Is ownership more culpable than trade?

I am planning to write a post soon responding to a very interesting debate between Jacob Imam and Trent Horn, but here’s a teaser.

In Trent Horn’s defense of 401Ks, he asks, “If we can use YouTube, why can’t we buy stock in Google?” In other words, what is morally different about cooperating with Google in the sense of doing business with them through the use of their service, and cooperating with them in the sense of purchasing ownership in the company itself?

It’s a great question, and my answer will hearken back to the Thomistic doctrine of double effect, which I discuss in previous posts, namely, that it is permissible to do an act that one foresees as having both good and evil consequences, if the good consequences outweigh the evil, and are caused with the same immediacy, as a separate byproduct, not as a result of the evil itself.

This principle explains the problem we feel with the logic of most movie villains (at least of those who offer an explanation for their insanity). They always want to correct some wrong in the world (like starvation due to overpopulation) by some wrong means (like killing half of the people in the universe). Why do we hate them? Because they are violating the fundamental moral principle that—even in the most desperate of situations—it’s always wrong to “do good that evil may come,” as St. Paul condemns in Romans 3:8. Why is it always wrong? Because we cause an end less directly than we cause the means to it. By doing evil that good may result, we lose faith in God to provide the means for us to wholly obey him. It’s failing the test of the Sacrifice of Isaac.

The difference between being a user of Google services and being an owner of Google is that the good that one achieves by being an owner is achieved by means of being an owner, as a further result of the ownership (and all the shared responsibility that entails), whereas in the case of being a user of Google services, one causes the good that they intend simultaneously and in causal parallel with the evil that they permit Google to do.

Ownership in Google is a means to that monetary end. (I am assuming one owns stock in Google because they want to make money.) I tolerate that I am an owner of Google and Google is thereby using my capital to do evil things, because by means of Google getting money, I may achieve whatever good I intend to do with my share. No matter how proportionately great the reason—providing for my kids and my elderly relatives, or what have you—the evil is still causally prior.

But when I use a Google service in such a way that Google gets money (from me or from advertisers by my passive complicity), I do not achieve whatever good I intend by means of Google getting money; if anything, I achieve it in spite of Google getting money, as is evidenced by the fact that I could achieve my purposes just as well, or even better, if I gave Google no money at all for their service: then I could browse more efficiently, or listen to music without those contemptible interruptions. Indeed, I would much prefer if their services were entirely free, of both fees and advertisements!

Are we angled mirrors?

The pastor at my church frequently articulates the central purpose of man in the following way: “We are angled mirrors, made to reflect the glory of God to his creation, and to reflect back the praises of creation to God.” So we are priests in the sense that we represent God to earth, and in the sense that we represent earth to God.

I take issue with the second part of this, not that we reflect the glory of God to his creation (which I believe we certainly do, as the only animals who bear his image), but the part where we “reflect back the praises of creation to God.”

For one thing, I am not sure that it is true. Creation does not need us to praise God. It does a better job than us! Deer and rivers do not need us to verbalize the praise they owe to God. Are they not praising him now, on their own? Can we not hear them, when we listen? And if we can hear them, how much more can God their maker hear them, who is attentive to the smallest creature he has made, and sensitive to the glory of everything he holds in existence by the continual lending of his own essence! If we were silent, would not even the rocks cry out?

But my more important objection is that this expression of our primary purpose frames it such that we are the agents, and God the patient. We are made so that we would do X to God. (reflect the praises of creation). This is the same as my objection to the Westminster Catechism’s answer to that same question of the purpose of man: “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” In it too, we are made to do something to or for God, namely, to “glorify him.”

The verb “enjoy” escapes my criticism for the same reason the whole of the Catholic catechism’s answer does: the semantics of the word keep man as a patient. The Catholic answer is:

Of all visible creatures only man is “able to know and love his creator.” He is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,” and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created.”

To “share in God’s own life” is an infinitely more satisfying answer to the question of our purpose. After all, what good reason can any parent give for “why they had their child” except that they wanted their child to share in their love? How much more true of our Heavenly Father!

