Of Viruses and Vices

"Invidia," by Giotto di Bondone,
Scrovegni Chapel, Padua

Among the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit is the gift of Knowledge which, St Thomas Aquinas tells us, equips Christians to interpret the world in the light of eternity.  He says,

Right judgment about creatures belongs properly to knowledge. Now it is through creatures that man's aversion from God is occasioned, according to Wis. 14:11: "Creatures... are turned to an abomination... and a snare to the feet of the unwise," of those, namely, who do not judge aright about creatures, since they deem the perfect good to consist in them. Hence they sin by placing their last end in them, and lose the true good. It is by forming a right judgment of creatures that man becomes aware of the loss (of which they may be the occasion), which judgment he exercises through the gift of knowledge (S.th., 2a2ae, q. 9, art. 4, resp.).

For this reason, St Thomas corresponds Knowledge to that Beatitude "Blessed are those who mourn..." because the things of the world are known to be an occasion to turn away from God.  The Spirit-filled believer, on seeing her or his attachment to the world then mourns in repentance which ultimately yields the reward of the Third Beatitude, "for they shall be comforted."

In a roundabout way, then, the gift of Knowledge allows us to observe worldly goings-on outside of ourselves (but always for our spiritual welfare!) in order to know where the Christian struggle (or ascesis--where the word "asceticism" derives) lies.

And so, applying the gift of Knowledge, I see in the actions of many Christians with regard to the SARS-cov-2 virus, several clear mirror-images of certain vices.

How COVID-19 Spreads

From this morning's edition of the National Public Radio comes a surprising instance of its usefulness and, more surprisingly, encouraging news about the coronavirus:  

If a person infected with the coronavirus sneezes, coughs or talks loudly, droplets containing particles of the virus can travel through the air and eventually land on nearby surfaces. But the risk of getting infected from touching a surface contaminated by the virus is low, says Emanuel Goldman, a microbiologist at Rutgers University.

The article goes on to explain that the "viruses" discovered on surfaces were in fact corpses of the virus, and that surface transmission of COVID-19 remains relatively low.  Thus, the expenditure and effort in disinfecting walls and tables is deemed to be an "overkill."

What spreads the virus, rather, are projectiles emanating from an infected person's mouth or nose and contacting another person's.  This is why elevators, large crowds, and poorly-ventilated spaces are especially ideal places for the transmission of this species of pneumonia.

What Else Spreads Death Via Airborne Projectiles?

This morning I was having a conversation with my sister about a particularly difficult set of people she had to work with in her business, which turned into a general conversation about toxic language transmitted through social media.  "Facebook gives people power," she observed, since one can safely hide behind the relative anonymity of a digital profile and shackle other people with slander, gossip, and misinformation.

I then shared three Scriptures with my sister, three Bible passages that speaks directly to the vices of slander, gossip, and misinformation.  The first comes from Our Lord Jesus Christ:

"I tell you, on the Day of Judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Mt 12:35-36).

Each of us will face judgment twice, the first at our "Particular Judgment" whereby we "stand before the judgment-seat of Christ" (2 Cor 5:10) immediately after death (Heb 9:27) to learn our eternal fate--whether it be of eternal beatitude or eternal loss.  In the above passage of Matthew 12:35-36, however, Jesus points out that our words will be accountable at the "General Judgment," that is, when the whole human race stands before Him in the Valley of Decision (cf  Joel 3:14) and we will see how the short span of our lives helped to write the narrative of human history.  It is in that context that we will see how our words--or silence--contributed to the advancement of the Kingdom of God, or to its detriment.  It is there that the entire human race will see either the honest or dishonest value of what we have said or left unsaid.  Hence, as the Lord Jesus said, "...for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known" (Mt 10:26; cf Lk 8:17).

In other words, like the coronavirus, our words have the power of spreading death, only it is a deadlier strain because, left unrepented, it can effect a spiritual death.

Another verse comes from St James, "The Brother of the Lord" and sometime Bishop of Jerusalem.  Early in the epistle, he wrote, "If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man's religion is vain" (Jas 1:26).  As much as I hate to say it, much of the slander, gossip, and misinformation I read on Facebook comes from particularly devout Catholics.

St James goes on to write--

And the tongue is a fire.  The tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the cycle of nature, and set on fire by hell.  For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue--a restless evil, full of deadly poison (Jas 3:6-8).

The Lord's brother (the ancient Semites had no specific word for "half-brother" or "cousin") tells us that the fire unleashed by the tongue comes from "hell"--because it is where the "deceiver of the whole world" (Apoc 12:9) has been cast, whom Jesus said "is a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44).

A half-truth is still a lie.  Recall that in the Garden of Eden, Satan twisted the words of God by insisting that our First Parents wouldn't really die if they ate the forbidden fruit.  By stating a half-truth, he meant that they wouldn't die immediately and, at that very moment, wouldn't die physically.  By distorting God's words, Adam and Eve were deceived, and thus wreaked havoc on the whole world.

St James further highlights the irony that animals can be tamed and trained but it is next to impossible to tame and train the tongue.  The image of "poison" is especially telling, since it usually takes only a few drops of lethal substance to turn any drink deadly.

Along the lines of St James' image of words getting out of control comes a passage from the Psalmist:

           They set their mouths against the heavens,
           and their tongue struts through the earth (Ps 73:9)

The Greek version of the text--the Septuagint--reads:

            They have set their mouth against heaven,
            and their tongue roveth in the earth (Ps 72:9).

Since God is "Father" because he generates "the Word" which is his "Only-Begotten Son" who creatively fashioned the cosmos (cf Ps 33:6) and fulfills the divine purpose (Is 55:10-11), the misuse of human words and human speech is a mockery of the indwelling Trinity, after whose "image and likeness" we were created and whom Christians are given the grace to imitate.  By the use of lying words, we do not imitate God but rather parody God, and instead of issuing a creative word, we unleash a destructive word.  As St Thomas à Kempis began his classic The Imitation of Christ, "What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity?"

And by this destructive word 'strutting' or 'roving' over the earth we are given the image of something that is both defiant ("struts") and eludes recapture ("roveth").

The vices of the tongue is very much like COVID-19.  It is highly contagious when it is airborne; a careless person can be held accountable for their culpability for spreading it; even after it causes death, it can still persist.

