tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52392907225759968162024-03-13T22:13:38.267-05:00The Supplement - Catholic CommentaryThe formerly pseudonymous former blogging home of Fred NoltieFred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.comBlogger559125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-46777652683141958112012-06-23T14:10:00.003-05:002012-06-23T14:10:56.838-05:00I am SpartacusI started writing this blog pseudonymously five years ago. It’s time to shed the anonymity. <a href="http://aquinasetc.wordpress.com/">This is me</a>.<br />
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I don’t have plans for continuing to write here at The Supplement. I have come to prefer Wordpress as a blogging platform. My plan at this point is to slowly, slowly see about re-publishing posts from here at The Supplement over at Aquinas Etc. I may alter, revise, trim, or expand them when I do so. I don’t intend to copy everything over to the new place, but I’m going to leave The Supplement online without expurgating or changing anything.Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-70851431217920842922011-07-04T11:47:00.001-05:002011-07-04T11:47:02.630-05:00Consequences of the Primacy of Conscience<p>An interesting exchange between a Presbyterian and some Catholics occurred recently. A Catholic mentioned in passing that Protestants hold to the primacy of the individual conscience. The Presbyterian indignantly denied holding this view, and apparently did not think that it is affirmed by any Reformed doctrinal standard. Now this gentleman is generally well informed (based upon what I have seen), so I presume this was a simple case of having forgotten what his own standards say.</p>
<p>I suspect (but I do not know for a fact) that part of what motivated his strong objection to the claim is that he realizes the primacy of individual conscience reduces to “solo scriptura” immediately, and he claims to hold to “sola scriptura.” In the end, the two boil down to the same thing anyway, as was demonstrated <a href="http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/11/solo-scriptura-sola-scriptura-and-the-question-of-interpretive-authority/">here</a>, but at least some Protestants (notably the Reformed) object to this (although in my opinion Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch’s argument remains unanswered so far).</p>
<p>Setting that aside for the moment, though, his challenge to demonstrate the claim from the Reformed standards was fairly quickly answered:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in any thing, contrary to His Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also. [<a href="http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/index.html?body=/documents/wcf_with_proofs/ch_XX.html">source</a>]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short: according to the Westminster Confession, no man has any standing to require anyone to believe anything that isn’t taught in the Bible. Ah, but there is the rub: who is to say what is taught in the Bible? The same document also <a href="http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/index.html?body=/documents/wcf_with_proofs/ch_I.html">insists</a> that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to the WCF no ecclesial body has any standing to so declare what Scripture teaches as to require assent by anyone, because the supreme court for all “controversies of religion” has but one Judge, and that is God Himself. So it seems pretty clear that primacy of the individual conscience (when it comes to discerning what truth the Bible teaches) is the definitive teaching of the WCF: a man is answerable to God alone. The claim that primacy of individual conscience is a “Protestant dogma” is not a Catholic invention.</p>
<p>When I was in the PCA, this principle was unquestionably enforced (so to speak). Subscription to the Confession was not required for membership in the denomination; it was only required of men who held office (and even they are not obliged to hold to every jot and tittle it contains). If one isn’t obliged to agree with the WCF at all for church membership, and if even officers aren’t answerable for everything it contains, it is pretty clear that the denomination affirms primacy of individual conscience and does not seek to compel assent.</p>
<p>More importantly, if a Protestant denies the primacy of individual conscience he is effectively undercutting the Reformers. Luther famously <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther#Diet_of_Worms">appealed</a> to conscience over against the authority of the Church; for a Protestant to deny the legitimacy of such an appeal is to reduce Luther from a reformer to a revolutionary who refused to accept licit authority. It would be to deny what is actually the <em>sine qua non</em> of the Reformation.</p>
<p>A third consequence of this primacy of individual conscience is that it pretty well obliterates any distinction between “solo scriptura” and “sola scriptura.” For if no man and no ecclesial body has any authority to compel assent to some doctrine or other (as the WCF asserts), then any claim for the legitimacy of “subordinate and derivative” authority amounts to nothing but a fog machine.</p>
<p>Now it might be asserted that the WCF doesn’t preclude compelled assent in literally every case, but rather only in cases having to do with “doctrines and commandments of men” that are contradict the Bible. But the assertion begs the question, because what is at issue in such situations is precisely what the Bible actually teaches. Suppose a PCA officer announces that he does not believe in predestination because he no longer believes that it is taught in the Bible. In his eyes, any attempt by his session to compel his assent to the doctrine of predestination would contradict what the WCF teaches about liberty of conscience.</p>
<p>The end result is an inescapable dilemma: either the Protestant must claim the primacy of individual conscience and that principle’s concomitant doctrinal and denominational chaos, or he must accept the right of ecclesial authority to declare the content of the Faith (which inescapably demolishes any pretended legitimacy of the Reformation). There aren’t any other alternatives.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-18181418349438602702011-06-26T22:32:00.005-05:002011-06-27T00:56:14.542-05:00Aquinas, Descartes, and Schaeffer continuedI have written a <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2007/12/francis-schaeffer-and-aquinas.html">few</a> <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/12/aquinas-descartes-and-schaeffer.html">posts</a> <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2011/05/schaeffer-vs-aquinas-redux.html">now</a> on this subject, and since it is apparently a topic of persistent interest (judging from what Blogger says about the traffic on <em>The Supplement</em>) it seems worthwhile from time to time to revisit it. This is not an area of active research for me, and I am pretty sure that it never will be. Nevertheless from time to time I come across information that seems relevant to it, and so I think it is useful to add it here for the sake of completeness.<br />
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In his monumental work <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Degrees-Knowledge-Collected-Jacques-Maritain/dp/0268008868"><em>The Degrees of Knowledge</em></a>, Jacques Maritain discusses Descartes’ epistemological mistake (one which he says has been retained by Descartes’ philosophical descendants):<br />
<blockquote>[Modern idealism] is characterized, truth to tell, by a radical misunderstanding of the true nature of the idea and of the intentional function of knowledge, thenceforth conceived upon the pattern of events in the material order. Descartes clearly saw that the known object is known within thought; his capital error was to have separated the object from the thing, believing as he did that the object is in thought, not as an intelligible entity rendered present to the mind through an immaterial form—and with which the mind is intentionally identified—but as an imprint stamped on wax. Henceforth, the intentional function disappears; the known object becomes something of thought, an imprint or portrait born within it; understanding stops at the idea (looked at as an instrumental sign). This idea-portrait, this idea-thing, has as its double a thing to which it bears a resemblance but which is itself not attained by the act of understanding. They are two separate <em>quod’</em>s, and the divine veracity is needed to assure us that behind the <em>idea-quod</em> (which we attain), there is a <em>thing-quod</em> corresponding to it. Of itself thought attains nothing but itself [136-137].</blockquote>Recall with me the Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of what it means to say that a certain proposition is <em>true:</em> that is, a proposition is true if it corresponds to reality. If I say that the sky is green, everyone knows immediately that what I said is false. It does not correspond to reality. It seems clear from what Maritain wrote that Descartes must <em>necessarily</em> have a different conception of what it means to say that a proposition is true, because for him there is no possibility of a knowledge of the real world around him.<br />
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On the one hand, he says this (Maritain’s description of his view is consistent with this):<br />
<blockquote>If I've gotten everything in me from God and He hasn't given me the ability to make errors, it doesn't seem possible for me ever to error. [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy#Meditation_IV:_Concerning_the_True_and_the_False">Source</a>]</blockquote>On that page they quote him saying that “error is a lack,” but of what? It seems that the answer is that truth for Descartes is founded upon “clear and distinct” perceptions (see basically <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy">this entire article</a>). Well, clearly this is completely <em>unlike</em> Aquinas’ view (and Aristotle’s for that matter). And if one’s idea of what truth is <em>doesn’t</em> hinge upon correspondence with reality, then what he has done is to functionally set himself free to say that just about anything is true: why not? The effect of this is to remove oneself from accountability for what he believes, because he no longer has any standard by which to measure the truth of what he says. In this there neither is nor can be any dependence upon Aquinas for Descartes, and the two are at odds. St Thomas affirms that what we say must be measured by the standard of reality. Descartes does not. This, it seems to me, is surely at the root of the rise of autonomous reason. But, contrary to Schaeffer, it is absolutely <em>not</em> a view that can be attributed to Aquinas. Schaeffer was wrong. Aquinas cannot be blamed for the disastrous course of modern philosophy.<br />
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[Update, a little later] I nearly forgot that I wrote about these subjects a few years ago. In <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2008/02/philosophy-of-st-thomas-knowledge-of.html">this post</a>, we see that St Thomas more or less addressed Descartes’ erroneous theory about knowledge of the external world, and <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2008/02/philosophy-of-st-thomas-falsity-in.html">here</a> is a brief discussion of Aquinas’ views about the reliability of the senses.Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-89249203602024230522011-06-09T20:12:00.004-05:002011-06-26T22:40:48.111-05:00Trent Does Not Contradict OrangeI recently stumbled across a <a href="http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/counciltrent.html">page</a> on a Protestant website that purports to demonstrate contradictions between the Council of Trent and the second Council of Orange. It attempts this by comparing the canons of Trent on Justification to those of Orange. My purpose here is to show that the demonstration fails, and that Trent does not contradict Orange.<br />