In discussing this with a friend after church, we came to the conclusion that our priesthood is only one-way, not two-way. We are priests of God toward creation, not priests of creation toward God. What about how priests represent the people before God when they offer the Paschal sacrifices? Perhaps the difference is that, in that, we are not offering anything created, but the uncreated Christ back to God; and thus, our sacrifice and our worship have come from him. That still keeps us as patients.

So the angled mirrors analogy breaks down. Mirrors are two-way reflectors, transparent and imageless; they merely reflect the image of something else to the viewer. But we are ourselves images with substance, imago dei, less like mirrors, and more like tangible paintings or icons. In his great love, he has deemed that we would show forth his glory by our likeness to him, as we follow him into the great journey of theosis, of entering into his divine life.

It’s true that this works out so that we do glorify God, and so that we do order creation in ways that please God (as I am pleased by my children’s works of art). But somehow, this is not our purpose, but the results of it, radiating out from the great love of God which remains relentlessly fixed on us, like a star-crossed lover, without any ulterior motive.

Catholic or Orthodox?

As for the question of whether to join the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox church, both have valid sacraments and priesthood. Both are, in that wonderful sense, true. But, despite the superior beauty of the Orthodox liturgy, and its exemption from the political and theological strife that plagues Catholics today, my heart and conscience can do nothing but desire to choose Catholicism. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the Orthodox can answer the liberal deconstructivist with equal strength, showing that there was an uninterrupted through-line of doctrine between Christ and the early patriarchs on which he anchors his faith. Even then, what would this argument be based on? Would it not be based on man’s knowledge and judgment? Would it not be examining the teachings of Christ, and the teachings of the patriarchs, and then saying, “Look, they are the same”? But the very act of doing so betrays a different epistemological basis: reason! The reason, mind you, not of the patriarchs themselves, but of the later theologians who contend for the connection, and, ultimately, to our own reason. Contemplate it honestly: at the root, is it not revealed to be the same way of arguing for validity than Luther or Calvin used?

But the answer of the Catholic Church against the modern who seeks to sever the line is not one of reason, though it is reasonable: it is one of faith in the promise of God: Jesus prayed for Peter, that his faith would not fail, and gave him the duty of strengthening his brothers, when he had returned from that place of humility and humiliation that would make him, in the inverted ways of God, most fit to be the exalted leader of the church. It is the prayer of Jesus that the Catholic clings to. It is the claim that Jesus promised never to let us go astray.

You asked me why I was convinced about the primacy of Peter, and I talked about the scriptures, yes. I wouldn’t have gotten there without them. (The irony is comforting, by the way, for, one who begins to perceive God’s patterns of irony ought to expect that the Baptist, in rejecting the church for the sake of the Bible, would end up both less like the church and less biblical, while the those who cling to the Church rightly would also turn out to be more biblical. But I digress.) But my reason is not merely one of reasoned argument from the scriptures. It is also one that appeals to my heart with a self-evidential power that I hope you see too: Jesus was to be taken back up into heaven, and he was to leave his people behind, subject to the constant attacks of the Devil, who would want nothing more, from the moment of Pentecost, than to literally and ecclesiologically tear them to pieces. He is our Good Shepherd. No Good Shepherd would leave his sheep defenseless. He would not leave them to their own devices. They are sheep, dumb and easily beguiled. Easy prey for wolves. No, if the Shepherd had to go way, he would leave a proxy to defend them all. He must, or he is no Good Shepherd!

Perhaps, a long time ago, I would have said, “Yes, yes, the Holy Spirit.” And that is true. But you and I both have come to a place where we find it insufficient that that Shepherd be merely spiritual. He must be of the flesh, because God’s people are of the flesh, and they need a leader who they can, literally, look to. They need a leader who carries a real staff and can smite real, physical wolves on the head. They need a leader who can speak audible words. We need a bodily leader because we are bodily people and we can only know God through bodies.