At the heart of a person's refusal to be prudent and to exercise the corresponding gift of Counsel in "flattening the curve" is an utter and gross lack of charity--and at the root of every vice is precisely uncharitableness.

The Toxicity of Social Media

The whole of 2020 has shown social media--especially Facebook--to be a dumpster fire whose flames leap onto nearby buildings.  Unfounded accusations, baseless conspiracy guesses (and I stress guesses), and deliberate misinformation are spreading like uncontrolled fires.  For weeks now, I have seen posts promising "details next Monday" about the election, or third-party hearsay about nefarious shenanigans being done at hospitals, or false captioning of photos as "evidence" of Deep State goings-on.

Now, do not misunderstand me.  I am fully aware of a number of eminently silly books and articles called The Great Reset published by various authors and that there are dimwitted politicians who think it's a good idea.  I am also fully aware of serious difficulties in the Church, which Prof Dr Ralph Martin of Sacred Heart Major Seminary has outlined in his recent and worthwhile Crisis in the Church:  Pathways Forward.  Above all, I am especially cognizant of this paragraph 676 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

But we can never advance the cause of Christ by throwing spaghetti to see what sticks.  In fact, we are detrimental to the cause of Christ by misusing human language, because it tarnishes our credibility.  When the time comes to speak shocking truths, who will believe the Church, if we've exhibited a pattern of lying?

What I find especially troublesome--and I pointed this out in my article in Grandin Media earlier this year--is how many "orthodox" Catholics think that being doctrinally sound excuses vice, as if being right can substitute the need to be holy, or at least that holiness has more to do with thinking than behaving.

Yesterday, a couple of supposedly "orthodox" Catholic believers made a snide remark about The Queen's annual Christmas speech by pretending theological expertise and taking issue with Her Majesty naming Jesus as her "inner light."  One conversant asked, "What heresy is this?"--an allusion to the founder of Quakerism, George Fox.  Then another conversant suggested that Elizabeth II was, perhaps, a "Rosicrucian," that is, a New Ager.

Clearly, these people, instead of "rejoicing in the Truth" as demanded by theological charity (1 Cor 13:6) took issue with the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.  Ignoring Her Majesty's boldness in repeating the Name of Jesus--which was unusually frequent given the history of her annual Christmas Speech--these two Facebook interlocutors decided to play Amateur Grand Inquisitor.

I have seen much of the same dynamic at work by some Catholic believers who--in total disregard of St Cyril of Jerusalem--attack bishops for the temporary suspension of Communion on the tongue and accusing these same bishops of "depriving" them of the Eucharist.  Perhaps they are better off not receiving Communion on the tongue if, with their tongues, they lie.

When St Thomas Aquinas composed his Summa theologiae, it was not without reason that a huge chunk of it--the Second Part of the Second Part--was given over to a labourous discussion of the virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, and Beatitudes.  By bridging his discussion God as Creator and Trinity (First Part) and Christ in His Person and Sacraments (Second Part) with a detailed exploration of the "life in the Holy Spirit," he certainly means to tell us that "orthodoxy" gives glory to God not only by believing rightly but also by acting supernaturally.  In point of fact--and speaking as a professional Thomist--being doctrinally sound but unvirtuous exhibits a deep wound in the human soul in desperate need of pastoral therapy that cannot be cured by a quick confession.

St Thomas explains that vices such as "reviling," "backbiting," "derision," "tale-bearing" are all sins against the virtue of justice and, by extension, against the Holy Spirit's gift of Piety (S.th. 2a2ae, qq. 72-75).  Do we not backbite our friends and family members for holding different opinions?  Do we not deride public officials with memes and GIFs?  Do we not engage in tale-bearing when we repeat unsubstantiated "news"?  And is not Facebook a convenient way to do this?

Stop it.

Conclusion

As I've said countless times, the "Church at Ephesus" in the Apocalypse of St John was commended by the Lord for holding to true doctrine, but remonstrated for their lack of charity, which is at the root of all vices:

"I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false; I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my Name's sake, and you have not grown weary.  But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.  Remember then from what you have fallen, repent, and do the works you did at first.  If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent" (Apoc 2:2-5).

Here, the Lord Jesus commended the Ephesian Christians for their doctrinal soundness and testing the validity of some people's claim to apostleship.  But He also takes issue with their lack of charity to the point that such uncharitableness has the power to 'cancel' one's orthodoxy (and, equally, one's heterodoxy cannot be compensated by charity; cf v. 5). 

A vicious Christian is far more contagious than a person infected with coronavirus because they incur spiritual death, spread spiritual death, and obstruct the mission of the Church by giving counter-witness to Christ.

What we need, rather, is to be aware that the vices of the tongue are spread in very much the same way as COVID-19, and instead of disinfecting surfaces, we need to disinfect our hearts with the grace of the Holy Spirit, "For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks" (Mt 10:34). 

St Thomas Aquinas on Apophaticism

The reason why no created species can represent the divine essence is plain:  For nothing finite can represent the infinite as it is; but every created species is finite; therefore it cannot represent the infinite as it is.  Further, God is his own existence and therefore his wisdom and greatness and anything else are the same.  But all those cannot be represented through one created thing.  Therefore, the knowledge by which God is seen through creatures is not a knowledge of his essence, but a knowledge that is dark and mirrored, and from afar.  Everyone sees him, in one of the above ways [e.g. "through a created substitute presented to the bodily sight"; "through a representation in the imagination"; "through an intelligible species abstracted from material things"], from afar (Job 36:25), because we do not know what God is by all these acts of knowing, but what he is not, or that he is.  Hence Denys says, in his Mystical theology, that the perfect way in which God is known in this present life is by taking away all creatures and every thing understood by us.

Super Evangelium S. Ioannis,
C.1, L.11, §211.

Virgo facta Ecclesia:Towards a More Biblical Veneration of Mary

By the hand of Fr Gregory Krug

Two dear, dear friends of mine, a married couple active in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, asked me recently to give some clarification on a homily they heard which seemed to give an exaggerated emphasis on Mary.  I'd like oblige for two reasons:  First, to show the deeply Biblical foundations of the Mother of Jesus' title as "Mother of the Church" and to offer a corrective to some aberrant forms of Marian piety.

