The Supplement - Catholic Commentary

Consequences of the Primacy of Conscience

2011-07-04T11:47:00.001-05:00

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.

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 here, 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).

Setting that aside for the moment, though, his challenge to demonstrate the claim from the Reformed standards was fairly quickly answered:

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. [source]

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 insists that

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.

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.

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.

More importantly, if a Protestant denies the primacy of individual conscience he is effectively undercutting the Reformers. Luther famously appealed 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 sine qua non of the Reformation.

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.

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.

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.

Aquinas, Descartes, and Schaeffer continued

2011-06-26T22:32:00.005-05:00

I have written a few posts now on this subject, and since it is apparently a topic of persistent interest (judging from what Blogger says about the traffic on The Supplement) 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.

In his monumental work The Degrees of Knowledge, Jacques Maritain discusses Descartes’ epistemological mistake (one which he says has been retained by Descartes’ philosophical descendants):

[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 quod’s, and the divine veracity is needed to assure us that behind the idea-quod (which we attain), there is a thing-quod corresponding to it. Of itself thought attains nothing but itself [136-137].

Recall with me the Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of what it means to say that a certain proposition is true: 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 necessarily 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.

On the one hand, he says this (Maritain’s description of his view is consistent with this):

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. [Source]

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 this entire article). Well, clearly this is completely unlike Aquinas’ view (and Aristotle’s for that matter). And if one’s idea of what truth is doesn’t 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 not a view that can be attributed to Aquinas. Schaeffer was wrong. Aquinas cannot be blamed for the disastrous course of modern philosophy.

[Update, a little later] I nearly forgot that I wrote about these subjects a few years ago. In this post, we see that St Thomas more or less addressed Descartes’ erroneous theory about knowledge of the external world, and here is a brief discussion of Aquinas’ views about the reliability of the senses.

Trent Does Not Contradict Orange

2011-06-09T20:12:00.004-05:00

I recently stumbled across a page 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.

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 ipso facto 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” (source).

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 page 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.
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 three of those canons. So I’m inclined to wonder: is this the worst that you can come up with?

Lastly, for the sake of stifling completeness, I’ve already written quite a few posts 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.
The three canons we’ll be looking at are 4, 5, and 11.
Canon 4:

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.

The text from Orange that canon 4 is alleged to contradict, including the emphasis that was added by our Protestant critic:

If anyone says that not only the increase of faith but also its beginning and the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly … belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, 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)

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 moved and excited by God…” 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 first. 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 rightly taught) “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.

So much for the criticisms of canon 4. Here is canon 5:

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.

And the corresponding criticism from the Protestant page, with its original emphasis:

If anyone maintains that some are able to come to the grace of baptism by mercy but others through free will, which has manifestly been corrupted in all those who have been born after the transgression of the first man, 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, 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).

Once again, there is no contradiction here. Canon 5 of Trent condemns those who deny that man has free will, and Orange says not that free will has been lost, but that it has been corrupted. 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).

Here is canon 11 from Trent:

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.

Our Protestant critic doesn’t quote Orange here; instead, he offers this commentary:

[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.]

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 not 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 essential constituents of justification, 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 post on canon 11. So how this can in any way be described as a denial of salvation by grace alone is beyond my powers to comprehend. It’s just crazy talk.

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. Here’s my post on the subject. Among other things, they say:

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, --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; 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].

Back to the Decree on Justification. In Chapter I, they declare:

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.

See my post on this chapter here.

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 here.

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 here.

In my opinion the heart of the Decree is chapter VII, because in it the Fathers declare what the causes of our justification are. Here is my post on the subject. Executive summary: none of the causes of our justification enumerated by Trent is something that man does, as though he can justify himself.

Trent doesn’t contradict Second Orange.

Correcting some misapprehensions

2011-06-06T23:08:00.001-05:00

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 here. 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:

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, there is no cause…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: 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. (pg. 26) [emphasis in original]

And Mr. Shelton’s comments:

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. This Clark just refuted. 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]

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? Because it does not even address it. 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 Aquinas. And Feser makes it pretty clear that Hume either didn’t understand or wasn’t talking about A-T causality, too.

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 per se, 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 to prevent it. This is what the quote is talking about, after all, since Clark had just said:

If in the time interval something happens, or even could happen, to prevent the effect, there is no cause…

So proximate causes are not in view at all, since proximate causes do not prevent an effect.

(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 simultaneous. Consequently there is no time interval at all.)

In short, then, it seems clear that Mr. Shelton’s claims against Aristotle (and consequently St Thomas, in this instance) don’t work.

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:

Man receives no knowledge from created and empirical means. Eccles. 8:16-17.

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. :-)

Toward the end of the article, he claims:

The law of contradiction is deduced from 1Co 14:6

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 only 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.

Communion with Protestants

2011-06-03T14:46:00.001-05:00

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.

The Catechism says:

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.” [§1400]

Furthermore, this practice is forbidden by Canon Law:

Catholic ministers administer the sacraments licitly to Catholic members of the Christian faithful alone, who likewise receive them licitly from Catholic ministers alone. [CIC 844, §1]

The requirements of this canon depend for their necessity upon the necessity of the truth expressed by the Catechism.

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, the truth and the life (John 14:6). 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.

So we may not participate in Protestant ordinances like the Lord’s Supper precisely because we are not in full communion with them.

Bloggers Emeritus

2011-06-01T10:09:00.001-05:00

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.

Contradiction

2011-06-01T01:08:00.001-05:00

I just came across a rather startling remark made by Protestant theologian Cornelius Van Til:

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. [Introduction to Systematic Theology, 11]

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.

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.

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.

Schaeffer vs Aquinas Redux

2011-05-31T23:04:00.001-05:00

In my last little seizure of activity some months ago, I spent some time 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.

In Praeambula Fidei, 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.

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 Surnaturel (“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].

McInerny offers the following setting of the scene, which he draws from one of de Lubac’s partisans:

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. Cajetan thus combined an atheist humanism and a theology destructive of human nature. One can see the devastating consequences that de Lubac was able to draw from the course of history [PF, p. 71, emphasis added].

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.

What does McInerny say about the claims made in this quotation?

Almost every charge against Cajetan in this paragraph is false. [PF, p. 72]

And:

[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.’” [Ibid.]

This, too, sounds a lot like Schaeffer’s claim.

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]

In short: de Lubac, writing in the middle 20^th century, says practically the same things about Cajetan that Schaeffer would later (in 1968) suggest about Aquinas:

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. [Escape from Reason, 11-13, quoted here]

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that Schaeffer’s views here might well have been influenced by de Lubac’s. This gentleman, 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.

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.

The subject at hand in Aquinas is obediential potency, 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 Disputed Questions on the Power of God. In q.1, a.3, he addresses the question whether God can do what nature cannot, and answers in the affirmative:

[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.
…
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.’
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. [Source]

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.

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, it is in no way autonomous. This is why he says (as we saw in a previous post) 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.

Aquinas, Descartes, and Schaeffer

2010-12-31T13:25:00.001-06:00

This post consists of the fruit of some investigations related to a combox discussion on this post. 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.

John Peterson writes in Aquinas: A New Introduction, with respect to metaphysics:

[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.
Yet there are important differences between the two philosophers. 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 here; emphasis added]

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.

In a related vein we find the following in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas. Joseph Owens writes there:

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. 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. 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]

So we see here that Owens too traces the beginnings of modern philosophy not to Aquinas (pace my interlocutor) but to Descartes, and identifies a “radical distinction” between the two.

In the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Descartes, we read the following:

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 here]

If Descartes rejected the philosophy, how can it reasonably be said that he was dependent upon Aquinas?

Elsewhere we read:

Descartes did not publish anything until he was forty years old, largely due to his fears of censure.

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.

And again:

Descartes self-consciously rejected the philosophical heritage of scholasticism, 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. 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. [Emphasis added]

I think it’s pretty clear that we may safely deny any substantive Thomistic influence on Descartes. Schaeffer was wrong.

Fed Up

2010-12-29T23:26:00.000-06:00

I 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.

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.

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.

Waste Not, Want Not

2010-11-21T20:09:00.001-06:00

I wrote the following in reply to Ken, in a thread 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.

So I gave up on the thread.

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 that?

Ken wrote:

Just asserting that doesn't prove your point.

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 said 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.

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)

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 began with “a stab” at some of those essentials; when the rather obvious weakness of this was pointed out, you reversed course 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.

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.

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 anyone (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 in their entirety cannot do so categorically demolishes the value of the doctrine. It is worthless.

Actually, Protestants are quite unified on the essential doctrines for salvation; which I pretty much think I covered.

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 single 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)???

I gave you a list of the clear things, for salvation. Most all Protestants would agree with that list.

So much for “quite unified.” :-)

You say, "it doesn't work". What do you mean by that? Work to produce what?

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.”

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.

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).

Does the RCC list of de fide dogmas for salvation actually work? How do you know they work?

First off, attempting a tu quoque here does not get you off the hook for the problems in what you believe yourself. :-)

Secondly, the Church does not pretend that literally every Catholic must be able to explicitly 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 tu quoque 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.

[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.

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.

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.

Reformed Protestants may have even more real spiritual unity on the essentials than Roman Catholics do.

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.”

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.

St Augustine and Material Heresy

2010-10-09T22:17:00.001-05:00

Being wrong is one thing; being wrong because you don’t know any better is another thing entirely. So St Augustine writes:

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. [De utilitate credendi 1]

I suppose I could add another option (besides just being mistaken) to the non-pejorative possibilities 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.

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.

Elsewhere we have seen that St Augustine said basically the same thing.

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]

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.

Jerks

2010-10-09T21:16:00.001-05:00

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are too”—Dostoyevsky

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.

I think that Dostoyevsky’s observation gets at the root of the thing. Sure, it’s possible that Joe Bob is Satan’s bagman. Yeah, he might be as dumb as a bag of hammers. Yeah, he might not have read all the coolest books like I have. But in the end it’s far more likely 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.

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.

St Augustine Accepted Church Authority

2010-09-30T21:24:00.001-05:00

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:

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. 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. Listen to what follows as diligently and as piously as you can. For God helps men like that. [Of True Religion 20, in Augustine: Earlier Writings, p. 235; emphasis added]

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.

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 On Free Choice of the Will. See here.

St Augustine on “Fitness”

2010-09-29T23:13:00.001-05:00

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.

Here is something that that St Augustine has to say about arguments from fitness.

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. [Of True Religion, 14]

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.

I concur with Augustine’s careful understanding of the usefulness of arguments from fitness (see another example here): 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.

St Augustine affirmed free will

2010-09-29T21:59:00.001-05:00

This should be unsurprising, because he was a Catholic. 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.

In today’s episode, we see that St Augustine re-affirms that which he previously said in On Free Choice of the Will.

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, 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. [Of True Religion, xiv, 27; in the Library of Christian Classics volume Augustine: Earlier Writings, p. 238; emphasis added]

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.

Unquestionably some folks will suggest that perhaps St Augustine later rejected this view. But as noted earlier in regard to On Free Choice of the Will, he did nothing of the sort in the Retractations. Happily, the LCC editors saw fit to include the Retractations associated with Of True Religion (see pages 218-221). Did Augustine later in life reject what this book says about free will? No he did not.

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]

I am reminded of suddenly of something said by Captain Jack Sparrow: “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 Catholic.

St Augustine Still Isn’t Protestant

2010-09-18T22:05:00.001-05:00

I’ve devoted a number of posts 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 really loud. Okay, I’m going bonkers with the metaphor-mixing. Let’s move on.

Here is yet another small snippet showing the unambiguously Catholic character of his writings. St Augustine opens the Soliloquies with a prayer, part of which go like this:

God, through whom we disapprove the error of those, who think that there are no merits of souls before You. God, through whom it comes that we are not in bondage to the weak and beggarly elements. God, who cleanses us, and prepares us for Divine rewards, to me propitious come Thou. [I, 3; emphasis added]

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.

In the very next section of this opening prayer, he writes:

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: 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. [I, 4; emphasis added]

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 some Protestants think. He doesn’t discuss the reasons for these facts in this context, but we have seen elsewhere (here, 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.

St Augustine doesn’t get this wrong. He wasn’t some crypto-proto-Protestant. He was Catholic. He wouldn’t be a Doctor of the Church if he wasn’t. That very fact really ought to induce Protestant hangers-on to think seriously about how they view his teaching.

Edit: It is probably necessary (unfortunately) to respond to the suggestion that St Augustine wrote the Soliloquies early in his career and that consequently it supposedly does not reflect his mature thought. The problem with this is that the Retractations related to this work say nothing about rejecting the ideas I've quoted here. The portion of the Retractations related to the Soliloquies is included in this edition 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.

Papal Wisdom

2010-09-18T21:07:00.001-05:00

“Society is for man and not vice versa” — Pope Pius XI, in Divini Redemptoris 29. This seems like a rather obvious inference of Genesis 2:18: “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.

But we must not suppose that Pius was some sort of libertarian or radical individualist.

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.
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. [ibid., 29-30]

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.

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?

Theology of St. Thomas - the Formal Object of Sacred Doctrine

2010-05-31T19:16:00.001-05:00

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.

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. [ST I Q1 A3]

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.

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 whatever has been divinely revealed “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.

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!

St. Thomas and the Argument for the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

2010-05-31T16:00:00.001-05:00

In a previous post 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.

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 Summa Theologiae, which is clearly not a devotional work.

In ST III Q28 A3 he addresses the question “Whether Christ’s Mother Remained a Virgin after His Birth?” In the sed contra he writes:

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?”

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 I Q1 A10).

St. Thomas and the Literal Sense of Scripture

2010-05-30T22:58:00.001-05:00

A Protestant comboxer suggests 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 ST I Q1 A10 ad 1:

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.

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.

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.

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:

Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says (Confess. xii), if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses. [Emphasis added]

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 commentary on St. Gabriel’s salutation to the Blessed Virgin, which we looked at here. 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:

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.
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.”

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.

Sacred Doctrine is a Science

2010-05-25T07:34:00.001-05:00

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. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, 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 why it is a fact” (ibid., 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.]

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. [ST I Q1 A2]

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.

From a Combox

2010-05-24T23:11:00.001-05:00

From a combox discussion…

Matthew writes:

You're not making an argument, Nick.

What he was responding to was no argument either. He was responding to this, from the post:

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.)

That's not an argument. It's an assertion. Nick is not obliged to counter an assertion with an argument.

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.

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.

That's certainly possible. But you need to prove that from Whitaker or Stapleton.

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.

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.

Well done, Nick.

Gospel Reading: Mark 10:17-27

2010-05-24T22:51:00.001-05:00

When the rich man asks the Lord what he must do 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.”

No. The Lord tells him what he must do.

The Gospel is not legalistic, but that doesn’t mean that obedience is optional.

The Catholic Faith is not Rationalist

2010-05-23T13:37:00.001-05:00

There is more to the Catholic Faith than may be encompassed by the rational powers of man. Consequently it is not merely a philosophy.

It is written (2 Timothy 3:16): “All Scripture, inspired of God is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice.” Now Scripture, inspired of God, is no part of philosophical science, which has been built up by human reason. Therefore it is useful that besides philosophical science, there should be other knowledge, i.e. inspired of God. [ST I, Q1, A1]

That’s not the strongest argument that St. Thomas will make for this, but it is the first appeal to authority that he makes in the Summa.

It was necessary for man’s salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason: “The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee” (Isaiah 64:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. [ibid.]

Because our end is one that is beyond our abilities to attain or apprehend, it was necessary for God to reveal such things to us. But it was also good for God to reveal to us even things that we might otherwise have been able to deduce by means of reason, because attaining knowledge by way of our natural powers is difficult and prone to error. As Aristotle says,

The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed. Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it.
Perhaps, too, as difficulties are of two kinds, the cause of the present difficulty is not in the facts but in us. For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all. [Metaphysics II, 1 (993b1-11)]

And St. Thomas:

Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. [ST, loc. cit.]

We can infer the reason for the mixture of errors from what Aristotle says; but why would these truths be known only by a few if we were limited only to what reason can discover? Because men differ in their intellectual gifts; some are capable of understanding things that the rest of us simply cannot grasp because of our own limitations: “He who has the superior intellect understands many things that the other cannot grasp at all. Such is the case with a very simple person who cannot at all grasp the subtle speculations of philosophy” (St. Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 3, 3). But all men need to be able to attain to their end, which is God. Since all men need knowledge of divine truth in some capacity, but since not all can discover it on their own, and since some things we need to know cannot be discovered by reason at all, we need divine revelation.

Whereas man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation. [ST, loc. cit.]

Hence we can see that the Catholic Faith is in no way rationalist. It cannot be measured by the mind of man, because some things cannot be comprehended by man at all. Such things must be received by faith.