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Before we go too far, though, a few things should be said. First and foremost, the Second Council of Orange was not an ecumenical council. Trent was. Consequently it is possible in principle for two such councils to actually contradict, but if that happens it is the non-ecumenical council which is in error. The Church does not claim that non-ecumenical councils as such have any charism for infallibility as may be exercised by the ecumenical councils. Now, we’ll find (as I intend to show) that Trent doesn’t actually contradict Orange, but the point I wish to affirm from the beginning is that such a contradiction—if it actually existed—would not stand as <em>ipso facto</em> proof that the Church’s claims are false. In this case, though, Orange’s acts were formally approved by the Pope, and consequently “enjoy ecumenical authority” (<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11266b.htm">source</a>).<br />
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Secondly, it should be pointed out that the comparison ignores the actual teaching of Trent on justification, focusing instead upon the canons. This is a mistake because canons do not in themselves have dogmatic force. Rather, they are a disciplinary measure that are founded upon the dogmas of the Council, and constitute a disciplinary expression of the dogmas. The point is that if you really want to know what Trent taught about justification, you need to look at the Decree on Justification rather than at the canons. It is disappointing that the author of the comparison did not do this. Certainly it is not because he was unable to find them; the very <a href="http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct06.html">page</a> he used as a source for his comparison for the canons also contains the Decree on Justification, and he had to scroll past the Decree in order to find the canons.<br />
Thirdly, it’s interesting to me that there are thirty-three canons on justification, but the Protestant critic of Trent alleges contradictions with Orange related to just <em>three</em> of those canons. So I’m inclined to wonder: is this the worst that you can come up with?<br />
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Lastly, for the sake of stifling completeness, I’ve already written <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/search/label/Council%20of%20Trent">quite a few posts</a> on the subject of Trent’s teaching on justification. It is abundantly clear that Trent taught nothing like what is charged by our Protestant accuser.<br />
The three canons we’ll be looking at are 4, 5, and 11.<br />
Canon 4:<br />
<blockquote>If any one saith, that man’s free will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it cannot refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema.</blockquote>The text from Orange that canon 4 is alleged to contradict, including the emphasis that was added by our Protestant critic:<br />
<blockquote>If anyone says that <strong>not only the increase of faith but also its beginning and the very desire for faith,</strong> by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly … <strong>belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace,</strong> that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, it is proof that he is opposed to the teaching of the Apostles, for blessed Paul says, “And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). And again, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8)</blockquote>It seems that the emphasized portions are intended to show us where the contradiction is, so that we are to infer that canon 4 (and consequently Trent) denies that the beginning of faith, the desire for it, and the increase of faith are all a gift of grace. The problem with this alleged contradiction is that it doesn’t exist. Look at the second clause of Canon 4: “that man’s free will <em>moved and excited by God…</em>” The canon’s not saying that we don’t need grace; on the contrary, it’s saying that we absolutely need it, because it’s talking about a man whose free will has been moved by God <em>first.</em> How did our Protestant accuser miss this? I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say that he missed it because he holds to a false view of free will: namely, I’d guess that he probably supposes that unbelievers (at the least) don’t have free will. This view is an error, because (as St Augustine <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/09/st-augustine-affirmed-free-will.html">rightly</a> <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/02/st-augustine-requirements-of-justice.html">taught</a>) “punishment would be unjust if man did not have free will.” But free will doesn’t imply the ability to do just anything, and among other things it must be moved by God (as canon 4 says) before it can assent to God’s call.<br />
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So much for the criticisms of canon 4. Here is canon 5:<br />
<blockquote>If any one saith, that, since Adam’s sin, the free will of man is lost and extinguished; or, that it is a thing with only a name, yea a name without a reality, a figment, in fine, introduced into the Church by Satan; let him be anathema.</blockquote>And the corresponding criticism from the Protestant page, with its original emphasis:<br />
<blockquote>If anyone maintains that some are able to come to the grace of baptism by mercy but others through <strong>free will, which has manifestly been corrupted in all those who have been born after the transgression of the first man,</strong> it is proof that he has no place in the true faith. For he denies that the free will of all men has been weakened through the sin of the first man, <strong>or at least holds that it has been affected in such a way that they have still the ability to seek the mystery of eternal salvation by themselves without the revelation of God. The Lord himself shows how contradictory this is by declaring that no one is able to come to him “unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44), as he also says to Peter, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17), and as the Apostle says, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3).</strong></blockquote>Once again, there is no contradiction here. Canon 5 of Trent condemns those who deny that man has free will, and Orange says <em>not</em> that free will has been lost, but that it has been <em>corrupted.</em> Our critic further claims (from what he has emphasized from Orange) that canon 5 contradicts Orange’s insistence that grace is necessary. But this too is absurd, as my series of posts about Trent make inescapably clear (but we’re going to briefly review some of these facts here anyway, in a little while).<br />
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Here is canon 11 from Trent:<br />
<blockquote>If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.</blockquote>Our Protestant critic doesn’t quote Orange here; instead, he offers this commentary:<br />
<blockquote>[Note: this says if the “the grace, whereby we are justified, is ONLY the favour of God; let him be anathema.” In Other her words, RCC outright rejects SOLA GRATIA - salvation by grace alone in Christ alone, thereby anathematizing both Augustine and their own early church council.]</blockquote>It appears that our Critic has unfortunately misunderstood the canon, and has arrived at preposterous conclusions as a result. With respect to what grace is, canon 11 is denying the Protestant error that grace is neither more nor less than God’s favor. The point of the canon is that there is more to God’s grace than His mere favor, and that those who say otherwise have in this respect departed from the Catholic Faith. It is certainly <em>not</em> saying there is anything non-divine in grace. I hope that I’m misunderstanding this gentleman, but based upon what he writes here, it seems as though he really thinks that canon 11 is endorsing a view of grace that includes something from outside of God. This is egregiously mistaken. For starters, the first half of the canon is explicitly insisting upon the fact that “the grace and charity poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost” are <em>essential constituents of justification,</em> and obviously (since they are poured forth by the Holy Spirit) they are solely and exclusively from God, as I have already pointed out in a previous <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2009/12/trent-on-justification-canon-eleven.html">post</a> on canon 11. So how this can in <em>any</em> way be described as a denial of salvation by grace alone is beyond my powers to comprehend. It’s just crazy talk.<br />
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At this point it’s probably a good idea to review the Decree on Justification on a few points related to these canons, because the Decree is the essential context for properly understanding what the Fathers of Trent meant by the canons. But before we do that it might be a good idea to have the Decree on Original Sin firmly in the back of our minds, not least because they explicitly refer to it themselves. <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2009/07/trent-on-original-sin.html">Here’s</a> my post on the subject. Among other things, they say:<br />
<blockquote>If any one asserts, that this sin of Adam,--which in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own, --<em>is taken away either by the powers of human nature, or by any other remedy than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification, and redemption;</em> or if he denies that the said merit of Jesus Christ is applied, both to adults and to infants, by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the church; let him be anathema [Decree on Original Sin, §3; emphasis added].</blockquote>Back to the Decree on Justification. In Chapter I, they declare:<br />
<blockquote>not the Gentiles only by the force of nature, but not even the Jews by the very letter itself of the law of Moses, were able to be liberated, or to arise, [from sin]; although free will, attenuated as it was in its powers, and bent down, was by no means extinguished in them.</blockquote>See my post on this chapter <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2009/07/trent-on-justification-chapter-one.html">here</a>.<br />
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Chapter II describes what God did on our behalf in view of the circumstances adumbrated in Chapter I: that is, because we cannot justify ourselves, He sent His Son to save us. My post on this is <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2009/07/trent-on-justification-chapter-two.html">here</a>.<br />
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Chapter V is the next chapter relevant for the present discussion. It declares that justification begins with the grace of God, “without any merits existing [on the part of man].” My post on this is <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2009/07/trent-on-justification-chapter-five.html">here</a>.<br />
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In my opinion the heart of the Decree is chapter VII, because in it the Fathers declare what the causes of our justification are. <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2009/07/trent-on-justification-chapter-seven.html">Here</a> is my post on the subject. Executive summary: <em>none</em> of the causes of our justification enumerated by Trent is something that man does, as though he can justify himself.<br />