The key to any Biblically sound doctrine about Mary is always, always, always--how often?  Always!--the Incarnation.  The "Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14) by way of one "Miriam of Nazareth."  Many exegetes (that is to say, Scripture scholars) believe that John 1:13, "...who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" has, in addition to the meaning of Christians' supernatural experience of being "born again" or "born anew," a subtle allusion to the Virginal Conception of Jesus.  We have, of course, the explicit testimony of the Eternal Word's enfleshment in Mary's womb by way of Matthew 1:18, 20, 23, Luke 1:31, 35, and Nativity by way of Luke 2:5-7, Galatians 4:4, and Apocalypse 12:5 (cf Mt 2:11).

The critical element is not merely that 'Mary gave birth to the God-Man' but, above all, that in gestating Him, she enfleshed God the Word (cf Jn 1:1).  This "enfleshment" is so central to the doctrine of Christ that to deny it is to be opposed to God--

By this you know the Spirit of God:  every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God.  This is the spirit of antichrist... (1 Jn 4:2-3);

For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist (2 Jn 2:7).

The importance of the Incarnation--of the Word's humanization--cannot be underestimated, because it took place for two principal reasons:  Revelation and Redemption.  The Word became flesh in order to reveal the Father and to redeem us for salvation.

At the end of the Johannine Prologue (Jn 1:1-18), the Evangelist tells us of this Word-made-flesh--"No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known" (Jn 1:18).  The Greek text reads, literally that Jesus Christ as "exegeted" (ἐξηγήσατο) the Father, the same word we use to describe unpacking any historical text.  It is in this sense that Christ told the Apostle Philip, 

"Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?  He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does his works.  Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves" (Jn 14:9-11; cf 12:45).

In other words, in becoming Man, the Son 'displayed' the Father from whom He came forth (cf Jn 8:42); not only that, but his Manhood or human nature meant that He was able to perform works as "signs" (cf Jn 2:11) to show forth visibly the truth about His Father.  Later, the Evangelist tells us that "For this reason the Son of God appeared (ἐφανερώθη) was to destroy the works of the devil" (1 Jn 3:8).

St Paul the Apostle uses slightly different but no less potent language in describing the Incarnation:  Epiphany, which is the Greek term for "manifestation"--

Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion:  He was manifested (ἐφανερώθη) in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory (1 Tim 3:16);

...and now has manifested (φανερωθεῖσαν) through the appearing (ἐπιφανείας) of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel (2 Tim 1:10).

This is at the heart of the "Twelfth Day of Christmas," that is, of Epiphany, because we wrap up the Season of the Lord's Nativity by commemorating Christ's manifestation to the world.  It was this manifestation which enlightened us, thus "destroying the works of the devil."  Hence did the aged Simeon say, when he beheld the Infant God in his arms, "...for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, light for revelation to the nations..." (Lk 2:30-31).

In conceiving and giving birth to Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Lady was thus an instrument in the Father's self-disclosure to the world by way of God the Word Incarnate.  Hence--

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life--the Life was made manifest (ἐφανερώθη), and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest (ἐφανερώθη) to us--that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you... (1 Jn 1:1-3).

Not only that, but by way of the body of the God-Man, a sacrifice was offered to the Father for the forgiveness of our sins.  The sacred writer of Hebrews wrote--

Consequently when Christ came into the world, He said, "Sacrifice and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for Me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.  Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,' as it is written in the roll of the Book"...

...And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (10:5-8, 10).

Clearly, the Word's enfleshment was oriented towards the Cross; when He foretold of the Temple's destruction, "He spoke of the temple of His body" (Jn 2:21).  Remember this bit, as we will come back to it.

I do not need to belabour the point of the Incarnate Word's body as the sacrificial offering on the Cross; what is crucial is to bear in mind that the Mystery of the Incarnation served both to reveal the Father by the Word Incarnate speaking, in His human nature, to the human family, in human language, and to redeem us from our sins by offering Himself on the altar of the Cross.  By His conception and gestation in Mary, the Eternal Word was furnished with a body to do just this, to reveal and to redeem.

Any devotion to the Mother of Jesus that forgets this "Incarnational key"  is a deformed devotion.

 The Temple of His Body, the Church

Just a moment ago we saw John 2:21; now we need to look closely at John 2:22, "When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this..."  Even in His Resurrection, Jesus' glorified body was still a body, as He told then-doubting Thomas to examine His flesh (Jn 20:27).  The Risen Lord made a similar point when He told the Apostles, "See My hands and My feet, that it is I myself; handle Me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Lk 24:39).  A glorified body, indeed, but still the same body carried and borne by the Virgin Mary.

When the same Evangelist St Luke said that "believers were added to the Lord..." (Acts 2:14), he was making a very precise point about the Church, namely, that by faith and baptism we are organically united to the Risen Christ.  This is why the Church is described by St Paul as "the body of Christ" (Rom 12:4-5; 1 Cor 12:12-13, 27; Eph 4:13-16).  In fact, the Church is described as "...His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all" (Eph 1:23).

This is why it is patently unbiblical to speak of the Church as an "organisation"; she is, rather, an organism.  Hence we make use of physical, tangible things in addition to faith in order to incorporate (see the stem of "body" in that word--corpus?) into Christ by water baptism (1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:27) and incorporated more deeply still by Eucharistic communion (1 Cor 10:16-17).  Therefore, the body of Jesus Christ which emerged from the Virgin Mary's womb continues in the "body of Christ," the Church, and in Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood.  It was Our Lady's "Yes!" to the Father's plan that set in motion your faith and mine.  We Christians are, therefore, part of the family tree emanating from the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Again, any veneration given to the Mother of Jesus that overlooks this "Incarnational key" is a false veneration.

Mary and the Beloved Disciple

If one looks at the Fourth Gospel carefully, one will discover that the "beloved disciple" is an anonymous figure.  In the literal sense, of course, he is St John the Apostle (or "St John the Theologian" as he is called among Byzantine Christians).  The expression "beloved disciple" and its variants appear in John 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 21:2.  The anonymity of this figure is a literary device:  It represents the believer's mirror-image in the gospel narrative.  Notice that all these mentions take place from chapter thirteen on, where the "Hour" of Jesus commences (cf 13:1), that is, when the Paschal Mystery takes place whereby people who come to faith in Christ are transformed.  At one level, the "beloved disciple" is the Apostle John; by making himself anonymous in the narrative, John means to have us see ourselves in him such that you and I are all of us "the beloved disciple."