It might be worth pointing out, however, that there is a certain way in which Protestantism most certainly is a rationalistic faith. The Protestant claims that his understanding of divine truth is obtained directly from the Bible. But he is limited in this by his own intellectual capacity: that is, the truth that he will perceive in the Bible will be only that which he is capable of grasping himself. Man becomes the measure of divine revelation; the Truth is reduced to that which the man is able to see himself. The Catholic Faith is not like this.

Sacramental Necessity and Apologetics

2010-05-22T22:38:00.001-05:00

Are the sacraments necessary? Yes, says St. Thomas. He proposes three reasons for this necessity:

The first is taken from the condition of human nature which is such that it has to be led by things corporeal and sensible to things spiritual and intelligible. Now it belongs to Divine providence to provide for each one according as its condition requires. Divine wisdom, therefore, fittingly provides man with means of salvation, in the shape of corporeal and sensible signs that are called sacraments.

So sacraments are necessary for us because of the kind of beings we are, being corporeal and spiritual.

The second reason is taken from the state of man who in sinning subjected himself by his affections to corporeal things. Now the healing remedy should be given to a man so as to reach the part affected by disease. Consequently it was fitting that God should provide man with a spiritual medicine by means of certain corporeal signs; for if man were offered spiritual things without a veil, his mind being taken up with the material world would be unable to apply itself to them.

Because we are prone to giving the things of this world more attention than we ought, it’s fitting, he says, that by means of visible signs we receive the graces necessary to overturn this earthly fixation.

The third reason is taken from the fact that man is prone to direct his activity chiefly towards material things. Lest, therefore, it should be too hard for man to be drawn away entirely from bodily actions, bodily exercise was offered to him in the sacraments, by which he might be trained to avoid superstitious practices, consisting in the worship of demons, and all manner of harmful action, consisting in sinful deeds.

It follows, therefore, that through the institution of the sacraments man, consistently with his nature, is instructed through sensible things; he is humbled, through confessing that he is subject to corporeal things, seeing that he receives assistance through them: and he is even preserved from bodily hurt, by the healthy exercise of the sacraments. [ST III Q61 A1]

Why did God give us the sacraments? It wasn’t just some arbitrary thing: “You’ll do this because I say so.” Of course that would be sufficient, but we are rational beings and God is rational too. No, there are reasons for the sacraments. God wasn’t acting without good reason when He ordained them for us; it wasn’t mere arbitrariness.

We need the sacraments. We need them to be tangible, because we are corporeal ourselves. And God’s love for us is seen in the fact that He gives us physical signs, and that by means of them He gives us grace.

I don’t really know if Protestants would countenance such an argument as this one (from necessity grounded in human nature), but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. At the very least, though, they ought to concede that the gift of sacraments is something God gives us for a reason. But if they are willing to concede this, then I should think that they should also be willing to grant that the proper form and matter of the sacraments is likewise not merely arbitrary on God’s part, and that consequently these also are not matters of indifference.

And yet Protestants have disagreed about these questions from the very beginning. This was a wedge issue for me, with the ultimate outcome being my reception into the Catholic Church. If the Holy Spirit leads the individual Christian to receive divine truth from Scripture as the Protestant claims, then it is quite frankly impossible that they should disagree amongst themselves about it. But they do disagree about the sacraments. Consequently their claims as to how the Holy Spirit works among them are patently false. Consequently there is no reason, on the Protestant’s own terms, to believe anything that he says about what the Bible teaches.

Expanding a Previous Observation

2010-05-18T07:56:00.002-05:00

In a previous post I said that if we Catholics ignore tradition as Protestants do, then we will misread the Bible as they do. This remark was challenged by a Protestant, who denied that they ignore tradition. I think I have sufficiently replied in the combox there (especially with Nick’s help), but I think that some more may be said about the subject.

Catholics make a distinction between tradition and big-T Tradition or Sacred Tradition, and I think it’s relevant in this case. The latter is not coextensive with the former: that is, Sacred Tradition is not exactly the same as the collection of writings produced by the Church Fathers. The writings of the Fathers aren’t divine revelation, and consequently they may err. By way of an atrocious example: St. Thomas Aquinas, who was not a Father of the Church but is a Doctor of the Church, erred concerning the Immaculate Conception. No matter the degree of respect that I have for his writings, they’re not revelation and they’re not inspired. The same is true for the Fathers.

But the same is not true of Sacred Tradition, because Sacred Tradition is divine revelation.

“Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.”

“and [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching.” [CCC §81]

The Catechism continues, making clear the distinction between small-t and big-T Tradition:

The Tradition here in question comes from the apostles and hands on what they received from Jesus’ teaching and example and what they learned from the Holy Spirit. the first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition.

Tradition is to be distinguished from the various theological, disciplinary, liturgical or devotional traditions, born in the local churches over time. These are the particular forms, adapted to different places and times, in which the great Tradition is expressed. In the light of Tradition, these traditions can be retained, modified or even abandoned under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium. [§83]

Small-t tradition is subject to correction and change; Sacred Tradition is not, because it has been revealed by God.

Now in the present context, I said that we must read the Bible within the living Tradition of the whole Church. As my one or two regular readers know, I’ve said that exact thing repeatedly; it’s a quotation once again from the Catechism (§113):

Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”. According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (“…according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church”).

It is not sufficient merely to dig around in the Church Fathers. Anyone can do that. Protestants do it; the heresiarchs of the fourth and fifth centuries surely did that as well. Just as Bryan Cross has said [quoted here] that “Scripture alone is not sufficient to prevent heresy,” the same may surely be said of the Fathers, whose writings are not divinely inspired. So to say that one doesn’t ignore tradition because he quotes the Fathers doesn’t answer to the issue. The tradition according to which we must interpret the Scripture and the Fathers is the same: the Sacred Tradition preserved and taught by the Church. Only by doing this may we have any confidence that we are properly understanding what God has said in the Bible; only by doing this may we have any confidence that we are properly reading the Church Fathers.

Bryan Cross on Quoting Scripture

2010-05-17T00:49:00.001-05:00

In a seemingly interminable thread on a Protestant site, Bryan Cross has some valuable things to say concerning the utility of Scripture. I’m not quoting the whole thing here (it’s reported that the comment from which this excerpt is drawn is several pages long itself).

Our snippet opens with a quotation from St. Jerome:

We ought to remain in that Church which was founded by the Apostles and continues to this day. If ever you hear of any that are called Christians taking their name not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some other, for instance, Marcionites, Valentinians, Men of the mountain or the plain, you may be sure that you have there not the Church of Christ, but the synagogue of Antichrist. For the fact that they took their rise after the foundation of the Church is proof that they are those whose coming the Apostle foretold. And let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning. [St. Jerome, Dialogue Against the Luciferians§28; emphasis added]

Bryan remarks:

Because the essence of Scripture is not the letter but the meaning, it is not enough to have Scripture as support for one’s doctrine, since “all heretics quote Scripture.” These sects were not founded by Christ, but by some men who came later, “after the foundation of the Church.” They appeal to Scripture to justify their separation from the Church. But without the guidance of the divinely appointed shepherds in the Church, these sects fall into heresies of all different sorts, each not realizing, however, that they are in a heresy, but all (though disagreeing with all the others) thinking that it is they alone who have the correct doctrine. [Emphasis added]

He then quotes St. Vincent of Lerins:

Do heretics also appeal to Scripture? They do indeed, and with a vengeance; for you may see them scamper through every single book of Holy Scripture—through the books of Moses, the books of Kings, the Psalms, the Epistles, the Gospels, the Prophets. Whether among their own people, or among strangers, in private or in public, in speaking or in writing, at convivial meetings, or in the streets, hardly ever do they bring forward anything of their own which they do not endeavour to shelter under words of Scripture. Read the works of Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and the rest of those pests, and you will see an infinite heap of instances, hardly a single page, which does not bristle with plausible quotations from the New Testament or the Old. [Commonitory §64]

Bryan concludes, knocking it out of the park:

The point is that Scripture alone is not sufficient to prevent heresy. The guidance of the Church is necessary. And defining the ‘Church’ as those who agree with one’s own interpretation only hides the problem from oneself, by designating as teachers those who agree with one’s own interpretation. This exacerbates the problem, by giving to oneself the appearance of being within the Church and under her authority, while in actuality being under the ‘authority’ of heretics. The proper course of action is to submit to those shepherds who received the authorization from the incarnate Christ through the succession from the Apostles.

Bingo. It’s totally inadequate to pretend that merely appealing to the Bible in a vacuum is sufficient to settle anything. As St. Jerome said, it’s the meaning of the Bible that counts. How then can we know that meaning? Only by reading Scripture within the living Tradition of the Church. And that is why I am no longer Protestant: it’s irrational to suppose that all the differences among them are of no consequence. Surely they disagree on subjects which are genuinely irrelevant (so to speak), but they also disagree on subjects about which it is too incredible even to suggest that the Holy Spirit, purported by them to guide each individual immediately (i.e., without mediation) in understanding the Bible, would leave them in uncertainty. It is not to be believed that the Sacraments (for one example) are a matter of indifference, and yet Protestants differ amongst themselves not just as to their mode, but also as to their significance. Consequently the Holy Spirit is not guiding them into all truth in the way that they suppose; consequently Protestantism, having staked everything upon sola Scriptura, falls apart.

There are Protestants in that thread who are insisting that the Bible is perspicuous in such a way that everything one is required to believe in order to be saved is presented with sufficient clarity in the Bible such that anyone may understand. And yet Protestants themselves can’t agree as to what those required beliefs are, and some of them even concede that they can’t provide a list of such things. This means, of course, that they claim some things must be believed in order to be saved, but that they are unable to tell you what those things are. They are perfectly happy to quote St. Paul when he says “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved,” but they ignore (or explain away) St. Peter when he says, in answer to practically the exact same question as the jailer asked Paul, “Do penance: and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”

We need the Church. If we ignore Tradition as Protestants do, we will misread the Bible as they do.

Ordination is a Sacrament

2010-05-15T00:56:00.001-05:00

Ordination is a sacrament.

Neglect not the grace that is in you, which was given you by prophecy, with imposition of the hands of the priesthood. [1 Tim 4:14]

Timothy received grace by means of the laying on of hands, which takes place when one is ordained. A visible sign is the means by which invisible grace is given.

Man's Chief End

2010-05-11T08:01:00.001-05:00

I like this summary of things:

The source of all man’s life is to be found in God. Through His strength and all-pervading power He maintains man’s growth and development and, as his ultimate goal, He constitutes that happiness which man of necessity pursues. Creator and goal, starting point and divine inspirer: this points to total dependence and asks for total devotion in return. Such a relation of dependence and devotion is the fundamental relationship between God and man. Man must acknowledge and express it, live by it inwardly and testify to it outwardly; for in this relationship is embodied his total human essence. He must completely surrender himself to God, and detach himself from everything which could impede that yielding. [A Handbook of the Catholic Faith, p. 304]

Gospel Reading: John 15:12-17

2010-05-10T20:30:00.000-05:00

This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man has, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you. I will not now call you servants: for the servant knows not what his lord does. But I have called you friends because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you. You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that you love one another. [John 15:12-17]

The Lord Jesus says that we are his friends if we do what he commands. If that is true, then is it in any way credible to suppose that what we do is irrelevant to our standing as Christians before God? Of course not. Is it reasonable to suppose that what we do as Christians does not matter? Of course not. Why would Christ give us commands if our obedience doesn’t matter? The very idea is irrational. The idea is likewise contradicted by Christ’s own words in the parable of the sheep and the goats, where he makes it very clear that our eternal standing depends upon what we do in this life. The simple fact is that a Christian is not free to live as he wishes. He is a servant of Christ, and to be a servant by definition demands that he serve his master: that is to say, he must obey his master.

It’s not reasonable to say that we love Jesus on the one hand if we disobey him on the other. He has said that if we love him, we must keep his commands, so our obedience to him is the very measure of our love for him.

Unfortunately there are many Protestants who ignore this fact. They erroneously suppose that their obedience (or lack thereof) in this life has nothing to do with their eternal home. The Lord Jesus Christ unambiguously says otherwise. St. Paul says otherwise (Gal. 5:19-21). What we do in this life matters. Our obedience matters. Our sins matter. Thanks be to God that our sins may be forgiven, but we dare not presume upon God’s mercy.

Deus Caritas Est

2010-05-09T07:53:00.001-05:00

Thus says the Lord: In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you: and I have preserved you, and given you to be a covenant of the people, that you might raise up the earth, and possess the inheritances that were destroyed: That you might say to them that are bound: Come forth: and to them that are in darkness: Show yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in every plain. They shall not hunger, nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor the sun strike them: for he that is merciful to them, shall be their shepherd, and at the fountains of waters he shall give them drink. And I will make all my mountains a way, and my paths shall be exalted. Behold these shall come from afar, and behold these from the north and from the sea, and these from the south country. Give praise, O you heavens, and rejoice, O earth, you mountains, give praise with jubilation: because the Lord has comforted his people, and will have mercy on his poor ones. And Sion said: The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me. Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will not I forget you. [Isaiah 49:8-15]
The Lord delays not his promise, as some imagine, but deals patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance. [2 Peter 3:9; emphasis added]

I once knew of a man who had a sign on his car that said, “God is Wrath.” It perhaps comes as no surprise that this man was a Calvinist. Unfortunately there is nothing Christian about this sentiment. God is love (1 John 4:8). Contrary to Reformed rantings, God really does want all men to repent, just as St. Peter says. Contrary to dreadful Calvinist doctrine, He doesn’t consign anyone to hell just because it suits Him to do so.

You can't always get what you want

2010-05-08T07:28:00.001-05:00

Thoughts expressed over here that seem worth adding here:

Many Protestants, particularly those in the Reformed camp, like to think of St. Augustine as one of their own, even sometimes supposing that he was practically a veritable forerunner of their own theology. They consider him to be a great theologian. Of course, I agree with that opinion (and so does the Catholic Church, which names him a Doctor of the Church), but it seems to me that the Protestant’s description of him undermines itself.

I have shown in a series of posts that St. Augustine was absolutely Catholic, holding to the following:

Submitted to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church
Held that Scripture must be interpreted according to Sacred Tradition
Affirmed that doctrine develops
Denied so-called “total depravity”
Denied that man is culpable for that of which he is genuinely (not willfully) ignorant
Affirmed that real holiness, and not a mere forensic imputation, was necessary for salvation
Affirmed that God rewards the merits of the righteous
Affirmed that we have free will, and that this is necessary for the just punishment of the wicked
Affirmed the authority of Sacred Tradition
Affirmed transubstantiation (or, if you prefer, the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist)
Affirmed the validity of consecrated virginity
Affirmed that Scripture has multiple meanings
Affirmed the veneration of the saints, holy relics, and other sacred objects
Affirmed the Catholic canon of Scripture
Affirmed that the Church defines the canon of Scripture
Affirmed that sins are forgiven by the Sacrament of Baptism
Affirmed that prayers should be offered for the dead
Affirmed the offering of the Mass for the dead
Affirmed that the saints pray for us
Affirmed the authority of Scripture because of the authority of the Church
Affirmed the Catholic enumeration of the Ten Commandments
Denied that God saves men against their wills

I’m sure that more could be said: this list is merely the result of my reading of a few of Augustine’s works. But it’s sufficient for my purposes here. My point for this post is that it is simply not credible (as I said in the combox post linked above) to suggest that Augustine’s views on the subjects in this list are utterly discontinuous with those views of his that Protestants happen to like. No. If they are going to say that St. Augustine was a great theologian, they must account for how he can be so wonderfully right about a few things and yet (as they would say) so badly wrong about the things above (and many others). It is not the mark of a great theologian to be incoherent, and yet that is exactly what Protestant opinions of him demand. On the Protestant handling of St. Augustine, on their own terms, it is unreasonable to describe him as a “great theologian” (although he is). On their own terms, he could only reasonably be described as lucky, mostly inconsistent, or wildly erratic to have got some few things right while messing up so many things (as we see above).

Thought experiment: suppose a 21st century theologian came along, affirming the things we see in the list above and also those things from Augustine’s writings that Protestants approve (we Catholics would call him “an orthodox Catholic,” but I digress). Would any Protestant put such a man on the same pedestal on which they place Augustine? How many Protestants would be likely to approve such a man? LOL! Do we even need to ask the question? Of course not. And this simply goes to show the radical inconsistency of Protestant approval of St. Augustine: they ignore what they don’t like while trying to claim him as their own.

Protestants can’t have it both ways. If St. Augustine was a great theologian, they must consider his theology as an organic, coherent whole. It’s dishonest and unfair to pretend that his explicitly Catholic views are not one with the parts of his writings that they happen to like.

St. Augustine was Catholic. Attempts to say otherwise aren’t even remotely plausible.

Michael Liccione on Scripture, Tradition, and the Church

2010-05-08T07:17:00.001-05:00

Over at Called to Communion, there is a monumental post entitled “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.” It’s six months old at this writing, but the most recent comments (836 at last count!) are only several days old.