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Trent doesn’t contradict Second Orange.Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-8848702475297133652011-06-06T23:08:00.001-05:002011-06-06T23:08:08.248-05:00Correcting some misapprehensions<p>A gentleman named Drake Shelton seems to have begun a series of blog posts in which he intends to present his confession of faith. Part one may be found <a href="https://eternalpropositions.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/drake-shelton%E2%80%99s-scripturalist-confession-of-faith-part-1/">here</a>. My interest is less in considering or evaluating this confession and more in correcting what I understand to be mistakes in it related to St Thomas and Aristotle. In the first section, on epistemology, he offers the following quotation from a Protestant philosopher/theologian Gordon Clark and a few comments upon it. Mr. Shelton’s comments are primarily what interest me, but the rest of the quotation here is necessary for context:</p><blockquote><p>Experience at best teaches us that one event follows another. It never shows that one causes the other. Experience at best gives sequence not causality. (pg. 24)…First of all causality is a relative term: That is, there can be no causes unless there is an effect. We say X causes Y. Omit either one of them and there is left neither cause nor effect (pg. 25)…a cause must be an event that guarantees the effect…There must be because the cause must produce its result. If in the time interval something happens, or even could happen, to prevent the effect, <strong>there is no cause</strong>…two objections. First, but illogically, he will say, ‘But I mean X cause Y if nothing intervenes.’ Stated thus baldly the fallacy is flagrant. However, it can be stated more covertly. Food nourishes us, if we do not get seasick, and if the stomach finishes its function, and if the juices are absorbed into the blood, and if the blood is brought to the muscles. But note well: <strong>We no longer have two event, X and Y. We have the definition of nourishment; and surely it is logical to insist that if we are nourished, it follows logically but not temporally, that we are nourished.</strong> (pg. 26) [emphasis in original]</p></blockquote><p>And Mr. Shelton’s comments:</p><blockquote><p>The context of this last section is the “spatio temporal” world of the empiricists and the Aristotelians. This view of God we reject. They will say that God causes all things because he is the first mover. This is not what a Scripturalist means when he says that God causes all things, because the Aristotelian view assumes that the subsequent motions are proximate causes. <em>This Clark just refuted.</em> Dr. Clark says, ”We now concur with the Islamic anti-Aristotelian Al Gazali: God and God alone is the cause, for only God can guarantee occurrence of Y, and indeed of X as well. [emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>Whatever may be the case about the book from which he’s quoting, it’s emphatically not the case that Clark has refuted Aristotle’s view of causality in the quotation above. Why do I say this? <em>Because it does not even address it.</em> Why do I say that? Because Aristotelian-Thomistic causality doesn’t have to do with temporal relations between events. Rather, it has to do with act and potency, and specifically with how potencies are raised to act. But Clark doesn’t address this in the quotation. Rather, he talks about events and relations and sequence. The whole quotation sounds a lot like Feser’s description and subsequent demolition of Hume’s critique of causality in chapters 2 and 3 of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners-Guide-Oneworld/dp/1851686908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307417378&sr=8-1"><em>Aquinas</em></a>. And Feser makes it pretty clear that Hume either didn’t understand or wasn’t talking about A-T causality, too.</p><p>Thirdly, although Shelton claims that Clark has refuted the A-T view of proximate causes, it seems pretty clear that this isn’t so. Why? Aside from the fact that nothing in the Clark quotation has to do with A-T causation <em>per se,</em> there’s nothing in the quotation that even refers to proximate causes. At any rate, I don’t see it. It may be that Mr. Shelton is referring to the hypothetical objection that Clark supposes might be raised to his argument: “But I mean X causes Y if nothing intervenes.” But this has to do with X being ordered to bringing about Y in such a way that Y is guaranteed unless something intervenes <em>to prevent it.</em> This is what the quote is talking about, after all, since Clark had just said:</p><blockquote><p>If in the time interval something happens, or even could happen, to prevent the effect, there is no cause…</p></blockquote><p>So proximate causes are not in view at all, since proximate causes do not prevent an effect.</p><p>(By the way, this one sentence shows that Clark’s argument doesn’t work against A-T causation, because in A-T causation the First Mover’s action and the resulting motion of the thing moved are <em>simultaneous.</em> Consequently there is no time interval at all.)</p><p>In short, then, it seems clear that Mr. Shelton’s claims against Aristotle (and consequently St Thomas, in this instance) don’t work.</p><p>Along similar lines there are a couple other observations about the post that seem worthwhile to make. A little later in the post, Mr. Shelton asserts:</p><blockquote><p>Man receives no knowledge from created and empirical means. Eccles. 8:16-17.</p></blockquote><p>But Mr. Shelton had to read (an empirical means) the Bible (a created means) in order to determine whether the given quotation might support this claim. So this seems to be pretty self-refuting. :-)</p><p>Toward the end of the article, he claims:</p><blockquote><p>The law of contradiction is deduced from 1Co 14:6</p></blockquote><p>It’s not clear whether his claim is “Among other ways, the law of contradiction may be deduced from 1 Cor. 14:6” or “The law of contradiction may <em>only</em> be derived from 1 Cor. 14:6.” If the latter: Parmenides (a Greek) formulated the law of contradiction 500 years before St Paul was born. So the latter claim would be clearly false.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-43186227076589021492011-06-03T14:46:00.001-05:002011-06-03T14:46:44.874-05:00Communion with Protestants<p>Recently the question arose: may Catholics participate in the Lord’s Supper with Protestants? The answer is an unfortunate “No, we may not.” It is unfortunate because of the fact that Christians are not united, and it is for that reason necessary that we not participate in the Lord’s Supper with them.</p><p>The Catechism says:</p><blockquote><p>Ecclesial communities derived from the Reformation and separated from the Catholic Church, “have not preserved the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Holy Orders.” It is for this reason that Eucharistic intercommunion with these communities is not possible for the Catholic Church. However these ecclesial communities, “when they commemorate the Lord's death and resurrection in the Holy Supper . . . profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and await his coming in glory.” [<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P42.HTM">§1400</a>]</p></blockquote><p>Furthermore, this practice is forbidden by Canon Law:</p><blockquote><p>Catholic ministers administer the sacraments licitly to Catholic members of the Christian faithful alone, who likewise receive them licitly from Catholic ministers alone. [<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P2T.HTM">CIC 844, §1</a>]</p></blockquote><p>The requirements of this canon depend for their necessity upon the necessity of the truth expressed by the Catechism.</p><p>Why is this important? Because Communion is an expression of the unity of the Church as Christ’s Body. An absolutely essential part of that unity is unity of belief. Why? Because the Lord Jesus Christ says that He is the way, <em>the truth</em> and the life (<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/bible/joh014.htm">John 14:6</a>). But if those who commune do not hold to what the Church teaches, then to that extent they are contradicting what Jesus said of Himself. An important thing to remember here is that the Church is not merely a human or earthly institution; as I said above, the Church is Christ’s Body. Consequently unity of belief is necessary just because He is truth Himself. To suggest that errors do not matter isn’t merely a question of being charitable or not. In the end, our very understanding of the nature of reality is at stake.</p><p>So we may not participate in Protestant ordinances like the Lord’s Supper precisely because we are not in full communion with them.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-9091016246336900422011-06-01T10:09:00.001-05:002011-06-01T10:09:23.508-05:00Bloggers Emeritus<p>I’ve added a gadget for an honor roll of sorts for bloggers who have apparently moved on to other pursuits. These folks made what I consider to be invaluable contributions in their own ways, and I thank them for their efforts.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-19270167210599790482011-06-01T01:08:00.001-05:002011-06-01T01:08:24.945-05:00Contradiction<p>I just came across a rather startling remark made by Protestant theologian Cornelius Van Til:</p><blockquote><p>The law of contradiction, as we know it, is but the expression on a created level of the internal coherence of God’s nature. Christians should therefore never appeal to the law of contradiction as something that, as such, determines what can or cannot be true. [<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Systematic-Theology-Prolegomena-Revelation/dp/0875527892/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3"><em>Introduction to Systematic Theology</em></a><em>,</em> 11]</p></blockquote><p>Many years ago I read that book. It has been far too long for me to remember anything in particular about it, but I must confess that I find this to be a rather bizarre remark, and likewise one that is just wrong.</p><p>In the first place, the law of contradiction is first and foremost a comment on the nature of existence, and it wasn’t formulated by a Christian. It’s as old as the Greeks. It’s as simple as this: whatever is, is; whatever isn’t, isn’t. A thing can’t exist and not exist at the same time. You don’t have to be a Christian to realize this. It’s bound up in the very meaning of the terms.</p><p>In the second place, I can’t fathom how anyone could rationally say that the law of contradiction doesn’t say anything about what can or can’t be true. The keyboard I’m using either exists or it doesn’t, and to say that the law of contradiction doesn’t determine this is utter nonsense. Likewise a given geometric shape is either a circle or it isn’t. It can’t be both a circle and a non-circle at the same time and in the same respect. So to say (as Van Til apparently did) that the law of contradiction must not at all be appealed to as a determiner of what’s true is crazy talk.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-73904190645519890322011-05-31T23:04:00.001-05:002011-06-26T22:36:31.242-05:00Schaeffer vs Aquinas Redux<p>In my last little seizure of activity some months ago, I <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/12/aquinas-descartes-and-schaeffer.html">spent some time</a> reviewing the case against Schaeffer’s erroneous claim that Aquinas must bear some (most of the?) blame for the course of modern philosophy—a claim that’s just bizarre, considering that it’s basically universally accepted that modern philosophy really begins with Descartes, and considering that Descartes explicitly and self-consciously repudiated the Scholastics (which of course includes St Thomas). Recently I stumbled across something that might possibly explain exactly where and how Schaeffer got his wrong idea.</p><p>In <a href="http://cuapress.cua.edu/BOOKS/viewbook.cfm?Book=MCPF"><em>Praeambula Fidei</em></a>, the late Dr. Ralph McInerny defends Thomism and St Thomas from the claim made by some scholars that Aquinas didn’t actually accept the idea of the preambles of faith, and that the notion was injected into Thomism by later commentators – especially Cajetan. “Preambles of faith” refers to the fact that there are things that we can know about God by means of reason which serve as stepping stones on the path to faith.