This means that, in the sacramental celebration of the Lord's Supper, we are reclining at the breast of Jesus; in our believing the Resurrection, we run to the empty tomb; above all, it is in our lives that Jesus continues to do many things, and we thus continue writing the gospel (Jn 21:24-25; cf Mk 1:1).  It also means that we are at the foot of the Cross hearing Jesus speak first to His Mother, then to us--

When Jesus saw His Mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing near, He said to His Mother, "Woman, behold, your son!"  Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your Mother!"  And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

Historically, the crucified Jesus gave Mary and John to each other--Mary to be the mother of the Theologian since she was a widow about to lose her only child, and John to be Mary's son to look after her and to celebrate the Eucharist with her since she intensely desired to remain close to Jesus after His Ascension.

Mystically, however, Mary is given to us to be our Mother, and we believers are given to Mary as her children; it is to us believers that Jesus spoke from the Cross, "Behold, your Mother!"  The Evangelist makes this point even clearer in his later Apocalypse (or Revelation) of St John--

And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery...  she brought forth a male Child, One who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her Child was caught up to God and to his throne... 

Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus (Apoc 12:1-2, 5, 17).

By "the rest of her offspring," John means to say two things.  First, the "Woman" who gave birth to the Child--clearly Mary (but larger-than-life) who gave birth to Jesus--has for "her offspring" those who are obedient to God and preach Jesus Christ.  St John the Theologian then gives us a clear indication of Mary's spiritual maternity over Christians.

But note that her maternity is not a gratuitous, free-for-all motherhood; it is unique to those who, like her, are obedient and faithful.  We have seen, earlier, how our membership in the ecclesial body of Christ places us within Mary's "family tree"; we see here how our believing in Jesus Christ makes us her spiritual offspring.

The Luke-Acts Diptych

Of all the gospels, St Luke's was written in the most polished quality of Greek.  There is much to be read "between the lines," as they say.  Here I would like to draw your attention to the beginnings of both St Luke's gospel (Luke) and the history of the apostolic Church (Acts).  Both Luke and Acts, by the Evangelist's authorial ingenuity, possess a deeply meaningful parallelism.

At the beginning of Luke, we encounter angels who proclaimed the first Advent of Christ--in fact, it is the same angel who appear twice, first to Zechariah and then to Miriam of Nazareth (Lk 1:11f; 1:26f).  Similarly, at the beginning of Acts, we read of two angels who appeared at the Ascension of Jesus and who declared that His second Advent would take place also on the Mount of Olives.

It was "by lot" that Zechariah was appointed to offer the evening incense in the Temple (Lk 1:9), and also it was by "cast lots for them" that St Matthias was chosen to succeed Judas in the apostolic office (Acts 1:26).

By these two instances, St Luke means to gear up his readers to see yet another parallelism, that of Mary's role; just as she was instrumental at the beginning of the gospel of Luke, so also was she instrumental at the beginning of Acts.  Just as by her faith and consent she prepared herself for the coming of the long-awaited Messiah, so also by her faith and consent she prepared herself for the coming of the long-awaited Holy Spirit.  There is a definite Incarnation-Pentecost diptych to be discovered here, and in both the Virgin Mary played a decisive role.  She waited for the Son in Luke, then waited for the Holy Spirit in the gospel's sequel, Acts.

It seems, moreover, that St Luke wants to maintain Miriam of Nazareth's maternal role by way of implication.  By evoking the image of Mary at the beginning of Acts as he did at the beginning of his gospel, Luke strongly hints at Mary's maternal role in the birth of the Church, the body of Christ.  Just as the Holy Spirit effected the conception of Jesus in Mary's womb, so too does the Holy Spirit effect the conception of the Church in Mary's presence, not only because the Church is the body of Christ which "continues" the Incarnation which began in Mary, but especially because Mary is the fist Christian disciple.  Not only on the "Incarnational score" is she the mother of the Church, but also on the "discipleship score" she is, too, just as the first woman member of any group is often accorded the title of "mother."

Conclusion:  The Contribution of St Francis of Assisi

Since it was from the body of Mary that the body of Christ emerged, and since the Church is organically united to the body of Jesus especially by the power of His Resurrection, and since St John Theologian makes clear the maternal role of Mary at the Cross and by calling Christ's disciples "her offspring" and since, finally, St Luke the Evangelist shows the Pentecost scene where the first Christians "with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren" (Acts 1:14), this Miriam of Nazareth is given the title of "Mother of the Church"  Her maternal role, or better, charism, is "duplicated" in the lives of her fellow disciples; St Paul wrote to the Church at Galatia:  "My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!" (Gal 4:19).

I am worried that so much of the "devotion to Mary" amounts to little more than "fandom" and that it falls short of that true veneration and honour which the Church encourages.  The esteem and childlike love for the Mother of Jesus cannot be had while forgetting the Incarnational key we discussed earlier in this post.  "Imitation is the best form of flattery," they say, and so Christians' devotion to Mary must imitate her love and obedience to her Son.  On this note, St Augustine counsels us:

Just see if it isn't as I say.  While the Lord was passing by, performing divine miracles, with the crowds following him, a woman said:  Fortunate is the womb that bore you.  And how did the Lord answer, to show that good fortune is not really to be sought in mere family ties?  Rather blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it (Lk 11:27-28). 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/A, 7, underlined emphasis added).

The essence of this truth was made crystal-clear through St Francis of Assisi, who understood that Mary is the paradigm of the Church.  Recent theologians have spoken of the "Marian form" of the Church (in contrast to the simultaneous "Johannine form" or "Petrine form").  By the Church's "Marian form," we mean that dimension of the Christian life of fidelity to the Scriptures, quiet obedience, and a behind-the-secnes working on behalf of Christ, as Our Lady did and continues to do.  The prayer Virgo facta Ecclesia, "Virgin Made Church," composed by St Francis captures this well:

    Hail, O Lady, holy queen,
    Mary, holy Mother of God,
    Who are the Virgin made Church,
    chosen by the most holy Father in heaven
    whom he consecrated with his most holy beloved Son
    and with the Holy Spirit the Paraclete,
    in whom there was and is
    all fullness of grace and every good!