Besides the article itself, there are many fine comments. The 760th is from Dr. Michael Liccione, and at the risk of doing injustice to other commenters’ offerings, I think this one is noteworthy. Here's a portion:

God authored the books of the New Testament by means of the authorities of the Church he established–to wit, the Apostles and those who wrote in their name. But that Tradition of which the NT is the most authoritative written record is wider and older than the NT. Hence, the NT can only be adequately understood in the context of that wider and older Tradition. Moreover, Tradition itself can only be properly received and interpreted with the mind of the Church to which it was entrusted. Therefore, it is a necessary condition for interpreting the NT adequately that one identify which visible body counts as “the” Church founded by the Lord, and then choose to conform one’s mind with hers. One can only do that by choosing to submit one’s judgment on matters de fide to those with divinely given authority to speak for and to the whole Church: those who hold and exercise the Magisterium. But such a submission would only be justifiable if in fact the Magisterium speaks with divine authority, and is not giving just its own opinions. Anybody can have opinions, but those are always provisional because always fallible. Divine authority, when exercised, is infallible, and thus its judgments are irreformable.
The NT is “adequate” only when prayerfully read in that context. It is of course possible for a person to simply read the NT on its own and learn a great deal of what’s necessary; in fact, I believe it happens a lot. But partly for the reasons given above, I don’t think it’s possible for anybody to assent by faith to the entire content of the deposit of faith in such a way. The history of Protestantism only confirms that judgment for me; in fact, the broad split between the Lutheran, Reformed, and free-church branches of Protestantism was already evident at the Colloquy of Marburg, a dozen years after Luther nailed his theses to the door. Thus, as St. Thomas had said, it is possible to learn by reading the NT alone much of that which is “of faith”; but unless one submits one’s judgment to that of the bishops in apostolic succession, one does not adhere “by faith” to what one thereby learns. For one has no way of knowing that what one learns is the actual faith of the Church rather than just one’s personal opinions. [Emphasis added]

This is consistent with the Catechism (§113) on a point I’ve repeated many times (recently here, for example): we must read the Bible within the living tradition of the whole Church.

Vatican II on Justification: Lumen Gentium 53

2010-05-07T05:10:00.001-05:00

Many Protestants, and basically all anti-Catholics, think that Catholics hold too high a view of the Blessed Virgin. If, then, they find that we insist that she is saved not on the basis of any intrinsic righteousness of her own, but rather on the basis of the merits of Christ, how much more would it be true that we think the same of ourselves?

The Virgin Mary, who at the message of the angel received the Word of God in her heart and in her body and gave Life to the world, is acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God and Mother of the Redeemer. Redeemed by reason of the merits of her Son and united to Him by a close and indissoluble tie, she is endowed with the high office and dignity of being the Mother of the Son of God, by which account she is also the beloved daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit. [Lumen Gentium §53; emphasis added]

It would be ridiculous to suggest that we believe Mary, the Mother of God, to be in need of redemption by Christ, but that we ourselves are saved by what we do! But as we see, the Fathers of Vatican II insist that she was redeemed by Christ, and of course the same applies to us. We cannot save ourselves.

Vatican II on Justification: Lumen Gentium 40

2010-05-06T01:24:00.001-05:00

Lumen Gentium Chapter V is entitled “The Universal Call to Holiness in the Church.” In §40, the Fathers of the Council write:

The followers of Christ are called by God, not because of their works, but according to His own purpose and grace. They are justified in the Lord Jesus, because in the baptism of faith they truly become sons of God and sharers in the divine nature. In this way they are really made holy. Then too, by God’s gift, they must hold on to and complete in their lives this holiness they have received. They are warned by the Apostle to live “as becomes saints” [Eph. 5:3], and to put on “as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, patience” [Col. 3:12], and to possess the fruit of the Spirit in holiness. Since truly we all offend in many things we all need God’s mercies continually and we all must daily pray: “Forgive us our debts”. [Emphasis and links to Bible added]

We are not Christians because of any merit on our part; we are Christians by the grace of God. Having been saved, we must live “as becomes saints,” as St. Paul says; we must seek to live holy lives, confessing our sins when we fail.

Getting back on the horse, I hope

2010-05-06T01:20:00.001-05:00

Ugh. Seven weeks without posting. I apologize. The real world has consumed most of my energy this year. I’d like to say that things will certainly be better from here on out, but that would be rash. More modestly, my hope is to be more productive here for the foreseeable future.

Vatican II on Justification: Lumen Gentium 14

2010-03-17T07:56:00.001-05:00

Lumen Gentium is Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, presenting the Council’s teaching on (naturally) the Church. Chapter II is titled The People of God, and in §14 there we read this:

All the Church’s children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.

We are not children of the Church, nor of God, on the basis of anything that we have done ourselves, nor because of any special qualities or traits that we have which others lack. On the contrary, this can only be attributed to “the special grace of Christ.” We cannot save ourselves; He must save us. But this does not mean that we are compelled against our wills into God’s kingdom; God has given us free will, and we must exercise it. If we reject God’s grace, then the judgment that we receive will be richly deserved.

Vatican II on Justification

2010-03-16T21:31:00.001-05:00

Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve presented a series of posts on the subject of justification as it is presented by St. Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent. What we have seen is unambiguous: namely, that those who claim that the Catholic Church teaches a “works-based” gospel have either not read what the Church teaches, or have failed to understand it, or are outright lying. Nothing could be further from the truth than to say that the Catholic Church teaches that we are justified by works.

For the sake of a better semblance of completeness about the question, I’m going to take a few posts to review what Vatican II has to say that’s related to justification. Fortunately for my readers who are bored by this topic (!) I haven’t found much in the Council’s documents related to it. This makes sense, since Trent is eminently clear. However, there are a few brief passages here and there in Lumen Gentium that will confirm, unsurprisingly, that the Catholic Church teaches now what Trent taught, and what She has always taught.

St. Augustine Pleads Ignorance

2010-03-14T19:05:00.001-05:00

It should probably be said in St. Augustine’s defense that it seems likely (although I’m not in a position to demonstrate it) that what we shall see in this post is not a view that he held all his life. Nevertheless, just as St. Thomas may err concerning the Immaculate Conception, so too St. Augustine was only human. We may be certain that he no longer has any doubts about this question:

There are these four theories concerning the soul: [1] The soul comes from propagation. [2] The soul is created new in the case of every individual. [3] The soul exists elsewhere and is sent divinely into the body of a man at birth; or lastly [4] of its own will, it slips into bodies. We must not affirm any one of these rashly. Either the catholic commentaries on the divine Scriptures have not yet given this question the explanation and enlightenment that its obscurity and complexity deserve; or, if it has already been done, the book has not reached my hands. [On Free Choice of the Will, III.xxi, p. 133f]

Several thoughts come to mind. First, it is surprising to me at first glance that this might have been unclear to St. Augustine at any time in his Christian life, but maybe that’s being a bit too unfair. As a Protestant I learned that there were two theories about where the soul comes from, corresponding to the first two mentioned by St. Augustine above, but it was never exactly clear which of these one must hold (if it was even something that Protestants would consider that important). I guess I would never have imagined the question being as apparently difficult as Augustine does, but there you go: we stand on the shoulders of giants, right?

[For those who might not know, the Catholic Church teaches (§366) the second of Augustine’s theories; this is what St. Thomas taught, too]

Secondly, it’s worth noting that St. Augustine fully intends to submit to the teaching of the Catholic Church on this point. He has no intention of jumping to a view of his own apart from what the Church says. The problem he faced was one of ignorance: he didn’t know what the Church taught about it, but it seemed to him that if the Church hadn’t yet spoken on the subject, it should do so. St. Augustine, we see, was by no means one to suppose that he could get along just fine with just his Bible. No. He understood, and we need to understand, that when we come to the Bible, we must read it within the living tradition of the whole Church. We don’t read it within the tradition of the Presbyterians, or of the Baptists, or of the Lutherans; we read it within the tradition of the Catholic Church. That means that if our interpretation of the Bible contradicts the teaching of the Church on faith and morals, then we have made an error in what we think the Bible says. Period. St. Augustine was a faithful son of the Church; it seems clear that this was his view as well.

Thirdly, St. Augustine understood that doctrine develops. Over time, the Church’s understanding of the Faith grows and becomes more clear. In our passage above, the saint makes it clear that it was at least possible that the Church had not yet spoken on the matter, and that he hoped that She would do so. I don’t know if She had done so by his day, so that Augustine was simply uninformed on this point, but She has spoken by now, as I pointed out above.

Climbing back in the saddle

2010-03-14T19:04:00.001-05:00

I fell off the horse there for a while; time to resume daily posting (and try to get caught up for this month).

As an aside for those who might have iPhones, I commend to you the superb app for Catholics called iPieta. It has more good stuff than I can list in a single blog post. It includes the Douay-Rheims and Vulgate versions of Scripture; the current and traditional liturgical calendars; hundreds of prayers (including free audio—downloadable separately—for many of them); brief lives of dozens of saints; multiple catechisms including the Baltimore, Roman, and the Catechism of St. Thomas; lots and lots of books (including the Summa!); a Bible commentary; documents of Trent and Vatican II (as well as many documents from or relating to councils prior to Trent); a whole raft of papal encyclicals; etc. In short, it's like a one-stop shop for all sorts of valuable tools. Enjoy!

Amusement for the Day

2010-03-02T22:08:00.001-06:00

I found this to be very entertaining. Perhaps you will too, unless you just can’t stand a certain green-blooded, pointy-eared hobgoblin. :-)

St. Augustine and Goodness in Human Nature

2010-03-02T01:43:00.001-06:00

In another post we saw that St. Augustine disagrees with certain forms of the Reformed/Presbyterian doctrine of total depravity. Some folks think that non-Christians are completely incapable of doing anything that God would view as good. This is not St. Augustine’s view.

It is no trifling matter that even before the merit of good works, the soul has received a natural power of judgment by which it prefers wisdom to error and peace to difficulty, so that it achieves these not simply by being born, but instead by its own endeavor. If the soul is not willing to act, it may justly be regarded as sin, for it has not put to good use the faculty that it received. For although it was born in ignorance and difficulty, nevertheless it is not compelled by necessity to remain in the state in which it was born. [On Free Choice of the Will, III.xx, p. 131-132]

If we are created so that we prefer wisdom to error, which is a good thing, it cannot be said to be evil or wicked when a man pursues wisdom. Of course it is possible for a man to “fail” to find wisdom deliberately, by prejudiced searching or deliberately hiding from it; but if we have free will as St. Augustine insists throughout the book, then it cannot be the case that we are compelled to shun wisdom.

This isn’t to say, of course, that a man may merit initial justification. It is to say that it is irrational to suggest that non-Christians never do good; it is to say that to hold that the non-Christian cannot do good is decidedly not an Augustinian view: “even before the merit of good works” a man has some powers for good. They cannot save him, of course, but that is not why God gave them to us.

St. Augustine on Invincible Ignorance

2010-03-01T07:49:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine believes that some unbelievers seem to have a valid appeal to ignorance.

Although there is One present everywhere who in many ways through His creation beckons to hostile servants, instructs believers, comforts those who hope, encourages those who work, aids those who try, and hears those who pray, you are not considered at fault if you, against your will, are ignorant; however, if you are ignorant because you fail to ask, you are at fault. You are not blamed because you do not bind up your wounded limbs. Your sin is that you despise Him who wishes to heal you. No one is denied the knowledge of how to seek advantageously what, to his disadvantage, he does not know, and how he must humbly confess his stupidity, so that He who neither errs or toils when he comes to give aid may help the man who seeks and confesses. What a man through ignorance does not do rightly, and what he cannot do, even though he wills rightly, are called sins because their origin lies in free will. … [W]e call sin not only what is properly called sin because it is committed from free will and in full knowledge, but even that which must follow from the punishment of sin. Thus we speak of nature in one way when we refer to man’s nature as he was first created, faultless in his own class; and we speak of it in another way when we refer to the nature into which, as a result of the penalty of condemnation, we were born mortal, ignorant, and enslaved by the flesh. Of this the Apostle says, “We also were by nature the children of wrath, as were the others.” [On Free Choice of the Will, III.xix, pp. 129-130; emphasis added]

It seems here that he means to say that Original Sin is not sin properly speaking, because it is not associated with any deed on our part arising from free will and full knowledge. But along the way he acknowledges that a man is not blameworthy if through no fault of his own he is not a Christian. This seems to me to be consistent with Romans 2, and it is consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church. It is certainly not consistent with at least some forms of Protestantism; there are some who deny that God extends any grace at all to those who are not Christian; there are some who insist that by original sin “we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” It seems clear that such men are at variance with St. Augustine’s words above.

He says something pretty similar a few pages later.

Therefore, if blessedness for us consisted of fine speech and if it were considered a crime to err in speech and grammar in the same way as when we err in the activities of living, no one would denounce an infant because it set out from this point to pursue eloquence. Clearly, however, a man would rightly be condemned if by the perversity of his will he had either returned to babbling like an infant, or had remained at that first stage. So even now, if ignorance of the truth and difficulty in behaving rightly are the natural points from which man begins his ascent toward the blessedness of wisdom and tranquility, no one properly condemns the soul because of its natural origin. But if a man refuses to strive for excellence, or wills to step back from where he set out, he justly and properly suffers punishment.

The Creator of man is in all respects to be praised: whether because from the beginning He instills in man the capacity for the highest good, or because He aids man in attaining this good, or because He completes and perfects man’s progress; and He justly ordains the justest condemnation for sinners—either those who, from the first, refuse to strive for achievement, or those who slip back from a higher state—according to their just deserts. Besides, we cannot say that God created an evil soul on the basis of the argument that it is not so great as it has the power to be if it advances… [p. 138]

Natural ignorance isn’t culpable.

St. Augustine and Merely Forensic Justification

2010-02-28T07:46:00.001-06:00

It does not appear that St. Augustine’s conception of justification is merely forensic. In Book III of On Free Choice of the Will, he writes:

If…we should see the noble man changed so as to be fit for a heavenly dwelling and then raised to the stars, we would rejoice. But if we should see the depraved criminal, either before or after punishment, raised to a seat of honor in heaven even though he is still as evil as ever, who would not be indignant?

…Unlike the just man…the wicked man, as long as he is wicked, cannot reach the immortality of saints, that is, sublime and angelic immortality…[Book III, chapter IX (pp. 109-110)]

Mere forensic justification does not make the sinner just or holy, as even the Protestant concedes; the claim is that on the basis of what amounts to a legal fiction the sinner is declared “not guilty,” despite the fact that he is still actually a sinner. But St. Augustine here appears to agree with Psalm 14: Such a man isn’t fit for a heavenly dwelling.

Platonic Influence on St. Augustine

2010-02-27T01:11:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine exhibits the influence of Platonism on his thinking here and there in On Free Choice of the Will. One example is in his ideas about numbers, as shown in this snippet from Book II, Chapter VIII:

Augustine. If someone were to say to you that numbers were impressed upon our spirit not as a result of their own nature, but as a result of those objects which we experience with the bodily senses, what answer would you make? Or do you agree with this?

Evodius. No, I do not. Even if I did perceive numbers with the bodily senses, I would not be able to perceive with the bodily senses the meaning of division and addition. It is with the light of the mind that I would prove wrong the man who makes an error in addition or subtraction. Whatever I may experience with my bodily senses, such as this air and earth and whatever corporeal matter they contain, I cannot know how long it will endure. But seven and three are ten, not only now, but forever. There has never been a time when seven and three were not ten, nor will there ever be a time when they are not ten. Therefore, I have said that the truth of number is incorruptible and common to all who think.

A. I do not disagree with your answer, for you spoke truly and clearly. [p. 54]

Of course it’s true that arithmetic and math are rational, but it doesn’t follow at all that we know nothing about them by way of our senses. The most obvious reply is that we all learn numbers by way of our senses: we are taught what “one” and “two” are by our parents (or others), who show us what these terms mean. We learn simple addition by way of our senses as well: we are shown one item, and two more are added to it, and we can then count that there are three; in this way we learn that 1 + 2 = 3. Obviously that is just a beginning, and of course reason comes into play in our comprehension of math. But it seems quite mistaken to suppose that we don’t begin to learn about this by way of what we can see and touch.

I think that a useful counter-example may be seen in this article, in which we learn about the Pirahã tribe in Brazil, whose concept of numbers is limited to “one,” “two,” and “many.” As the article says by way of example, they are unable to reliably distinguish between four and five objects in a row. But if “the truth of number is incorruptible and common to all who think,” in the way that St. Augustine apparently suggests, then it seems that the Pirahã tribe must not be able to think. But this is absurd: they are human beings created in the image of God. Therefore we know that they can think. Hence we must say that Augustine’s claim that “the truth of number” is “common to all who think” is incorrect.

