"The original Scholastic movement had not made the sharp distinction between personal experience and dogmatic theology which Lossky attacks. St Thomas specifically says that the same understanding which the theologian gains by reflecting on sacra doctrina exists in a non-theologian through the 'connaturality' or sympathy with God which charity brings about. In other words, an experimental intimacy with God, on the part of the saint or the lover of God, leads to an intuitive grasp of what the theologian comes to understand in a more roundabout way. In the Secunda Pars of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas's account of the theological virtues and of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit sets out to show in some detail how this can be so. Furthermore, the whole character of theology as a science in St Thomas is linked to the notion that by faith we have a share in the absolutely certain and manifest knowledge which God has of himself and which the blessed have of him by participation. However, a good deal of later Scholasticism, without necessarily denying ex professo these convictions of St Thomas, was cast in a strict deductive mould, dependent on a somewhat narrow propositionalist view of faith, differing markedly from Aquinas' own. A certain kind of neo-Scholasticism, accordingly, had difficulty coping with the contemplative, and subjectively engaged, aspect of historic Thomism. In brief, a breach had opened between theology and Christian experience."
Here at the Dominican priory where I live, there are two coffee mugs that I'm partial to; one of them is picture above. I like the shape of the handle, the thinness of the ceramic, and the amount of coffee it holds is juuust right. More often than not, it is kept hostage in my monastic cell so that, should I desire to imbibe yet again, "my" coffee mug is right there.
The mug is at its best when it is full of the good stuff. When it's been drunk to the halfway point, I begin to be sad, because it needs to be downed before it gets too cold. And when it's empty, my life falls apart.
Now, watch my language: When the cup is empty, it has the potential to be filled with coffee again. When it's filled with coffee and ready to be drunk, it has reached its full potential--it is actually full of coffee.
Between the mug's absolute potentiality for coffee (and my joys) and it actually being full of the Eighth Sacrament, there are degrees, as it were, from potentiality to actuality: Between buying the beans at The Bridgehead, to grinding them, putting the right amount in my Aeropress, brewing, then adding a bit of milk (don't judge me, Fr Kristopher Schmidt); once all that is done, it has reached its full potential; in other words, it is actually full of coffee. Then the cycle repeats after I've taken my first sip and my covetousness for coffee begins anew.
Potentiality in the Soul
We're often told that we "hold a lot of potential." A friend of mine, himself both deaf and blind, has begun doctoral studies in mediaeval history at the University of Toronto; I've seen his work and held conversations with him about, say, the Plantagenet Kings or the merits of Edward Gibbon's theory why the Roman Empire collapsed or how St Brendan the Navigator may have been the first European to have discovered what is now North America. Last year, someone who could name names and date dates was, as I told him, "not reaching your full potential." Now that he's passed his entrance Latin exam, his potentiality will continue to be reached, until (please, Notre-Dame de la Belle-Verrière!) he earns his Ph.D. degree. Even then, there's some potential left to be met: Becoming a professor or an author or whatever the case may be.
Where is his potentiality to be found? In his intelligence, obviously, and in a whole set of skills that go along with it. By putting his intelligence to work, he increasingly comes to actualise his potential.
The same can be said of auto mechanics, bookbinders, store merchants. In these cases, there is an innate skill with machinery, with handicraft, with enterprise.
In the previous post, I mentioned the "sensitive soul" and the "intellectual soul." For ease of conversation, let's call them "sensitive part" and "cognitive part." We have seen, too, how the sensitive part of the soul has to do with the emotional life, and the cognitive part has to do with the mental life. And we have seen, finally, how these parts of the soul need to be "ordered" properly for human nature to function properly.
We might say, rather, "for human nature to reach its full potential." Not quite, but that'll do for now--there's a surprise coming.
Each of these parts of the soul--the sensitive and the cognitive--have faculties. In his commentary on St Matthew's gospel, the Angelic Doctor relies heavily upon St Jerome. Following Jerome, he interprets the Parable of the Leaven at Matthew 13:33 in a very curious way: "The kingdom of heaven is like a leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal [or leaven or yeast], till it was all leavened." About this, St Thomas Aquinas says:
Jerome explains it as about the evangelical teaching, which a woman, i.e., wisdom, hid in three measures, which are the spirit and the soul, or the irascible, concupiscible, and rational powers (Commentary on Matthew, §1168).
Since these are essentially lecture notes, St Thomas' words need to be "unrolled," as it were. He speaks of "the spirit and the soul," as we talked about in the previous post. Bear in mind that the "spirit" refer to the mental powers where rationality takes place, and that the "soul" in the narrower sense means the emotions. Now watch how he unrolls the spirit and the soul: "or the irascible, concupiscible, and rational powers." The "rational powers," obviously, have to do with the spirit or the mind or the cognitive part. As for "irascible" and "concupiscible" powers, we meet something new: They belong to the soul.
To be irascible is to be liable to anger; to be concupiscible is to be pleasure-seeking. Liability to anger and seeking pleasure are faculties of the sensitive part of the soul. The question, then, becomes: What is the full potentiality of pleasure-seeking and being liable to anger? What good does it serve, like my mug's good is to be full of coffee? These are not inherently bad things: Liability to anger erupts when we sense danger to life and limb; it's the innate "fight or flight" faculty interiorly engineered to preserve life. Seeking pleasure surfaces when we're hungry or when we've reached puberty or when we want to be as snug as a bug in a rug; it's also a bit of interior engineering to preserve life.
So what's the "full potential" to the irascible and concupiscible faculties? Hold on, we'll come back to this.
Turning to the cognitive faculties, we ask: What are they? We're getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but I think you've earned it:
Now men are said to be perfect in two ways: first, in regard to the intellect; second, in regard to will. For among all the powers of the soul these are peculiar to man. Consequently, man’s perfection must be reckoned in terms of these powers. But the perfect in intellect are those whose mind has been raised above all carnal and sense-perceptible things and can grasp spiritual and intelligible things. Of such it is said: solid food is for the perfect, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil (Heb 5:14). The perfect in will, on the other hand, are those whose will, being raised above all temporal things, clings to God alone and to his commands. Hence after setting forth the commandments of love Christ added: be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt 5:48) (Commentary on 1 Corinthians, §79).
As we saw in the previous post, it is "spirit" or the "mind" or the cognitive part of the soul that sets the human race apart from the rest of the animal kingdom--as St Thomas said above. But the cognitive part of the soul, like sensitive part, is again subdivided into two faculties: The intellect and the will. The intellectual faculty knows, and the will commands. If we're going to be human, we need to mentally flourish and be purpose-driven. Our full potentiality lies here, too: To collect and use information and to put it to good use. Intellect and will.
But how do we actualise the full potentiality of irascibility and concupiscence, of intellect and will? My coffee mug isn't a coffee mug unless there's actually coffee in it; likewise, our human nature isn't completely human unless irascibility, concupiscence, intellect, and will are all put to good use.
Virtue: Actualizing Potential!
In Wisdom 8:6, we read:
And if a man love righteousness: her labours have great virtues; for she teacheth temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life.
These four are called the cardinal virtues, because our moral excellence hinges (Latin: cardo, cardinis) on these four virtues, or powers or strenths (that's what the Latin virtus means).
St Thomas applies each of these four virtues to each of the powers of the soul, following the classical tradition. But he has a very interesting way of interpreting Scripture in correlating the virtues to the faculties of the human soul, retrieving Matthew 4:12-22, in the Biblical story of the call of Peter and Andrew, James and John:
By these four is indicated the teaching of the four Gospels, or the four virtues; because by Peter, who is interpreted as ‘discerning’, the virtue of prudence is indicated; by Andrew, who is interpreted ‘manly’, or ‘most courageous’, the virtue of fortitude; by James, who is interpreted ‘supplanter’, the virtue of justice; by John, on account of virginity, the virtue of temperance (Commentary on Matthew, §376).
Common sense tells us which virtue guides which faculty: prudence guides the intellect to discern; fortitude guides irascibility to be courageous in the face of fight-or-flight instinct; justice does what is right, obviously something the will does; temperance tempers concupiscence.
Or, to visualise:
SENSITIVE part of the soul:
Fight-or-flight faculty governed by fortitude;
Pleasure-seeking faculty governed by temperance
COGNITIVE part of the soul:
Thinking faculty governed by prudence;
Willing faculty governed by justice
The virtues, then, help us to maximise our potential for excellence. Or, better, the virtues actualise our full potential to be human. Surprise!
Again using my earlier analogy, what coffee is to my (really, "our"--it belongs to the Dominican friars') mug, virtues are to the soul. To increase in virtue is to increase in humanity.