This is why, during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, the bishops assembled voted to treat of Mary in the very last chapter of the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium.  There was put the question to the Council Fathers whether, in addition to the sixteen documents of the Council, a seventeenth should be added, treating of Mary alone.  The vote came back with a majority of the bishops preferring that Mary be given attention in the context of the Church.  In so doing, the bishops hoped to re-contextualise the Mother of Jesus within its proper Christological framework rather than--as many ill-catechised believers had done--to approach Mary as a "standalone."  Hence the title of Chapter Eight, "The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God in the Mystery of Christ and His Church" re-integrated her within the Incarnational framework.  The Council, following St Augustine, taught of Mary's motherhood:

At the same time, however, because she belongs to the offspring of Adam she is one with all those who are to be saved. She is "the mother of the members of Christ...having cooperated by charity that faithful might be born in the Church, who are members of that Head" [De S. Virginitate, 6: PL 40, 399].  Wherefore she is hailed as a pre-eminent and singular member of the Church, and as its type and excellent exemplar in faith and charity.  The Catholic Church, taught by the Holy Spirit, honors her with filial affection and piety as a most beloved mother (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium, n. 53).

The couple I referred to at the start of this post are my "spiritual parents," people who mentor me in my following of the Lord Jesus Christ.  In their company, I sense the grace of the Lord's presence, and I look to their example in their love for the divine Scriptures, their unyielding pursuit of holiness, and their uncompromising commitment to prayer.  How I love them, I would hope, would help us to rightly love the Mother of Jesus whose example in fidelity to the Scriptures, to holiness, and to prayer ought to be the motive behind our veneration of her which, in turn, fortify my following of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, we hear Mary speak to us, in the authoritative tone of a mother (and a Jewish mother, to boot!):  "Do whatever He tells you!" (Jn 2:5).  This is why I am convinced that the Byzantine approach to Mary is the healthier one--as the icon above shows, Mary is the Panagia Platytera or Bozhey Materi Znamenie, "More Spacious Than The Heavens," who bore in her womb Him whom the heavens cannot contain.  Byzantine iconography is loath to depict Mary alone, preferring to show her always with Christ.  This is because her vocation has meaning only in the context of Christ; in the icon, she not only bears Him in the womb, but also in faith, and with her open hands and outstretched arms, invites us to do the same, always saying, tirelessly beckoning us, and maternally insisting:  "Do whatever He tells you!" 

To my Spiritual Parents, R. and J.,
who model for me the life of surrender to the Holy Spirit
and assiduous reading of the Bible,
with filial love this post is dedicated.

 

 

Theology that is Therapeutic

In his recent, superb reflection on "bourgeois Catholicism," Prof Dr Larry Chapp puts his finger on precisely what ails the Church, especially in the United States.  He identifies, broadly, bureaucratic pettiness, the 'spirit of the age,' and the claim that a whole-hearted and full-throated following of Jesus Christ is often written off as being "fanatical."

It is a telltale sign of a fool's errand to give one, single cause to a set of problems, and with that I make my disclaimer:  What I'm about to say is only one ingredient in the bubbling cauldron of "bourgeois Catholicism" in addition to those pointed our by Dr Chapp.  It's only a pinch, but it multiplies its toxicity:  The Cartesian and Wolffian approach to theology, long since given up, but not without giving way to the reduction of the Church's doctrinal patrimony to theologoumena.  This, I submit, is precisely what Orthodox theologians mean when they criticise "Western theology."  So I make no attempt to hide my Byzantine--even Slavophile--bias.

Before I elaborate on this, it would be helpful to recall that the Greek Orthodox theologian Fr John Romanides "stressed emphatically that we can understand whether a theology is true by whether it is able to cure people.  If it cannot cure them, it is not true theology."  These words are relayed by Metropolitan Heirotheos Vlachos of Nafpaktos, a formidable dogmatician who has written several volumes on what has come to be known as "Orthodox psychotherapy."

Dogma, according to Metropolitan Heirotheos, does not only tell the truth about God and the world; it also tells the truth about the meaning of the human person and, for that reason, possesses a deeply curative and therapeutic import.  Dogma is applied principally through the Sacraments ("Mysteries") and asceticism, which is to say the Church's liturgical celebration and living out the virtues, gifts, and beatitudes.  We can already see how, on the beige-Catholic side of things, Biblically insipid liturgy functionally excises mystagogy from worship, thus subtracting from the believer's believing; reducing the Christian life to "Moral Therapeutic Deism" (which Dr Chapp alludes to) in which an imagined god only assuages us like a talk-show host or a motivational speaker instead of nudging us to yield to sanctifying grace.

If you see hints of St John Paul II's personalism or traces of "Lublin Thomism" in what I've just described, you're on the right track.

At the heart of this is what made for the decline of theology since the seventeenth century (as Fr Yves Congar OP identified in his History of Theology):  The reduction of dogmatics (yes, I know this is a recent term) to "philosophical theology" and treating the articles of faith more as "right ways to cogitate about God" rather than as blueprints for the life of grace.  The fact that we encounter so many Catholic-with-a-capital-K believers who know their catechism well yet obsessively chase after dubious Marian apparitions and undertake various forms of obscure devotions (e.g. Luisa Piccaretta, the Pieta Blue Book, &c.) betrays precisely this wrongful divide between doctrine and devotion.

By "Cartesian" and "Wolffian" we mean a theological system built upon supposedly indubitable first principles (Descartes) which engages in a profound misreading of the "treatise on God" in the First Part of the Summa theologiae by treating it as philosophy rather than theology, and in a highly synthentic and artificial organisation of the structure of dogmatics (Wolff) which ends up exaggerating "the powers of natural religion prepared the way for rationalistic systems of theology" (A. H. Strong).  For all the glories of the manuals of Ludwig Ott, Adlophe Tanqueray, the Spanish Summa, they suffer precisely this weakness--being excessively deductive and rationalist to the point that spirituality and mysticism becomes foreign to it.  Only Matthias Scheeben, it seems, was among the few to be immune to this Cartesian-Wolffian tendency.  This, I submit (especially to V. Lossky, J. Romanides, D. Staniloae, and Metropolitan Heirotheos) is what the Orthodox mean by the expression "Western theology"; it is also a misnomer, since it represents only a small, albeit loud, bloc within the enterprise of Catholic dogmatic theology.  But it is this "Western theology" which stands accused as being partially at the root of today's beige Catholicism.

