God So Loved The World

Crucifixion is the most horrific and torturous type of death, perfected by the Romans, to inflict the maximal amount of pain upon the one crucified. This execution consisted of a person being affixed to the cross by having a single nail driven between both of his feet, and one nail in each of his palms or wrists. The person is thus hung in a manner in which the downward force makes it immensely difficult to allow air into the lungs, leading to death by asphyxiation. The only way to stop the immense feeling of suffocation is by pushing up on the nails in your hands and feet, causing excruciating pain, in order to allow the slightest bit of oxygen to flow into your lungs. When the Romans were feeling merciful, they smashed the victim’s legs with a giant mallet in order to speed up the agony. And, yet, Christians believe that God the Father sent his only begotten Son, who is innocent and free from all sin, into the world for the specific purpose of dying on the cross for the salvation of guilty and sinful men. ...

Continue reading my most recent article, The Providence of God and the Cross of Christ, over at Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Charity As A Political Virtue

 

Now one can love the good of a city in two ways: in one way to possess it, in another that it might be preserved. If someone loves the good of a city in order to have and own it, he is not a good political person, because in this way even a tyrant loves the good of a city, in order to dominate it, which is to love oneself more than the city. He wants this good for himself, not for the city. 

But to love the good of the city that it might be kept and defended, this is truly to love the city and this makes a person a good political person, so much so that some expose themselves to the danger of death and neglect their private good in order to preserve or increase the good of the city. In the same way, to love the good that is participated by the blessed, to love it so as to have or possess it, does not establish the right relation between a person and blessedness, because even evil people want this good. 

But to love that good according to itself, that it may remain and be shared out and that nothing be done against this good, this gives to a person the right relation to that society of the blessed. And this is love [caritas] which loves God for his sake and the neighbors, who are capable of blessedness, as oneself.

-St. Thomas Aquinas, De Virtutibus, 2.2 c.  

Modernity: How Did We Get Here?

As a Catholic looking at Modernity, provided that one is aware of the goings-on around him, the world can seem like a pretty messed up place. And it is. Original Sin has radically effected the state of the world and there continues a constant battle against personal sin throughout the history of man. One of the effects of sin is the darkening of the intellect. That's right....sin makes you stupid! Throughout Christian history, however, there have been thinkers who, aided by the supernatural grace of God, have risen above this ignorance of the intellect to soar to great heights. The most famous of these was St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) who, building off of the great pre-Christian thinker Aristotle, systematized the union of faith and reason unlike anyone before or after. Yet, shortly after the death of Aquinas, the Aristotelian-Thomistic approach to the world (i.e. the via antiqua) was subverted, leading us into the via moderna. One of the first casualties of modernity was the rejection of the philosophy of being found in Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.

The root of the problem known as the via moderna goes back to John Duns Scotus (d. 1308) who was the founder of voluntarism and William of Ockham (d. 1347) who was the founder of nominalism. These two concepts (voluntarism and nominalism) replaced logos (contemplative reason) as the highest act of man and led to the idea of reason as will to power. Ockham and Scotus thereby influenced Luther, Bacon, Newton, Kant, etc., so that not only was the notion that there are greater realities above mankind done away with, being replaced by a mechanistic view of nature where man is the highest reality in existence, but also nature was seen as something to be controlled, manipulated, and conquered for purposes of humanity. Rene Descartes (d. 1650) started what is known as the "turn to the self", whereby the only certain things in existence are clear and distinct ideas (Cogito, ergo sum/I think, therefore I am). Everything else is to be approached with radical doubt.  After Descartes came Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), another key figure in this history. Due to him, modern man is egotistically centered on himself. Kant's categorical imperative is based on radical autonomy so that each man becomes the measure of the universe and the arbiter of law, rather than something objective outside of man, such as an infinite God. In Kant's world view there is no such thing as natural law, which Thomas Aquinas defined as the "rational creature's participation of the eternal law" (Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 91  a. 2). Most of the modern world is Kantian without having read Kant. Thus, if you know how to answer Kant, you are on your way to steering people back in the right direction.