Have you noticed that a cruel person is called "inhumane" and where abandoned pets are cared for by good people is called the Humane Society? The way we use language speaks what we innately know about being good, about being human. That's why it's a mistake to excuse inexcusable behaviour by saying "Well, I'm only human"--because to behave inexcusably is to be unvirtuous and, therefore, less-than-human. In fact, that's what we mean by "vicious"--having vice, which is the opposite of virtue.
"But it's so hard," you may object.
Of course it is! But we'll talk about that in the next post.
I shall be entirely useless if none of my training were to be indigestible to lay believers; Pope Francis is correct in criticising "desk-bound theology"--
The Church, in her commitment to evangelization, appreciates and encourages the charism of theologians and their scholarly efforts to advance dialogue with the world of cultures and sciences. I call on theologians to carry out this service as part of the Church’s saving mission. In doing so, however, they must always remember that the Church and theology exist to evangelize, and not be content with a desk-bound theology (Evangelii gaudium, n.133).
For this reason, this post (and a few of my previous ones) seeks to make digestible some of the points of my research; my Dorktorvater told me--in essence--that he hopes the way I gave my answers at the comprehensive examination isn't the way I would preach or catechise! True, true.
That being said, this post will explore humanity in its three parts--the "tripartite human nature" as it's sometimes called--namely "body," "soul," and "spirit." We have heard this phrase many times, particularly in the apostolic writings of the New Testament:
May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess 5:23);
For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow... (Hebrews 4:12).
St Paul's line to the Church at Thessalonika has become classic; the passage from Hebrews is a more fleshed-out (pun intended!) way of saying the same thing, except "body" has been replaced with "joints and marrow."
The question, though, is a straightforward one: What is the difference between "soul" and "spirit"? In conversational language, we speak of the "spiritual life" and "spiritual growth," but we refer to "my soul" and to "the salvation of souls." How do bodies and souls and spirits differ from each other?
"Body"
Let's begin with the obvious. The "body" is simple enough: It is the organic matter, the "flesh" of which we are made: skin covering organs and bones. It is the matter of human nature, but here we mean it in a narrower sense than merely the "stuff" of of our makeup. In the language of the New Testament, "body" is σῶμα (sṓma) is contrasted with "flesh," σάρξ (sárks) in that the former has the flavour of pointing towards the whole person, whereas the latter tends to point to the material aspect of the person. This is simplifying things a bit, but it'll have to do for our purposes.
In my dictionary of words used by St Thomas Aquinas, corpus is given for "body" and it has the meaning of "either in the physical sense as material, or mathematical as tridimensional, frame, synonym of elementum, the opposite of spiritus" (Deferarri, 247). "Flesh," on the other hand, in Latin, is related to the word for "meat," namely caro, carnis, "(1) flesh in the proper sense of the word, the opposite of spiritus, (2) flesh in the improper sense of the word, carnal inclination, carnal disposition of man, also the opposite of spiritus (Deferarri, 133).
In both cases, they are contrasted with "spirit."
"Soul and Spirit"
Now we can get onto St Thomas' exegesis of 1 Thessalonians 5:23, wherein he distinguishes between "soul" and "spirit"--
For it should be realized that these two elements do not differ essentially, but only by reason of the powers present in them. There are certain powers in our soul which are linked to bodily organs, such as the powers of the sensitive part of the soul. And there are other powers which are not linked to bodily organs, but function apart from the body, insofar as they are the powers of the intellectual part of the soul. The latter powers are regarded as spiritual powers in that they are immaterial and separated in some manner from the body in that they are not functions of the body but are referred to as the mind. Be renewed in the spirit of your minds (Eph 4:23). Yet it is called the soul insofar as it animates the body, for this is proper to it (Commentary on 1 Thessalonians, , §137).
"Soul" and "spirit" are not different things; rather, they are different functions within the one thing. Here is where we need to keep our vocabulary like ducks in a row: "soul" can mean the whole spiritual aspect of human nature; in a narrower sense it can also mean a certain function in contrast to the function of the "spirit."
Notice that St Thomas speaks of the "sensitive part of the soul" and then the "intellectual part of the soul." Both the "sensitive part" and the "intellectual part" are in the soul, but, as he said, "[t]he latter part [= "intellectual part"] are regarded as spiritual powers...[and] are referred to as the mind." In other words, the "spirit" is the cognitive part, the thinking and willing part. St Thomas cites Ephesians 4:23 to demonstrate this: "...and be renewed in the spirit of your minds..." Calling attention to the hinge "of," he compares it to "...by putting off the body of flesh..." In other words, "spirit of your minds" relates 'spirit' to 'mind,' just as "body of flesh" relates 'body' to 'flesh,' no less than the "pages of a book" relates pages to books, or "people of the crows" relates 'people' to 'crowd.' There is a sense of 'symmetry' in the definition. Hence, in his Commentary on Ephesians (§243) St Thomas wrote:
Or spirit could refer to the rational spirit and would be identical with our mind, similar to the expression: in despoiling of the body of the flesh (Col 2:11), that is, the body which the flesh is. Likewise here, in the spirit of your mind would refer to the spirit which the mind is. He would qualify it in this way since there is another spirit within us, differing from the mind, and which is common to both us and the beasts.
So the "spirit" refers to the mind. This is why, then, we read about Jesus:
And immediately Jesus, perceiving [ἐπιγνοὺς] in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves... (Mark 2:8).
The scribes were thinking to themselves, but "in His spirit" Jesus was able to "perceive": The Greek verb here means "to know exactly, to recognize" (Strong's #1921), clearly an operation of the mind, a mental operation.
Before we talk more about the "soul" in the sense of the "sensitive soul," let's look at the next paragraph of St Thomas' commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where he explains how one is "blameless" in all three parts of human nature:
Paul speaks here in a specific sense. Now there are three elements involved in sin: reason, the sensitive appetite, and the actual actions of the body. Paul is anxious that all three of these areas be free of sin. Since he wants reason to be free of sin, he says: that your whole spirit, that is, your mind, may be preserved. For in every sin, reason is corrupted in the sense that every bad person is in some way ignorant. There should be no sin in the sensitive appetite either, and Paul refers to this when he says: and soul. Nor should there be sin in the body, and so Paul adds: and body.
To be "blameless" in "spirit" is to be blameless in our "reason" or the mind, that is, in our habits of thinking. This is why we pray in the Confiteor at Mass, "I confess to almighty God...that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts..." (The Order of Mass, 4). To be "blameless" in "body" has to do with "the actual actions of the body," the things we do--where we go, how we (mis-) use our hands, how we (mis-) use our voice. Again, as we confess at Mass, "...that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do..." Thus the elements of "reason" and the "actual actions of the body" involved in sin. What about the "soul"?
The "soul" (in the narrower sense, that is, in contrast to "spirit," rather than the larger sense which includes both) is the seat of the emotional life or, more properly, the "passions." This is why St Thomas referred it as the "sensitive appetite." Hence St Thomas wrote that "[t]here should be no sin in the sensitive appetite..."
Experience tells us that when our passions are "inflamed," we are enticed to sin, like when I drive by a billboard featuring the very large and shapely "St Pauli girl" on the highway. This is at the heart of the saying, "Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment." We're going to come back to this.
Hence St Peter, several times, speaks of how the Christian ought to no longer allow his or her passions to enslave him or her:
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance... (1 Peter 1:14);
Beloved, I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11);
...so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer by human passions but the will of God... (1 Peter 4:2);
...by which he has granted us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4);
...and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority... For, uttering loud boasts of folly, they entice with licentious passions of the flesh men who have barely escaped from those who live in error (2 Peter 2:10, 18).
In these passages, St Peter makes clear that the "passions" are self-destructive and are related, somehow, to ignorance. Again, "Do not let your emotions cloud your judgment." He also contrasts the "passions" with divinization and doing the will of God. This brings us to our last point: The ordering or hierarchy of the soul's functions.
Spirit > Soul > Body
If you're in the habit of watching Big Bang Theory you will notice--especially in its earlier seasons--that Dr Sheldon Cooper appears to be almost entirely aloof when it comes to sex. The implication, clearly, is that his intelligence finds such satisfaction with the "life of the mind" that he has little use for sex beyond what's practical, that is, to propagate the human species. On the other hand, his intensely cerebral life has made him rather insensitive to his friends and acquaintances. Whoever wrote the series, I dare to say, was an 'anonymous Thomist,' to paraphrase Karl Rahner!