Now, if the Good Shepherd put a proxy in his place to guard is people from the Evil One, but that proxy denied that responsibility, and said, “I am only the first among the sheep,” or “I have only been put here as an example that the sheep should follow, but they ought to protect themselves,” or “I have only been given charge of these sheep, not those,” then he has shown himself to be a bad proxy, and the Good Shepherd, who knows all things, would not put such a proxy of himself in place, for he knows that he, in appointing such a vicar of himself, has responsibility to ensure that he will be faithful.

And the thing is, that only the See of Peter claims such leadership. Therefore it is not the claims of Peter that convince me, so much as the fact that neither Constantinople, nor Canterbury, nor any other See claims it along side him! They would claim authority, yes, but they soften it; they shrink back; they do not claim primacy to rival Peter, but say that there is no such primacy anywhere. The authority which makes the deviations of Francis so terrifying is also that which is necessary. (It must be theoretically possible for the Shepherd to stray; that is why it was necessary for Jesus to pray for him, that he would not. And that is why we must cling to that prayer in fear, but hope and confidence that through the cross, Christ won perfect efficacy in his prayer, and that, come hell or high waters, come many political scandals and near-collapses, the Church will come out all right, purified, and saved from vital error, safely home). So, you see, it is precisely the fact that the Orthodox and Anglicans and all the rest are safe, that they do not claim primacy, that invalidates them. For it removes the need for Christ’s prayer, and it means that Christ is not with us, in a vicar of his appointing, bearing the promise and power and responsibility of Christ himself to guard us with Christ’s own power while he is gone. It is because I need the protection of Christ himself, because I need him to be with me, bodily, to shepherd my poor and weary soul in a world filled with heresy and doubt and undermining philosophy, and where I sense the weakness and fickleness of my own intellect and reason. That is why I fall, with desperation, at the feet of Christ, and the one whom he charged to feed me. “To whom shall we go, Lord?”

But if this does not yet convince you, I will share another thought that goes alongside it: I see a heavenly vision of the time when all things will be restored, and Christ’s high-priestly prayer will at last come to fruition. It is like the vision in Flannery O’Connor’s story “Revelation” about the woman who realizes she is like the pigs, and in the end sees the train of people going up to heaven, in which the last are first, and the first last. As in that vision, all the schisms that have pained Christ’s church will be healed, beginning with the most egregious–the pentecostal micro-denominations, and then the baptists, then the presbyterians and methodists and lutherans, then the Anglicans, and last of all, the Orthodox will be restored to the full unity of the church. The Orthodox have been least in need of restoration. They are nearest to the fullness. Thus they too will be restored, though as with a lesser urgency. So do not worry, brother: even if you choose wrongly, and choose Orthodoxy (ha!), Christ will have mercy on your good reasons, and we will be drawn together at last.

But let us take care to guard our reasons for doing things, for if we convert to this or that church for the reason that it is “doing Christianity better,” does this not spring from pride? But if we convert, let it be in order to cast ourselves in need at the feet of Jesus our Shepherd, whose grace will prevail.

“That your faith may not fail”: The verse that shows Peter being given the Papacy

Joe Heshmeyer, in his book Pope Peter, makes several interesting arguments from scripture that point to the fact that Jesus gave Peter a unique role among his followers, one that equates to the role of the pope. Of course, the most common passages of scripture are the “keys to the church” passage and the “feed my lambs” passage; however, there is one that is rarely discussed, and I think, due to the deep themes of Christianity and the Bible, it may be the strongest one. It is from Luke 22:24-34, especially verses 31-32:

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat,but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

In this passage, the first two occurrences of the word “you” are plural. “Satan demanded to have [you all, the disciples] that he might sift [you all] like wheat.” However, then the word “you” becomes singular. “But I have prayed for you [Peter] that your faith may not fail. And when you [Peter] have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

The implication of this is that Jesus gave Peter alone the promise that his faith would not fail, and the charge to strengthen his brothers so that theirs wouldn’t either; in other words, he was the tether, the lifeline to keep them all from falling into disbelief or error. Imagine the apostles holding onto a rope dangling over the edge of a cliff, and we all holding onto them, grasping ankles in a long line descending through the ages. The rope is tied to the cross above. But Satan and his demons are flying about, attacking us, trying to pick us off of the rope and make us fall to our death, apart from faith. But by the power of the prayer of Christ, Peter is the only one whom Satan cannot pick off of that rope. He keeps holding on, with a divine tenacity (for it is God holding onto him, not the other way around), and what’s more, because he cannot be plucked off, he is able to catch those others who are falling, and help them to hold on.