If you are interested in learning more about the via moderna, what it is, how we got here, and how to counter it, here are some books I would recommend:

Metaphysics -Aristotle

Nicomachean Ethics -Aristotle

Summa Theologiae -St. Thomas Aquinas

The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society -Brad S. Gregory

The Last Superstition -Edward Feser

Socrates Meets Hume -Peter Kreeft

Socrates Meets Kant -Peter Kreeft

A Refutation of Moral Relativism -Peter Kreeft

Back to Virtue -Peter Kreeft

Faith and Certitude -Thomas Dubay

The Evidential Power of Beauty -Thomas Dubay

Answering the New Atheism -Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker

Reasons to Believe -Scott Hahn

Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists -Benjamin Wiker

Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700 -Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker

Christianity and the Crises of Culture -Joseph Ratzinger

Introduction to Moral Theology -Romanus Cessario

Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body -John Paul II

Another Sort of Learning -James V. Shall

Leisure the Basis of Culture -Josep Pieper

Thomas Aquinas And Mystical Theology

"Several authors, struck by the difference which they find between the writings of the great mystical theologians (such as Dionysius, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, Tauler, St. John of the Cross) and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, are surprised that we should expect to find in St. Thomas’ writings the principles of mystical theology. Some even consider St. Thomas, not a great theologian who from a supernatural point of view used Aristotle for the defense and explanation of the divine truths of faith, but rather a philosopher of genius who gave us an interpretation of the Gospel, a Christian Aristotle, as later on Malebranche was a Christian Plato.

    Anyone who accepts this view must lack an intimate knowledge of the writings of St. Thomas, especially his treatises on the Trinity, the incarnation, the Holy Eucharist, grace, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Certainly such a person never read St. Thomas’ commentaries on St. Paul, St. John, the Psalms, and the Canticle of Canticles. He must be ignorant of St. Thomas’ short treatises on piety, his prayers, his office of the Blessed Sacrament; and he must be unacquainted with the saint’s life, his nights spent before the tabernacle, his ecstasies, the eminent gift of contemplation which made him refer to his Summa as being only straw in comparison with what he beheld."

-Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation: According to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross

Sapientis Est Ordinare

“According to the philosophical acceptation of the word stultitia, namely, the opposite of wisdom, there is nothing more foolish than Materialism or Mechanicism. …If, therefore, there were no intelligent designer directing the world, the order and intelligibility existing in things, which science reveals to us, would be the effect of an unintelligible cause, and, in addition to this, our own intelligence would originate from a blind and unintelligent cause, and again we should have to say that the greater comes from the less, which is absurd.”

-Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and HisNature, vol 1.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree

"The point is clear in the case of Muhammad. He seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning, Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on the part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be. seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly."

-St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One: God, 6.4

Original Sin?

I was looking through back issues of First Things and came across this article by Fr. Edward T. Oakes who provides a defense for the doctrine of Original Sin a la Thomas Aquinas' Summa. Twelve years later it is pertinent as ever.

On Biblical Theology

“We speak then of the biblical theologian, and of biblical theology as that division of positive theology for which the materials are supplied by exegesis which is both scientific and guided by faith. But the very name of ‘biblical’ theology is somehow strange; it seems to be tautological. Any Christian of the Patristic period, of the Middle Ages, of the first millennium and a half of the Church’s history, would probably have inquired, ‘What other kind of theology is there?’ Certainly, St. Thomas would have been amazed at the suggestion that his Summa was somehow not biblical. As is plain the very first Questio, to him, sacra doctrina, sacra scriptura, and theologia were all—at least from his particular pedagogical point of view—one and the same thing. He aimed at systematizing and synthesizing, in easily intelligible form, the sum of revelation contained in the Word of God. And his magnificent accomplishment rests on a minute familiarity with the sacred text—in the Vulgate translation, naturally, and according to the exegetical science of his time.”

-Fr. Roderick Mckenzie, S.J., "The Concept of Biblical Theology" in Studies in Salvation History.