As I have said previously, this "Baroque theology" makes the serious error of mistaking The Subject for an object and "balkanizes" (to use the words of Fr Romanus Cessario OP in his The Examined Life) the various "treatises" of theology into fragmented areas of specialisation (an ecclesiologist inept in Pneumatology has no business teaching theology, for example.)  Perhaps Nietzsche's imagery of Apollos and Dionysius is helpful here:  Until around the time of the Council, "Western theology" took the Apollonian approach to doctrine--logical, compartmentalised, and cerebral.  And what is logical, compartmentalised and cerebral does not speak warmly to the human heart.

As a result of this, dogmatics was accused of being "un-pastoral" because the connexion between believing and living was lost--not unlike how Dr Sheldon Cooper is a brilliant scientist but an inept human being.  Had the neoscholastics been true Thomists, they would have known that the rational part of the soul consists of not only the intellect but also the will, which directs desiring.  Thus the Byzantines speak of "sobornicity," that is, the integration of the intellect and the heart (cf Catherine Doherty).  In forgetting this, another wedge was driven--between truth and goodness.  This "balkanization" Cessario described of Baroque theology can therefore equally be applied to the human soul.  Regarding the "heart" we've just mentioned, Metropolitan John Zizioulas reminds us of St Macarius the Egyptian's minute, but vital contribution to theology:

Makarius introduced another faculty, the heart, into the discussion.  Rather than the mind, the heart was the source of our knowledge of God. Because the classical view of man understood the heart as the source of the emotions, Makarius was not always understood, but in fact he was not making a distinction between mind and emotion.

In the theology of Israel the heart was the faculty of cognition because it was the instrument of obedience. The heart represents man's obedience and so it knows God as God, since the pure in heart ‘shall sec God’ (Matthew 5.9). The heart is the place of freedom, where we say ‘yes' or ‘no' to one another and to God. The obedient heart does God’s will. So knowledge of God is not an issue simply of intellect or of emotion but of obedience. For those formed by the Greek worldview and coming to terms with the teaching of Scripture this was not obvious. For Greeks, knowledge had to point towards the identity and existence of something. An object must be much more than a moral summons, to which I respond with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Through obedience we acknowledge that someone truly exists, so for Makarius there was an ontological aspect to this knowledge (John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics [London:  Continuum, 2008], 22-23).

This is why I think that the Catechism of the Catholic Church was right to place the human person's "desire for God" (capax Dei) at the very start, since all the doctrines that followed had the goal of satisfying the human heart by building up the believer's personal relationship with God.  Post-seventeenth century theology failed precisely on this point:  It dealt more with what to think than anything else, thus demarcating the mind and the heart--an error that can be traced back to Origen.

Going back to Dr Chapp's diagnosis, it seems to me that the Church's pastoral structure has, in large measure, failed because around the time of the Council it had inherited a theological method that was un-therapeutic.  Taking stock of this, the theology in vogue in the seventies and eighties (Revd Prof Mauro Gagliardi offers a good analysis of this in his recent Truth is a Synthesis:  Catholic Dogmatic Theology) became a wasteland of sentimentalism, Biblical scepticism, and pop psychology.  So when "bourgeois Catholics" push back at a doctrinally sound priest who tries to improve his parish's life, we must ask whether seminaries or theological academies is sufficiently preparing candidates by highlighting the "therapeutic value" of Christian dogma and whether previous generations of parishioners have been infected with the attitude of the doctrinal/pastoral dichotomy by those "old guards" who studied theology with these Cartesian-Wolffian manuals.

On that last note, I believe that my former seminary rector said it best:  "You can be right, but be wrong in the way that you're right."  Introducing doctrinally sound and liturgically correct practices in the parish must be done with tact and courtesy and, above all, presenting the teachings of the Church as being health-giving.  Doctrinal orthodoxy is a lot like eating broccoli--it's good for you, not just a rule at the dinner-table.  Here, again, Macarius' contribution can be enormously helpful.

Relying on grace, I hope that pastors of souls can learn to move beyond "dogmatic facts" to "living dogma," that is, to see how the articles of faith are "therapeutic" in healing the fallen human condition, and to rediscover how the dogmas of the Church are not only "correct" but also "curative."  Take to heart (pun intended) the warning given to the Church at Ephesus:

I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false; I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.  But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first (Apocalypse 2:2-5).

The leaders of the Ephesian Christian community, scholars tell us, were doctrinally sound but cold (why does this sound familiar?), and were thus summoned to return "to this love you had at first."  St Thomas Aquinas tells us that the place of the virtue of charity is in the will, which Macarius (and the Biblical tradition) identifies as the "heart."  But it is too facile to treat this "love you had at first" as something in addition to being Biblically sound, as though being "doctrinaire" and "nice" can work in tandem.  "Speaking the truth in love" does not represent an addition but an integration, like the Hypostatic Union.

When Christ--Who is Truth in Person--spoke truths, He did not do so with a volley of words (except to the corrupt religious leadership) but by addressing the human person beyond simply articulating divine abstractions.  We see this, for example, in His conversations with the likes of the  the Samaritan Woman or the Rich Young Ruler.  Thus, there is a kind of "Hypostatic Union" to dogma such that both truth and goodness integrate in addressing that which makes the human soul unique--the rational soul:  In both the intellect (which is drawn to truth) and the will or the heart (which is drawn to goodness), the articles of faith speaks existentially and not only ontologically.

At the start of St Thomas' Summa theologiae, his "treatise on God" (and not, please God, "treatise de Deo uno"!) opened with a discussion the divine Essence, inherited from the Sinai Theophany (Exodus 3) even more than the transition from metaphysics to theology.  In disclosing the unutterable divine Name, God was not merely giving St Moses a crash course in ontology, but was revealing his Presence to a person, and inviting future Lawgiver to enter into a personal relationship with him.  Though Moses approached the Burning Bush out of curiosity, God did not humour him until he had removed the sandals from his feet--the Near Eastern gesture of worship and reverence (Ex 3:5).  From there on, Moses came to know God "face-to-face, as a friend" (Ex 33:11) rather than as an object of curiosity and study.  As St Gregory of Nyssa tells us in his Life of Moses, this is precisely the paradigm of theology. 

It is only in this way that sacred theology can be therapeutic and, therefore, pastoral.