I have come around to belief in the Catholic Church because of my great desire to be sure of my Christian faith. One one hand it was because of the accusations of modern critics of the Bible, the canon, etc. There is no reasonable basis on which to assert that we have the Bible and the Creeds intact, whole, reliable, and preserved from error, except that it was the beliefs of the church leaders, not the rampant schismatics and heretics of the early centuries, who were right about the teachings of Jesus; and likewise, there is no reason to believe that they were right, and not their rivals, except that God has promised that he would not let his church, as expressed by its visible organizational structure, go astray, as a whole. And if you believe that the church as a human institution was protected by God for the first three hundred or four hundred years, then the unanswerable question is, when did he stop protecting it so?

On the other hand, it is because I have become weary of poor interpretations of the Bible, which proliferate among Protestants of religious fervor like weeds among wheat. How can we be sure which of the disagreeing teachers is correct? How can we be sure that our own best interpretations are correct? The Protestant cannot answer that question either, unless he makes recourse to individualism, and reclines against the bosom of the spirit of the age, which whispers in his year, cogito ergo sum.

So this tether to Christ is precisely why I cling to the See of Peter. It is because I cannot believe that God would leave his people as sheep without a shepherd; a shepherd not simply of spirit, but of flesh, for we are people of flesh and we must have shepherds of flesh.

But why do I think this passage is stronger than the others that put Peter as the feeder of the flock and the rock of the church? It is because here we see the irony, the humility, the inversion of power which is the unmistakable hallmark of the kingdom of God. Protestants are afraid that the assertion of Peter as this tether is a power-move, a claim to exclusive authority rooted in conceit and pride. (Sometimes I feel that the Reformation taught Modernity how to talk that way.) But how can this be the case when Peter’s charge is unified with his humiliation, his very denial of our Lord? He is first among the apostles because he is also, in this sense, least among them. He is the reliable tether because nothing but the grace of God kept him from denouncement and denial. But Christ restored him. Who can challenge Peter when we see his calling and authority as wrapped up in his story the very grace-through-humiliation that is at the heart of Christianity? On a deep level, a Gospel-level one might say, this resonates with me and reassures me of God’s plan, and I can approach the authority of this man confident that it is God whom I am really approaching.

Aquinas on Forms, Part 2

This is an extension of the conversation mentioned first in my post “Aquinas on Forms.“

How did Thomas Aquinas’s Aristotelean view of Forms differ from that of Plato? Can he be said to have denied their reality, or made it possible, by the reasonable extension of his ideas, to have facilitated Nominalism, which did so?

In Question 84 of the Summa Theologiae (Part 1), ”How the soul while united to the body understands corporeal things beneath it,” Aquinas says that ideal forms exist, but cannot be known by human intellect without our coming into contact with material species of these forms, through which our intellect can understand them. The essential articles are Article 5, “Whether the intellectual soul knows material things in the eternal types?”, and Article 6, “Whether intellectual knowledge is derived from sensible things?”

In Article 5, Aquinas accepts the existence of ideal forms, affirming Augustine, but qualifies this by saying, “But since besides the intellectual light which is in us, intelligible species, which are derived from things, are required in order for us to have knowledge of material things; therefore this same knowledge is not due merely to a participation of the eternal types, as the Platonists held, maintaining that the mere participation of ideas sufficed for knowledge.”
In Article 6, Aquinas rejects the pre-platonic idea that we know all things by “atoms”/material ways only (~nominalism?); Plato, on the other hand, said that our intellect is “an immaterial power not making use of the senses”; Aquinas owns the “middle course” of Aristotle: “For with Plato he agreed that intellect and sense are different. But he held that the sense has not its proper operation without the cooperation of the body; so that to feel is not an act of the soul alone, but of the “composite.”