</p><p>The third chapter of PF is particularly relevant to the present question concerning Schaeffer. In it, McInerny defends Cajetan against charges made by de Lubac. In 1946 de Lubac wrote <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Surnaturel-Etudes-historiques-Henri-Lubac/dp/2220031845"><em>Surnaturel</em></a> (“Supernatural”; sorry, I haven’t got a link to an English language version of the book, and I’m not even completely certain that the link is to the right book), in which he proposes to show whether “the teaching of Saint Thomas on this capital point [concerning the supernatural] was indeed that offered by the Thomist school as established in the sixteenth century, codified in the seventeenth, and affirmed even more starkly in the twentieth” [quote taken from PF, page 70].</p><p>McInerny offers the following setting of the scene, which he draws from one of de Lubac’s partisans:</p><blockquote><p>For Cajetan, nature does nothing in vain: it cannot have an aspiration it could not accomplish by its own means. If there is a desire for God in man, this is not natural, but added by God in a gratuitous act of omnipotence and His will. By right, nature is self-sufficiency (this is the theory of pure nature), and if in fact man always desires God, this is simply because God wills it and substitutes it for the order of nature. <em>Cajetan thus combined an atheist humanism and a theology destructive of human nature.</em> One can see the devastating consequences that de Lubac was able to draw from the course of history [PF, p. 71, emphasis added].</p></blockquote><p>Does this bear any resemblance to Schaeffer’s charge against Aquinas? I think it that it does. Schaeffer’s claim holds water only to the extent that it can be said that Aquinas really did foster the idea of autonomous reason, which view is akin to “atheist humanism.” But this is exactly what McInerny tells us was de Lubac’s charge against Cajetan.</p><p>What does McInerny say about the claims made in this quotation?</p><blockquote><p>Almost every charge against Cajetan in this paragraph is false. [PF, p. 72]</p></blockquote><p>And:</p><blockquote><p>[It is said by Cajetan’s critics that] …[t]he commentators of the sixteenth century, by holding that man is not naturally called to the vision of God, end by juxtaposing a natural end of man distinct from his beatifying fulfillment. “They give credit then to a secularized natural order—cultural, moral, philosophic…Pure nature is thus linked to ‘separated reason.’” [<em>Ibid.</em>]</p></blockquote><p>This, too, sounds a lot like Schaeffer’s claim.</p><blockquote><p>Given his understanding of how mankind has declined into secularization and atheism, de Lubac’s animus against Cajetan is understandable, however unjust. He takes Cajetan to be, if not the inventor, then the propagator of a notion of obediential potency that presupposes a state of nature and thus suggests that we are, in a natural state, autonomous, self-sufficient. What need, then, for the supernatural? … There are two great problems with de Lubac’s criticism: first, Cajetan does not say the things de Lubac claims he says; second, it is de Lubac, not Cajetan, who is out of harmony with the teaching of Aquinas. [PF, p. 87]</p></blockquote><p>In short: de Lubac, writing in the middle 20<sup>th</sup> century, says practically the same things about Cajetan that Schaeffer would later (in 1968) suggest about Aquinas:</p><blockquote><p>But the important point in what followed was that a really autonomous area was set up. From the basis of this autonomous principle, philosophy also became free, and was separated from revelation. Therefore philosophy began to take wings, as it were, and fly off wherever it wished, without relationship to the Scriptures.... Aquinas had opened the way to an autonomous Humanism, an autonomous philosophy, and once the movement gained momentum, there was soon a flood. [<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Reason-Penetrating-Analysis-Thought/dp/0877845387"><em>Escape from Reason</em></a>, 11-13, quoted <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2007/12/francis-schaeffer-and-aquinas.html?showComment=1293756951497%23c4554329522224113427">here</a>]</p></blockquote><p>It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that Schaeffer’s views here might well have been influenced by de Lubac’s. <a href="http://www.leithart.com/archives/001960.php">This gentleman</a>, for example, associates the two’s criticisms as being substantially the same, so it’s not just crazy me that thinks so. But there are two problems. In the first place, de Lubac was criticizing Cajetan and not Aquinas; but more importantly, McInerny doesn’t leave any serious room for discussion: de Lubac was just wrong in his interpretation of Cajetan. The latter was rather a faithful commentator of Aquinas rather than an innovator, and furthermore Aquinas doesn’t hold the view that de Lubac attributed to Cajetan either.</p><p>I wouldn’t be surprised if Schaeffer might have been exposed to de Lubac’s views. There are sufficient parallels in the criticisms the two men offer to suggest a connection. Obviously I could be mistaken, because I certainly don’t know anything about Schaeffer’s personal library. The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that de Lubac was wrong about Cajetan, and (on this point anyway) misunderstood Aquinas as well. Schaeffer does the same, and in practically the same way.</p><p>The subject at hand in Aquinas is <em>obediential potency,</em> which has to do with how it is that we have a desire to see God. As human beings we have certain faculties and powers that are ordered to life as material beings in a material world. But because we are not merely material—because we have souls—we also have powers that are ordered to something beyond the material world. St Thomas addresses this issue in the <em>Disputed Questions on the Power of God.</em> In q.1, a.3, he addresses the question <em>whether God can do what nature cannot,</em> and answers in the affirmative:</p><blockquote><p>[Objection] 1. The (ordinary) gloss on Romans xi, 24 says that since God is the author of nature he cannot do what is contrary to nature. Now things that nature cannot do are contrary to nature. Therefore God cannot do them.</p><p>…</p><p>I answer … thing is said to be impossible in respect of a power in two ways. First, on account of an inherent defect in the power, in that the effect is beyond its reach, as when a natural agent cannot transform a certain matter. Secondly, when the impossibility arises from without, as in the case of a power that is hindered or tied. Accordingly there are three ways in which it is said to be impossible for a thing to be done. First, by reason of a defect in the active power, whether in transforming matter, or in any other way. Secondly, by reason of a resistant or an obstacle. Thirdly, because that which is said to be impossible cannot be the term of an action. Those things, then, which are impossible to nature in the first or second way are possible to God: because, since his power is infinite, it is subject to no defect, nor is there any matter that he cannot transform at will, since his power is irresistible. On the other hand those things which involve the third kind of impossibility God cannot do, since he is supreme act and sovereign being: wherefore his action cannot terminate otherwise than principally in being, and secondarily in nonbeing. Consequently he cannot make yes and no to be true at the same time, nor any of those things which involve such an impossibility. Nor is he said to be unable to do these things through lack of power, but through lack of possibility, such things being intrinsically impossible: and this is what is meant by those who say that ‘God can do it, but it cannot be done.’</p><p>Reply to the First Objection. Augustine’s words quoted in the gloss mean, not that God is unable to do otherwise than nature does, since his works are often contrary to the wonted course of nature; but that whatever he does in things is not contrary to nature, but is nature in them, forasmuch as he is the author and controller of nature. Thus in the physical order we observe that when an inferior body is moved by a higher, the movement is natural to it, although it may not seem in keeping with the movement which it has by reason of its own nature: thus the tidal movement of the sea is caused by the moon; and this movement is natural to it as the Commentator observes (De coelo et mundo, iii, comm. 20), although water of itself has naturally a downward movement. Thus in all creatures, what God does in them is quasi-natural to them. Wherefore we distinguish in them a twofold potentiality: a natural potentiality in respect of their proper operations and movements, and another, which we call obediential, in respect of what is done in them by God. [<a href="http://dhspriory.org/thomas/QDdePotentia.htm%231:3">Source</a>]</p></blockquote><p>The point here is that the facts that we are called to an end above us (namely, the beatific vision), and that we begin to obtain knowledge by way of our senses—which means that we begin to get knowledge by way of the material world—are not contradictory. Obediential potency is that which gives us the capability to become children of God.</p><p>Now with respect to philosophy, it is consequently no contradiction in the view of St Thomas to say that the intellect is capable of attaining to truths about God, and that in fact this is its true and final end (i.e., the beatific vision again, wherein the blessed contemplate God). And because this is its end, <em>it is in no way autonomous.</em> This is why he says (as we saw in a <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2007/12/francis-schaeffer-and-aquinas.html">previous post</a>) that “Whatsoever is found in other sciences contrary to any truth of this science must be condemned as false.” Because reason isn’t free to just go its own way, but is rather properly ordered to God. So it it’s just plain mistaken for Schaeffer to suggest that Aquinas set reason loose. But in view of what McInerny reports in PF about the history of Catholic theology in the mid-twentieth century, it is perhaps the case that Schaeffer leaned on a weak reed for his ideas, and borrowed from gentlemen who didn’t have their facts straight.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-41834594840262101222010-12-31T13:25:00.001-06:002011-06-26T22:36:50.246-05:00Aquinas, Descartes, and Schaeffer<p>This post consists of the fruit of some investigations related to a combox discussion on <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2007/12/francis-schaeffer-and-aquinas.html">this post</a>. My interlocutor suggests that Schaeffer is correct in proposing that Aquinas paved the way for Descartes. I deny this for the reasons already presented in that post and in the subsequent comments. Here are a few more hopefully helpful bits on the subject. As an aside, I think it’s worth noting that it is Descartes who is regarded as the father of modern philosophy and not Aquinas.</p><p>John Peterson writes in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-New-Introduction-John-Peterson/dp/0761841040/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293819181&sr=1-1"><em>Aquinas: A New Introduction</em></a>, with respect to metaphysics:</p><blockquote><p>[T]he temptation is to conclude that Aquinas was a Cartesian before Descartes. For both philosophers avoid the extremes of materialism on the one hand and idealism on the other. They both deny either that all is matter or that all is mind.</p><p><strong>Yet there are important differences between the two philosophers.</strong> That is partly due to the fact that Aquinas was less of a Platonist than was Descartes on the matter of persons. For Descartes, a person’s soul or mind is a complete substance, just as it is for Plato. But for Aquinas, who is here closer to Aristotle, a person’s soul is not a complete substance in its own right but rather the form of his or her body. For wider philosophical reasons, Descartes rejected outright the analysis of natural things into form and matter. For that reason, he could not and would not have applied the form-matter schema to the analysis of persons. So even though they are together in denying what is now called identity materialism (as well as, for that matter, epiphenomenalism), the two philosophers part company as regards the sort of thing the spiritual human soul is, i.e. whether it is a complete substance or the (incomplete) form of a substance. [p. xi, available <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=C6u8kXWTjwwC&lpg=PR11&ots=IixQ2OaHE0&pg=PR11#v=onepage&q&f=false">here</a>; emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>In my view this is a fundamental difference for the present discussion. On the one hand it is consistent both with Descartes’ rationalism (which Aquinas did not share) and with his famous insistence upon starting his philosophical inquiry with himself (or, to be more precise, with his own rational powers)—which Aquinas also did not share.