In contrast, consider people in your lives who maybe wholly given over to sexual pleasures. Experience tells us that they tend to be, on the whole, dullards, because "venereal pleasures" (as St Thomas calls them) tends to "override" the pleasures of the intellectual life. (Is it any wonder that Alfred Kinsey was an utter boor?)
It is for this reason that, in St Thomas' system, the spirit or the mind or the intellectual part of the soul holds first rank, because how we think ought to govern everything else. This is why he calls prudence the "charioteer of the virtues," but we'll look at that closely in the next post. Hence Catholic doctrine teaches that, with the introduction of sin, the "integrity" of our first parents was lost; in other words, whereas before sin, reason governed our emotions, but after sin emotions became 'passionate' and governed, or rather enslaved, our reason. Experience tells us this, too: Nobody sins because they've decided it was a good thing to do; rather, we sin because we get excited about something, with excitement gaining the upper hand over thinking. "Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment."
The contemporary implications of this are enormous. How many times have we heard someone explain their point of view by saying "I feel that..." rather than "I think that..." Emotions are good, but they don't think. (Believe me, I've tried that in high school algebra: "I feel the answer is 'c'" never got me an 'A'!
This is why, in his commentary on Hebrews, St Thomas explains that the Word of God cleaves between the "soul" and "spirit"--in order to re-set and re-order the priority of thinking over emoting; as a two-edged sword, that is, very sharp and piercing, it evenly slices between "soul and spirit," that is, between the emotional life and the intellectual life, and "joints and marrow," that is, the bodily life:
The Word of God effects and distinguishes between all those divisions and species, namely, how the sensibility is distinguished from reason; also, the species of the same sensibility in itself; also, the species of the function of reason, and what arises in the rational soul from the consideration of spiritual and earthly things (Commentary on Hebrews, §222).
This is why in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ did not allow His emotions to override His thinking. We will explore this more fully in future post, but it suffices for now to highlight the steps Christ took in order to maintain the correct "ordering" of His soul's powers:
"Now is My soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, for this purpose I have come to his hour. Father, glorify thy Name! (John 12:27).
This is how St Thomas unpacks this single, yet enormous Biblical verse:
And so the soul of Christ was troubled in such a way that its perturbation was not opposed to reason, but according to the order of reason... (Commentary on John, §1651).
The full quote is too long to include here, but I will summarise how, according to St Thomas, the Lord Jesus Christ maintained the correct ordering of the soul as an example for us.
Fear (the emotion) makes one take counsel; i.e., He turns to reason in order to pacify His emotion: "And what shall I say?"
Christ rhetorically asks, on the basis of his sensitive soul, "Father, save me..."
Christ answers His own rhetorical question, "For this purpose I have come...", thus subordinating his emotions to his reason;
Finally, a correct prayer is devised: "Father, glorify Thy Name!"
Therefore, to speak of the "spiritual life" we mean, in part, to speak of the life of the 'whole soul' guided by the 'spirit of our mind,' which is constantly being "renewed" according to God's purpose. "Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment," yes, but: "Don't let your judgment cloud the will of God."
This is why, for example, the preservation of the liberal arts was once the domain of monastics: Both Hugh of St-Victor and John of Salisbury wrote an extensive treatise on classical learning and, later, St Albert the Great's sanctity owed a great deal to this mental prowess on account of his scientific achievements; Thierry of Chartres wrote a commentary on Boëthius' On Arithmetic and the Cathedral School he was affiliated with furnished Europe with scholars-clerics of renown--not just for their learning but, concomitantly, for their piety. The "unflappability" with which St Bernard of Clairvaux could write about the very suggestive themes of the Song of Songs owes to the mental training in intellectual delights so prevalent in monastic culture. This is at the heart of the Dominican charism of intelligence and holiness going hand-in-hand.
And that is why, equally, there is a decline in contemporary education: Feelings, emotivism, or more precisely, the passions have the weightier say, making us less-than-intelligent and, thereby, less-than-human.
In a subsequent post, we will look at how simply 'having' a body, soul, and spirit is insufficient to be human, and how the virtues, in fact, humanize us.
"Revolutionaries are always in the wrong, since, in their juvenile fervor for everything new, in their hopes for a better future, and a way of life built on justice, they always base themselves on theories that are abstract and artificial, making a clean sweep of living tradition which is, after all, founded on the experience of centuries.
"Conservatives are always wrong, too, despite being rich in life experience, despite being shrewd and prudent, intelligent and skeptical. For, in their desire to preserve ancient institutions that have withstood the test of time, they decry the necessity of renewal, and man’s yearning for a better way of life.
"Both attitudes carry within themselves the seeds of death. Is there, then, a third way? Another destiny for society than of always being subject to the threat of revolutions which destroy life, or reactionary attitudes which mummify it? Or is this the inevitable fate of all terrestrial cities, the natural law of their existence
"In fact, only in the Church can we find both a Tradition that knows no revolution and at the same time the impetus towards a new life that has no end. Her theory (understood in the true sense of the word, namely 'vision') is based on a constant experience of Truth. Which is why she is in possession of those infinite resources upon which may draw all who are called to govern the perishable cities of this world."
An acquaintance of mine, who is endlessly attending workshops and formation programmes in pastoral theology has, more than once, articulated this or that article of faith, only to wave his right hand dismissively and exclaim, "But that's just theology."
Conventional wisdom tells seminarians and young priests that the laity do not want to hear "doctrine" preached in the liturgical homily, to say nothing of the rarity of clerics bringing their seminary knowledge to the ordinary believer in the pew.
Perhaps worst of all, it is not uncommon for the most (reputedly) brilliant theologians to be the least "devout"--I have had the misfortune of meeting some of my heroes, validating a certain proverb.
Another Testimony
My conversion to Holy Catholicity was largely a cerebral one; I engorged myself on catechisms and theology books--the venerable Fr Fred Brucker once half-jokingly pointed out that I was reading "old catechism books" when I asked about those other forms of baptism, "of desire" and "of blood" when he was presenting on the newly-released Catechism of the Catholic Church. (Guilty as charged! I had just finished Fr John Laux's Chief Truths of the Faith published by TAN Books.)
One of my dear friends, Denise (who shepherded my late mother as she was coming into the Church) introduced me to the Madonna House Apostolate. It was there that I met Theresa Marsey, who would in time become a lasting influence in my life, a true "spiritual mother"--a veritable staretsa. During one of my frequent visits to their field house in Muskegon, Michigan, she initiated me into the world of Byzantine theology, especially by way of Archbishop Joseph Raya, Fr Alexander Men, Fr Dimiti Dudko, The Way of a Pilgrim and, above all, Catherine Doherty. Not only Eastern Orthodox theology, but especially Russian Christianity left a lasting impression on me because I discovered theology not as thinking but as living.
I learned that theology is an encounter with God, with the living God.
This is the essence of the Russian Christian concept of sobornost--the "unity of mind, heart and soul" that Catherine so masterfully explained in her classic book by the same name.
Latin Christianity, especially since the High Scholastic period but even more so from the seventeenth century (cf Yves Congar, History of Theology [Adelaide: ATF, 2019], 195ff), seemed to be more interested in an arcane, laboratory approach to doctrine, one that still infects theology and catechesis to this day. (Even the great Russian Orthodox theologian, Fr Michael Pomazansky, in his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, criticises this "Latin" tendency--all the while doing it himself!)
That was back in the mid-1990s. In the early 2000s, when I was studying graduate theology with the Dominicans in Berkeley, I had the grace of serving as acolyte at the Russian Catholic parish in San Francisco, especially during the Fridays of Lent. Since my research was taken up with the Cappadocian Fathers' approach to the Trinity, participating in the Divine Liturgy from behind the iconostasis was very much like overhearing the Council of Chalcedon; it was then, especially, when theology became prayer.
St Thomas Aquinas and Sacra doctrina
Many people--especially those who have not read him but are eager to parrot "modern" ideas--accuse the Angelic Doctor of being guilty of bombastic obscurationism, projecting a later, more decadent form of scholasticism on his writings. What is often forgotten that St Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa theologiae out of a certain impatience with the way theology was being done in his day--
We have considered that novices in this doctrine have often been hampered by what they have found written by various authors, partly on account of the multiplication of useless questions, articles, and arguments; partly also because the things such novices need to know are not taught according to the order of the discipline, but according as was needed for commenting on books, or according as an opportunity for raising a disputed question presented itself; partly, too, because frequent repetition of the same things brought weariness and confusion to the minds of the readers.