St. Augustine argues against an empirical component to our ideas of numbers in a peculiar way. He says that the infinite divisibility of a body argues against means that we must “concede that no body is truly and purely one” (ibid., p. 55). But what does that have to do with whether we may distinguish the idea of one by way of what we see? I don’t think that it has anything to do with it. At the very least it seems to me to be obvious that infinite divisibility doesn’t mean we can’t look at any particular body and say that there is just one of them. The fact that a rock might be divisible doesn’t mean that it’s not a single rock. But Augustine says no: “The perception of one does not occur through any bodily sense” (ibid).

Similar Platonic influence seems to me to be evident in chapter X of Book II, where it appears that he views truth as a sort of subsisting thing somehow. He argues that for a given fact, its truth is not something that one man can hold in opposition to another; rather, its truth is available to all:

A. Can we deny that this fact is true and one, yet common for all who know it? Each man sees it with his own mind, not with mine, yours, or anyone else’s; yet what is seen, is present for all to see in common. We cannot deny this, can we?

E. Of course not.

…

A. Can anyone call truth his own, when it is present unchangingly, for all to meditate upon who have the power to meditate?

E. No one can truly call truth his own. Truth is one and common to all, just as much as it is true.

…

A. I shall not ask you any more questions of this kind. It is sufficient that you see and grant, as I do, that it is certain that these judgments are rules and, as it were, lights of virtue; and that true and unchangeable things, whether individually or all together, are present in common for all to meditate upon who have the power to perceive with mind and reason. [p. 61-62]

In chapter XII, he says that immutable truth exists, and it seems that he means that it has some sort of actual being:

You will not deny, therefore, that immutable truth, comprising everything that is immutably true, exists; and you cannot say that immutable truth is yours, or mine, or anyone else’s. It is present and shows itself as a kind of miraculously secret, yet public, light for all who see what is immutably true. [p. 66]

This doesn’t seem to me to be the best account of what truth is. It seems to me that Aquinas’ view, and Aristotle’s, is more reasonable: namely, that something may be said to be true when it conforms to reality.

St. Augustine: The Purpose of Free Will

2010-02-26T03:01:00.001-06:00

God did not give us free will as part of some kind of crapshoot. He gave it to us for a reason, says St. Augustine.

If man is a good, and cannot act rightly unless he wills to do so, then he must have free will, without which he cannot act rightly. We must not believe that God gave us free will so that we might sin, just because sin is committed through free will. It is sufficient for our question, why free will should have been given to man, to know that without it man cannot live rightly. That it was given for this reason can be understood from the following: if anyone uses free will for sinning, he incurs divine punishment. This would be unjust if free will had been given not only that man might live rightly, but also that he might sin. For how could a man justly incur punishment who used free will to do the thing for which it was given? When God punishes a sinner, does He not seem to say, “Why have you not used free will for the purpose for which I gave it to you, to act rightly”? Then too, if man did not have free choice of will, how could there exist the good according to which it is just to condemn evildoers and reward those who act rightly? What was not done by will would be neither evildoing nor right action. Both punishment and reward would be unjust if man did not have free will. Moreover, there must needs be justice both in punishment and in reward, since justice is one of the goods that are from God. Therefore, God must needs have given free will to man. [On Free Choice of the Will, II.I, p. 36; emphasis added]

If God gave us free will with the intention that we should be free to use it to sin, then it would be unjust for him to punish us if we sin, says St. Augustine: for we would only be putting it to one of the uses for which God gave it to us. But this is wrong; God did not give us free will for that purpose. He gave us free will in order that we might freely do that which is good. Consequently when we sin, we abuse the gift that he has given to us, and thereby become subject to just punishment.

Note also that he insists upon what we have seen before. That is, justice in punishing us for sin demands that we have free will: “What was not done by will would be neither evildoing nor right action. Both punishment and reward would be unjust if man did not have free will.” If we lack free will, and if our sins are compelled in some way, then they are not actually sins, properly speaking; it would therefore be unjust to punish them as though we were actually responsible for them. This is why Catholic moral teaching insists that compulsion removes guilt, either partly or completely (depending upon the compulsion).

Lastly, note again that St. Augustine insists upon the reward that is justly due to those who do good. But this would only be just if there is a sense in which our good works may be truly said to be our own, and this cannot be said if we do not have free will. St. Augustine was Catholic; he firmly believed that our good deeds merit a reward from God (although, of course, they are completely inadequate as a means by which we may receive initial justification; we may only receive that by means of God’s grace alone, as we have seen many times).

St. Augustine: The requirements of justice

2010-02-25T07:42:00.001-06:00

On Free Choice of the Will begins with a question (it is framed largely as a dialogue between Augustine and his friend Evodius).

Evodius: Tell me, please, whether God is not the cause of evil.

Of course, as St. Augustine points out, this question is silly for the Christian.

But if you know or believe that God is good (and it is not right to believe otherwise), God does not do evil. Also, if we admit that God is just (and it is sacrilege to deny this), He assigns rewards to the righteous and punishments to the wicked—punishments that are indeed evil for those who suffer them. Therefore, if no one suffers punishment unjustly (this too we must believe, since we believe that the universe is governed by divine Providence), God is the cause of the second kind of evil, but not of the first.

It’s not that God causes or does evil in an absolute sense; that would be heretical (as he says in the first sentence) because God is good. There is a relative sense in which he might be said to do “evil,” though, if we are talking about the punishment of the wicked, says our author: the evil man considers punishment to be an evil thing that happens to him. In point of fact, though, Augustine reminds us that God’s justice demands that he punish the wicked and reward the righteous.

Would it be just if God punished the wicked but did not reward the righteous? It seems not, in Augustine’s view. The complaint that might be offered: “You punish them for doing evil, but you do not reward us for doing well.” Some might pretend that no one does good, but the Bible (Mt. 25:31-46) does not seem to bear them out.

Now the book is on free will, and so of course we ought to expect St. Augustine to address its relation to justice.

[E]ach evil man is the cause of his own evildoing. If you doubt this, then listen to what we said above: evil deeds are punished by the justice of God. It would not be just to punish evil deeds if they were not done willfully. [Emphasis added]

God’s justice demands that he punishes evil deeds, but if we are compelled to do them, it simply cannot be said that we are liable for them.

[Quotations above taken from Book I of On Free Choice of the Will, p. 3]

We see the same thing in Book II, chapter I:

Both punishment and reward would be unjust if man did not have free will. [p. 36]

The fact that God foreknows that we will sin does not mean that we lack free will. St. Augustine offers additional arguments about this in the book, but for our purposes here it is sufficient to remark that what we’ve said above applies here as well. If God’s foreknowledge constitutes a compulsion whereby our free will is removed, he could not justly punish the wicked for sin nor reward the righteous for good.

[L]et us acknowledge both that it is proper to His foreknowledge that nothing should escape His notice and that it is proper to His justice that a sin, since it is committed voluntarily, should not go unpunished by His judgment, just as it was not forced to be committed by His foreknowledge.

[Book III, chapter IV; p. 95]

It might be worth pointing out what we’ve seen repeatedly already (and what we see again above) concerning St. Augustine’s views on the reward that awaits the righteous: in short, there is one. He constantly refers to it as a reward for good deeds done. Although he doesn’t use the word in what we’ve seen above, he steadfastly recognizes this reward as something that one merits by his deeds.

St. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will: Overview

2010-02-24T08:10:00.001-06:00

I will have a few (maybe several) posts on St. Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will. I don’t have an online link to this book. Surprisingly to me, it’s not available at New Advent. I presume this is because it is peculiarly omitted from The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series. I am not familiar with the theological predispositions of the editors and translators of NPNF, but it strikes me as odd that this particular work would not be included.

On the other hand, if those editors were of any sort of Reformed stripe that really took seriously (as Calvinists do) their doctrine of predestination, I think we might be able to arrive at an answer. Because if there is anything that On Free Choice of the Will is not, it is predestinarian. It has, admittedly, been a while, but I am at a loss to think of any books by Reformed authors on the subject of man’s free will. My wife suspects that (possibly) Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God might have, but even if that’s so, it’s but one book (and by a man that at least some Reformed types aren’t too keen to claim as one of their own). Let us compromise and suggest that there may be some very few books on the subject from the Reformed camp. In general, though, they simply do not write books about it; and in many cases what they write about free will is intended to deny that we have it.

But St. Augustine was not Calvinist. He was not Reformed. He was Catholic. And so he was perfectly willing to write such a book as this, because of course the Catholic Church teaches both that we have a free will and that God has an eternal plan of predestination.

Another striking feature of the book as a whole is that The Doctor appealed to Scripture very little. Most of the argument is strictly philosophical—something else that is doubtless unappetizing to many Reformed. There is also at least one theological oddity that might perhaps embarrass those who disagree with St. Augustine about it…But we’ll save that for a post of its own.

It’s also worth noting, for the sake of those who might try to suggest that On Free Choice of the Will was somehow superseded by St. Augustine’s later writings, that this is quite simply not the case. While in fact it was written very early in his Christian life, he revisited it in his Retractations (near the end of his life) because the Pelagians were ripping quotations from it for their own use. Far from overturning anything that he actually wrote in the book, though, all he does is make clear that they were taking things out of context. In short: he certainly did not repudiate the views in this book. [Source for the material in this paragraph may be found in the Appendix (pp. 151-158) of the edition of On Free Choice of the Will linked above; it includes both the text of the Retractations pertinent to this book and historical notes from the translators].

We are not worthy; we pray to be made worthy

2010-02-23T07:22:00.001-06:00

I post on this subject often, because I find the lies spread by our enemies about it (whether they do so wittingly or not) to be particularly vexing.

A standard prayer said by Catholics when they pray the Rosary is this:

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Note: we do not ask the Blessed Virgin to pray for us because we are worthy; we ask it in order that we may be made worthy. We pray this because we long to be worthy of Christ’s promises; we pray this because we understand that unless we receive grace to be worthy of them, we shall never be.

So much, once again, for the lie of our enemies that we think we can earn our way to heaven based upon our own merits.

St. Augustine Approves Catholic Truth

2010-02-22T06:33:00.001-06:00

This post presents indirect evidence that St. Augustine was Catholic and not some sort of proto-crypto-forerunner of Protestantism. In On Christian Doctrine Book IV, chapter 21, he quotes St. Cyprian concerning the Cup in the Eucharist. In this part of the quotation, he affirms the authority of Tradition:

“Observe” he says, “that we are instructed, in presenting the cup, to maintain the custom handed down to us from the Lord, and to do nothing that our Lord has not first done for us: so that the cup which is offered in remembrance of Him should be mixed with wine.”

But the Bible doesn’t say a thing about whether there should be water mixed with the wine in the Chalice. So it’s clear that St. Cyprian is appealing to Sacred Tradition here, rather than the Bible.

Nor can it be held that His blood, by which we are redeemed and vivified, is in the chalice when it contains no wine, through which the blood of Christ is shown, as is foretold by all the mysteries and testimonies of the Scriptures. [Ibid., quoted from the Robertson translation]

If Christ’s blood is not in the Cup when there is no wine (as Cyprian affirms), then it must be the case that Christ’s blood is in it when the wine is there.

Later (paragraph 47), St. Augustine quotes St. Cyprian again, this time concerning virgins:

Now our discourse addresses itself to the virgins, who, as they are the objects of higher honor, are also the objects of greater care. These are the flowers on the tree of the Church, the glory and ornament of spiritual grace, the joy of honor and praise, a work unbroken and unblemished, the image of God answering to the holiness of the Lord, the brighter portion of the flock of Christ. The glorious fruitfulness of their mother the Church rejoices in them, and in them flourishes more abundantly; and in proportion as bright virginity adds to her numbers, in the same proportion does the mother’s joy increase. And at another place in the end of the epistle, ‘As we have borne,’ he says, ‘the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.’ Virginity bears this image, integrity bears it, holiness and truth bear it; they bear it who are mindful of the chastening of the Lord, who observe justice and piety, who are strong in faith, humble in fear, steadfast in the endurance of suffering, meek in the endurance of injury, ready to pity, of one mind and of one heart in brotherly peace. And every one of these things ought ye, holy virgins, to observe, to cherish, and fulfill, who having hearts at leisure for God and for Christ, and having chosen the greater and better part, lead and point the way to the Lord, to whom you have pledged your vows. You who are advanced in age, exercise control over the younger. You who are younger, wait upon the elders, and encourage your equals; stir up one another by mutual exhortations; provoke one another to glory by emulous examples of virtue; endure bravely, advance in spirituality, finish your course with joy; only be mindful of us when your virginity shall begin to reap its reward of honor.

And similarly in paragraph 48, St. Ambrose (Augustine’s father in the Faith):

Ambrose also uses the temperate and ornamented style when he is holding up before virgins who have made their profession a model for their imitation, and says: “She was a virgin not in body only, but also in mind; not mingling the purity of her affection with any dross of hypocrisy; serious in speech; prudent in disposition; sparing of words; delighting in study; not placing her confidence in uncertain riches, but in the prayer of the poor; diligent in labor; reverent in word; accustomed to look to God, not man, as the guide of her conscience; injuring no one, wishing well to all; dutiful to her elders, not envious of her equals; avoiding boastfulness, following reason, loving virtue. When did she wound her parents even by a look? When did she quarrel with her neighbors? When did she spurn the humble, laugh at the weak, or shun the indigent? She is accustomed to visit only those haunts of men that pity would not blush for, nor modesty pass by. There is nothing haughty in her eyes, nothing bold in her words, nothing wanton in her gestures: her bearing is not voluptuous, nor her gait too free, nor her voice petulant; so that her outward appearance is an image of her mind, and a picture of purity. For a good house ought to be known for such at the very threshold, and show at the very entrance that there is no dark recess within, as the light of a lamp set inside sheds its radiance on the outside. Why need I detail her sparingness in food, her superabundance in duty,— the one falling beneath the demands of nature, the other rising above its powers? The latter has no intervals of intermission, the former doubles the days by fasting; and when the desire for refreshment does arise, it is satisfied with food such as will support life, but not minister to appetite.” Now I have cited these latter passages as examples of the temperate style, because their purpose is not to induce those who have not yet devoted themselves to take the vows of virginity, but to show of what character those who have taken vows ought to be. To prevail on any one to take a step of such a nature and of so great importance, requires that the mind should be excited and set on fire by the majestic style. Cyprian the martyr, however, did not write about the duty of taking up the profession of virginity, but about the dress and deportment of virgins. Yet that great bishop urges them to their duty even in these respects by the power of a majestic eloquence.

We may safely infer Augustine’s agreement with these authorities when he says—without a hint of disapprobation—“have cited these latter passages as examples of the temperate style, because their purpose is not to induce those who have not yet devoted themselves to take the vows of virginity, but to show of what character those who have taken vows ought to be.” But if this is insufficient, he goes even further in paragraph 50:

Now in these two authors whom I have selected as specimens of the rest, and in other ecclesiastical writers who both speak the truth and speak it well—speak it, that is, judiciously, pointedly, and with beauty and power of expression—many examples may be found of the three styles of speech, scattered through their various writings and discourses; and the diligent student may by assiduous reading, intermingled with practice on his own part, become thoroughly imbued with them all. [Emphasis added]

So we see that St. Augustine’s judgment is that St. Cyprian and St. Ambrose speak the truth in the passages that he has quoted from them concerning the Eucharist and concerning consecrated virginity. But these are Catholic views, not Protestant. So once again we see that St. Augustine was a Catholic.

St. Augustine: Preaching Inspires Good Works in Hope of Reward

2010-02-21T00:46:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine says that biblical preaching inspires men to good works, in hope of an eternal reward.

Of course, if we were giving men advice as to how they ought to conduct secular cases, either for themselves or for their connections, before the church courts, we would rightly advise them to conduct them quietly as matters of little moment. But we are treating of the manner of speech of the man who is to be a teacher of the truths which deliver us from eternal misery and bring us to eternal happiness; and wherever these truths are spoken of, whether in public or private, whether to one or many, whether to friends or enemies, whether in a continuous discourse or in conversation, whether in tracts, or in books, or in letters long or short, they are of great importance. Unless indeed we are prepared to say that, because a cup of cold water is a very trifling and common thing, the saying of our Lord that he who gives a cup of cold water to one of His disciples shall in no wise lose his reward, is very trivial and unimportant. Or that when a preacher takes this saying as his text, he should think his subject very unimportant, and therefore speak without either eloquence or power, but in a subdued and humble style. Is it not the case that when we happen to speak on this subject to the people, and the presence of God is with us, so that what we say is not altogether unworthy of the subject, a tongue of fire springs up out of that cold water which inflames even the cold hearts of men with a zeal for doing works of mercy in hope of an eternal reward? [On Christian Doctrine, IV.xviii.37]

The Protestant denies that we should do good works in hope of receiving an eternal reward, but St. Augustine affirms that it is a good thing—indeed, something that is to be expected as a result of good preaching. Once again we see that St. Augustine was a Catholic.

