Contradiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.