a Celtics fan growing up (at least before Rick Pitino turned it into the University of Kentucky at Boston). Since living in Cambridge, I get physically ill at the thought of any pro team from Boston winning anything. Suffice it to say, football and baseball have been pretty painful for me lately. I'm hoping that the Lakers beat the Celts in the finals this year, because that would be the most painful outcome for Boston fans.
d. Manhattan, staying across the street from Battery Park with the missus. It wasn't even a year, but I fell in love with the City. I don't think I will ever have another experience like waking up to sunrise over the Statue of Liberty every day. I can remember how surreal it was when I went looking for the tower of light 9/11 memorial, and it turned out that it was projected from the cinema where we went to see movies several times. But the best part was that we came home with my first child, my little baby daughter.
e. The O.C. I was reminded of how much I love it when I read a post by M.Z. Forrest. He remarked "The story went that one could make more money elsewhere, but the cost of living would be higher. This argument was that things basically equal out. I still think that there is some truth to this, but there are a lot of things that don’t equal out. Trips to Disney World cost the same whether you are from Chicago or Escanaba, MI." I would just point out that trips to Disneyland are a hell of a lot cheaper when you live in Orange County. So are trips to the beach, to Sea World, to the San Diego Zoo, and to L.A. (if you actually wanted to go there for some reason, like a Dodger game). Not to mention that my commute is half what it was in Dallas, and based on the reduction in property taxes and utilities and more favorable lending terms in California, I'm actually paying only slightly more per month for my condo in California. Granted, it's a much smaller space, but in SoCal, you can go outside in absolute comfort pretty much year round, so you needn't spend nearly as much time in the house anyway. The only drawbacks are (1) family is halfway across the country and (2) you never know if Sacramento is going to pass socialized health care, a 50% income tax, or some other nightmarish piece of legislation that will ruin our lives.

OK, that was fun and reminded me why I like life so much. Now I can go back to grim and cheerless esoterica.

Mar Thoma (Thinking about Entropy)

John 20:26-29 [RSV]
Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."

During the Mass remembering Doubting Thomas this past Sunday, I received an exceptional gift: the gift of clarity. In part this was due to a well-spoken homily by Fr. Chris Heath, one of the excellent priests of our parish. But that homily brought me to see that many of the themes that I had been pondering this Lent (and to some extent, my whole life) were recapitulated in the person of St. Thomas. I hope to express how my own little epiphany, pale shadow that it was of St. Thomas's own, still something of the same quality.

Fr. Chris's homily contrasted the moment that caused St. Thomas to receive his dubious nickname, Doubting Thomas, with the remainder of his life as the Apostle to India, where he is called Mar Thoma. While St. Thomas was the last one to accept the Resurrection, not believing until he had seen it, the people he converted to the Christian faith were probably those least likely to have near experience of Jesus. It is even said that he converted Hindu Brahmins to his faith. Kerala, where St. Thomas was supposed to have arrived in India around A.D. 52, was something like Alexandria in Egypt, viz., a port city that included multiple cultural and religious tradition. To this day, the people from this region are called Nasrani (Nazarenes), because of the identification of the ethnic group native to Kerala with Christianity having a distinctive Syriac-Hebrew emphasis. While there were some Jewish settlers, both previously resident and recently arriving in response to persecution, the culture of the region was no doubt remote from Jerusalem, and St. Thomas's evangelical success could not have come easily. But as Fr. Chris suggested, perhaps it was because St. Thomas knew the struggles with doubt so intimately that he was so successful at convincing those who had not seen to believe.

This struck me personally because I had a realization of how much of my life had followed the path of Thomas in some way, apart from the rather obvious biographical connection of having been baptized Catholic (chosen as a disciple) and then becoming a doubter before returning to the faith. St. Thomas could practically epitomize Western empiricism in the passage from the Gospel of John quoted above, so I can hardly claim to be different in having embraced the attitude "show me, and then I will believe." But what suddenly became overwhelmingly apparent to me in a way I had never seen before was the connection between St. Thomas and India, which brings together several disparate areas of my own life.

My experience of Christianity has probably been similar to many people's experience, and it goes something like "NOW it all makes sense!" I don't mean that in an exhaustive sense, as if everything gets explained. On the contrary, it is more like the idea of having finally stumbled upon the key that unlocks the possibility of explaining everything, where you had previously been facing a locked door. But as the mysteries continue to unfold, there are always new and surprising levels of awareness, and this blog is intended in large part to share those realizations as they come to me. One could liken this picture of Mar Thoma to a kind of meta-realization in that regard, bringing together several themes that had emerged previously.