So he essentially says, “Yes, forms are real and it is by means of them that we know things, but not ONLY by means of them; we also need intelligible species (particular things/physical realities) to cooperate with them in order to produce understanding.

I see this to be the most “incarnational” view, the one most unitive of the heavenly and the earthly. This is what we Anglicans mean when we say that “We need sacraments because as humans we are both spiritual and physical, and to know God, we must experience him both spiritually and physically.” Indeed it seems to be thick with the very Incarnation of God, who knew that humans could only know him if he came to them in physical form! (In subsequent Question 88, “How the human soul knows what is above itself,” Aquinas says that human intellect cannot perfectly know “immaterial substances,” i.e. angels or God, for the same reason, that they cannot know things without material species.)

Interestingly, Aquinas is favoring Aristotle’s more nuanced position over Plato’s, but he is accepting ideal forms from Plato, and even more so, he is defending and assimilating Augustine’s statements on the issues, presenting them in the “objections” and resolving them in the “replies to the objections.” It seems that it matters to him not to contradict Augustine, much more than to not contradict Plato.

If the nominalists cited Aquinas to deny the real existence of universal ideas, their argument, as far as I can see, must have been “According to Aquinas, we cannot know ideal forms without participation in species; therefore, ideal forms are not real.” This makes no sense(!?) It is like saying, “We cannot know God the Father except through God the Son; therefore, God the Father is not real”! I cannot see any way the nominalists could have validly reached their conclusion from the starting point of Aquinas; it seems, rather, that they are an antagonistic strain of thought.

Mary, our heavenly mother

I just read this reflection in the Exodus 90 devotional:

“In God’s infinite wisdom, He desires that all men have the blessing of a mother (and father!). Unlike all other mothers who sin, fail their children in various ways and eventually die, Jesus has given all men an eternal and perfect Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who never fails to love and help those who come to her. Realize your deep need for her and grow in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary (CCC 963-975) and be a man who fulfills Mary’s prophecy, “All generations will call me blessed” (Lk 1:48).”

I realize that, in dealing with family-of-origin stuff, it is not only important to deal with the ways that our father has let us down, but also the ways our mother has. It seems that in Christian circles people are quick to say “Your Heavenly Father can be for you what your earthly father failed to be.” And amen. But I wonder whether there isn’t that other aspect of needing a fully healthy mother figure, that is almost never talked about as being something God provides!

So reading the passage above I was like “Maybe he does” 😮.

Just on a purely theological level: Jesus calls us brothers (Heb 2:11-12), because we share a “source” (Greek “all are of one”). It is clear that this means we share the same Father. Would it not also imply that, in some true sense, by virtue of our adoption, we also share the same mother?

Could it be that Mary, in her perfect obedience, and with her status among the saints of heaven as the Mother of God, can intercede between her Son and us with a feminine tenderness that we have heretofore done without, but need not?

Astounded by this, and hopeful.

Reaction to Francis on civil unions

Okay, here are my reactions to a few friends about Pope Francis saying he supports civil unions for same-sex couples:

Firstly, with all due respect, Pope Francis is a dunderhead, and he is wrong about same-sex civil unions. This is Francis’s typical loose-lipped pastoral sappiness and big-heartedness, inviting confusion when he should be leading his flock toward clarity in these times of moral upheaval. I don’t even think he is fully cognizant of the fact that when he says “civil unions” for “legal protection,” this could take no shape in our world today except something that was equivalent to marriage in certain untenable ways. By the way, in 2003 under Benedict the CDF was extremely clear on this:

“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself…Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase.”

As has been said, thankfully Francis’s opinions don’t matter unless he chooses to promulgate the legitimacy of civil unions ex cathedra, solemnly invoking his authority to interpret Scripture and Tradition. This would be unthinkable and would throw me into an existential crisis concerning my belief about the Catholic Church (which is, as a reminder, that we should all join the Catholic Church whether we like it or not because it is the One True Church). Short of him doing this (which I don’t think he will, for several reasons) what we have is a Pope with wrong opinions, not a Church with wrong opinions.