Endeavoring to avoid these and other like faults, we shall try, trusting in God’s help, to set forth whatever belongs to Sacred Doctrine as briefly and clearly as the matter itself may allow.
This he wrote at the very outset of his Summa theologiae, in the "Prologue."
The "multiplication of useless questions" and the "weariness and confusion in the minds of the readers" exhibits something deeper: Not just an itch for appearing educated and obtuse, but also letting on a nearly-empty spiritual life. It is not without reason that St Paul wrote "knowledge puffs up" (1 Cor 8:1). One need only to look at his simpler Compendium theologiae or his Eucharistic hymns to see a man of profound spirituality. Who would not be moved by his prayer Adoro Te, devote? Fr Jean-Pierre Torell OP has written substantially of St Thomas' interior life (cf Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol 2: Spiritual Master [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003]; Christ and Spirituality in Thomas Aquinas [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2011]). Fr Paul Murray's Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism, and Poetry (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2013) has also done a master job of unpacking St Thomas' mysticism.
The relationship between theology and faith was articulated very clearly in many places throughout Thomas' writings, when he explains that the object of "faith" are not the "Articles of Faith" (what we would today call "dogmas") but to the reality they point towards. To say, for example, "I believe...in Jesus Christ" is not to mean that one believes in a grammatical construct, but to the reality standing behind it.
Not only that, but the theological virtues of faith and charity are infused together when one becomes a Christian; faith is in the intellect and charity is in the will, with the intellect and will constituting an intimate symbiosis in the rational soul. One believes in God, and in believing, loves him; in loving God, one desires to know him more, and so faith is increased; with increased faith comes a more ardent love, and so on. This is the very principle of spiritual growth.
For a theologian to accumulate dogmatic facts but to be static in love is to cleave the intellect and will, thus introducing a deformity in his or her rational soul because God designed it in such a way that there would be an interplay between the two.
The remedy to this, again, is the Sevenfold Gift, in which Wisdom, the highest gift, resides in the will to buttress charity, but not without being led thereto by Understanding and Knowledge in the intellect to buttress faith. This is why, I am convinced, that the Second Part of the Summa theologiae is so important: Its structure of integrating virtues and gifts serves not only to bridge "God and Creation" to "Christ and the Sacraments," but more precisely to provide a roadmap for digesting dogma.
Dogma as Analogy of the Liturgy
Recall that, at the Mass of Christmas, we sing not of Christ who 'was' born but of Christ who is born, as if we were in Bethlehem. Recall, too, that at the Mass of Easter, we sing not of Christ who 'wasraised' but of Christ who is risen--now, today, at this very moment. This is the Anamnesis principle of the Sacred Liturgy, following the Jewish understanding of time: We don't recall events; they recall us. As we proclaim Scripture, we are contemporaneous with the events written; as we celebrate the Eucharist, we are at the foot of the Cross. The Lord's Day is a perennial Easter.
Dogma is like that. In believing this or that dogma, we are not merely cogitating facts; we are speaking of what is happening to us, right here, right now.
In believing "in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth," I acknowledge that my very existence owes to God keeping the universe in existence by his active power: "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) and that he is my Father (cf Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). When I say, "I believe in Jesus Christ...who was incarnate..." I do not simply articulate an historical fact but, rather, declare that He took upon Himself my creatureliness in order that I may be divinized. When I say "and His Kingdom will have no end," I am saying that the Heavenly Kingdom exists right underneath my feet and every place I leave behind, because my vocation is to advance the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I am His co-king! (cf 1 Cor 5:8, 6:3.)
In essence, the dogmatic canons of the Church articulate not only "facts" but declare those very graces empowering our Christian lives--yours and mine. The dogmas say something about you and me. It's not about what happened but about what is happening.
Overcoming a Spiritually Dangerous Dichotomy
Unlike Byzantine Christianity, Latin-rite Catholics have a terrible tendency to get liturgy "over with" as quickly as possible ("no more than an hour!") and to dumb down the richness of the celebration (when have we been to a Paschal Vigil that was actually a vigil?). The lazy approach to liturgy, I am convinced, owes to the spiritual deformity I mentioned earlier--of cleaving intellect and will in the rational soul. One can devalue dogma in two ways--by over-intellectualizing it, thus becoming "brains on sticks" (to use the famous expression of Fr Martin Farrell OP) in which case the palpability of the liturgy is reduced to verbosity, or by under-intellectualizing it, in which case the liturgy is becomes something of a glorified Oprah Winfrey Show where feelings are assuaged.
In case I'm being insufficiently blunt: To say that "dogma" isn't "pastoral" is to know little of both theological dogmatics and pastoral praxis.
When the dogmas of faith are integrated as grace, they become celebratory, and that is the very reason we celebrate the mysteries of Christ's life throughout the liturgical year--because He revealed the Father (cf Jn 1:16, 14:0-11) during the course of His life, which we re-live in the liturgy.
In fact, the sacred liturgy is dogma in dance.
This post is dedicated to my staritsa and spiritual mother Theresa Marsey of the Madonna House Apostolate in gratitude for her lasting influence in my Christian life.
I must confess, and give glory to God, because I was spoiled.
When I made the decision to become a Catholic, a venerable old priest at St Catherine's Parish in Ravenna, Michigan, gave me an inelegant but informative book, Instructions in the Catholic Faith, which I still have (and highly, highly recommend). It was chock-full of Scriptural quotations, with abundant references to the recently-adjourned Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (the book was published in 1971), and fairly traditional (it still warned that Father would be "very angry" if I showed up after the Gospel at Mass!).
I spent every spare moment I could studying this catechism, flipping through my New International Version Bible, and memorising the prayers at the back of the book (what's this "vale of tears"? What's "my last agony"?).
It wouldn't be several years yet that I was allowed to receive Baptism, Confirmation, and First Communion. But when I could, another priest gave me Anthony Wilhelm's Christ Among Us. But something in that book disturbed my spirit, and I knew in my gut of guts that it was somehow...inauthentic. I stuck with my yellow, cheaply-produced Instructions in the Catholic Faith, and "upgraded" to the New American Bible (which I heavily underlined), and, having sunk my teeth in the Word of God, I kept my jaws locked.
That was around 1992. When the Catechism of the Catholic Church came out, our parish priest (and my personal hero) Fr Fred Brucker took us through the entire book, giving us "the framework" of the Church's teachings, he said. This was around the time my (late) mother was received into the Church. The wonderful lady who led the Catechumenate for my mother (hello, Denise!) gave me a wonderful book, Catholic And Christian, and my doctrinal diet was upgraded to steak and baked potatoes.
Not too long afterwards, my then-spiritual director, Fr James Wyse, provided me with an abundance of guidance on Scripture and doctrine. He once led a Bible study on 1 Corinthians and, one Lent, a "Soup and Scripture" on the book of Exodus. He also led a group discussion on the late Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk's Twelve Tough Issues, gently and patiently explaining some of the more challenging teachings of the Magisterium otherwise tiptoed around or altogether ignored elsewhere.
Eventually, opportunities to learn the faith in the parish waned. I will never forget sitting in the living room at home and listening to my mother express her sadness at being hungry for divine truth but not being fed--there was a parish mission and, hungry for more of the Word, we went, but came away even more famished. As my mother was recalling this miserable parish mission, she had to turn away her face to hide her tears.
Being bookish and a something of a loner, my solution was easy--to keep reading. Eventually we developed a group of solidly Catholic friends and met for fellowship and, before long, my theological gluttony served our joyous little group who wanted to know this or that about Holy Catholicity. (At one point, I even ordered and avidly read William Jurgen's The Faith of the Early Fathers--I don't think I was yet 18.)
Fast-forward to about five years ago. I was a rookie priest and was invited to speak at a gathering of believers who loved the Mother of Jesus. Before I was about to speak, the Holy Spirit stirred up something in me, and I spoke to this effect:
Before I begin, I want to offer an apology. Many of you, I am sure, have experienced belittlement from certain priests or deacons because of your love for the Blessed Virgin Mary. You were slighted for praying the Rosary or treated harshly when you asked to hear a word about Jesus' Mother from the pulpit. I want to say, simply: I am very sorry that you had to endure this.
Halfway through, about three-quarters of the people were in tears. One by one, they shared their own experience of being verbally mistreated by clerics simply because the loved the Lady through whom the Holy Spirit enfleshed the Eternal Word (Mt 18:19, 20; Lk 1:35).