The first theme is that I have always been drawn to various aspects of Indian religion on a personal level throughout my life. I have mentioned before that my childhood religious upbringing (to the extent I had one) centered around the comparative mythological studies of Joseph Campbell, particularly reflected by George Lucas in Star Wars, and Hindu mythology was a significant part of that theme. Even in Catholic life, I have significantly benefited from the teaching of Thomas Merton, and I am particularly fascinated by the brief period before his untimely death when he had a closer contact with Buddhism than he ever had ever been before. On the more mundane level, my best friend in Orange County (whose birthday we are celebrating tonight) is Buddhist, and we have had many discussions about the common elements between Catholicism and Buddhism. In some way or another, I have always been interested in the Eastern religions that originated in India.

Turning to a theme more directly pertinent to my current state, I have never felt more "at home" in any liturgy than I have in the Syro-Malabar rite of Holy Qurbana, which I attended several times when I lived near the Syro-Malabar mission in Garland, TX. I credit that feeling as having no small significance in light of the fact that I was culturally quite uncomfortable, not because the people there weren't some of the most friendly and gracious people you could meet, but because I and whomever I managed to drag with me to "Indian Mass" were the only white people there. When I say "the only white people there," I mean that literally. They had Sunday school classes for the kids upstairs, and one time I was there, a girl who was about four or five excitedly exclaimed "Look, mommy, white people!" Those kids were learning Malayalam so that they could understand parts of the liturgy, including the Gospel reading; lacking that training myself, I had to look it up when I got home. Afterwards, I had to stammer some sort of response to "Please have some coffee and donuts, and why exactly are you here?" I couldn't really explain, because I didn't really know. I'd been to other rites before and since ... Byzantine, Tridentine, Maronite ... and the culture shock is common to all of them to some degree, but I never felt drawn to them in the same way. Now, I wonder whether it wasn't the fact that it was a land converted by Mar Thoma, a whole culture that never saw but believed, that I instinctively recognized.

Lastly, the connection with India touches on the physical/metaphysical theme that has been running through this series of posts. Put quite simply, I think pagan Vedic philosophy has a better handle on the concepts of destruction at the heart of this series (and to some extent, modern science) than pagan Greek philosophy does. Compared to Kali, the Manichee principle of matter and the Gnostic archons look pretty pathetic. Here's an interesting aside: when Latin America was attempting to express its religious independence from Spain and Portugal, various groups adopted the story of St. Thomas in India as their own, going so far as to cite him as the origin of the god Quetzalcoatl. It is surely an interesting cultural phenomenon that the legend of St. Thomas adapted so well to the inheritors of the Aztec culture, another culture that confronted destruction in a far more graphic way than Western culture. It is another example of the unlikely reception by a culture that had not seen Christ of the witness of St. Thomas. It seems that these cultures who have seen the dark side of life more immediately find something that resonates in the disciple who doubted but then gave the most remarkable witness.

I believe my perspective here has also been influenced by my professor E. C. George Sudarshan (articles available at this website), who taught me quantum mechanics in graduate school. Professor Sudarshan is from Kerala, India, the same place Mar Thoma arrived in the first century. He studied physics at the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society College in Kottayam, Kerala, which now has a center named after him. He also has the rather dubious distinction of having had the Nobel Prize in Physics twice given to other people for his work, first in 1979 and more recently in 2005. (The latter case was egregious, because the prize winner Roy Glauber had actually accused Sudarshan of committing an error and only after Sudarshan corrected him did he accept and disseminate what is now known as the "Sudarshan-Glauber representation" or more briefly "the Sudarshan diagonal representation." Personally, I think the paucity of Indian Nobel laureates in physics might well have something to do with the reluctance of Westerners to admit that Indian culture might originate scientific ideas outside the ambit of Western culture.)

I respect Prof. Sudarshan because he seems to have found the golden mean in recognizing the importance of philosophy for science without falling into the trap of making science into philosophy. As far as I know, he is not a Christian, but he is well versed in Vedic philosophy and knows something of Christianity as well (one might note his description of natural law here: "The 'word becomes flesh': sabda entails dravya."). Several of his Seven Science Quests involve fundamental questions in our knowledge of the world, and I have already recommended his book (with Tony Rothman) titled Doubt and Certainty, which explores these themes in some detail. Even in the secular understanding of physics and metaphysics, the ideas were from the same cultural milieu where Mar Thoma's Gospel was received.

I find it comforting that all of these themes of science, of philosophy, and of religion can be brought together in the Christian witness of Mar Thoma. I find it comforting because the Church in India has always given me a sense of hope. The St. Thomas Christians were treated badly by missionaries of both religious and political stripes. But somehow, Malabar and Malankara Christianity has survived intact, and that survival is testimony that Christianity has lasted and can last with an authentic character, one that can be reconciled with the Holy See and the later ecumenical councils even when culturally and historically remote from both. Like the Maronites (another Syrian Christian rite), they witness to the fact that separation is not insurmountable, that there is no historic Christian witness opposed to unity. And from the text of John's Gospel, itself a message passionately devoted to the theme of Christian unity, the words of St. Thomas echo through the legacy of his own life. They reverberate with this theme: the hope of uniting all things in Christ.