St. Augustine and the Public Teaching of the Bible

2010-02-20T06:05:00.001-06:00

Sometimes it is better not to teach the Bible in public, says St. Augustine.

For there are some passages which are not understood in their proper force, or are understood with great difficulty, at whatever length, however clearly, or with whatever eloquence the speaker may expound them; and these should never be brought before the people at all, or only on rare occasions when there is some urgent reason. [On Christian Doctrine, IV.ix.23]

Clearly then St. Augustine is saying that prudence must rule with regard to the presentation of the Bible to people. Some parts of Scripture are apparently so likely to cause problems for others’ faith that it is best to avoid them in public. This insistence upon discretion with regard to God’s Word is really not so different in principle from the limitations that the Church placed upon access to the Scriptures in around the time of the Reformation, it seems to me. There were heretical translations from which the people needed to be protected. Even more importantly, most people lacked the tools (educationally and otherwise) to properly handle the Bible. Of course, this is still true even today, but I digress. The point is that St. Augustine placed a higher premium on the preservation of people’s faith than on the exposition of literally anything in Scripture. This is a Catholic attitude.

St. Augustine and Hermeneutics - Multiple Meanings are Providential

2010-02-19T07:26:00.001-06:00

We have seen this before. St. Augustine absolutely believed that multiple meanings in Scripture were not simply legitimate, but a provision of the divine authorship. In fact, in his view this was more important than whether we can discern the human author’s intended meaning or not.

When, again, not some one interpretation, but two or more interpretations are put upon the same words of Scripture, even though the meaning the writer intended remain undiscovered, there is no danger if it can be shown from other passages of Scripture that any of the interpretations put on the words is in harmony with the truth. And if a man in searching the Scriptures endeavors to get at the intention of the author through whom the Holy Spirit spoke, whether he succeeds in this endeavor, or whether he draws a different meaning from the words, but one that is not opposed to sound doctrine, he is free from blame so long as he is supported by the testimony of some other passage of Scripture. For the author perhaps saw that this very meaning lay in the words which we are trying to interpret; and assuredly the Holy Spirit, who through him spoke these words, foresaw that this interpretation would occur to the reader, nay, made provision that it should occur to him, seeing that it too is founded on truth. For what more liberal and more fruitful provision could God have made in regard to the Sacred Scriptures than that the same words might be understood in several senses, all of which are sanctioned by the concurring testimony of other passages equally divine? [On Christian Doctrine, III.xxvii.38; emphasis added]

It seems clear that in the opinion of St. Augustine, to limit the legitimate meanings of the Bible solely to the one intended by the human author is the same as to completely discount the divine authorship. We might suppose that this is analogous to what Joseph told his brothers: “You intended evil against me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20, CCD). In that situation, God’s purposes were certainly distinct from those of the human actors. That is, we may have our own purposes and intentions in mind, but God has his own as well, and his purposes cannot be thwarted.

St. Augustine and the Goal of Hermeneutics

2010-02-18T07:40:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine has this to say about the end of Bible interpretation:

Accordingly, in regard to figurative expressions, a rule such as the following will be observed, to carefully turn over in our minds and meditate upon what we read till an interpretation be found that tends to establish the reign of love. Now, if when taken literally it at once gives a meaning of this kind, the expression is not to be considered figurative. [On Christian Doctrine, III.xv.23]

Mere theology doesn’t even enter the picture; rather, he says that we should read the Bible in order to be able to fulfill the two greatest commandments.

And now for something completely different

2010-02-17T19:17:00.003-06:00

In the past I’ve taken a break from blogging during Lent. This year will be different. I have set myself a goal of publishing at least one post for each day of the year. I may not post everyday, but if I miss one then I must make it up sometime. My intent in pursuing this goal is to give myself some incentive for studying, and for writing about what I read. In short, the goal is an incentive for discipline.

So, you should expect to see posts from me everyday throughout Lent, and throughout the rest of the year. May God bless these labors for good.

St. Augustine, the uses of things, and motives

2010-02-17T19:17:00.001-06:00

In the past I have pointed out the rational and moral illegitimacy of the charges brought by psychics against Catholics with regard to kneeling before statues. The rational person acknowledges that worship is a matter of the heart, and that therefore whether kneeling before a statue constitutes an act of worship is dependent upon the intentions of the one kneeling. The irrational person agrees that worship is a matter of the heart, and then says that all kneeling before a statue is worship without regard to the intentions of the one kneeling. And then this same irrational person demands that we take his worthless criticism (worthless because it is irrational) seriously. I would laugh in his face if this wasn’t the Internet :-)

St. Augustine has the following to say about things, their uses, and motives:

18. Those things, again, whether only sayings or whether actual deeds, which appear to the inexperienced to be sinful, and which are ascribed to God, or to men whose holiness is put before us as an example, are wholly figurative, and the hidden kernel of meaning they contain is to be picked out as food for the nourishment of charity. Now, whoever uses transitory objects less freely than is the custom of those among whom he lives, is either temperate or superstitious; whoever, on the other hand, uses them so as to transgress the bounds of the custom of the good men about him, either has a further meaning in what he does, or is sinful. In all such matters it is not the use of the objects, but the lust of the user, that is to blame. Nobody in his sober senses would believe, for example, that when our Lord's feet were anointed by the woman with precious ointment, it was for the same purpose for which luxurious and profligate men are accustomed to have theirs anointed in those banquets which we abhor. For the sweet odor means the good report which is earned by a life of good works; and the man who wins this, while following in the footsteps of Christ, anoints His feet (so to speak) with the most precious ointment. And so that which in the case of other persons is often a sin, becomes, when ascribed to God or a prophet, the sign of some great truth. Keeping company with a harlot, for example, is one thing when it is the result of abandoned manners, another thing when done in the course of his prophecy by the prophet Hosea. Hosea 1:2 Because it is a shamefully wicked thing to strip the body naked at a banquet among the drunken and licentious, it does not follow that it is a sin to be naked in the baths.

19. We must, therefore, consider carefully what is suitable to times and places and persons, and not rashly charge men with sins. For it is possible that a wise man may use the daintiest food without any sin of epicurism or gluttony, while a fool will crave for the vilest food with a most disgusting eagerness of appetite. And any sane man would prefer eating fish after the manner of our Lord, to eating lentils after the manner of Esau, or barley after the manner of oxen. For there are several beasts that feed on commoner kinds of food, but it does not follow that they are more temperate than we are. For in all matters of this kind it is not the nature of the things we use, but our reason for using them, and our manner of seeking them, that make what we do either praiseworthy or blameable. [On Christian Doctrine, III.xii.18-19; emphasis added]

Yes, he’s talking about food in 19; but he is talking about all “transitory objects” in 18. But the principle is the same: i.e., extending charity to our fellow man when it comes to questions of his actions and intentions. When we do not know the other man’s intentions it is rash to impute sin to him; when we do know his intentions are not sinful, it is wicked to ignore what he says and impute sin anyway: it is to lie or willfully believe lies about another. I sincerely wish that the anti-Catholic mind-readers who pretend St. Augustine was crypto-proto-Protestant would follow his advice here. Honest disagreement is one thing; irrational dishonesty is another, and simply foments disunity.

St. Augustine and Hermeneutics - Distinguishing Literal and Figurative

2010-02-16T08:07:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine wrote On Christian Doctrine as a guide to interpreting the Bible. Fundamental to this is of course his insistence that Scripture has both literal and a figurative meanings; the literal meaning intended by the human author is not at all the only significance of any passage, because God is the “real” author of the Bible. How then do we know when to take a passage figuratively rather than literally?

In the first place, then, we must show the way to find out whether a phrase is literal or figurative. And the way is certainly as follows: Whatever there is in the word of God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as figurative. [III.x.14]

This tells us more than just that single principle, actually. He also hereby tells us something of his understanding of what exactly the purpose of the Bible is: that is, it is to instruct us concerning how to live and what to believe. This being the case, then, any passage that doesn’t literally have something to do with either of those goals must be interpreted figuratively. The human author may not have intended this, but God must have.

Theology of St. Thomas: The Dogmatic Authority of the Pope

2010-02-15T19:48:00.001-06:00

Somehow I missed this while reading the Summa Theologiae a few years ago. A cordial tip of the hat to Bryan Cross for pointing it out.

Who has authority to convoke a general council? The Pope.

The symbol [i.e., the Creed – RdP] was drawn up by a general council. Now such a council cannot be convoked otherwise than by the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, as stated in the Decretals [Dist. xvii, Can. 4,5]. [ST, II-II, Q1, A10; emphasis added]

Who has authority to draw up a symbol? The Pope. Why? Because he alone has authority to convoke a general council, such as the one that drew up the Creed. But if he alone has that authority, then:

Therefore it belongs to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff to draw up a symbol. [Ibid.]

Why would the creed need to be revised?

[A] new edition of the symbol becomes necessary in order to set aside the errors that may arise. [Ibid.]

But if this is necessary in order to eradicate error, then it seems that such a revision must have sufficient authority so as to preserve the faith. Hence St. Thomas writes:

Consequently to publish a new edition of the symbol belongs to that authority which is empowered to decide matters of faith finally, so that they may be held by all with unshaken faith. Now this belongs to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, “to whom the more important and more difficult questions that arise in the Church are referred,” as stated in the Decretals [Dist. xvii, Can. 5].

In other words then, the Pope has the authority to rule in regard to matters of faith, specifically so that the faithful may believe them “with unshaken faith.” But this implies that these matters are decided not just with final authority but also infallibly, else the faithful would have no basis in his decisions for holding an “unshaken faith.”

Some might mistake St. Thomas’ appeal to the Decretals as suggesting that this authority was merely held canonically—i.e., by human law—and not by virtue of any divine vesting of authority in the papal office. But he goes on to say immediately afterwards:

Hence our Lord said to Peter whom he made Sovereign Pontiff (Luke 22:32): “I have prayed for thee,” Peter, “that thy faith fail not, and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.”

In other words, this authority of the Pope ultimately derives from the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave it to St. Peter. Obviously this authority must descend to his successors, in St. Thomas’ view; hence the doctrine of apostolic succession is unambiguously in view here as well.

What theological necessity is there for this?

The reason of this is that there should be but one faith of the whole Church, according to 1 Corinthians 1:10: “That you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you:” and this could not be secured unless any question of faith that may arise be decided by him who presides over the whole Church, so that the whole Church may hold firmly to his decision. Consequently it belongs to the sole authority of the Sovereign Pontiff to publish a new edition of the symbol, as do all other matters which concern the whole Church, such as to convoke a general council and so forth.

The Pope’s authority is given, says St. Thomas, for the sake of the unity of faith of the Church. This unity would be impossible if the Pope, St. Peter’s successor, lacked this authority.

The answers St. Thomas gives to objections in this article are likewise very instructive. To the claim that no further specification of the articles of faith is needed, he says:

The truth of faith is sufficiently explicit in the teaching of Christ and the apostles. But since, according to 2 Peter 3:16, some men are so evil-minded as to pervert the apostolic teaching and other doctrines and Scriptures to their own destruction, it was necessary as time went on to express the faith more explicitly against the errors which arose.

So the articles of the faith grow not because there are new truths, but rather because new errors arise that must be refuted, for the sake of the preserving the unity of faith of the Church (as we saw above).

In response to the claim that the Council of Ephesus’ prohibition against any Creed than that of Nicaea likewise binds the Pope, he says:

This prohibition and sentence of the council was intended for private individuals, who have no business to decide matters of faith: for this decision of the general council did not take away from a subsequent council the power of drawing up a new edition of the symbol, containing not indeed a new faith, but the same faith with greater explicitness. For every council has taken into account that a subsequent council would expound matters more fully than the preceding council, if this became necessary through some heresy arising. Consequently this belongs to the Sovereign Pontiff, by whose authority the council is convoked, and its decision confirmed.

The Council of Ephesus, he says, had no intention of preventing the Pope from exercising his authority to draw up a new symbol, since this would only be done for the sake of clarifying the Faith in the event of new errors.

In response to the objection that the example of Athanasius’ declaration of faith implied that any bishop could act similarly (rather than only the Pope), St. Thomas says this:

Athanasius drew up a declaration of faith, not under the form of a symbol, but rather by way of an exposition of doctrine, as appears from his way of speaking. But since it contained briefly the whole truth of faith, it was accepted by the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, so as to be considered as a rule of faith.

In other words, it was the Pope’s ratification of the creed of Athanasius that validated it; its authority for the whole Church would not otherwise stand.

The Catholic Church has a visible head in order to maintain the unity of the faithful. The Pope has authority from the Lord Jesus Christ to exercise this office.

St. Augustine and the veneration of things

2010-02-15T01:40:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine differs from the average Protestant in affirming that there may well indeed be a place for proper veneration of things.

Now he is in bondage to a sign who uses, or pays homage to, any significant object without knowing what it signifies: he, on the other hand, who either uses or honors [sic; see below – RdP] a useful sign divinely appointed, whose force and significance he understands, does not honor the sign which is seen and temporal, but that to which all such signs refer. Now such a man is spiritual and free even at the time of his bondage, when it is not yet expedient to reveal to carnal minds those signs by subjection to which their carnality is to be overcome. To this class of spiritual persons belonged the patriarchs and the prophets, and all those among the people of Israel through whose instrumentality the Holy Spirit ministered unto us the aids and consolations of the Scriptures. But at the present time, after that the proof of our liberty has shone forth so clearly in the resurrection of our Lord, we are not oppressed with the heavy burden of attending even to those signs which we now understand, but our Lord Himself, and apostolic practice, have handed down to us a few rites in place of many, and these at once very easy to perform, most majestic in their significance, and most sacred in the observance; such, for example, as the sacrament of baptism, and the celebration of the body and blood of the Lord. And as soon as any one looks upon these observances he knows to what they refer, and so reveres them not in carnal bondage, but in spiritual freedom. Now, as to follow the letter, and to take signs for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness and bondage; so to interpret signs wrongly is the result of being misled by error. He, however, who does not understand what a sign signifies, but yet knows that it is a sign, is not in bondage. And it is better even to be in bondage to unknown but useful signs than, by interpreting them wrongly, to draw the neck from under the yoke of bondage only to insert it in the coils of error. [On Christian Doctrine, III.ix.13; emphasis added]

Disclaimer: I do not read Latin. The difference in word choice between the two translations at my disposal (the NPNF translation linked above, and Robertson in the Library of Liberal Arts) was sufficiently striking in one respect as to inspire a little digging. The NPNF version says, in the second half of the first sentence, “he, on the other hand, who either uses or honors a useful sign…” But Robertson has this: “But he who uses or venerates a useful sign…”! So I thought I’d do a little digging and see if it might be obvious, lexically, whether one was a more likely rendering than the other. It appears that Robertson might be the more accurate one here.

In comparing a few Latin dictionaries I’ve got on hand, it seems pretty clear that the general semantic domain of the Latin veneratur is more towards the sense of reverence, veneration, and very great respect rather than towards the more generic, lesser sense of mere “honor.” Obviously in certain respects there is not a whole lot of difference between the two words, so it is certainly possible (based upon the little that I am able to do) that St. Augustine meant the lesser sense…but given that a fairly modern translation has used “venerates,” it seems reasonably more likely—given the word’s apparent usual semantic range—that “venerates” is more accurate.

Now, setting that foray into linguistics aside, the important thing I want to point out in this post is that St. Augustine here affirms that there may indeed be a proper veneration accorded to things. Here, he suggests that this respect is given to the thing as a way of indirectly venerating that which the thing signifies, and this is exactly the sort of thing that the Catholic means by his veneration of things, including the sacraments and holy relics. And that the latter is certainly included (though unspoken) in what Augustine says here seems to me to be strongly suggested by his attitude toward the veneration of the relics of certain martyrs in his own day, as we have seen previously.

Things in themselves are not what the Catholic venerates, but rather God himself, his grace, and his mighty works for our salvation—it is these that we honor when we kiss the cross or venerate relics. And it seems pretty clear that St. Augustine affirmed doing so. And the very fact that he did so shows that he was a Catholic, and not a Protestant.

Nevertheless, it probably ought to be said that showing respect to objects for the sake of that which they signify is a universally human experience. Even Protestants show respect for their Bibles, for example: I certainly can’t imagine any Christian (to say nothing of only Protestants) spitting on God’s Word, for example. People usually honor the flag of their country. They show respect for the remains of departed family: it isn’t just a carcass (can you imagine anyone referring to a dead parent’s body that way?); those aren’t just ashes. Americans show respect to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Generally speaking such respect for these things has nothing to do with worshiping the things themselves, but rather with showing proper respect, reverence, and honor for what they signify.

Now if we show respect and honor for objects that signify earthly things, how much more ought we to show respect for things that signify in some way God, his works for us, our salvation, and so forth? And to do so is not to “worship” those objects any more than it is “worship” to show respect for the dead body of a departed loved one.