 

"Thy Will Be Done":Christ's Two Wills and Us

Dogmatic Dyotheletism

In the second half of the fifth century, the Church formally defined that Christ's one Person had two wills, each corresponding to His two natures--divine and human.  This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it:

Similarly, at the sixth ecumenical council, Constantinople III in 681, the Church confessed that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human.  They are not opposed to each other, but cooperate in such a way that the Word made flesh willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit for our salvation.  Christ's human will "does not resist or oppose but rather submits to his divine and almighty will" (¶ 475).

What is key here is that Christ's two wills "cooperate" such that the humanity of the Incarnate Word was in "obedience" to God the Father.  Behind this language is a very specific choice of words in the language of the dogmatic canon:  The human will of Christ is "compliant" to the divine will and "submits" to it.

We are well acquainted with the classic text from Jesus' agony at the Garden of Gethsemane:

"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will...

"My Father, it is not possible to let this cup pass from me unless I drink it, let Your will be done" (Mt 26:39, 42).

In both instances, Christ ultimately asks that His Father's will 'override' (so it would seem) His human will.  The question before us is this:  How did the divine will "override" the human will of Christ?  Commenting on these passages, St Thomas Aquinas says--

Nevertheless not as I will, but as you will, i.e., if it fits with your justice, I will do it; this is why he says, not as I will.  Hence he touches on two wills:  one which he had from the Father insofar as he is God, one which he had with the Father.  ...Also, another will which he had insofar as he is man;  and he submitted this will to the Father in all things, by this giving us an example, that we might submit to God's will... (Commentary on Matthew, 2232, underlined emphasis added).

At least three passages from the Fourth Gospel make the same point about Christ submitting His human will to the Father's:

Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to accomplish his work" (Jn 4:34);

Accordingly, Jesus answered them, "Amen, amen, I tell you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but only what he sees the Father doing.  Indeed, whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise" (Jn 5:19);

"For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of the one who sent me" (Jn 6:18).

The Incarnate Lord repeatedly insists that He does not do "his own will" but the Father's.  Yet if Christ is one Person, how does He have two wills?

Christ's Two Wills Together--How?

The will is proper to nature, not to personhood, as both St Maximus the Confessor and St John Damascene explained.  Regarding the will proper to Christ's human nature, recall from our past entries that St Thomas Aquinas taught that one is human on account of possessing a soul; in the rational part of the soul is the intellect and the will whereby the intellect thinks about what ought or ought not be done, and informs the will about it.  When we speak of Christ's human will, therefore, we are speaking about the process of decisionmaking taking place in His soul.

The divine will, on the other hand, takes place in the Godhead.  St Thomas explains that the Son's consubstantiality with the Father includes the identity of the Son's will with the Father's (never the other way 'round!).  To speak of Christ's divine will means, by extension, the Father's, because the Son's nature is from the Father, and, again will is proper to nature.

So we ask the question again:  How does Christ's human will "cooperate" (Catechism) with the divine will in such a way that it is "compliant" and "submits" (III Constantinople) to it?

In the first place, it is false to say that Christ's humanly willed the Father's will by 'brute force' such that by His own human powers He simply "did" the Father's purpose.  (This is the heresy of Pelagianism.)  It was, rather, a specific working of the Holy Spirit in the soul of Christ which so transformed His human will to submit to His divine will.

This is no verbal pulling the wool over one's eyes.  Recall that the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit operate in the various parts of the human soul; with respect to our present discussion, the gifts of Fear of the Lord, Piety, and Wisdom operate in the human will.  By Fear, therefore, Christ clung to His Father; by Piety, He behaved in a 'sonly' way towards His Father and in a brotherly way towards the rest of us; by Wisdom, He contemplatively gazed upon the Father.  These "affective gifts" (as St Thomas calls them in his Commentary on Isaiah) in turn influenced the passions in Christ' sensitive soul.  Anterior to moving the will, the gifts of Understanding, Knowledge, and Counsel in Christ's intellect gave Him an insight to "the purpose of his will" (cf Eph 1:11), that is to say, the "stuff" of Divine Revelation.

This is why St Thomas, commenting on John 4:34, speaks of the rational creature "...being joined to his end and following a higher rule" (Commentary on John, 640, underlined emphasis added).  When St Thomas speaks of a "higher rule," he means something higher than the rule of human reason or logic and, more specifically, the rulership of the Holy Spirit.  Thus the Angelic Doctor speaks of the Seven Gifts as the "principle higher than human reason" (S.th., 1a2ae, q. 68, art. 1, resp., art. 2, ad 2 and 3) or as a "higher force," namely "grace" (S.th., q. 109, art. 5, resp.).  In his Commentary on Isaiah, St Thomas uses the expression "higher habit" to describe the Seven Gifts in Christ (361).

Therefore, Christ's human will was conformed to the divine will by the working of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit in His soul.  More than that, Christ's two wills isn't about what Christ did, but about His disposition.  His perfect surrender and yielding to the Father was enabled--or, better, empowered--by the Holy Spirit in such a way that even if He appeared to be doing nothing (say, sleeping or eating), He was still in absolute conformity with the Father's will.  This is what the Evangelists mean when St John the Baptist saw the apparition of the dove "rest" upon the Lord Jesus Christ at His baptism:  As the Anointed One, Jesus enjoyed such a measure of the Holy Spirit that there was no 'empty space' in which He did His own will at variance with the Father's.

So when Christ appeared to be asking His Father to "override" His human will with the Father's will, He was in reality praying that His human will would maintain its yielding to the indwelling Holy Spirit.  It was, therefore, a preeminently "Christic" moment which He allowed us to see and to imitate.

"Thy Will Be Done"

When Christians pray the Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we are praying to have the same receptivity to the Holy Spirit's anointing as Jesus did, so that our souls would be so re-engineered as to be disposed to do what the Father wills.  We ought not to imagine that doing "Thy will..." is an ad hoc, occasional experience, things we do here and there, now and then.  Rather, the petition "Thy will be done," more than 'doing,' is about disposition.

This is because the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit are habits in the Christian soul, that is, permanent fixtures by which we abide in the divine, supernatural life.  Ours is to be no different than Christ's:  There ought to be no single, however minute, gap between our wills and God's.  This is why St Paul was able to say, "This is the will of God, your sanctification" (1 Thess 4:3).  To be "sanctified" is to belong to God, and the work of sanctification is especially appropriated to the Holy Spirit, as the Cappadocian Fathers made clear.  To pray "Thy will be done" is to pray for an ever-deeper conformity to God's purpose, and it is in this purpose alone that we can find a fulsome freedom.  (This is why Occam was profoundly, profoundly wrong, in his notion of "freedom of indifference").