</p><p>In a related vein we find the following in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Aquinas-Companions-Philosophy/dp/0521437695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293820664&sr=1-1"><em>The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas</em></a><em>.</em> Joseph Owens writes there:</p><blockquote><p>Common to both Aristotle and Aquinas is the tenet that all naturally attainable knowledge originates in external sensible things. By their efficient causality transmitted through the appropriate media, the external things impress their forms upon the human cognitive faculties, and thereby make the percipient be the thing perceived in the actuality of the cognition. The awareness is directly of the thing itself, and only concomitantly and reflexively of the percipient and of the cognitive acts. The external things remain epistemologically prior. <strong>From this viewpoint both Aristotle and Aquinas remain radically distinct from modern philosophers, who from Descartes on base their philosophy upon ideas or sensations or vivid phenomena, instead of immediately on external things themselves.</strong> Likewise, both Aristotle and Aquinas remain just as distinct from postmodern thinkers who look for their starting points in linguistic and historical formation. [53; emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>So we see here that Owens too traces the beginnings of modern philosophy <em>not</em> to Aquinas (pace my interlocutor) but to Descartes, and identifies a “radical distinction” between the two.</p><p>In the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Encyclopedia-Philosophy-10-Set/dp/0415073103/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293821860&sr=1-1"><em>Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy</em></a> article on Descartes, we read the following:</p><blockquote><p>Descartes rejected the Aristotelian philosophy as soon as he left school. … [I]t is probable that what dissatisfied him most in what he had been taught was natural philosophy. [Page 4, which may be seen <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ivAVyxG18qkC&lpg=PA4&ots=pmp3AC3j3m&dq=descartes%20rejected%20scholasticism&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q&f=false">here</a>]</p></blockquote><p>If Descartes rejected the philosophy, how can it reasonably be said that he was dependent upon Aquinas?</p><p><a href="http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/discoursemethod/context.html">Elsewhere</a> we read:</p><blockquote><p>Descartes did not publish anything until he was forty years old, largely due to his fears of censure.</p></blockquote><p>Why would he fear censure if his views were consistent with those of Aquinas? Answer: he wouldn’t. But he did, because they weren’t.</p><p>And <a href="http://www.abu.nb.ca/courses/grphil/Modphil/Descartes.htm">again</a>:</p><blockquote><p><strong>Descartes self-consciously rejected the philosophical heritage of scholasticism,</strong> and attempted to formulate a new philosophical method and construct of new system of philosophical knowledge. It should be noted that Descartes did concede to theology the role that it occupied in the mediaeval period and still occupied in the church of his day; yet justifiably historians attribute this concession to his fear of persecution of ecclesiastical authorities. <strong>His statement, “That we must believe all that God has revealed, even though it is above the range of our capacities” (Principles 1.25) is anomalous in his system based on systematic doubt.</strong> [Emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>I think it’s pretty clear that we may safely deny any substantive Thomistic influence on Descartes. Schaeffer was wrong.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-72303992451177685172010-12-29T23:26:00.000-06:002010-12-29T23:26:47.271-06:00Fed UpI am weary of the "enhancements" that Google has added to Blogger. It's bad enough that I get the stupid "URI too large" error when posting comments on others' Blogger blogs; it's ridiculous that it also happens to me on my own blog.<br />
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I'm not going to say that I'm shutting down The Supplement, but blogging shouldn't provide irritants. Since Google seems to think that irritants are a useful part of the blogging experience (since they've added this particular irritant), I'm going to [mostly] give this up.<br />
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I'm sure I'll still post from time to time. Given this year's performance, I suppose people are used to that now already. But I'll look elsewhere for my US RDA of irritants. I don't need to get them from here.Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-32879227756116742882010-11-21T20:09:00.001-06:002010-11-21T20:09:43.529-06:00Waste Not, Want Not<p>I wrote the following in reply to Ken, in a <a href="http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/11/turretinfan-on-formal-insufficiency.html">thread</a> over at David Waltz’s. But Blogger decided that it was too long and would not allow me even to preview it. Fine. So I split it into two smaller pieces, intending to post a single comment across two physical comments. But when I tried that it complained—during the process of posting—that the URI was too large, even though the parts were several hundred characters under Blogger’s limit. Whatever. Blogger people, fix this junk. It is ridiculous for limits like this to exist on a discussion forum.</p><p>So I gave up on the thread.</p><p>But since I don’t want the time I spent writing this to go to waste, here it is in its entirety. I wonder if Blogger will allow <em>that?</em></p><p>Ken <a href="http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/11/turretinfan-on-formal-insufficiency.html?showComment=1290383915148#c5427905126323039849">wrote</a>:</p><p><em>Just asserting that doesn't prove your point.</em></p><p>You wrote that in response to this remark of mine: “As we’ve said repeatedly, the problem is with the Reformed doctrine of perspicuity,” something that I <a href="http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/11/turretinfan-on-formal-insufficiency.html?showComment=1290349767211#c7562070209035197976">said</a> by way of excusing you from fault with regard to the difficulties you have had in providing a complete list of things that you say are necessary to believe in order to be saved. Are you saying that the problem really is with you, and not with what you believe? I seriously doubt it.</p><p><em>Works pretty good for all conservative and Reformed, doctrinal Protestants. (about things essential for salvation; not secondary issues, which are the things churches disagree over)</em></p><p>And yet in this thread you have been demonstrably unsure about providing The List of things which a man must believe in order to be saved. You <a href="http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/11/turretinfan-on-formal-insufficiency.html?showComment=1290259399476#c426838122243441236">began</a> with “a stab” at <em>some</em> of those essentials; when the rather obvious weakness of this was pointed out, you <a href="http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/11/turretinfan-on-formal-insufficiency.html?showComment=1290274669129#c2800661059906703484">reversed course</a> and said that your first list was actually complete. But uncertainty returned before you even got the latter comment posted, and you reserved the right to change your mind again later.</p><p>Meanwhile, as was shown, TF is absolutely panic-stricken at the thought of providing The List at all. He just refuses to do it, pretending (I suppose) that this is a course of moderation. But it isn’t. It isn’t because he knows as well as you do yourself that not even Reformed people agree about those essentials.</p><p>Furthermore, it is a question-begging qualification to suggest that the Reformed doctrine of perspicuity “works pretty good” for Reformed folks. You may recall that the doctrine doesn’t claim to be relevant only for Reformed folks; rather, the WCF’s language unambiguously asserts that <strong>anyone</strong> (Reformed or not, educated or not) can readily discover the things that must be believed in order to be saved. So the fact not only that the Reformed can’t and won’t agree about The List but that Protestants <em>in their entirety</em> cannot do so categorically demolishes the value of the doctrine. It is worthless.</p><p><em>Actually, Protestants are quite unified on the essential doctrines for salvation; which I pretty much think I covered.</em></p><p>With all due respect, this remark seems to me to be absurd, given the fact that you yourself aren’t even sure that you provided The List. “Pretty much” is pretty inadequate, in my opinion, when one is discussing things that must be believed in order to be saved. A <em>single</em> deviation would land someone in hell. And you’re not 100% sure about The List—a List of things which are just absolutely clear in the Bible (if the doctrine in question is true)???</p><p><em>I gave you a list of the clear things, for salvation. Most all Protestants would agree with that list.</em></p><p>So much for “quite unified.” :-)</p><p><em>You say, "it doesn't work". What do you mean by that? Work to produce what?</em></p><p>Here is what the WCF says: “those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”</p><p>If that was actually true, it ought to be child’s play to provide a list of all and only “those things.” But the falsity of it is clear in that Protestants absolutely disagree about such things. So, to answer your question, the doctrine does not work in the sense that no one can tell us what “those things” actually are: all of them, with no omissions and no extras whatsoever.</p><p>And the effect of this is that Christians are left to decide for themselves what “those things” are. And that is just plain wrong (besides being divisive, as the history of Protestantism shows).</p><p><em>Does the RCC list of de fide dogmas for salvation actually work? How do you know they work?</em></p><p>First off, attempting a <em>tu quoque</em> here does not get you off the hook for the problems in what you believe yourself. :-)</p><p>Secondly, the Church does not pretend that literally every Catholic must be able to <em>explicitly</em> profess adherence to literally every dogma, because She understands that not everyone is gifted with the time, talents, and treasure necessary to know and understand them all. Intellectual ability is not a prerequisite of saving faith; it is sufficient that a man sincerely intend to believe all that the Church professes. Consequently your <em>tu quoque</em> fails, in that the Church neither claims that all dogmas are readily accessible to all men nor that they are required to explicitly believe all of them. Explicit faith is definitely to be preferred, and laziness in pursuit of it is certainly culpable, but men are not called to things that are beyond their gifts.</p><p><em>[Catholic dogmas] certainly did not produce unity, for Luther and Calvin and all the Protestants after them did not fall in line, so it didn't work.</em></p><p>I wonder whether you think (mistakenly, as it turns out, though I do not blame you for it) that the primary fault of the Reformed doctrine of perspicuity is its effects upon unity? No. That is a serious effect, certainly. But what I had in mind is more the fact that Protestant disunity about those essentials that are allegedly guaranteed by this “perspicuity” demonstrates the epistemological weakness of the doctrine.