We certainly ought to venerate these things, including the saints. But it ought to be obvious, then, that no actual worship (in the sense of that which ought to be offered to God alone) should ever nor could ever be seriously offered by a Catholic to these things. Because what is important is not the thing in itself, but that which it signifies; and the saints, however much we respect them, signify something beyond themselves: our communion with God in eternity (among other things).

Bryan Cross on St. Thomas, Faith, and the Church

2010-02-14T07:02:00.001-06:00

Here is an excellent article by Bryan Cross on the subject of St. Thomas’ view of the relation of faith to the Church. In it, he interacts with II-II Q5 A3 of the Summa Theologiae (“Whether a man who disbelieves one article of faith, can have lifeless faith in the other articles?”). We have examined this important article in the past here at The Supplement, focusing upon its significance for so-called “cafeteria Catholics,” who want to pick and choose what they believe among the teachings of the Church. Mr. Cross speaks more generally and at greater length on Aquinas’ meaning in this article, and with greater clarity. I commend it to you.

Now, in the present time, dissent on various teachings of the Church is commonplace, even among Catholics. One can reject the authority of the Church outright, as dissenting Catholics do, or one can fashion a ‘Church’ in one’s own interpretive image, as Protestants do, and convince oneself that one is submitting to the Church. But both actions are rejections of the divinely established authority through which faith adheres to the articles of faith. For the reasons St. Thomas explains, where there is faith there can be no picking and choosing from among the Church’s teachings, because what makes faith to be faith is not essentially the set of articles believed, but the basis on which they are believed, namely, the authority of God, given to the Church to teach and interpret the deposit of faith.

Faith is not faith merely because of what is believed, he says, but because of the basis on which things are believed, which must be (as St. Thomas says) the authority of the Church.

Consequently whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and Divine rule, to the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth manifested in Holy Writ, has not the habit of faith, but holds that which is of faith otherwise than by faith.

St. Augustine and Difficult Passages of the Bible

2010-02-14T06:30:00.001-06:00

The Protestant says that Scripture interprets Scripture: in other words, that the Bible is its own ultimate interpreter. While it is certainly true that consideration of context is essential in understanding any work, there are limitations to its utility. If we say that clear passages must be used to help us understand passages that are unclear, the obvious problem is that we do not all agree (and Protestants certainly do not all agree) as to what passages ought to be considered “clear” (and therefore appropriate as helps in interpretation) or “unclear” (and consequently subject to the hermeneutical “grid” of the “clear” passages). For example, if we take St. Peter’s Pentecost sermon as an example of a clear passage, we might conclude that faith is not necessary for salvation at all, but only repentance and baptism. This is certainly not a Protestant view, and it’s not Catholic either. But then one might reasonably ask how it is that St. Peter’s (of all people) argument should not be construed as a “clear” passage of the Bible.

In Book III.ii.2 of On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine addresses this sort of question.

But when proper words make Scripture ambiguous, we must see in the first place that there is nothing wrong in our punctuation or pronunciation. Accordingly, if, when attention is given to the passage, it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated or pronounced, let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church, and of which I treated at sufficient length when I was speaking in the first book about things. But if both readings, or all of them (if there are more than two), give a meaning in harmony with the faith, it remains to consult the context, both what goes before and what comes after, to see which interpretation, out of many that offer themselves, it pronounces for and permits to be dovetailed into itself. [emphasis added]

St. Augustine agrees that “plainer passages” ought to help us in interpretation, but no less importantly he also insists upon the authority of the Church as a guide in hermeneutics, and that whatever meaning we find must be consistent with the Faith taught by the Church. This is consistent with what we find in the Catechism—a truth that I have emphasized repeatedly here at The Supplement (most recently in this post):

Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church.” [CCC §113]

The Christian goes astray if he thinks that he can interpret the Bible according to his own lights, ignoring the Faith as it has been delivered to the Church and faithfully taught by her throughout the centuries. The Bible does not and cannot contradict that Faith, and any interpretation of Scripture which proposes to do so is an interpretation gone astray. It is not true.

This is clearly the viewpoint of St. Augustine in the passage we’ve quoted above, and it is still more evidence that the great Doctor was no Protestant. He was a Catholic.

St. Augustine - Church and Scripture go together

2010-02-13T09:11:00.001-06:00

This is merely an observation, and it isn’t a point that St. Augustine makes, but in passing I think it is worth noticing. While giving examples about valid reasoning as it bears upon interpretation of Scripture, he concludes chapter 31 (paragraph 49) of book II of On Christian Doctrine with this:

But the truth of propositions must be inquired into in the sacred books of the Church.

For purposes of this post, what I am interested in is the phrase “sacred books of the Church.” St. Augustine does not appear to hold to a view of the Scripture as something that is utterly distinct from the Church. Rather, it seems that he considers them as two things that go together: Scripture and the Church, so that the Bible is understood as belonging to the Church. This doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of thing that a Protestant would say: “the church’s Bible.” But it is the sort of thing that Augustine was willing to say by way of an apparent recognition that the two go together.

This seems to be consistent with a Catholic view, inasmuch as the Church insists that Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium “go together.”

St. Augustine and the Authority of the Septuagint

2010-02-12T18:49:00.001-06:00

It’s likely that virtually all modern men would consider St. Augustine’s views of the Septuagint (hereafter LXX) to be unfortunate and badly ill-informed. In chapter xv of On Christian Doctrine Book II, he claims (on the basis of traditions passed down to him) that the translation of the LXX was divinely superintended.

[T]he authority of the Septuagint is pre-eminent as far as the Old Testament is concerned; for it is reported through all the more learned churches that the seventy translators enjoyed so much of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in their work of translation, that among that number of men there was but one voice. And if, as is reported, and as many not unworthy of confidence assert, they were separated during the work of translation, each man being in a cell by himself, and yet nothing was found in the manuscript of any one of them that was not found in the same words and in the same order of words in all the rest, who dares put anything in comparison with an authority like this, not to speak of preferring anything to it? (paragraph 22)

Whatever criticisms we may make of this argument for the basis of the authority of the LXX (and the story has long been regarded as spurious), at the very least we must concede that it was considered an authoritative translation of Scripture, as evidenced not least by the fact that the apostles quoted from it.

St. Augustine also argues that the LXX was providentially ordained for the preservation of canonical books the Jews later omitted:

Wherefore, even if anything is found in the original Hebrew in a different form from that in which these men have expressed it, I think we must give way to the dispensation of Providence which used these men to bring it about, that books which the Jewish race were unwilling, either from religious scruple or from jealousy, to make known to other nations, were, with the assistance of the power of King Ptolemy, made known so long beforehand to the nations which in the future were to believe in the Lord. [ibid.]

My purpose here is to show that St. Augustine certainly did not seem to consider the opinion of the Jews as definitive for the canon of the Old Testament, as we have seen in another post.

Some might try and jump on the fact that St. Augustine received as true a tradition concerning the LXX that we know to be false, in order to suggest that tradition cannot be trusted. But the Catholic doctrine of infallibility does not extend to questions of historicity of the Septuagint. The Catholic doctrine of infallibility relates to questions of faith and morals. The fact that St. Augustine held to a view of the LXX that we know to be false in no way undermines the validity of Sacred Tradition for the transmission of the Faith.

St. Augustine and the Canon of Scripture

2010-02-11T07:55:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine wrote On Christian Doctrine as a guide to interpreting Scripture. As part of that, he considered it worthwhile to include some guidelines for identifying the canon of the Bible.

The most skillful interpreter of the sacred writings, then, will be he who in the first place has read them all and retained them in his knowledge, if not yet with full understanding, still with such knowledge as reading gives—those of them, at least, that are called canonical. [II.viii.12]

The question that might have come to the minds of his first readers was, “And what are the canonical Scriptures?” The Doctor says this:

Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he must follow the judgment of the greater number of Catholic churches; and among these, of course, a high place must be given to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to receive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical Scriptures he will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the Catholic churches to those which some do not receive. Among those, again, which are not received by all, he will prefer such as have the sanction of the greater number and those of greater authority, to such as are held by the smaller number and those of less authority. If, however, he shall find that some books are held by the greater number of churches, and others by the churches of greater authority (though this is not a very likely thing to happen), I think that in such a case the authority on the two sides is to be looked upon as equal. [ibid.; emphasis added]

Since he doesn’t appeal to any specific standard or defined canon as though it were universal, it’s reasonable to say that none existed when St. Augustine was writing the book—or at any rate that he was unaware of one. But it’s important to say at the same time that this doesn’t mean the canon was a matter of opinion for the Catholic Christian. Just as the true teaching concerning the deity of Jesus Christ was always taught prior to Nicaea, so too the canon of Scripture was not wreathed in impenetrable mystery either. The Catholic could know the canon, St. Augustine taught, by “[preferring] those [Scriptures] that are received by all the Catholic churches.”

In other words, St. Augustine appealed to the authority of the Church in order to know the canon, and this canon was transmitted by tradition. Hence we see that the great saint was a Catholic himself, and not a Protestant making ludicrous (and self-defeating) appeals to a “fallible list of infallible books” (a la RC Sproul) or even worse, a “self-authenticating” canon.

St. Augustine was a Catholic.

And what was the canon of Scripture, in his eyes?

Now the whole canon of Scripture on which we say this judgment is to be exercised, is contained in the following books:— Five books of Moses, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; one book of Joshua the son of Nun; one of Judges; one short book called Ruth, which seems rather to belong to the beginning of Kings; next, four books of Kings, and two of Chronicles— these last not following one another, but running parallel, so to speak, and going over the same ground. The books now mentioned are history, which contains a connected narrative of the times, and follows the order of the events. There are other books which seem to follow no regular order, and are connected neither with the order of the preceding books nor with one another, such as Job, and Tobias, and Esther, and Judith, and the two books of Maccabees, and the two of Ezra, which last look more like a sequel to the continuous regular history which terminates with the books of Kings and Chronicles. Next are the Prophets, in which there is one book of the Psalms of David; and three books of Solomon, viz., Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. For two books, one called Wisdom and the other Ecclesiasticus, are ascribed to Solomon from a certain resemblance of style, but the most likely opinion is that they were written by Jesus the son of Sirach. Still they are to be reckoned among the prophetical books, since they have attained recognition as being authoritative. The remainder are the books which are strictly called the Prophets: twelve separate books of the prophets which are connected with one another, and having never been disjoined, are reckoned as one book; the names of these prophets are as follows:— Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; then there are the four greater prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel. The authority of the Old Testament is contained within the limits of these forty-four books. That of the New Testament, again, is contained within the following:— Four books of the Gospel, according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, according to John; fourteen epistles of the Apostle Paul— one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, one to the Colossians, two to Timothy, one to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews: two of Peter; three of John; one of Jude; and one of James; one book of the Acts of the Apostles; and one of the Revelation of John. [II.viii.13; see previous link]

In this list, the only books of the Catholic canon not explicitly mentioned are Baruch and Lamentations. Presumably Augustine would have considered them a part of Jeremiah if their omission was not accidental; the Protestant who wants to make hay about Baruch’s absence would do well to remember that Lamentations is also missing: you can’t say that the one’s absence has canonical weight without attributing the same to the other.

Other items worth noting: Augustine doesn’t appeal to the Jews for the canon of the Old Testament. It is the authority of the Catholic Church that matters for him, not the authority of Israel. Also, his appeal to the apostolic sees as preferable for the canon strongly suggests a presumption of continuity that is only comprehensible on the foundation of apostolic succession; else a see founded by an apostle would (after his death) be of no particular significance whatsoever. But this is not the attitude evinced by our author. Once again we see the same thing: St. Augustine was a Catholic.

St. Augustine and the Necessity of Scripture

2010-02-10T08:01:00.001-06:00

I’ve seen but not read a post or two on this topic elsewhere in the past week or two; it is purely coincidental that it happens to rise to the top of my “posts to write” list at nearly the same time.

St. Augustine writes in On Christian Doctrine:

[A] man who is resting upon faith, hope and love, and who keeps a firm hold upon these, does not need the Scriptures except for the purpose of instructing others. Accordingly, many live without copies of the Scriptures, even in solitude, on the strength of these three graces. So that in their case, I think, the saying is already fulfilled: “Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.” Yet by means of these instruments (as they may be called), so great an edifice of faith and love has been built up in them, that, holding to what is perfect, they do not seek for what is only in part perfect—of course, I mean, so far as is possible in this life; for, in comparison with the future life, the life of no just and holy man is perfect here. Therefore the apostle says: “Now abides faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity:” because, when a man shall have reached the eternal world, while the other two graces will fail, love will remain greater and more assured. [I.xxxix.43; emphasis added]

The Doctor is not saying that Scripture has no use; he is not saying that Scripture is unnecessary for any Christian at all. It is useful for teaching, as he says (and of course as Scripture says). Not every Christian rises to the measure of perfection in this life that St. Augustine observes in some men of his day; indeed, it seems that in his humility he would not even include himself among those who no longer need the Bible.

One thing that he is undeniably saying, however, is that the Bible is not a sine qua non of the godly Christian life. A man can, in St. Augustine’s view here, live a life of holiness and godliness without use of the Scriptures—beyond their usefulness for teaching others. The implication is that we may not ipso facto assume that a Christian without a Bible is somehow substandard (or worse, a Christian in name only).

Whatever else we may say about St. Augustine’s view, we may assuredly say that it is contrary to the typical evangelical Protestant’s.

I have seen some Protestants suggest that perhaps this view was not one held by the saint in his maturity, when his views were more well-developed. I do not consider this to be a credible stance. St. Augustine worked on the book in 427, near the end of his life, and it is pretty unbelievable to me that he would have left this portion un-amended if he found it to be contrary to what he believed at the end of his life.

I have seen at least one Protestant try to turn the passage on its head entirely, pretending (incredibly) that the point is that every Christian needs the Bible for purposes of instructing others. Certainly it is true that in this passage St. Augustine does affirm the Scripture’s usefulness for teaching. But to attempt to spin the thing so as to claim that this usefulness is the very point he had in view is simply ridiculous in the extreme. The point is unambiguous: not every Christian requires the Scripture for godly living. Protestants who think otherwise ought to have the integrity to concede that on this point St. Augustine was most assuredly not one of them.

St. Augustine and the merit of human works

2010-02-09T23:51:00.001-06:00

I have often appealed to St. Augustine’s teaching that when God rewards us, he is rewarding what he has given us. The point of course is that the Christian life is a life of grace, even with regard to the obedience that we offer to God. But the Doctor does not say this to the exclusion of the fact that our works are also our own, and that our good deeds merit reward no less than our sins merit punishment.

When we take pity upon a man and care for him, it is for his advantage we do so; but somehow or other our own advantage follows by a sort of natural consequence, for God does not leave the mercy we show to him who needs it to go without reward. Now this is our highest reward, that we should fully enjoy Him, and that all who enjoy Him should enjoy one another in Him. [On Christian Doctrine, I.32; emphasis added]

So we see once again that St. Augustine was not some sort of proto-neo-crypto-quasi-Protestant. Protestants (generally) deny that the good works of Christians merit reward, an error that Trent rightly condemns. But St. Augustine affirms that our works will receive a reward. He was a Catholic.

St. Augustine - Prudence and Charity

2010-02-08T19:06:00.001-06:00

It may be that there are some people who so construe the second great commandment (Matthew 22:39) as entailing a burden of compliance that is so extensive as to literally prevent our compliance. We have examined previously what St. Thomas says about this command. In Book I, Chapter xxviii of On Christian Doctrine St. Augustine says this:

Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. For, suppose that you had a great deal of some commodity, and felt bound to give it away to somebody who had none, and that it could not be given to more than one person; if two persons presented themselves, neither of whom had either from need or relationship a greater claim upon you than the other, you could do nothing fairer than choose by lot to which you would give what could not be given to both. Just so among men: since you cannot consult for the good of them all, you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you. [emphasis added]

St. Augustine makes clear that our obedience to God with regard to the second great commandment must be fulfilled through prudence: we cannot do good to all. And God does not expect us to do so. But since the Bible doesn't tell me whether my neighbor Jim needs my charity more than my neighbor Bob, it is obvious (given the fact that we must make a choice) that how we love our neighbors is an undertaking that must be characterized by prudence. St. Thomas tells us (as the masthead up top reminds us!) that prudence is right reason applied do action, and since charity demands action, prudence must therefore inform our exercise of charity. St. Augustine gives us guidelines for exercising that prudential charity in this passage.

God neither commands nor expects from us what would require omnipotence or infinite resources to perform. We are able to obey him with his help. To say otherwise is to transform God into a sadist who puts impossible burdens on us, it seems to me. But he is not like that. He is just, so that his laws are not so difficult as to be impossible for us, and he is merciful, so that he helps us to obey. Some Protestants suppose falsely that even when we do good, we sin; this error is something that the Council of Trent rightly condemned.