The real question that we’re asking is, does it follow from the fact that the Pope has the power to potentially go further, to promulgate such an error authoritatively, that we should deny the legitimacy of his authority? Should we, like Dreher implies, take shelter in Orthodoxy (or Anglicanism), who assure us that their patriarchs could not possibly promulgate a wrong opinion ex cathedra, because they do not have the authority to promulgate anything ex cathedra? Should we find comfort as Dreher does in fact that Orthodoxy is not “equally endangered by dodgy progressive patriarchs” because “the opinions of Orthodox patriarchs aren’t binding”?

My answer is that we should reject Orthodoxy and cling to Catholicism for the very reason Dreher perfers Orthodoxy: that it refuses to assert its authority to proclaim truth ex cathedra. I hold that no Church that is the True Church, and thus bears Christ’s promise to guide and protect it and subject the gates of hell to its authority, can ever deny that it has the authority to speak on His behalf, nor relieve itself of the solemn duty of interpreting the mind of Christ in each new age. Contained within this responsibility is the fearfulness of free will: the possibility of error. The radical possibility that the Church will blaspheme is necessary if she is to have the ability to speak Truth in power. That is why we must hold, trembling, to the promise of Christ, that he himself will never let his flock go astray, even when individual human Vicars skirt the edge. The Orthodox church and the rest are safe from this fearful possibility, but only by doing something even worse: denying their birthright and severing the vital connection of heaven and earth. For they deny that the anointing of God can remain on sinful and errant men. But if this cannot be, then we are all like sheep without a shepherd.

Aquinas on forms

The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a friend recently in discussion of Aquinas’s view of Platonic forms. It is well known that Aquinas assimilated Aristotelian metaphysics into Christianity, often by extending or clarifying the Platonic metaphysics which had sufficed to his day, largely from Augustine, who, as Aquinas says, was “imbued with the doctrines of the Platonists.” However, as I mean to demonstrate below, Aquinas did not do so by abrogating the Platonic “form” (a move that was subsequently made by Enlightenment moderns) but rather by assimilating them, I think more orthodoxly, into Christian doctrine.

I think the work you’re doing with tracing the philosophical origins of modernism back before the traditional period markers is going to be a real vital contribution. I totally agree that “the Enlightenment is the extension of late medieval nominalism,” and I love that you’re roasting the nominalists. Down with Ockham!

But I do wish to save Aquinas from the flames of your roasting. I would draw the line of blame between Aquinas and Ockham; if Ockham and the other Nominalists did “follow him,” it was not as protégés, but as robbers following someone down a dark alley.

I read one of your main lines of argument to be, essentially, that Aquinas deserves at least some blame because his philosophy lent itself, or inherently disposed itself (whether by his express intention or by culpable negligence) to the abuses of the nominalists, because it denied the real existence of Forms. You say that Aquinas “denies the existence of the Ideal Form of which individual material entities share an essence. The form/category is only something we infer from similarities of particular objects—not something actually there.” I agree that Aquinas would have taken an inadvertent first step toward modernism if he had denied the existence of forms (he would have been a sort of materialist, eh?); however, I argue that he did not.

In the Summa, I:15:1, Aquinas deals with “Ideas,” which is the Greek word which equates to the Latin forma. He asks whether there are ideas, and concludes that “it is necessary to suppose ideas in the divine mind,” since “in all things not generated by chance, the form must be the end of any generation whatsoever,” and, “as then the world was not made by chance, but by God acting by His intellect…there must exist in the divine mind a form to the likeness of which the world was made.” (He even goes on to say in Article 3 that “there are ideas of all things that God knows.”)