</p><p>Getting back to what you said in the last quotation: Catholic dogma does not possess the intrinsic power to compel submission. If men (like Luther and Calvin) sin by refusing to exercise the divine virtue of faith, that is a fault on their part, not a defect on the part of the Truth.</p><p><em>Reformed Protestants may have even more real spiritual unity on the essentials than Roman Catholics do.</em></p><p>Paraphrase: “All the people in this tiny room—who happen to agree with [most] of what I believe—have more unity than a billion Catholics.”</p><p>Heh. Well, any sufficiently-small group of self-selecting individuals would indeed have a high degree of unity. Yes. But that is a poor measuring stick for truth, in my opinion.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-73446123571233829632010-10-09T22:17:00.001-05:002010-10-09T22:17:13.105-05:00St Augustine and Material Heresy<p>Being wrong is one thing; being wrong because you don’t know any better is another thing entirely. So St Augustine writes:</p><blockquote><p>If, Honoratus, a heretic, and a man trusting heretics seemed to me one and the same, I should judge it my duty to remain silent both in tongue and pen in this matter. But now, whereas there is a very great difference between these two: forasmuch as he, in my opinion, is an heretic, who, for the sake of some temporal advantage, and chiefly for the sake of his own glory and pre-eminence, either gives birth to, or follows, false and new opinions; but he, who trusts men of this kind, is a man deceived by a certain imagination of truth and piety. [<em><a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1306.htm">De utilitate credendi</a></em> 1]</p></blockquote><p>I suppose I could add another option (besides just being mistaken) to <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/10/jerks.html">the non-pejorative possibilities</a> for those who disagree with us: being deceived. And St Augustine shows here that different types of errors warrant different sorts of responses. Generally speaking (for those of us who do not happen to be Doctors of the Church…) the first sort of response ought to be in the range of humility.</p><p>But I digress. The point that I wished to make with this post is that there is nothing novel in the Catholic Church’s insistence that the sons and daughters of actual heretics (that is, those who have been formally condemned by the Church as such) are not guilty of formal heresy when they follow in their parents’ footsteps. They err, certainly, if they believe the same heretical things, but they are just not in the same boat with the leaders.</p><p><a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2007/10/formal-vs-material-heresy.html">Elsewhere</a> we have seen that St Augustine <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102043.htm">said</a> basically the same thing.</p><blockquote><p>But though the doctrine which men hold be false and perverse, if they do not maintain it with passionate obstinacy, especially when they have not devised it by the rashness of their own presumption, but have accepted it from parents who had been misguided and had fallen into error, and if they are with anxiety seeking the truth, and are prepared to be set right when they have found it, such men are not to be counted heretics. [Letter 43]</p></blockquote><p>So we see that Augustine agrees with the Catholic Church. We should not be surprised to learn that this is the case; after all, he was Catholic. He doesn’t use the words “material heresy,” but the idea is clearly present, as is the distinction between that and formal heresy. There’s nothing “progressive” or “liberal” about the Church saying today that Protestants are our brothers in Christ by virtue of their baptism, nor in denying that they are subject to the anathemas of Trent. It’s simple justice.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-40071188189580652602010-10-09T21:16:00.001-05:002010-10-09T21:16:57.580-05:00Jerks<p>“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are too”—Dostoyevsky</p><p>I think that the second sentence really makes this remark really hit home more. It’s tremendously easy (especially on the Internet) to make the jump from wondering why Joe Bob doesn’t agree with me to concluding that the answer is so totally obvious that his disagreement cannot possibly result from anything other than bad faith, stupidity, or culpable ignorance. But when I go down that road I ignore at least two other explanations: I’m wrong myself, or Joe Bob is just simply mistaken: not devious, not doltish, and not uninformed.</p><p>I think that Dostoyevsky’s observation gets at the root of the thing. Sure, it’s <em>possible</em> that Joe Bob is Satan’s bagman. Yeah, he <em>might</em> be as dumb as a bag of hammers. Yeah, he <em>might not</em> have read all the coolest books like I have. But in the end it’s <em>far more likely</em> that Joe Bob is doing his best, and he happens to have reached different conclusions than I have. No malice, doltishness, or ignorance necessary. After all, if we look around the world we find smart and well-informed people on opposite sides of practically any question that you might happen to ask. Yet it’s tremendously easy to just be a jerk and think the worst of the other guy.</p><p>I don’t want to be a jerk. I’m going to try hard not to be. And I don’t want to waste my time bickering with jerks. There are better things to do.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-84262823688445811462010-09-30T21:24:00.001-05:002010-09-30T21:24:08.845-05:00St Augustine Accepted Church Authority<p>St. Augustine accepted the authority of the Catholic Church, unlike Protestants who vainly wish that he was one of their own. Says the Doctor of the Church:</p><blockquote><p>This religion can be defended against loquacious persons and expounded to seekers in many ways. Omnipotent God may himself show the truth, or he may use good angels or men to assist men of good will to behold and grasp the truth. Everyone uses the method which he sees to be suitable to those with whom he has to do. I have given much consideration for a long time to the nature of the people I have met with either as carping critics or as genuine seekers of the truth. I have also considered my own case both when I was a critic and when I was a seeker; and I have come to the conclusion that this is the method I must use. Hold fast whatever truth you have been able to grasp, and attribute it to the Catholic Church. Reject what is false and pardon me who am but a man. <strong>What is doubtful believe until either reason teaches or authority lays down that it is to be rejected or that it is true, or that it has to be believed always.</strong> Listen to what follows as diligently and as piously as you can. For God helps men like that. [<em>Of True Religion</em> 20, in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Augustine-Earlier-Writings-Christian-Classics/dp/066424162X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285813235&sr=1-1"><em>Augustine: Earlier Writings</em></a>, p. 235; emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>Now of course we must not conclude from the complete absence here of any mention of Scripture that St Augustine held the Bible in contempt. Far from it. But at the same time, it would be absurd to suppose that he held the authority of the Catholic Church in contempt. Far from it! As we see above, he held that the Church has authority to define dogmas and to condemn heresy, and that God blesses those who accept what the Church teaches.</p><p>An interesting side note here (apart from the primary point that he submitted to the Church’s authority and urged others to do the same) is that he evidently held to some form of doctrinal development. For he anticipates that there will be subjects about which we may find ourselves unsure of the truth, but which will be settled by decree of the Church. It seems reasonable to infer that such decrees may not already exist in every case, so that the expectation is for some questions to be definitively settled in the future. This is not the only place where he has expressed such an opinion; he also did so in <em>On Free Choice of the Will</em>. See <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/03/st-augustine-pleads-ignorance.html">here</a>.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-63190666921423014912010-09-29T23:13:00.001-05:002010-09-29T23:13:35.517-05:00St Augustine on “Fitness”<p>Sometimes we hear Protestants complain that arguments from fitness for some belief or other are invalid. For example, when we say that it was fitting that Our Lady’s virginity should have been preserved, Protestants get upset as though it proves nothing.</p><p>Here is something that that St Augustine has to say about arguments from fitness.</p><blockquote><p>When this is known it will be as clear as it can be to men that all things are subject by necessary, indefeasible and just laws to their Lord God. Hence all those things which to begin with we simply believed, following authority only, we come to understand. Partly we see them as certain, partly as possible and fitting, and we become sorry for those who do not believe them, and have preferred to mock at us for believing rather than to share our belief. [<em>Of True Religion</em>, 14]</p></blockquote><p>By his measure we would say (quite reasonably, I think) that an argument from fitness is not so certain as one based more upon reason. This fact does not mean that arguments from fitness are without any validity at all. Similarly, it seems clear that he does not consider them to be contrary to reason. Lastly, there is more than a hint here of St Anselm’s saying, “I believe in order that I may understand:” the pattern in the quotation above is to begin by believing what the Church teaches, and to move from there to understanding.</p><p>I concur with Augustine’s careful understanding of the usefulness of arguments from fitness (see another example <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2009/09/trudging-through-anselm.html">here</a>): they certainly aren’t as good as demonstration, but they are not without value, either. In any case, the purpose of this post is merely to highlight the fact that St Augustine stands in the long tradition of the Church in affirming the use of such arguments, and Protestants distance themselves from him when they reject them.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-1093073478274680722010-09-29T21:59:00.001-05:002010-09-29T21:59:19.899-05:00St Augustine affirmed free will<p>This should be unsurprising, because <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/search/label/Augustine">he was a Catholic</a>. Nevertheless it is unfortunately necessary to make these things crystal-clear, so that Protestants who persist in misrepresenting the great Doctor of the Church will be without excuse.</p><p>In today’s episode, we see that St Augustine re-affirms that which <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/02/st-augustine-requirements-of-justice.html">he previously said</a> in <em>On Free Choice of the Will</em>.</p><blockquote><p>If the defect we call sin overtook a man against his will, like a fever, the penalty which follows the sinner and is called condemnation would rightly seem to be unjust. But in fact sin is so much a voluntary evil that it is not sin at all unless it is voluntary. This is so obvious that no one denies it, either of the handful of the learned or of the mass of the unlearned. We must either say that no sin has been committed or confess that it has been willingly committed. No one can rightly deny that a soul has sinned who admits that it can be corrected by penitence, that the penitent should be pardoned, or that he who continues in sin is condemned by the just law of God. Lastly if it is not by the exercise of will that we do wrong, no one at all is to be censured or warned. If you take away censure and warning the Christian law and the whole discipline of religion is necessarily abolished. Therefore, it is by the will that sin is committed. And since there is no doubt that sins are committed, <strong>I cannot see that it can be doubted that souls have free choice in willing. God judged that men would serve him better if they served him freely. That could not be so if they served him by necessity and not by free will.