St. Augustine and St. Anselm again

2010-02-07T14:07:00.001-06:00

Here is more evidence of St. Anselm’s dependence upon St. Augustine, at least with respect to the formulation of his ontological argument.

For when the one supreme God of gods is thought of, even by those who believe that there are other gods, and who call them by that name, and worship them as gods, their thought takes the form of an endeavor to reach the conception of a nature, than which nothing more excellent or more exalted exists. And since men are moved by different kinds of pleasures, partly by those which pertain to the bodily senses, partly by those which pertain to the intellect and soul, those of them who are in bondage to sense think that either the heavens, or what appears to be most brilliant in the heavens, or the universe itself, is God of gods: or if they try to get beyond the universe, they picture to themselves something of dazzling brightness, and think of it vaguely as infinite, or of the most beautiful form conceivable; or they represent it in the form of the human body, if they think that superior to all others. Or if they think that there is no one God supreme above the rest, but that there are many or even innumerable gods of equal rank, still these too they conceive as possessed of shape and form, according to what each man thinks the pattern of excellence. Those, on the other hand, who endeavor by an effort of the intelligence to reach a conception of God, place Him above all visible and bodily natures, and even above all intelligent and spiritual natures that are subject to change. All, however, strive emulously to exalt the excellence of God: nor could any one be found to believe that any being to whom there exists a superior is God. And so all concur in believing that God is that which excels in dignity all other objects. [On Christian Doctrine, I.vii; emphasis added]

St. Thomas on the Divine Simplicity

2010-02-07T01:23:00.001-06:00

In a recent combox I was asked about resources concerning the Simplicity of God. Here, for those who are interested, are two more items related to this subject.

The Oxford book of Selected Philosophical Writings of St. Thomas includes (passage 24, pp. 230-240 in the edition I have) a section from the Commentary on the Sentences, related to “How we Know One Simple God by Many Concepts.” I couldn’t find this online, but the Oxford book says it’s taken from Book I of the Commentary, Distinction 2, 1.3. I thought it was helpful.

Similarly, there is another passage from the Commentary that I did find online: Book I, Distinction 8, Question 4, Concerning God’s Simplicity.

I hope that these will prove useful.

St. Augustine and St. Thomas - The Image of God in Man

2010-02-07T00:14:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine and St. Thomas agree in saying that the image of God in us must be understood as referring to the fact that we are rational beings.

St. Augustine:

We behold the face of the earth furnished with terrestrial creatures, and man, created after Your image and likeness, in that very image and likeness of You (that is, the power of reason and understanding) on account of which he was set over all irrational creatures. [Confessions XIII.32]

St. Thomas:

Not every likeness, not even what is copied from something else, is sufficient to make an image; for if the likeness be only generic, or existing by virtue of some common accident, this does not suffice for one thing to be the image of another. For instance, a worm, though from man it may originate, cannot be called man's image, merely because of the generic likeness. Nor, if anything is made white like something else, can we say that it is the image of that thing; for whiteness is an accident belonging to many species. But the nature of an image requires likeness in species; thus the image of the king exists in his son: or, at least, in some specific accident, and chiefly in the shape; thus, we speak of a man's image in copper. Whence Hilary says pointedly that "an image is of the same species."

Now it is manifest that specific likeness follows the ultimate difference. But some things are like to God first and most commonly because they exist; secondly, because they live; and thirdly because they know or understand; and these last, as Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 51) "approach so near to God in likeness, that among all creatures nothing comes nearer to Him." It is clear, therefore, that intellectual creatures alone, properly speaking, are made to God's image. [ST I, Q93, A2]

Trent on Justification - Canon 33 (and concluding remarks)

2010-02-06T12:34:00.001-06:00

It is false to say that the Catholic doctrine of justification in any way detracts from the glory of God and merits of Christ; to the contrary, they are made more glorious.

If any one saith,that,by the Catholic doctrine touching Justification, by this holy Synod inset forth in this present decree, the glory of God, or the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ are in any way derogated from, and not rather that the truth of our faith, and the glory in fine of God and of Jesus Christ are rendered (more) illustrious; let him be anathema. [Council of Trent, Canon 33 on Justification]

There really isn't anything to observe here with respect to our present focus on whether Trent teaches justification by grace alone. So instead, by way of concluding summary, I hope that is sufficiently clear now that Trent in no way teaches a “works-based” gospel, and their detractors really need to cherry-pick in the most abominable way in order to pretend otherwise. The great chapter VII of the Decree on Justification (discussed here) leaves no room for any doubt about the subject, declaring as it does what exactly the causes of justification are. It ought to go without saying that none of them are human; all the causes of our justification are found in God, his grace, his purposes, and his glory. None of them are found in us.

Now if this is what Trent explicitly teaches, it is gross falsehood (hopefully born in ignorance, but falsehood nonetheless) for anyone to say that the Catholic Church teaches a justification based upon human works.

But maybe some will say that Vatican II has changed the game in some way, and that this later council has taught justification by works. So we will be turning our attention to Vatican II, and later to the Catechism, to see whether our critics can sustain their complaints there. Clearly they cannot sustain them from the teaching and canons of Trent, nor of St. Thomas, as we have seen.

Trent on Justification - Canon 32

2010-02-06T12:17:00.001-06:00

The 32nd canon on Justification has to do with the question of whether our good works may truly be called ours.

If any one saith, that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner the gifts of God, as that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified; or, that the said justified, by the good works which he performs through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life,-if so be, however, that he depart in grace,-and also an increase of glory; let him be anathema.

Two important observations for those who erroneously suppose that the Catholic Church teaches a so-called “works-based gospel:” First, the canon says that it’s the good works of “one that is justified” that are in view here: in other words, it relates to those who have already been justified. Secondly, they tell us that the good works of such a man merit increase of grace, not its initial reception. In short: they are talking about the good deeds of those who are already Christians.

Even so, they do not deny that a Christian’s good works are in fact gifts of God, as they have previously said in Chapter XVI of the Decree on Justification (which we have previously examined).

The Fathers of Trent are saying that how we live our lives as Christians really does matter, and they are condemning the error of some Protestants who falsely say otherwise. We are justified by grace alone, as Trent teaches us, but having been justified, we must then strive to live lives of holiness with God’s help.

St. Augustine and the Meanings of Scripture

2010-02-06T11:58:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine believed that the Scripture has not merely a single meaning, but rather more than one meaning. Although this should not in principle be contrary to the Protestant idea of “sola scriptura,” it’s not how Protestants typically view things. For example, they tend to believe (if my own background is any measure) that if one “goes beyond” (so to speak) the single meaning intended by the human author, then anything goes and there is nothing to prevent the interpreter from making the Bible mean anything he wishes.

But this is operating in a vacuum, as we have seen in the past. As the Catechism says:

Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church.” [§113]

It’s not the case that “anything goes” for the Christian when he reads the Bible, for he must always “read the Scripture within ‘the living Tradition of the whole Church.’” He is not free to read the Bible in any silly, idiosyncratic way that he wishes, nor after the traditions of newcomers on the block. No. He must read it with the constant teaching of the Church in view, and understand it within the context of that teaching.

So there is no danger when St. Augustine says that Scripture may indeed have multiple meanings:

42. Thus, when one shall say, “He [Moses] meant as I do,” and another, “Nay, but as I do,” I suppose that I am speaking more religiously when I say, “Why not rather as both, if both be true?” And if there be a third truth, or a fourth, and if any one seek any truth altogether different in those words, why may not he be believed to have seen all these, through whom one God has tempered the Holy Scriptures to the senses of many, about to see therein things true but different? I certainly,— and I fearlessly declare it from my heart—were I to write anything to have the highest authority, should prefer so to write, that whatever of truth any one might apprehend concerning these matters, my words should re-echo, rather than that I should set down one true opinion so clearly on this as that I should exclude the rest, that which was false in which could not offend me. Therefore am I unwilling, O my God, to be so headstrong as not to believe that from You this man [Moses] has received so much. He, surely, when he wrote those words, perceived and thought whatever of truth we have been able to discover, yea, and whatever we have not been able, nor yet are able, though still it may be found in them.

43. Finally, O Lord, who art God, and not flesh and blood, if man does see anything less, can anything lie hidden from “Your good Spirit,” who shall “lead me into the land of uprightness,” which You Yourself, by those words, were about to reveal to future readers, although he through whom they were spoken, amid the many interpretations that might have been found, fixed on but one? Which, if it be so, let that which he thought on be more exalted than the rest. But to us, O Lord, either point out the same, or any other true one which may be pleasing unto You; so that whether You make known to us that which You did to that man of Yours, or some other by occasion of the same words, yet You may feed us, not error deceive us. Behold, O Lord my God, how many things we have written concerning a few words—how many, I beseech You! What strength of ours, what ages would suffice for all Your books after this manner? Permit me, therefore, in these more briefly to confess unto You, and to select some one true, certain, and good sense, that You shall inspire, although many senses offer themselves, where many, indeed, I may; this being the faith of my confession, that if I should say that which Your minister felt, rightly and profitably, this I should strive for; the which if I shall not attain, yet I may say that which Your Truth willed through Its words to say unto me, which said also unto him what It willed. [Confessions, XII.31-32; emphasis added]

Later, in Book XIII, St. Augustine insists that we must not be limited to the literal sense of Scripture in at least one place, but rather that we must seek its figurative meaning:

But if we treat those words as taken figuratively (the which I rather suppose the Scripture intended, which does not, verily, superfluously attribute this benediction to the offspring of marine animals and man only) [XIII.24]

It’s probably worth pointing out that he is not writing in reference to a psalm or a prophecy in which we might say that the figurative sense is the literal sense, so to speak; but rather, he is writing about Genesis 1—where many Protestants insist no figurative sense is rightly to be sought. But the point here isn’t to quibble about the right way to read Genesis, although the fact that Christians 1600 years ago were seeking a figurative meaning ought to give pause to those who insist that doing so is a recent novelty borne solely from an effort to harmonize Scripture and science. No, the point is that St. Augustine’s approach to the Bible is consistent with the Catholic Church’s constant teaching (§§115-119) about the multiple meanings of the Bible.

St. Augustine - We enter the kingdom of heaven through Baptism

2010-02-05T00:45:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine was a Catholic, not some strange form of quasi-crypto-proto-incipient-Protestant, notwithstanding the fever dreams of those Protestants who try to claim him for themselves. And as a Catholic, he understood that Baptism is the way that we gain entry to God’s kingdom.

And hereby, in Your Word, not the depth of the sea, but the earth parted from the bitterness of the waters, brings forth not the creeping and flying creature that has life, but the living soul itself. For now has it no longer need of baptism, as the heathen have, and as itself had when it was covered with the waters—for no other entrance is there into the kingdom of heaven, since You have appointed that this should be the entrance [Confessions XIII.21, emphasis added]

Now if this be the case, then it is clear that Baptism actually does something to us and for us, and if that is the case, then it is clear that the sacraments work ex opere operato, as the Catholic Church teaches, and as St. Augustine obviously believed himself.

Trent on Justification - Canon 31

2010-02-04T01:30:00.001-06:00

The 31st canon addresses an error related to the good works that Christians must do.

If any one saith, that the justified sins when he performs good works with a view to an eternal recompense; let him be anathema.

It is no more sinful to hope for an eternal reward than it is for a child to hope to receive a reward from his father for doing good. Only a troll of a parent would say otherwise. Only a troll would send such a child away empty-handed, and our heavenly Father would not do that to us in return for our good deeds, done for love of him and in hope of his blessing.

Of course, if one does such works not out of love for God, but rather by way of hoping to extort something from God, he is gravely mistaken. We may not say, “I’ve done so many good things that God just has to let me into heaven.” We cannot merit initial justification by anything that we do, as we have seen repeatedly in this series. That is the gift of God, given solely by his grace (and nothing in canon 31 contradicts this).

That bad attitude reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Dad tells Calvin that he can earn a dollar (or some amount of money) by picking up sticks in the yard. Calvin, in high dudgeon, retorts that he won’t do it for less than two, or five, or some such amount (something a few times more than he was offered). Dad replies, “In a minute you’ll do it just because I say so,” at which point Calvin haughtily accepts the dollar.

We don’t deserve dollars from God, and it is ridiculous (and wicked) for us to start supposing that our good deeds are worth quite a lot, and we had best get it. With that attitude, our works are worthless.

St. Augustine - Christ is the Eucharist

2010-02-04T00:36:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine believed not merely that the Eucharist represents Christ, but that it actually is He.

For He judges and approves what He finds right, but disapproves what He finds amiss, whether in the celebration of those sacraments by which are initiated those whom Your mercy searches out in many waters; or in that in which the Fish Itself is exhibited, which, being raised from the deep, the devout earth feeds upon… [Confessions, XIII.23; emphasis added]

Note that the “Fish” is a symbolic term for the Lord Jesus Christ, based upon the ΙχΘυς anagram, which represents the first letters of the Greek words for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. “The Fish Itself,” then, can be none other than Jesus Christ Himself: it is He who is exhibited in the Eucharist; it is Him upon whom the faithful feed.

Trent on Justification - Canon 30

2010-02-03T01:26:00.003-06:00

Trent’s 30th canon on justification addresses errors related to temporal penalties for sin.

If any one saith, that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise, that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened (to him); let him be anathema.

Temporal penalties for sin are a stumbling block for some Protestants, but they really shouldn’t be. Our sins have consequences that aren’t strictly eternal, as David learned (when he was told that his son would die, although his sins were forgiven). The “Reformers” were wrong when they abandoned this doctrine.

In any case, neither Purgatory nor temporal punishment is contrary to the doctrine of justification by grace alone.

St. Augustine and Prayers for the Dead

2010-02-03T01:26:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine tells us that he prayed for the sake of his mother St. Monica’s soul.

I know that she acted mercifully, and from the heart forgave her debtors their debts; do Thou also forgive her debts, whatever she contracted during so many years since the water of salvation. Forgive her, O Lord, forgive her, I beseech You; enter not into judgment with her. Let Your mercy be exalted above Your justice, because Your words are true, and You have promised mercy unto the merciful; which You gave them to be who wilt have mercy on whom You will have mercy, and wilt have compassion on whom You have had compassion. [Confessions IX.13; emphasis added]

Note that he records this not simply as something that he did on the day of her death, nor even only at her funeral, but that he records it as his constant prayer for her, even years after her death, that her sins might be forgiven.

Those who would pretend that St. Augustine is a hero of Protestantism would do well to consider this. He is a hero of the Catholic Faith, and your own hero to the extent that you agree with him (and not vice-versa).

Trent on Justification - Canon 29

2010-02-01T19:20:00.001-06:00

The 29th Canon on Justification of the Council of Trent has to do with restoration to fellowship with God following a fall into mortal sin.

If any one saith, that he, who has fallen after baptism, is not able by the grace of God to rise again; or, that he is able indeed to recover the justice which he has lost, but by faith alone without the sacrament of Penance, contrary to what the holy Roman and universal Church—instructed by Christ and his Apostles—has hitherto professed, observed, and taught; let him be anathema.

The Christian may lose his salvation through sin, as we have seen that the Council teaches and affirms; but his fellowship with God may certainly be restored through the sacrament of Penance, as they tell us here. It is insufficient, despite the claims of Protestants, merely to have faith in order for one’s fellowship with God to be renewed.

This canon teaches nothing contrary to the doctrine of justification by grace alone.

St. Augustine and Mass for the Dead

2010-01-27T08:19:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine believed in celebrating the Mass for the sake of those who have died. He writes, concerning the funeral rites for St. Monica his mother:

So, when the body was carried forth, we both went and returned without tears. For neither in those prayers which we poured forth unto You when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered up unto You for her—the dead body being now placed by the side of the grave, as the custom there is, prior to its being laid therein—neither in their prayers did I shed tears; yet was I most grievously sad in secret all the day, and with a troubled mind entreated You, as I was able, to heal my sorrow, but You did not; fixing, I believe, in my memory by this one lesson the power of the bonds of all habit, even upon a mind which now feeds not upon a fallacious word. [Confessions IX.12; emphasis added]

Really, people ought to be embarrassed even to attempt to pretend that St. Augustine was not Catholic in his views.

This is true

2010-01-26T08:10:00.001-06:00

TF, attempting to answer “35” questions (although the linked PDF contains 38 numbered questions and fourteen “bonus” questions; don’t ask me to explain the discrepancy) from Steve Ray, has this (among a few other things) to say about the seventeenth question (“Who may authoritatively arbitrate between Christians who claim to be led by the Holy Spirit into mutually contradictory interpretations of the Bible?”):

[T]he Holy Spirit will not lead two Christians into contradictory views.

This is true.

However, it is also an indictment of the entire history of Protestantism, and it was fundamental to my own departure from Protestantism. The Holy Spirit does not lie, the Holy Spirit is the court of final appeal for Protestant truth claims, and yet Protestants hold contradictory views. It isn’t the case that every disagreement among them matters: there are certainly things that are adiophora. But it is also indisputably the case that they disagree about things that do matter, and which cannot in any way be reasonably reckoned as matters of indifference.