In his reply to Objection 1 he qualifies that “Aristotle (Metaph. ix) rejects the opinion of Plato, who held that ideas existed of themselves, and not in the intellect,” using this as an explanation for why “God does not understand things according to an idea existing outside Himself.” I sense that the temptation would be to point to this and say, “There. He says ideas do not exist of themselves. Therefore he doesn’t believe they are real, in an objective sense.” However, his statement that forms exist in the intellect cannot be taken to mean that they therefore do not really exist. Rather, the intellect is the part of rational beings which is capable of understanding things, and ideas exist within this dimension, within the “houses” of these parts of rational beings; but that they are relative or not real is ruled out by his claim that they exist in the intellect of God, because, if they exist in God’s mind, then they exist truly, and objectively, being independent of the intellect of any man.

So he says forms exist; they exist in the mind of God. But Aquinas might still be guilty of functionally denying them if he denied that men can know them.

But Aquinas says that men do indeed know the forms, or “eternal types,” when they know anything. In I:84:5 he says:

We must needs say that the human soul knows all things in the eternal types, since by participation of these types we know all things. For the intellectual light itself which is in us, is nothing else than a participated likeness of the uncreated light, in which are contained the eternal types. Whence it is written (Psalm 4:6-7), “Many say: Who showeth us good things?” which question the Psalmist answers, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us,” as though he were to say: By the seal of the Divine light in us, all things are made known to us.

Aquinas goes so far as to address Plato’s concept of forms, and how we ought to—indeed, how Augustine did—admit it, and yet modify it to be suitable to Christian thought:

As Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. ii, 11): “If those who are called philosophers said by chance anything that was true and consistent with our faith, we must claim it from them as from unjust possessors. For some of the doctrines of the heathens are spurious imitations or superstitious inventions, which we must be careful to avoid when we renounce the society of the heathens.” Consequently whenever Augustine, who was imbued with the doctrines of the Platonists, found in their teaching anything consistent with faith, he adopted it: and those things which he found contrary to faith he amended. Now Plato held, as we have said above (Article 4), that the forms of things subsist of themselves apart from matter; and these he called ideas, by participation of which he said that our intellect knows all things: so that just as corporeal matter by participating the idea of a stone becomes a stone, so our intellect, by participating the same idea, has knowledge of a stone. But since it seems contrary to faith that forms of things should subsist of themselves, outside the things themselves and apart from matter, as the Platonists held, asserting that per se life or per se wisdom are creative substances, as Dionysius relates (Div. Nom. xi); therefore Augustine (QQ. 83, qu. 46), for the ideas defended by Plato, substituted the types of all creatures existing in the Divine mind, according to which types all things are made in themselves, and are known to the human soul.

Here again, we see that Aquinas accepts the existence of forms, and holds that when we know anything, it can only be by the participation of our intellect in those forms; but he corrects Plato, or rather cites Augustine’s correction, by saying that forms do not exist in themselves, for then they would be creative substances (taking the place of the Creator God), but rather they exist in the Divine mind.

What do you think? Have I missed something here, or shall we clear Aquinas of the charge?

On Wendell Berry’s ‘God and Country’

Wendell Berry’s essay “God and Country,” in What Are People For?, is an expression of his angst as someone who is “devoted both to biblical tradition and to defense of the earth.” He complains that “Organized Christianity” has chosen to reject the care of the earth in favor of complicity with an ecologically exploitative economic order; it has chosen this perhaps inadvertently, but under compulsion, as a result of the very act of organizing: organizing compels an institution to become “dependent on ‘the economy'” and thus unable to raise a hand against it, even though its ideology may in theory contradict that oppressive order. The error of Organized Christianity is thus not that they have outright rejected ecological stewardship—Berry gives Christianity more credit than that. Rather, our error has been that we have failed to see the danger of organizing: “It is clearly possible that, in the condition of the world as the world now is, organization can force upon an institution a character that is alien or even antithetical to it.” That is why Christianity is now by-and-large hamstrung in the fight for ecological justice.

It is at the end of his essay, when Berry is forced to wonder about “how then we shall live” in light of this utter failure of Organized Christianity, where his angst and confusion are most evident.