The supreme irony in all of this is that, in at least two places, the documents of the Second Vatican Council speaks of "preaching" and "teaching" as the priest's first obligation--even prior to celebrating the Sacraments. (And, no, homiletics do not entirely fulfill that obligation.) In other words, in the name of the Council, the express wishes of the Council was often set aside. (That being said, I bought my first copy of The Documents of Vatican II when I was 19 or 20, at the Pauline Bookstore in Upper East Manhattan. I was flabbergasted at the dissonance between what I read in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and my general experience of liturgical celebrations.
So, what's a spiritually famished Catholic Christian to do?
Befriending the Indwelling Holy Spirit
Once, when I was still living at home, I was about to pass the living room when my mother called me in. She was sitting in her blue recliner and exuding joy on her face.
"Matthew! I just thought of something!"
So I said, "What is it?"
Then my mother replied, "Godis love! It just came to me--God is love!" She was beside herself, but in a good way.
Since I'm a typical, insensitive male, I said, "Well, yeah, he is. It's in the Bible!" I was thinking of 1 John 4:8 and 16. When I told Mom this, she balked: "I didn't know that! It just came to me!"
And I didn't doubt it for a moment. In the same epistle, the holy Apostle John also said that
...his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him (1 Jn 2:27).
Mom knew that "God is love" because the Holy Spirit indwelling her made that clear.
My research, as you know, is entirely taken up with the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. What I find astonishing is how little a role it plays in Catholic faith-formation. Even Confirmation preps talk little--if at all--about it, and usually nothing beyond a mere list. I have become not only convinced, but convicted that the Seven Gifts is paramount for developing a Biblically and doctrinally sound mind.
Of the Seven, there are four intellectual gifts: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, and Knowledge, which give us "the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16):
Understanding means to grasp or to apprehend the truths of the Faith. Have you ever had an "Aha!"-moment, when something became suddenly clear to you? That was the gift of Understanding.
Wisdom is a loving, contemplative gaze, when we bask in the Lord's presence after, say, being touched by a Scripture that speaks directly to us.
Knowledge is when we relate creation to a divine truth. When I trudged up several dozen flights of concrete steps with a sprained ankle, at night, in the rain, to see the Cristo Redentor statue atop Corcovado Mountain, I knew that it was an analogy of discipleship. That's Knowledge.
Counsel was all the rage when everybody had those webbed "WWJD" bracelets and asked, with the impulse of the Holy Spirit, whether an action was good or not on the basis of whether it was something Jesus would do.
So, what's a spiritually famished Catholic Christian to do?
When the Council spoke of the Sensus fidelium, she was by no means referring to a "democratic" method of discerning divine truth but, rather, was shining a light on those believers whose lives are fuelled and ruled by the indwelling Holy Spirit who display, by their lives, Biblical doctrine.
Why else do you think St Joan of Arc--a simple, illiterate girl from the backwaters of France--was able to confound her theologically expert Inquisitors when she gave that answer?
Since it is the Holy Spirit who is the "Spirit of Truth" and who "leads you into all the truth" (Jn 16:13). there are no two ways about it: Developing a relationship to the Third Person of the Trinity who indwells your souls, and remaining in the state of sanctifying grace is a non-negotiable if we are to be spiritually stalwart.
I would be remiss to not add that befriending the indwelling Holy Spirit happened to me in a powerful way when I experienced a Life in the Spirit Seminar (hi, Joe!).
Devouring the Word of God
Not only does the Holy Spirit lead us into the fullness of divine truth, he also causes us to remember the words of Jesus:
But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your reembrace all that I have said to you" (Jn 14:26).
How the heck is the Holy Ghost 'supposa remind you of everything Jesus said, if we don't take the trouble to first read Him? I cannot begin to count the times when a word of Jesus popped into my head when I was faced with some action or opinion which was anti-Christian, and that was not on account of my mental prowess (I'm actually terrible at remembering, to be honest). This was entirely thanks to the Holy Spirit ministering to me by bringing my attention to something I read in the gospels.
Since the whole Bible is, really, the communication of the Eternal Word, by availing ourselves to the divine Scriptures, we increase the storehouse of of the word of God in our hearts for the Holy Spirit to recall for our benefit--
When I found your words, I devoured them; your words were my joy, the happiness of my heart, because I bear your name, LORD, God of hosts (Jer 15:16);
It was precisely because Our Lady "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Lk 2:19; cf v. 51) that she was able to make Biblical sense out of the horrific experience of seeing her sweet Son crucified. The Word of God so buttressed the soul of Mary that she was "standing by the Cross of Jesus" (Jn 19:25) when every other mother in their right minds would have collapsed from overwhelming grief. Mary's intimacy with the Scriptures--in addition to being fully graced--was just that stalwart buttress that kept her standing.
Jesus said as much. When a listener hollered out to Him the praises of His Mother simply because she was His Mother, He replied, "Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!" (Lk 11:28). It is for this reason that the great St Augustine was able to pen these astonishing words--
So that is why Mary, too, is blessed, because she heard the word of God and kept it. She kept truth safe in her mind even better than she kept flesh safe in her womb. Christ is truth, Christ is flesh; Christ as truth was in Mary's mind, Christ as flesh in Mary's womb; that which is in the mind is greater than what is carried in the womb (Sermon 72).
When I was in high school, my classmates teased me (in a friendly way, I hope!) with the nickname "Bible Boy." But it did serve me well, because when I did not have anyone to teach me, I had recourse to the Word of God, and the Word of God has plenty to say to us, today. It is life's instruction manual.
Pray, Pray, Pray!
St Thomas Aquinas innovated when he defined the theological virtue of charity as "friendship with God." I also learned from a powerful encounter with Jesus late one night in Yonkers, New York, right at the corner of Shonnard and Broadway, that to know Jesus is to be in friendship with him.
Yet what friendship is there between those who don't communicate? That is why I have my "prayer chair" in my monastic cell here at the conventual priory, and my "spot" by the Ottawa River where I pray the canonical hours, read the Scriptures, and chew the Lord's ears with my thoughts, concerns, and joys.
The indwelling Holy Spirit gives us "access" to the Father (Eph 2:18); it is only him within who enables us to call God "Father!" (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6); it is also this same Paraclete who equips us to worship aright (Jn 4:23). In fact, we ought to learn to go beyond scripted, read prayers, and to speak to Lord in our own words, with intimate familiarity. By prayer, we move from knowing about God to knowing God.
So get crackin'.
Conclusion
The indwelling Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16, 6:19), armed with the Bible (Eph 6:17; cf Mt 4:1-11), and with the power of prayer (1 Thess 5:17), gives us everything we need to steer the ship that is the Church through the storms of this world that has elected to ignore that What Really Matters.
In my early years of theological formation, I took a course in moral theology given by a cleric who, clearly, taught in contravention to St John Paul the Great's Veritatis splendor. Though the previous professor of moral theology was dismissed on the grounds that his teachings were contrary to Church teaching, his textbook was, ironically, still being used. When I moved to the Dominican studium generale in Berkeley, I was permitted to transfer fifteen academic credits and, ultimately, opted to toss my previous course in moral theology and have a do-over.
And, boy, am I ever glad I did. It was taught by Prof Dr John Berkman--now at Regis College at the Toronto School of Theology--who all but tossed me (all of us students, really) into the deep end of the pool called the Secunda pars. In contrast to the dubious principles of the "Fundamental Option" and "proportionalism" I learned earlier, Dr Berkman introduced us to the system of virtues taught by St Thomas Aquinas.
That was back in 2006. Now, some fifteen years later, my doctoral research focuses on the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the soul of Christ; what is key is that St Thomas' way of doing "moral theology" (though it is imprecise to speak of the programme of second part of the Summa theologiae in that way) gives us a kind of "virtue-calculus" whereby we can crunch numbers, so to speak, in order to determine either the virtue or the vice of a given action.
What is often lost is that St Thomas had a pattern for explaining the virtues and vices in the "Second Part of the Second Part" (Secunda secundae for short). The pattern, in general, often looks like this:
Virtue (theological or cardinal) and their "variants"
Vices and their offspring
Gift of the Holy Spirit corresponding to the virtue
Precept or one of the Ten Commandments fulfilled by said gift
Again, this is a very rough sketch. What matters to our discussion is how, especially when it comes to the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, each of these virtues' treatment wraps up with a Precept (Aquinas' way of saying "one of the Ten Commandments). More significantly, however, is that close to these wrap-up treatments, one or more of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit is brought in to "wind down" each virtue's treatment, and a few questions after (sometimes none at all), the Angelic Doctor corresponds one of these Seven Gifts to the Ten Commandments.