</strong> [<em>Of True Religion</em>, xiv, 27; in the Library of Christian Classics volume <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Augustine-Earlier-Writings-Christian-Classics/dp/066424162X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285813235&sr=1-1">Augustine: Earlier Writings</a></em>, p. 238; emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>This flies directly in the face of the Reformed error of “Irresistible Grace,” according to which men are unable to reject the grace that God gives them to believe.</p><p>Unquestionably some folks will suggest that perhaps St Augustine later rejected this view. But as <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/02/st-augustine-on-free-choice-of-will.html">noted earlier</a> in regard to <em>On Free Choice of the Will</em>, he did nothing of the sort in the Retractations. Happily, the LCC editors saw fit to include the Retractations associated with <em>Of True Religion</em> (see pages 218-221). Did Augustine later in life reject what this book says about free will? No he did not.</p><blockquote><p>5. In another place (chap xiv) I say, “Sin is so much voluntary evil, that there would be no such thing as sin unless it were voluntary.” That may appear a false definition; but if it is diligently discussed it will be found to be quite true. [ibid., p. 219]</p></blockquote><p>I am reminded of suddenly of something said by <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325980/quotes">Captain</a></em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325980/quotes"> Jack Sparrow</a>: “pirate is in your blood, boy, so you'll have to square with that some day.” Like it or not, some day Calvinists are going to have to square with the fact that St Augustine isn’t one of them. He was no proto-incipient-Calvinist; he was <em>Catholic</em>.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-54534839741704651682010-09-18T22:05:00.001-05:002010-09-18T23:51:56.724-05:00St Augustine Still Isn’t Protestant<p>I’ve devoted a <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/search/label/Augustine">number of posts</a> to demonstrating the folly of Protestant attempts to paint St Augustine with their own colors. In short: it cannot be done—not, at any rate, if one wishes to avoid running his works through a shredder and pulling out tiny little bits that have that Geneva ring to them when you turn up the music <em>really loud.</em> Okay, I’m going bonkers with the metaphor-mixing. Let’s move on.</p><p>Here is yet another small snippet showing the unambiguously Catholic character of his writings. St Augustine opens the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1703.htm"><em>Soliloquies</em></a> with a prayer, part of which go like this:</p><blockquote><p>God, through whom <strong>we disapprove the error of those, who think that there are no merits of souls before You.</strong> God, through whom it comes that we are not in bondage to the weak and beggarly elements. <strong>God, who cleanses us, and prepares us for Divine rewards</strong>, to me propitious come Thou. [I, 3; emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>This passage flatly contradicts the Protestant errors that there is no sense at all in which we merit anything but condemnation from God, and that there is no sense at all in which we could be said to receive rewards from Him.</p><p>In the very next section of this opening prayer, he writes:</p><blockquote><p>God, by whose ever-during laws the stable motion of shifting things is suffered to feel no perturbation, the thronging course of circling ages is ever recalled anew to the image of immovable quiet: <strong>by whose laws the choice of the soul is free, and to the good rewards and to the evil pains are distributed by necessities settled throughout the nature of everything.</strong> [I, 4; emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>This passage repeats the fact that the good will be rewarded, just in case we didn’t get the point the first time. And it adds the extra observation that man’s will is not in bondage in the way that at least <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/search/label/Total%20Depravity">some Protestants</a> think. He doesn’t discuss the reasons for these facts in this context, but we have seen elsewhere (<a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/02/st-augustine-requirements-of-justice.html">here</a>, for one example) why he says so. In short: if we do not have free will, or if God does not reward the good, then He is not just. But this is obviously impossible. Consequently it is the Protestant claims to the contrary that are in error.</p><p>St Augustine doesn’t get this wrong. He wasn’t some crypto-proto-Protestant. He was Catholic. He wouldn’t be a <a href="http://www.doctorsofthecatholicchurch.com/AU.html">Doctor of the Church</a> if he wasn’t. That very fact really ought to induce Protestant hangers-on to think seriously about how they view his teaching.</p><p><strong>Edit:</strong> It is probably necessary (unfortunately) to respond to the suggestion that St Augustine wrote the <em>Soliloquies</em> early in his career and that consequently it supposedly does not reflect his mature thought. The problem with this is that the <em>Retractations</em> related to this work say nothing about rejecting the ideas I've quoted here. The portion of the <em>Retractations</em> related to the <em>Soliloquies</em> is included in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Augustine-Earlier-Writings-Christian-Classics/dp/066424162X/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1284871719&sr=8-1">this edition</a> of his works (pp. 17-18), and it says nothing whatsoever about these ideas. It is therefore unreasonable to suppose that he rejected free will or merits later in life.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-12037629347572648002010-09-18T21:07:00.001-05:002010-09-18T21:07:04.699-05:00Papal Wisdom<p>“Society is for man and not vice versa” — Pope Pius XI, in <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris_en.html"><em>Divini Redemptoris</em></a> 29. This seems like a rather obvious inference of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/bible/gen002.htm#18">Genesis 2:18</a>: “It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself.” God created Eve (and consequently society itself) because “it is not good for man to be alone.” This is why we must reject all forms of statism and socialism as godless: because they define man in terms of his relation to the State, and because they reduce man to nothing apart from the State. Man needs society, but society does not define what he is.</p><p>But we must not suppose that Pius was some sort of libertarian or radical individualist.</p><blockquote><p>This must not be understood in the sense of liberalistic individualism, which subordinates society to the selfish use of the individual; but only in the sense that by means of an organic union with society and by mutual collaboration the attainment of earthly happiness is placed within the reach of all. In a further sense, it is society which affords the opportunities for the development of all the individual and social gifts bestowed on human nature. These natural gifts have a value surpassing the immediate interests of the moment, for in society they reflect the divine perfection, which would not be true were man to live alone. But on final analysis, even in this latter function, society is made for man, that he may recognize this reflection of God's perfection, and refer it in praise and adoration to the Creator. Only man, the human person, and not society in any form is endowed with reason and a morally free will.</p><p>30. Man cannot be exempted from his divinely-imposed obligations toward civil society, and the representatives of authority have the right to coerce him when he refuses without reason to do his duty. Society, on the other hand, cannot defraud man of his God-granted rights, the most important of which We have indicated above. Nor can society systematically void these rights by making their use impossible. It is therefore according to the dictates of reason that ultimately all material things should be ordained to man as a person, that through his mediation they may find their way to the Creator. [<em>ibid.</em>, 29-30]</p></blockquote><p>It is an error to view man either as abstracted from other men, as though we do not need each other, just as it is an error to view man solely in relation to the state—as though we have no higher or greater end than the state or society.</p><p>I’ve been out of circulation for quite a while. I apologize. I do not know whether this post portends a return to more regular activity or not, but I’ve been taking notes on my reading during my absence, and there may be a few more posts related to that. And later? Who knows?</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-14214219812331347832010-05-31T19:16:00.001-05:002010-05-31T19:16:03.772-05:00Theology of St. Thomas - the Formal Object of Sacred Doctrine<p>St. Thomas says that Sacred Doctrine is a single science, rather than a collection of sciences. It is distinguished by its formal object, which is all that has been divinely revealed.</p><blockquote><p>The unity of a faculty or habit is to be gauged by its object, not indeed, in its material aspect, but as regards the precise formality under which it is an object. For example, man, ass, stone agree in the one precise formality of being colored; and color is the formal object of sight. Therefore, because Sacred Scripture considers things precisely under the formality of being divinely revealed, whatever has been divinely revealed possesses the one precise formality of the object of this science; and therefore is included under sacred doctrine as under one science. [<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#article3"><em>ST</em> I Q1 A3</a>]</p></blockquote><p>That’s not to say that sacred doctrine has nothing to say about anything else, but that it only has something to say concerning them insofar as revelation addresses or relates to it.</p><p>Some Protestants like to pretend that St. Thomas held to various Protestant distinctives that are contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Faith, and some members of that little band might try to say, on the basis of one clause above, that Aquinas held to “sola scriptura.” But when he says “because Sacred Scripture considers things precisely under the formality of being divinely revealed,” he does not mean to say that this is the sole locus of divine revelation, which ought to be clear from what immediately follows: “whatever has been divinely revealed…” It’s obvious that he doesn’t mean to limit revelation to what is contained in the Bible. Consider the preceding example, in which he identified a commonality of “man, ass, stone” in “the one precise formality of being colored; and color is the formal object of sight.” Analogously, he describes Scripture as dealing with things “precisely under the formality of being divinely revealed,” and says that <em>whatever has been divinely revealed</em> “possesses the one precise formality of the object of this science.” So he’s not trying to limit the scope of divine revelation to the Scripture here; rather he’s he’s trying to define the scope of the science of Sacred Doctrine as having to do with whatever has been divinely revealed, and addressing other things under that aspect.</p><p>Of course, this doesn’t mean that we can’t have systematic theologians or moral theologians or a theology of man alongside a theology of redemption or whatever; since the scope of what has been revealed is broad, and since the truth is likewise so deep, it’s reasonable to have a division of labor with regard to the science of Sacred Doctrine. We can’t all be Aquinases who are experts on practically the whole of the field!