Even the magisterial Reformers said that in cases of such disagreement the Holy Spirit could only be leading one of the two (or more) parties, but the critical point is that it is impossible for Protestants to distinguish the truth from error in such cases on their own terms. Impossible. No matter what they say. And on points where it matters, it is inconceivable that the Holy Spirit would “leave them in the lurch” (so to speak) if what they say about how He works is true.

Now the usual reactions to this are to ignore it (which is irrational, and probably a sin against truth), or to splinter into ever smaller and more insular groups (hence the Protestant “genius” for division, which only highlights this problem I’m discussing), or to claim that the areas on which the parties disagree are really matters of indifference after all. But the problem with the latter approach is that it reduces the content of what Christians must believe to an absurdly few points. Such a response means (for one glaring example) that the meaning, mode, and even the number (if you include certain Anglicans) of the sacraments is a matter of indifference for the Christian. And this, quite simply, beggars belief. It is not possible. And the same could be said about other areas of Protestant disagreement. Consequently it is inescapable that Protestantism is a self-defeating principle.

They do not say that the Holy Spirit speaks audibly (or in any other publicly verifiable fashion) to disputing parties so as to resolve disagreements; they say that He speaks internally to each man. But it is impossible to distinguish the Spirit’s leading in such a fashion from mere subjectivism. And really, all this does is cement in each party’s mind that his or their view is the correct one, because of course they are quite naturally all completely convinced of their own faithfulness before God, and of their own abilities in exegesis, and so of course it is inconceivable to them that the Holy Spirit would lead them astray. And yet the other parties say the same things about themselves too.

Consequently Protestantism is a self-defeating principle. Consequently I am now a Catholic.

Trent on Justification - Canon 28

2010-01-26T07:33:00.001-06:00

Canon 28 addresses an error related to faith.

If any one saith, that, grace being lost through sin, faith also is always lost with it; or, that the faith which remains, though it be not a lively faith, is not a true faith; or, that he, who has faith without charity, is not a [Christian]; let him be anathema.

As we saw previously, infidelity is not the only mortal sin a Christian may commit; consequently one may lose his salvation without sinning against faith. I suspect that the faith in view here isn’t just the Protestant’s notion of mere faith-as-trust, although it is probably included. In any case, we see with regard to this canon as well that it is not contrary to justification by grace alone.

St. Augustine and Holy Relics

2010-01-26T07:23:00.001-06:00

I suppose I ought to point out that I have no illusions about these facts concerning St. Augustine having any probative value concerning the truth, at least for Protestants. Without doubt their likely reaction will be that St. Augustine was mistaken about these things. But it is not my purpose to attempt to prove their truth by appealing to St. Augustine (although I find it amusing that people who discount St. Augustine’s authority on this score will cheerily appeal to him as though he supports their errors on other points). Rather, my purpose is to suggest that it’s pretty clear from his own writings—here, his autobiography—that St. Augustine was most certainly Catholic.

Here is an excellent case in point.

Thou by a vision made known to Your renowned bishop [St. Ambrose – RdP] the spot where lay the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, the martyrs (whom You had in Your secret storehouse preserved uncorrupted for so many years), whence You might at the fitting time produce them to repress the feminine but royal fury. For when they were revealed and dug up and with due honour transferred to the Ambrosian Basilica, not only they who were troubled with unclean spirits (the devils confessing themselves) were healed, but a certain man also, who had been blind many years, a well-known citizen of that city, having asked and been told the reason of the people's tumultuous joy, rushed forth, asking his guide to lead him there. Arrived there, he begged to be permitted to touch with his handkerchief the bier of Your saints, whose death is precious in Your sight. When he had done this, and put it to his eyes, they were immediately opened. Thence did the fame spread; thence did Your praises burn—shine; thence was the mind of that enemy, though not yet enlarged to the wholeness of believing, restrained from the fury of persecuting. [Confessions IX.7, emphasis added]

St. Augustine’s respect for the relics of the holy martyrs was that of a Catholic.

St. Augustine - Baptism forgives sins

2010-01-25T08:43:00.001-06:00

It isn’t by faith that our sins are forgiven, says St. Augustine; it is by Holy Baptism.

And Your purposes were profoundly impressed upon me; and, rejoicing in faith, I praised Your name. And that faith suffered me not to be at rest in regard to my past sins, which were not yet forgiven me by Your baptism. [Confessions, IX.4]

We see here that St. Augustine considered himself already to have faith, but he knew that this would not save. His sins had to be forgiven, and this, he knew, must be done in Baptism.

We see the same thing in chapter 6 of the same book of the Confessions, where he writes concerning his son and others who were baptized at the same time as he:

Quickly did You remove his life [i.e., that of St. Augustine’s son Adeodatus] from the earth; and now I recall him to mind with a sense of security, in that I fear nothing for his childhood or youth, or for his whole self. We took him coeval with us in Your grace, to be educated in Your discipline; and we were baptized, and solicitude about our past life left us. [ibid., IX.6]

Why was he no longer worried about his past life? Because his sins were forgiven in baptism. Faith didn’t do this, as the first quotation above makes clear; it was the sacrament.

St. Augustine and the Intercession of the Dead

2010-01-24T14:19:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine was Catholic—something that some Protestants are fond of ignoring while attempting to claim him as one of their own. But St. Augustine believed that departed Christians pray for those of us who remain in this life.

Now he puts not his ear unto my mouth, but his spiritual mouth unto Your fountain, and drinks as much as he is able, wisdom according to his desire—happy without end. Nor do I believe that he is so inebriated with it as to forget me, seeing Thou, O Lord, whom he drinks, art mindful of us. [Confessions IX.3]

They pray for us, and St. Augustine knew it. And now he prays for us himself!

St. Augustine - Baptism regenerates us

2010-01-24T13:51:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine firmly believed that the sacraments perform that which they represent; that is, he was a Catholic.

Although [Nebridius] also, not being yet a Christian, had fallen into the pit of that most pernicious error of believing Your Son to be a phantasm, yet, coming out thence, he held the same belief that we did; not as yet initiated in any of the sacraments of Your Church, but a most earnest inquirer after truth. Whom, not long after our conversion and regeneration by Your baptism, he being also a faithful member of the Catholic Church, and serving You in perfect chastity and continency among his own people in Africa, when his whole household had been brought to Christianity through him, You released from the flesh; and now he lives in Abraham's bosom. [Confessions, IX.3; emphasis added]

A Protestant reading the Confessions might get the idea that [according to his own Protestant lights] St. Augustine was already “saved” well before his baptism; St. Augustine himself makes it clear that he believed nothing of the sort. He was not saved before receiving justification by means of Holy Baptism, and he knew it.

Trent on Justification - Canon 27

2010-01-23T15:41:00.001-06:00

The 27th canon on justification of the Council of Trent relates to questions of perseverance and mortal sin in the life of Christians.

If any one saith, that there is no mortal sin but that of infidelity; or, that grace once received is not lost by any other sin, however grievous and enormous, save by that of infidelity; let him be anathema.

The Protestant is keen to say that nothing a man does is sufficient to cause him to lose salvation, with the (usually heavily qualified) exception of disbelief. As the Council teaches us, this is an error. As we have seen, however, “perseverance of the saints” is itself an unbiblical error; true Christians can lose their salvation.

Nothing in the 27th canon is contrary to the doctrine of justification by grace.

Trent on Justification - Canon 26

2010-01-23T11:18:00.001-06:00

Trent’s 26th canon on justification concerns the question of God rewarding the deeds of the righteous.

If any one saith, that the just ought not, for their good works done in God, to expect and hope for an eternal recompense from God, through His mercy and the merit of Jesus Christ, if so be that they persevere to the end in well doing and in keeping the divine commandments; let him be anathema.

This seems to me to be a matter of simple symmetry: if the wicked receive punishment for their deeds, it seems ridiculous to pretend that the Christian will receive nothing for his good works. Even so, as the canon makes clear, the true merit inhering in our good works comes from the merit of Jesus Christ: so that we cannot claim to “deserve” anything.

In any case, a reward for those who have already been justified is beside the point of whether they receive justification by grace alone, which we have argued to be the case in this series and which is certainly not contradicted by this canon.

Trent on Justification - Canon 25

2010-01-23T11:08:00.001-06:00

Canon 25 on Justification condemns the error of those who insist that every work performed by the just is necessarily sinful in some way.

If any one saith, that, in every good work, the just sins venially at least, or—which is more intolerable still—mortally, and consequently deserves eternal punishments; and that for this cause only he is not damned, that God does not impute those works unto damnation; let him be anathema.

It is just not the case that it’s impossible for a Christian to avoid sin at any time. Men can and do perform good deeds, particularly when they are assisted by the grace of God (as Christians certainly are).

This canon says nothing contrary to justification by grace alone.

Trent on Justification - Canon 24

2010-01-22T21:33:00.001-06:00

The 24th canon on justification relates to the increase of justification.

If any one saith, that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof; let him be anathema.

An excellent and helpful description of the distinction between initial justification and subsequent increase of justification may be found here, in an article by Bryan Cross. For our purposes it is sufficient to point out that Trent is of course by no means describing initial justification as caused by good works, but (as the canon says) only the increase of justification, as described in Chapter X of the Decree on Justification; to say otherwise would be to say that the canon contradicts Chapter VII, which would be absurd. This canon does not contradict the doctrine of justification by grace alone; even the obedience that we offer to God as Christians is a gift of God’s grace.

Church and Scripture

2010-01-21T07:49:00.005-06:00

For St. Augustine, it was never a question of Scripture or the Catholic Church; it was always Scripture and the Catholic Church.

But You suffered me not to be carried away from the faith by any fluctuations of thought, whereby I believed You both to exist, and Your substance to be unchangeable, and that You had a care of and would judge men; and that in Christ, Your Son, our Lord, and the Holy Scriptures, which the authority of Your Catholic Church pressed upon me, You had planned the way of man's salvation to that life which is to come after this death. [Confessions VII.7]

Of course, he also accepted the authority of Sacred Tradition…but that’s not in view in this portion of the Confessions.

Divine Simplicity

2010-01-21T07:49:00.003-06:00

St. Augustine affirmed divine simplicity.

Nor are You compelled to do anything against Your will in that Your will is not greater than Your power. But greater should it be were You Yourself greater than Yourself; for the will and power of God is God Himself. [Confessions, VII.4; emphasis added]

The will and power of God are not attributes of God, but rather they are God himself.

Augustine and Anselm

2010-01-21T07:49:00.001-06:00

This sounds suspiciously like St. Anselm’s ontological argument:

For never yet was, nor will be, a soul able to conceive of anything better than You, who art the highest and best good. But whereas most truly and certainly that which is incorruptible is to be preferred to the corruptible (like as I myself did now prefer it), then, if Thou were not incorruptible, I could in my thoughts have reached unto something better than my God. [Confessions VII.4]

It’s not too hard to see from this that St. Augustine influenced St. Anselm.

Augustine and Free Will, part 2

2010-01-21T07:48:00.001-06:00

And I directed my attention to discern what I now heard, that free will was the cause of our doing evil, and Your righteous judgment of our suffering it. But I was unable clearly to discern it. So, then, trying to draw the eye of my mind from that pit, I was plunged again therein, and trying often, was as often plunged back again. But this raised me towards Your light, that I knew as well that I had a will as that I had life: when, therefore, I was willing or unwilling to do anything, I was most certain that it was none but myself that was willing and unwilling; and immediately I perceived that there was the cause of my sin. [Confessions, VII.3]

If we do not have free will, it is not possible for us to sin—because it is the cause of sin (as St. Augustine says here). That is not to say that we are compelled to sin by virtue of the fact that we have free will (which would contradict the very idea of free will), but rather that if we did not have free will, we could not sin.

Limits of Reason and the Authority of the Church

2010-01-20T10:45:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine insists that not everything we believe may be provable by reason.

From this, however, being led to prefer the Catholic doctrine, I felt that it was with more moderation and honesty that it commanded things to be believed that were not demonstrated (whether it was that they could be demonstrated, but not to any one, or could not be demonstrated at all) [Confessions VI.5]

The sense of this passage is more easily grasped, I think, in R.S. Pine-Coffin’s rendering:

The Church demanded that certain things should be believed even though they could not be proved, for if they could be proved, not all men could understand the proof, and some could not be proved at all [p. 116]

In any case, two things are certain. St. Augustine did not believe that a dogma of faith must be demonstrable by reason: some dogmas are not demonstrable by reason at all, and in other cases they exceed the measure of some men (though not necessarily all men) to grasp by reason. In either case, the important thing is that we are obliged to receive the dogmas by virtue of the authority of the Church, just as St. Augustine says.

Secondly, it is obvious that St. Augustine’s words here rule out any sense of the Protestant novelty of “sola scriptura;” he unambiguously assents to the authority of the Church to define dogmas that must be believed.

It occurs to me that perhaps these considerations might be of use to David Waltz, who continues to wrestle with certain dogmas. I think it bears mentioning that history as an enterprise is unquestionably an enterprise of reason, and that the “conclusions” of history are unquestionably conclusions of reason, and that consequently St. Augustine’s observations about Church authority and the limits of reason surely apply not merely to syllogisms we work out in our heads but also to our conclusions from history. This is not to say that the Church’s dogmas are ahistorical or contrary to history at all—indeed, quite the reverse is true. But it is to say that individual men may err concerning the “facts” of history, and also that history does not contradict the dogmas of the Church.

Baptismal Regeneration

2010-01-20T10:22:00.001-06:00

St. Augustine believed in baptismal regeneration.

And behold, there was I received by the scourge of bodily sickness, and I was descending into hell burdened with all the sins that I had committed, both against You, myself, and others, many and grievous, over and above that bond of original sin whereby we all die in Adam. For none of these things had Thou forgiven me in Christ, neither had He abolished by His cross the enmity which, by my sins, I had incurred with You. For how could He, by the crucifixion of a phantasm, which I supposed Him to be? As true, then, was the death of my soul, as that of His flesh appeared to me to be untrue; and as true the death of His flesh as the life of my soul, which believed it not, was false. The fever increasing, I was now passing away and perishing. For had I then gone hence, whither should I have gone but into the fiery torments meet for my misdeeds, in the truth of Your ordinance? She was ignorant of this, yet, while absent, prayed for me. But You, everywhere present, hearkened to her where she was, and had pity upon me where I was, that I should regain my bodily health, although still frenzied in my sacrilegious heart. For all that peril did not make me wish to be baptized, and I was better when, as a lad, I entreated it of my mother's piety, as I have already related and confessed. [Confessions, V.9; emphasis added]

Trent on Justification - Canon 23

2010-01-20T10:12:00.001-06:00

Canon 23 on Justification concerns the question of perseverance.

If any one saith, that a man once justified can sin no more, nor lose grace, and that therefore he that falls and sins was never truly justified; or, on the other hand, that he is able, during his whole life, to avoid all sins, even those that are venial,-except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard of the Blessed Virgin; let him be anathema.

The Christian can certainly lose his justification; else a passage like (for example) Hebrews 6:4f. makes no sense at all: who else but real Christians ever partakes of the Holy Spirit? Or who else has been illuminated, or tasted the heavenly gift?

But the fact that we may reject God’s gift doesn’t mean that it is any less a gift. We cannot save ourselves. It is not credible in the least to say that choosing to believe in a freely offered salvation is somehow “works-based,” but that the act of faith intended by the Protestant’s “sola fide” is not. We are saved by grace; the fact that we may reject that grace doesn’t make our acceptance of it a saving act.

Trent on Justification - Canon 22

2010-01-20T09:33:00.001-06:00

Perhaps some enemies of the Gospel suppose that the Church’s insistence that Christians must live lives of obedience in order to be saved implies a “works-based” salvation. This supposition is false, and Canon 22 of the Council of Trent on Justification makes this clear.

If any one saith, that the justified, either is able to persevere, without the special help of God, in the justice received; or that, with that help, he is not able; let him be anathema.

We cannot persevere in justification without God’s grace. Consequently to pretend that there is something meritorious about our obedience on its own, apart from God’s grace, is just that: a pretense.

The canon also condemns an error of some Protestants—particularly some in the Reformed camp—that even with God’s help the Christian is unable to live a life of holiness.

Trent on Justification - Canon 21

2010-01-18T20:08:00.001-06:00

Canon 21 on Justification addresses an error that persists among some Protestants (and ill-informed Catholics, it must be said) even today.

If any one saith, that Christ Jesus was given of God to men, as a redeemer in whom to trust, and not also as a legislator whom to obey; let him be anathema.

The Lord Jesus Christ is our King. Who ever heard of a king for whom obedience is optional?!? The very idea is ridiculous. But the fact that we must obey God is in no way contrary the truth that we are justified by grace alone.