Think about that for a moment. St Thomas is telling us, in essence, that the Ten Commandments is to be kept not by our own gumption but by the help of the Holy Spirit. For example, he tells us that the gift of Counsel aids the cardinal virtue of prudence in S.th., 2a2ae, q. 52, and five questions later, at q. 56, he tells us that the Holy Spirit counsels us to prudentially obey the whole Decalogue. To take another example, in q. 139, the gift of Fortitude is explained to infuse the cardinal virtue by the same name and, in the very next question, encourages us to obey the Commandments because "the Lord your God is in the midst of you, and will fight for you against your enemies" (Deut 20:3-4).
In other words, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit buttresses our souls in various ways to obey the whole range of God's law. This is exactly why St Paul wrote in Romans 13:8-10,
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the Law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the Law.
St Paul by no means is talking about the emotion of love, but the virtue of love or charity, the very same thing mentioned earlier in Romans 5:5, "...God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
The Decline of Theology in the Seventeenth Century
Fr Yves Congar OP, in his book A History of Theology describes the decline which took place towards the end of the seventeenth century, when "course manuals" began to replace the writings of St Thomas Aquinas. Amongst these changes, Fr Romanus Cessario OP, in his Virtues, or the Examined Life,notes that the "Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit" began to be detached from moral theology and was relegated to the more arcane and esoteric field of "mystical theology" around the same time. We can see this, for example, in the otherwise excellent Synopsis theologiae moralis by Fr Adolphe Tanquerey PSS, who says nothing about the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but instead discusses of it in his (otherwise excellent) The Spiritual Life: A Treatise on Ascetical and Mystical Theology. It is not really until Dominic Prümmer OP in his Handbook of Moral Theology that the Seven Gifts makes a reappearance, but only with the barest treatment.
This approach is wholly foreign to the structure of "Christian moral life" envisioned by St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologiae. It seems to me that, on account of this seventeenth-century deformity in theology, two problems arose.
First, it drove a wedge between "Christian morality" and "life in the Holy Spirit" because, as St Paul said, it is the indwelling Holy Spirit who assists us in fulfilling the essence of the Ten Commandments.
Second, in lieu of "life in the Holy Spirit," there emerged a multiplication of rules to follow, with a "method" of doing moral theology known as casuistry, or a case-by-case analysis of the moral permissibility, impermissibility, or neutral acceptability of a given act. What's glaringly omitted in the casuist approach to moral theology is the absence of factoring the Seven Gifts' operations in determining the moral excellence or baseness of a given act.
Nowhere is this shortcoming so obvious in the Church as the reception of St Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae proscribing artificial birth control, and that on two fronts. On the one, the sexual responsibility demanded in Christian matrimony was said to be "too difficult" and artificial birth control was offered as a kind of fail-safe; what was missing was the Christian married couple's surrender and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit's initiative in the exercise of his Seven Gifts, the very thing which enables Christians to live lives of moral excellence. On the other front, confessors often advised Christian couples, with respect to the magisterium of St Paul VI, to "pray and discern" about whether to obey Humanae vitae or not; the problem with this is that the Holy Spirit was made to be the very principle of a double-standard, guiding the teaching office of the pope in one way, but guiding Christian married couples in another way, despite the fact that the Holy Spirit is "the soul of the Church." A vague Pneumatology or doctrine of the Holy Spirit among many clerics added to the moral confusion as the Church struggled to respond pastorally to the Sexual Revolution.
Being Morally Excellent Today
My mentor and hero, the late John Cardinal O'Connor, once said that a danger of liberal democracy with its "one person, one vote" is that it came to be projected onto moral issues, as if "one person, one vote" could determine for me what I can or cannot do. As a result of this, moral issues have come to be something "voted" on, with the "majority" being the correct position. Subsequently, many within the Church have tried to observe what moral norms are in the mainstream and to co-opt it and to "Christianize" it, so to speak.
For example, the mainstream enthusiasm for "Environmentalism" has been interpreted by many in the Church as a viable point of moral reflection and thus appropriated--I have even seen First Communion prep manuals give a disproportionate amount of attention to environmental matters at the expense of the doctrine of the Real Presence. The same can be said of a whole range of "mainstream" issues ranging from sexuality to politics; it has not been unusual for me to encounter Catholic educators who simply take the cake of secular concerns and lather it with Jesus frosting and call it "Christian ethics."
And, of course, for "one person, one vote," the Holy Spirit doesn't have as much as a say.
This is what I mean when I describe the programme of many Christians as "building the City of God with the playbook of the City of Man." This has, in turned, served to push back the Lordship of Jesus, precisely because it is by the Holy Spirit's indwelling of believers that Jesus exercises His Lordship. By constructing a system of ethics apart from the Holy Spirit, we are building anything but the City of God but are, in fact, being contra-Christian.
We can begin, I would suggest, with a more robust, steak-and-baked potatoes Confirmation preparation that includes especially a teaching on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit that goes beyond mere bullet-listing to explaining what the gifts do and how to use the gifts in living supernaturally.
"Praise and worship" music evokes strong reactions, and I've heard most of them, ranging from fellow-seminarians railing against them as "not liturgical music" to parish music ministers saying we need them "to get young butts in the pews." What unites the two ends is how "emotional" such praise and worship music can be, and I would like to address precisely this--the question of "emotionalism."
More than that, I would like to look at it theologically and, more precisely, on the basis of St Thomas Aquinas' teachings on the structure of the human soul. Once we have gained some insight into Thomistic "Christian anthropology" we can evaluate not praise and worship music in se but the value of emotions in the believer.
The Parts of the Human Soul
St Thomas Aquinas taught that the human soul has three "parts": A vegetative, a sensitive, and a rational part. Sometimes he will say things like "the sensitive soul" meaning the sensitive part. Each of these parts have different functions.
The "vegetative soul" is what causes all life to need nutrition, to grow, and to procreate. We call these the three "powers" of the vegetative soul. Humans are part of all living things because they have at least a vegetative soul.
The "sensitive soul" has four "powers": self-movement, the "five external senses" (touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing), "four internal senses" (memory, imagination, common sense, and estimative sense), and the eleven emotions. We'll come back to that shortly. But, for the moment, we say that humans are also part of the animal kingdom (or "brutes" if you're a good mediaevalist!).
Finally, in the "rational soul" are the two powers of intellect and will (sometimes also called the "appetitive faculty"). This is what distinguishes humans from all living things--because we have a rational soul with an intellect which is interested in truth, and a will which is interested in goodness. More to the point, it is in our "rational soul" or the "rational part of the soul" where our being in God's "image and likeness" is to be found (cf Gen 1:26). It is in possession of a rational soul which makes is humans. When the early Church was hammering out the doctrine of Christ's "true manhood," it was hinged not so much on Christ's enfleshment or bodiliness, but on the fact that the Incarnation meant He also had a rational soul.
While we're on the topic, though angels have intellect and will, it is in fact improper to speak of them having souls--angels do not have souls. There is no such thing as an "angelic soul" (despite yours truly). Yet St Thomas Aquinas speaks of them as "intellectual substances"--but that's for another blog entry.
Back to the sensitive part of the rational soul. St Thomas Aquinas says that (1) there are eleven emotions (2) further subdivided into two parts, namely the irascible appetite and the concupiscible appetite. "Irascibility" makes us shun dangers to life and limb; "concupiscence" makes us to chase after desirable things. Therefore there are (3) five emotions in the concupiscible appetite and six emotions in the irascible appetite. They are as follows--
Irascible Emotions: hope, despair, courage, fear, and anger.
Believe me when I say that I am giving only the roughest outline, because I wouldn't be so heartless to explain the full package of St Thomas' doctrine of the human soul without offering a glass or ten of Hennessy's gin.
The Hierarchy of the Parts of the Human Soul
The order in which I described the parts of the human soul--first vegetative, then sensitive, and finally rational--are from the lowest to the highest, with the rational soul's intellect and will as the noblest part of woman and man. That's how God made us.
The vegetative part pretty much takes care of itself, but we do have a hand in it. The vegetative part needs food and--whether we like it or not--causes our bodies to be hungry. The sensitive soul may crave a juicy steak to feed our hunger. But the rational soul intellectually figures out how to get a juicy steak--perhaps by purchasing and cooking it, or perhaps by going to, say, The Keg. Our will then carries out the pursuit of juicy steak. This brings us back to the sensitive soul since locomotion is involved: Deftly using the knife and fork, we cut, put in our mouths, then eat. In doing that we enjoy the juicy steak, as the concupiscible emotion of joy suggests. As we eat, the vegetative soul's need for nutrition is satisfied.