</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-50610682751762742042010-05-31T16:00:00.001-05:002010-05-31T16:00:32.315-05:00St. Thomas and the Argument for the Perpetual Virginity of Mary<p>In a <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2010/05/st-thomas-and-literal-sense-of.html">previous post</a> we showed that Aquinas made a typological argument for the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin in his commentary on the Angelic Salutation. This was part of a response to a Protestant’s claim that the use of typologies contradicted St. Thomas’ views concerning the usefulness of the different senses of Scripture: clearly it does not, since he made use of them himself.</p><p>But some folks might be tempted to suggest that his use of typology in the commentary doesn’t contradict the Protestant’s argument, because (so it might be said) Aquinas isn’t making an argument in the commentary; these folks might say that the commentary on the angelic salutation is devotional, and not actually an argument. In this post we shall see that St. Thomas used typological arguments in the <em>Summa Theologiae</em>, which is clearly not a devotional work.</p><p>In <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4028.htm#article3"><em>ST</em> III Q28 A3</a> he addresses the question “Whether Christ’s Mother Remained a Virgin after His Birth?” In the <em>sed contra</em> he writes:</p><blockquote><p>It is written (Ezekiel 44:2): “This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it; because the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it.” Expounding these words, Augustine says in a sermon (De Annunt. Dom. iii): “What means this closed gate in the House of the Lord, except that Mary is to be ever inviolate? What does it mean that ‘no man shall pass through it,’ save that Joseph shall not know her? And what is this—‘The Lord alone enters in and goeth out by it’—except that the Holy Ghost shall impregnate her, and that the Lord of angels shall be born of her? And what means this—‘it shall be shut for evermore’—but that Mary is a virgin before His Birth, a virgin in His Birth, and a virgin after His Birth?”</p></blockquote><p>St. Thomas approves Augustine’s typological interpretation of Ezekiel 44:2 as referring to Mary, and uses it as part of his argument in defense of her perpetual virginity. From this we see that the use of typology in argument is not contrary to St. Thomas’ statement that only the literal sense should be used for that purpose; this is so because God is the author of Scripture, and consequently a single passage may have more than one literal sense (as he stated in <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#article10">I Q1 A10</a>).</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-55611573646241106032010-05-30T22:58:00.001-05:002010-05-30T22:58:48.078-05:00St. Thomas and the Literal Sense of Scripture<p>A Protestant comboxer <a href="http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/whitaker-on-the-canon-part-1/#comment-74950">suggests</a> that St. Thomas prefers the literal sense (rather than any of the other senses of Scripture) for purposes of argument. He quotes the following from <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#article10"><em>ST</em> I Q1 A10 ad 1</a>:</p><blockquote><p>Thus in Holy Writ no confusion results, for all the senses are founded on one—the literal—from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory, as Augustine says (Epis. 48). Nevertheless, nothing of Holy Scripture perishes on account of this, since nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not elsewhere put forward by the Scripture in its literal sense.</p></blockquote><p>This comboxer uses this quotation in order to justify his rejection of a typological argument for the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin—one that views her as the Ark of the new covenant and compares her to the Old Testament ark of the covenant.</p><p>There are at least two reasons why this use of St. Thomas for this purpose is improper. In the first place, since the New Testament itself makes use of typologies, it seems to be proving too much to say that they are invalid in and of themselves: if it is to be assumed that typologies are invalid, then we would forced to conclude that the New Testament writers had gone too far themselves in making use of them. I have heard Protestants say that the only valid types are the ones that Scripture uses and that all others are invalid, but we have no principled reason to accept this claim.</p><p>In the second place, the comboxer misquotes St. Thomas by omission, and consequently causes him to appear to accept something that he does not. Earlier in the same article, St. Thomas said this:</p><blockquote><p>Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since <strong>the author of Holy Writ is God,</strong> Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, <strong>it is not unfitting,</strong> as Augustine says (Confess. xii), <strong>if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses.</strong> [Emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>So it’s clear that you can’t appeal to Aquinas as an authority for the idea that the literal sense of Scripture is something singular, which would rule out typology. This fact is made more clear from Aquinas’ own use of the Bible. A single example will suffice for now: his <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/STTOMHMY.htm">commentary</a> on St. Gabriel’s salutation to the Blessed Virgin, which we looked at <a href="http://the-supplement.blogspot.com/2007/08/be-careful-what-you-ask-for.html">here</a>. There are many examples of his use of Scripture in the commentary, but perhaps the most interesting for our purposes here is the following, from his argument in the commentary for the Virgin’s purity:</p><blockquote><p>Third, she exceeds the angels in her purity, for the Blessed Virgin was not only pure in herself, but she also obtained purity for others. For she was most pure with respect to guilt, because neither mortal nor venial sin could be imputed to this virgin, and she was equally pure with respect to punishment.</p><p>Three curses come to men because of sin…The third is common to men and women, namely that into dust they shall return. The Blessed Virgin was free of this, because she was assumed in the body into heaven. For we believe that after death she was raised up and borne to heaven. Psalm 131:8: Arise, O “Lord, into thy resting place, thou and the ark of thy majesty.”</p></blockquote><p>The most important thing to note here is that he specifically quotes Ps. 131:8 in such fashion as to refer to Mary as “the ark of thy majesty.” In other words, he’s making the exact same typological argument that our Protestant comboxer objected to, and the same argument that he erroneously claimed was invalid in the eyes of Aquinas. Hence we see that, quite contrary to what our comboxer asserts, Aquinas believed in the legitimacy of typologies like this, and actually made use of them himself.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-4592517852252335082010-05-25T07:34:00.001-05:002010-05-25T07:34:41.661-05:00Sacred Doctrine is a Science<p>St. Thomas says that Sacred Doctrine is a science. By this he does not mean something akin to modern science and its focus upon experiment; he means what Aristotle understood by the idea of science: “an organized body of systematically arranged information” (R. J. Hankinson in Barnes, ed. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Aristotle-Companions-Philosophy/dp/0521422949/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274649521&sr=1-1"><em>The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle</em></a>, 109). “To have scientific knowledge, then, is to have explanatory understanding: not merely to ‘know’ a fact incidentally, to be able to assent to something which is true, but to know <em>why</em> it is a fact” (<em>ibid</em>., 110). Such a science proceeds primarily by way of demonstrations from certain first principles: either such as are self-evident, or such as are established by some other science. [Consequently what goes by the name of knowledge in common conversation today doesn’t pass muster for Aristotle or Aquinas as anything other than mere opinion…But I digress.]</p><blockquote><p>We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God. [<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#article2"><em>ST</em> I Q1 A2</a>]</p></blockquote><p>One thing that seems worth noting here is that with this view of what a science is, and because he considers sacred doctrine to be a science, it seems doubtless that St. Thomas doesn’t intend to be offering what he considers to be mere opinions, but truths that are no less certain than those of any other science, since they are demonstrations following from first principles.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-27563246814495766172010-05-24T23:11:00.001-05:002010-05-24T23:11:16.811-05:00From a Combox<p>From a <a href="http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2010/05/whitakers-disputations-refutation-of.html?showComment=1274758866669#c695637157904577348">combox discussion</a>…</p><p>Matthew writes:</p><p><em>You're not making an argument, Nick.</em></p><p>What he was responding to was no argument either. He was responding to this, from the post:</p><blockquote><p>1. The only way Stapleton's argument can be truly successful is if he proves that "God and the church are the same thing." (It seems this can't be done without some kind of serious doctrinal error, so Stapleton's argument is rendered fallacious.)</p></blockquote><p>That's not an argument. It's an assertion. Nick is not obliged to counter an assertion with an argument.</p><p><em>As for Whitaker's reply itself, he is noting that, by the rules of logic, in order for Stapleton's argument to succeed, Stapleton needs to somehow prove that God and the Church are the same thing.</em></p><p>No, he doesn't. All that needs to be established is whether the Church teaches with the authority of Christ. One analogy might be power of attorney: the one who possesses this is able to act with the authority of the one who has given him power of attorney, and yet the two people are certainly not the same.</p><p><em>That's certainly possible. But you need to prove that from Whitaker or Stapleton.</em></p><p>No he doesn't. All he has to do is show that the original premises had to do with the authority of the teaching of the Church, not the authority of the Church generally compared to God's authority generally. And that is beyond dispute from the post itself. But in the post, Whitaker begins with a discussion of the general authority of God in comparison to the general authority of the Church - about which no one argues that God's authority is greater - and moves from there to a conclusion about a specific that is unwarranted. It is certainly a distortion as Nick claimed. If God teaches only through the Church (P<sub>2</sub>), then it is impossible for God to be more authoritative than Himself, and Whitaker's refutation fails.</p><p>Lastly, even if Whitaker succeeds against Stapleton's first argument, it does nothing whatsoever to establish that the Church is unnecessary for knowing the canon of Scripture: the notion that Scripture (as an undefined collection of books) might have more authority than the Church in no way implies that the Scripture can (or does) define its own canon, or that the canon may be known in any objective sense apart from the Church.</p><p>Well done, Nick.</p><p> </p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239290722575996816.post-81620892193687975292010-05-24T22:51:00.001-05:002010-05-24T22:51:03.252-05:00Gospel Reading: Mark 10:17-27<p>When the rich man <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/bible/mar010.htm#17">asks the Lord</a> what he must <strong>do</strong> in order to be saved, He does not give him the “sola fide” answer: “You don’t have to do anything. You just need to have faith.”</p><p>No. The Lord tells him what he must <strong>do.</strong></p><p>The Gospel is <strong>not</strong> legalistic, but that doesn’t mean that obedience is optional.</p>Fred Noltiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10203885485191808284noreply@blogger.com0