I acknowledge that I feel deeply estranged from most of the manifestations of organized religion, partly for reasons that have mentioned. Yet I am far from thinking that one can somehow become righteous by carrying protestantism to the logical conclusion of a one-person church. We all belong, at least, to the problem…. But it is a [problem] we can set our hearts against [and] try with all our might to undo. We can ally ourselves with those things that are worthy: light, air, water, earth; plants and animals; human families and communities; the traditions of decent life, good work, and responsible thought; the religious traditions; the essential stories and songs.

It is presumptuous, personally and historically, to assume that one is a part of a “saving remnant.” One had better doubt that one deserves such a distinction, and had better understand that there may, after all, be nothing left to save. Even so, if one wishes to save anything not protected by the present economy…one is part of a remnant, and a dwindling remnant too, though not without hope…”

In a desire for humility, he hesitates to condemn Christianity, saying, “we are all a part of the problem,” but then, unwilling to compromise the moral unction, he contradicts this by upholding the good, and saying it is still possible to reject what is evil and cling to what is good.

In a desire for humility, he hesitates to separate himself from Christianity, saying, “we should not think of ourselves as a remnant,” and worse still, that there may “be nothing left to save”; but he cannot thus abandon hope, and he contradicts himself, saying, “we are indeed a remnant, and there is still hope.”

It is Berry’s unrelenting moral conscience, and the grace given to his soul by God, that forbids him to relent his wrath against Organized Christianity. Yet it seems that Berry has failed to find among its manifestations one faithful branch who has “not bowed the knee to Baal,” and this makes him most unfortunate, for his faith is thus rendered homeless; he is left adrift, unable, like Noah’s raven, to find any place to alight. Berry would be the first to tell you that without a home—a real, earthen one—one cannot live.

Would that he would hear the voice of God, “I have reserved for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee,” for this is the voice of hope—a hope not, as Berry rightly critiques, “disembodied,” but embodied in men. We must believe that God has not left his church. And this is where I believe Berry’s ecclesiology, and his culture, fail him. They have kept him from knowing that there is indeed a branch faithful to ecological stewardship. It is the Catholic Church, who from Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si has preached against ‘the economy’ which he so rightly fears and hates.

This branch, sustained by the grace of the Spirit of God in its faithfulness to all that is good and its opposition to all that is evil, is the spiritual home for all who suffer under that contradiction. May all of us rise to join Berry in his unrelenting moral honesty, and may we together with him find a home and a rest for our souls in the Ark of the Church, that our souls may be protected and cultivated, as we protect and cultivate the earth.

Success before purpose?

A student asked me today, following a reflective assignment, whether it is possible for a person to be successful as if by accident, without choosing to do the right thing with a knowledge that it was the right thing or without a sense of purpose in the choice, but rather as a sort of random choice. In other words, could it be that a person could be successful without knowing his purpose? Here is my reply:

Darren, you are describing a situation like the story I mentioned in class called “It’s a Wonderful Life” (the Christmas story with the old man angel). In this story, the man (George Bailey) made the choice to be successful (to be loyal to his town and raise a family), even though he did not KNOW that this choice made him successful (he was still wishing to travel and felt “trapped” by his town and his family).

So, you are saying, “Wasn’t he successful before he knew his purpose?”

In some way, yes, I believe he was.

But I believe the story teaches a deeper lesson: Although George chose the right thing, he did not LOVE it: He did not see it and accept it as his real purpose. (Because, to love something is to make it your purpose, your dream.) And that refusal to love the good things he chose made him deeply unhappy. Where did that unhappiness lead him? To a bridge on Christmas eve, ready to jump off. Can we say that anyone who kills himself was truly successful?

So I guess that someone can begin to be successful even before they realize it. But if they refuse to want it, to accept it as their purpose…if they refuse to LOVE it…that success will become failure. I think there are times in each person’s life when they have to choose whether to love like that or not, and I think those moments define the person.

[And, a note to self: it is these moments that crop up time and again in Flannery O’Connor stories, and in Dostoevsky, and perhaps in every good story…]