Let's say I'm hungry, and I need a good intake of an assortment of vitamins. Since I have an intellect, I know that eating my glasses won't do. I also know that eating Doritos may be gratifying, but would not be very sustaining. My rational soul decides and carries out how to satiate my hunger.
A somewhat dull person might choose to eat junk food to sustain themselves (and I'm not talking about having "the noshes"), but an entirely stupid person might drink motor oil for sustenance.
In point of fact, stupidity and sin are correlated. When Adam and Eve sinned, the ordering of their soul was then disrupted: Whereas they were created with their rational faculties governing their sensitive faculties, an inversion took place such that the sensitive soul took over the rational soul. In other words, sin caused the emotions to rule the soul despotically.
This is why St Peter wrote of "the corruption that is in the world because of passion..." (2 Pt 1:4) and tells us to "not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance" (1 Pt 1:14) and that these "passions of the soul...wage war against your soul" (1 Pt 2:11). The old saying "Do not let your emotions cloud your judgment" is entirely Biblical and every bit as Christian.
The Cardinal Virtues and the Parts of the Human Soul
You remember--please God--the four "cardinal virtues," I'm sure: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. What's neat is that each of these cardinal virtues correspond to each of the "faculties" in the parts of the soul we can control, the sensitive and rational part.
In the sensitive part of the soul, the virtue of temperance is how we control concupiscence, that is, our desires. I may desire seven cups of coffee in the morning, but temperance tells me that six and a half are quite enough. The virtue of fortitude is how we control irascibility, as it 'fortifies' or strengthens us against dangers that face us, helping us to either flee certain situations or to confront them head-on.
We control the will in the rational soul by the virtue of justice, that is, "to give that which is owed" to others or to myself. (It does not mean "fairness"! And you catechists and Catholic school teachers, stop telling your students that 'justice = fairness.)
But the question remains: How do we know what is owed in justice? How do we know that "enough is enough" in temperance? Or that we should either fight or take flight in fortitude?
In a word, prudence, the remaining cardinal virtue, which governs the intellect. St Thomas Aquinas goes so far as to call the virtue of prudence "the charioteer of the virtues," because prudence rules over justice, temperance, and fortitude; more to the point, since "virtue" is the "means between two extremes"--that is to say, right smack midway between a vice in excess or a vice in defect--we need to be able to figure out those midpoints, and Mrs Prudence is perfect for the job.
The Infused Virtues: Where the Holy Spirit Comes In
As Holy-Spirit-filled believers, the same indwelling Holy Spirit works at the root of the soul's powers (concupiscence, irascibility, will, and intellect) in such a way that they infuse the virtues governing those powers to the point that they become supernatural.
When the Holy Spirit takes up residence in a Christian soul, he does this first by installing the theological virtues of faith in the intellect which turns our minds toward God, and by installing the theological virtue of charity in the will which causes us to cling to God. These two, in turn, engender the theological virtue of hope, again in the will, which causes us to stretch out our whole selves to God so that we can enjoy him in the next life.
At the same time, the Seven Gifts begin to work. Faith is buttressed by the gifts of Understanding and Knowledge, charity is buttressed by the gift of Wisdom, and hope is buttressed by the gift of Fear of the Lord. We won't get into these definitions just yet.
This is how the Holy Spirit begins to re-order our souls. By working at the root of the powers, Counsel buttresses prudence, bringing it to first place among the cardinal virtues, followed by Piety in the will, buttressing justice. Then Fortitude buttresses fortitude (surprise) but temperance is buttressed by Fear, but only in a secondary way.
The Holy Spirit thus "repairs" the soul's deformity as a result of sin by (1) putting God in the first place by the theological virtues and their corresponding gifts of Understanding, Knowledge, Fear, and Wisdom and (2) restoring the rational part to first place by prudence infused by Counsel and justice infused by Piety and (2) subordinating the emotions to the rational part by infusing fortitude with Fortitude and infusing temperance, again, with Fear.
What's This Got to Do with Praise & Worship Music?
The emotions, as we've seen, are natural to the human soul. Conversely, to be emotionless is unnatural. What matters is that they must be governed by the rational soul.
At the same time, while not necessarily always sinful, it is still disordered for the emotions to govern our rationality. We see this all the time with the "mob mentality" rampant on social media, where thinking is thrown to the wind and "emoting" rules the day. In fact, this mob-mentality whipping up into frenzy to the point of 'overriding' rationality is at the heart of paganism. We recall the story of Elijah's contest with the pagan cultists of Ba'al: "And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation" (1 Kgs 18:28-29). In other words, the Ba'alist religionists used their sinful passions at the expense of their rationality.
Contrast this with the earlier story of David, whose music soothed King Saul:
Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him. ...And David came to Saul and entered his service. ...And whenever the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him (cf 1 Sam 16:14f).
Somehow, David's musicmaking soothed Saul. But not only David's musicmaking, but also the prophets' after Saul was first anointed king over the congregation of Israel:
...as you come to the city, you will meet a band of prophets coming down from the high place with the harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre before them, prophesying. Then the Spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon you, and you shall prophesy with them and be turned into another man... (1 Sam 10:5-6).
This is not simply because Saul got worked up by the music. If we look at the Psalms for David, for example, we see an abundance of feeling, but only because they are in response to the wonderful works of God (joy, exultation), or in response to sin (sorrow, contrition). Thus, the feelings were in response to facts. Certain facts evoked feeling, such as the beauty of the Jerusalem Temple (Ps 84 [83]), gratitude for God's wonderworking (Ps 103 [102]), or the sorrow of having sinned (Ps 143 [142]).
We cannot reverse course on this one-way street: How we feel cannot create facts. Some people feel assuaged by reading astrological horoscopes, but that does not change the fact that the stars do not govern human destiny. I used to feel my way through my high school algebra tests, but I almost never got my mathematical facts right thereby!
Joyful worship and sorrowful repentance, in music, must arise out of those facts which are dogmatic. By sin, we have forfeited eternal life, and so we sorrow. By Christ's work of the Cross, He won for us pardon, and so we rejoice. "Religious passion" cannot invent dogmatic facts, but dogmatic facts can engender "spiritual fervour."
Granted "praise and worship music" are known for their catchy tunes, but we have to ask: Do these catchy tunes accent and highlight Biblical truths, or are they gratuitous? That would depend almost entirely on the person at worship.
To be perfectly frank, I find that Christians who have not been "baptised in the Holy Spirit" look utterly ridiculous when they sing "praise and worship music"--even if the acoustics are perfect. Equally, such music only makes sense if it's sung by Spirit-baptized Christians, even if their voices are discordant. Why?--because in being baptised by the Holy Spirit, the intellect is illuminated, brightly illuminated by those Biblical truths which bring us elation for all the wonderful works of God and even bring us "bright sadness" (to borrow from Fr Alexander Schememann) for having been derelict in our discipleship.
In closing, I remind you of the words of St Paul the Apostle who said
Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. ...Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice (Phil 3:1, 4:4);
Rejoice always! (1 Thess 5:16).
I am genuinely baffled by those extremely "religious" and "devout" people who seem to think they display their virtue and holiness by long faces and sombre expressions. In fact, St Teresa of Avila, one of the great masters of the spiritual life, had choice words about such serious, religious people. (Why else do you think she's often depicted with a tambourine?)
And, finally, I invite you to listen and watch this YouTube clip by Matt Boswell. His wonderful composition, Come, Behold the Wondrous Mystery contains a précis of Christ's redeeming work--His Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection. As you watch and listen, look at the joy and elation on the faces of the young people: They rejoice not on account of the mere aesthetics of the music, but because of the Biblical truths being sung, Biblical truths that changed their lives and set them towards eternity.
If we're left unfeeling on account of Biblical, dogmatic facts, maybe the Holy Spirit hasn't been let in entirely.
This blog post is dedicated to my dear friends of "Shophar Praise and Worship Unending."
During my first visit to Europe back in 2011, my destination was Norcia, Italy, to the birthplace of St Benedict. The Church of San Benedetto is built over an ancient Roman basilica where St Benedict's father presided as a magistrate, later turned into a church. It was in Italy that the Roman basilica was adopted as the basic architecture of the Christian temple--fundamentally, to house a sizeable assembly for liturgical celebrations.
Originally, the Roman basilica served as a kind of 'town hall' where municipal business was conducted. In fact, the Latin Basilica is related to the earlier Greek basilikē, meaning "royal"; students of the Greek New Testament may recognise it from the expression basileia tou Theou, "Kingdom of God." When it was used for civil proceedings, the magistrate would be seated on a distinctive chair within the apse in order to conduct business; when the formerly underground Christian movement adopted the basilica as her basic structure for the "house of the Church," the accent with respect to the seated magistrate shifted: Instead of a man presiding over the proceedings was the God-Man presiding over the Church and all creation, and instead of the magistrate's chair was the painting or mosaic in the apse of Christos Pantokrator--Christ the Ruler of All.
...To Romanesque...
If you've been to Italy, where the Roman basilica floorplan is as common as pasta, you will know, too, that the apse often shows Christ enthroned. My favourite one is at San Paulo furori le Mura with Christ flanked by several of the Apostles and--charmingly--a diminutive Pope Honorius III prostrate before His right foot (see image above). You may also be aware of the famous Cefalù Pantokrator in Franco Zeffirelli's absolutely awful Brother Sun, Sister Moon passing for Old St Peter's in Rome but is, really, in Sicily. Until Hagia Sophia was again confiscated from the Christians earlier this year, the Pantokrator could still be partially seen. To this day, Orthodox churches still maintain the Pantokrator-motif (unless there is the Platytera).
An interesting variant of the Pantokrator motif can be seen at the intensely anti-Arian Sant' Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna, where the Cross is seen to transform all of creation, and in the middle of the Cross is a figure of Christ Himself. We see something like this, too, in the church of the Irish Dominican friars, San Clemente in Rome, where Christ reigns from the Cross and vines emanate from Him to transform the world by the power of His redemptive work.
In the Western Church, the Greek Christos Pantokrator became the Latin Maiestas Domini, "The Majesty of the Lord," or, colloquially, "Christ in Majesty."
Moving north to France in the early Middle Ages, we see a significant architectural change which, in fact, maintains the "Christ in Majesty" motif. Often, over the main entrance into the church we often see a sculpture of Christ enthroned, sometimes in judgment. We see this among the last remaining Romanesque churches, namely Moissac Abbey, where "Christ in Majesty" is depicted in a collage of scenes taken from the Apocalypse of St John.
...To Gothic
The depiction of "Christ in Majesty" over the main entrance into French churches earned it the name of "Royal Portal" in Gothic architecture--not because it was the privilege of French monarchs to enter in that way, but because it is where the royal, kingly symbols of Christ was depicted. Thus at the first Gothic church at the Abbaye de Saint-Denisnear Paris, we see this continued. Later, at both Vézelay and Chartres, the "Christ in Majesty" motif in the central tympanum over the Royal Portal came to accent more the dominion of Christ than the Last Judgment (which was placed elsewhere), with a connexion to evangelical preaching.
Moving to England, we see still another shift in style, but permanence of meaning: Sometimes, instead of over the main entrance, we see "Christ in Majesty" at the topmost tier of the church's façade, such as at Salisbury Cathedral, right under the peak. Additionally--and this is a distinctive feature of English Gothic churches--instead of an apse is often a stained-glass window covering the entire (usually flat) east end. The most famous instance of this is at Yorkminster, where the "Great East Window" depicts the main contours of salvation history from Genesis to the Apocalypse with the "Ancient of Days" at the uppermost peak and, in the central lancet windows, several depictions of the majestic Christ. The Great East Window at Wells Cathedral focuses on my personal favourite--the Tree of Jesse (Is 11:1-3)--highlighting the anointing of Jesus as the source of His authority.
Biblical Underpinning
Why all this stress on Christ's majesty and dominion? It would be too facile to explain it within the rubric of mediaeval feudalism. Rather, it stresses a basic Biblical, Gospel truth: The Lordship of Jesus. My own doctoral research explores how Jesus' anointing by the Holy Spirit--thus being named Christ--constitutes one of the fundamental aspects of His Lordship (again, see Is 11:1-3). In fact, the Lordship of Jesus is a kind of diptych with one panel being His own anointing, "The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon Him...", and Pentecost, where He "...received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 10:36) outpoured the Gift upon the newborn Church. But it is the Ascension which hinges the two panels together, as the consummation of His own anointing, after which He shares His anointing with His Christians from His throne.
The Ascension of Jesus isn't simply about His translation, but above all about His enthronement: "And so, the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God" (Mk 16:19); "Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God..." (Acts 2:33); "When He made purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand o the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the Name He has obtained is more excellent than theirs" (Heb 1:3-4). This was all foretold by the prophet Daniel:
I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son of Man, and He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to Him was given dominion, and glory, and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed (Dan 7:13-14).
As a corollary to this, Jesus Christ was invested with the title of "Lord," hardly an honourific but a declaration of His peerless power: "Therefore God highly exalted Him and bestowed upon Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:9-11). The Lordship of Jesus was at the heart of the apostolic preaching; St Peter spoke of Jesus as "Lord of all" (Acts 10:36) and St Paul, having arrived at Rome, "welcomed all who came to him, preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered' (Acts 28:30-31).
Hence the same Apostle to the Nations also wrote:
None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead an do the living (Rom 14:7-9).
Yet, contrary to Biblical truth and flying in the face of all sound doctrine, many Christians hear an altered 'gospel' of Jesus as a therapist or life-coach rather than Lord of lords and King of kings (Apoc 17:4; cf 19:16). Our post-democratic society is suspicious of authority, preferring instead a slick and glitzy perpetual pep rally about how we are the masters of our own destiny, and many Christian leaders have 'evangelised' this message instead of Christ's, Who came to preach "the Gospel of the Kingdom" (Mt 4:23).
But being one's own master is candy-coated chattel slavery.
Ecclesiastical architecture's variegated "Christ in Majesty" motif serves to remind both the Church and creation the very essence of the Gospel, that Jesus is Lord, and that "he who is not with Me is against Me" (Mt 12:30), and that the Gospel presents two modalities of Jesus' Lordship, each depending on which choice we make. Either we yield to His Lordship and discover a sweet and gentle sovereignty over our lives and a wonderful freedom, or we simply ignore it, in which case He is still Lord but we remain frozen and ossified in our rejection of Him eternally as unfree slaves of ourselves.
The beautiful paradox of Christ as Lord is that, the more we yield to Him, the freer we become. As I will be explaining in my dissertation, the Gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit is how Christ rules in us, and it is this precisely this grace which so re-organises the Christian soul that there is an intense interior freedom, such a freedom that cannot be found anywhere else (and especially not in Occam's "freedom of indifference!). "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). As St Thomas Aquinas wrote:
...the governance of things by God must be understood as a certain motion by which God directs and puts in motion all beings toward their proper ends. If then impulsion and movement are, by reason of love, the work of the Holy Spirit, the governance and development of things, is fittingly attributed to him. This is why it says in the Book of Job (33:4): "It is the Spirit that has made me," and in Psalm 142:10, "Your good Spirit leads me on a level path." And since the governance of subjects is the proper activity of a lord, lordship is fittingly attributed to the Holy Spirit. "The Spirit is Lord," says the Apostle (2 Cor. 3:17); so too in the Creed: "The Holy Spirit is Lord" (Summa contra Gentiles, IV.20.3571).
The paucity of the Maiestas Domini motif--both in contemporary Christian art and Christian education--suggests, I make bold to say, a subtle attempt to preach a 'gospel' that isn't Gospel at all.
"A person who does not persevere in charity, however, is not saved, even though incorporated into the Church. Such people remain indeed in the bosom of the Church, but only 'bodily,' not 'in their hearts.' All daughters and sons of the Church should nevertheless remember that their exalted status is not to be ascribed to their own merits, but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail to respond in thought, word, and deed to that grace, not only will they not be saved, they will be the more severely judged" (Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, no. 14).
M. G. Hysell is a candidate for both a civil and canonical doctorate in sacred theolog at Dominican University College in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He completed his B.A. in philosophy (in the analytic tradition) at Hunter College of the City Univeristy of New York, his M.A. (Hon.) degree in theology from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, CA, with a specialization in Triadology (thesis, "The Father-Son Relation in the Fourth Gospel and the Cappadocian Fathers") and his M.Th. degree in systematic theology from Newman Theological College in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, (thesis, "The Sacramental Validity of the Eucharistic Form in Sign Language").
Matthew serves on the Archdiocese of Edmonton Advisory Board for Deaf Ministry and is the chaplain to the local Catholic Deaf community as well as the national chaplain for the International Catholic Deaf Association--Canadian Section. In the past, he directed the Mark Seven Bible Institute, a biblical-pastoral study week and retreat held annually at Camp Mark Seven in Old Forge, NY, for Deaf Catholics seeking a greater exposure to the Bible.