I have said that the dogmas of the Church are not "facts" but life.  The dogma of "Dyotheletism"--of Christ's two wills--gives us the pattern of life upon which we are to build our discipleship.  That being said, consider an expression often heard in the earlier days of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (and one we need to hear more of today!), namely, that we undertake an action only if we are "released by the Lord" to do so.  I have a Christian couple friend with whom I am close.  Occasionally, I will half-jokingly text them, "Does the Lord release you to have coffee with me this afternoon at Second Cup?"

Yet the attitude between seeking the Lord's "release" is in profound conformity with the dogma of Christ's two wills and His human will in perpetual and stable conformity to the divine will by the Holy Spirit's operation in His soul.  When I took a closer look at this "Dyotheletism," it became abundantly clear to me that this attitude is the correct one--that we must be in such conformity with the Holy Spirit that nothing we do is without the Holy Spirit's guidance.  Hence did St Paul write, "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" (Gal 5:25).  Here, the Apostle contrasts the merely 'having' the Holy Spirit ("live by the Spirit") from the active 'conformity' to the Holy Spirit ("walk by the Spirit").  The Greek word here for "walk by" is derived from στοιχέω, that is to say, in 'cadence' or 'to walk in rows' or 'to keep in step,' like the Prussian March.  The Christian life cannot be one of "autopilot" or "cruise control" but, rather, of us being the co-pilots and the Holy Spirit being the captain steering the course of our lives.

This is the heart of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal:  Not so much the exercise of the charism, but of surrendering and yielding to the Holy Spirit, of giving the Holy Spirit such sovereignty in our lives that we can truly say, "Thy will be done," because it is the Holy Spirit working to conform our wills to the Father's. 

This post is dedicated to my late Mother
on the second anniversary of her falling-asleep in the Lord,
who loved to pray, "Not my will, but thine be done!"

 

 

 

St Thomas Aquinas, Byzantine Theologian?

By the hand of Nicholas Markell

Along with a number of recent and contemporary Dominican theologians, I find myself becoming increasingly hostile to the "balkanization" of theology (as Romanus Cessario OP puts it) wedging apart the various branches of theology (e.g. moral theology, ascetical theology, etc.) which, in turn, perpetuates the pastorally (and clerically!) disastrous 'divorce' between theology and spirituality.  For all of the merits of Fr Tanqueray's otherwise enormously useful book The Spiritual Life, the mere fact that there are topics divided between that book and his Dogmatic Theology leaves us with the impression that personal holiness and doctrinal acumen are not necessarily mutually inclusive when, in fact, it must be.

One is reminded, therefore, of St Maximus the Confessor's aphorism that a prayer-less theologian is "a demon's theologian."

As it so happens, todays' Second Reading in the Office of Matins in the revised breviary gives us the opening paragraphs of St Anselm of Canterbury's Proslogion, in which he asks God for grace to undertake his meditation:

Teach me to seek You, and reveal Yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek you if You do not teach me how, nor find You unless You reveal Yourself.  Let me seek You in desiring You; let me desire You in seeking You; let me find You in loving You; let me love you in finding You (Advent, Week I, Friday, UK edition).

The "Father of Scholasticism" (though there are other legitimate contenders for this title) here conveys an attitude of supplication at the beginning of a theological task, a habit one finds in nearly all of the masters of the monastic and cathedral schools, and one that persisted somewhat until the High Middle Ages.  It is precisely this attitude that stands behind the seeming intransigence of St Bernard of Clairvaux in his blistering attacks upon the "Schoolmen."  I have, in my collection (somewhere!) a book by a monastic theologian who begins his treatise by telling, in no uncertain terms, how presumptuous the Scholastic theologians of his day are precisely because they approach the things of God merely with the intellect than with the heart.

Recent scholarship has demolished the stereotype of St Thomas Aquinas as a dry logician who made his mark in philosophical theology.  Jean-Pierre Torrell OP, in both his Thomas Aquinas:  Spiritual Master and Christ and Spirituality in Thomas Aquinas easily and ably consigns to the flames the myth of the Angelic Doctor as a wooden university lecturer and demonstrates, rather, a priest of deep contemplative prayer and silence.  One need only consult Fr Martin Grabmann's The Interior Life of St Thomas Aquinas to catch a glimpse of Aquinas' profound relationship with God.

Vladimir Lossky, in several of his works, routinely criticises the "intellectualism" of Catholic theology and, to a certain extent, he has a point.  In several of his writings, then-Father Ratzinger similarly expressed his distaste for "Thomism," only to prefer the more contemplative approach of St Bonaventure.  I think it is fair to say that, in both cases, what Lossky and Ratzinger really had in mind was not Thomism so much as it was "Manualism" or the style of post-seventeenth century theology which, as Yves Congar OP observes in his History of Theology, marked the beginning of a long "decline" in the theological enterprise, with no small thanks to Descartes and Wolff.

At the heart of all this, I would suggest, is what John Zizioulas describes as the radically different methods of theological epistemology versus theological gnosiology.  It would seem that both the Vetus Latina and St Jerome's revision tended to conflate both ἐπιστήμη and γνῶσις in the singular Latin scientia since there is no satisfactory Latin cognate or translation for the latter Greek term.

Whether or not St Thomas was aware of these two Greek words, his method nonetheless preserves the distinction on at least two counts:  In his frequent use of the expression "...by knowledge and by love" and the adoption of theosis in his theological project.

"By Knowledge and By Love"

In the first place, as we all know so well, the Order of Preachers is a contemplative Order, where theologizing was done primarily in contemplation and preaching is simply an overflow of this contemplation.  The role of study, though St Dominic innovated in giving dispensations to the obligation of the Choral Office, is subordinate to contemplative prayer, not the other way around.

I was shocked, in fact, when a Dominican friar pointed out to me recently that up to 1968, the Order retained a very "monastic" flavour and showed me, as proof, a picture-book from the early twentieth century, of a Dominican convent which I could not tell if it was really a Cistercian monastery!  Less well-known is the work of Blessed Hyacinth-Marie Cormier OP, the 76th Master-General, who laboured to restore the monastic character of an otherwise mendicant Order.  (After all, Raymond Bonniwell OP insisted that Dominicans are, at heart, canons regular.)

All of this is simply to underscore the contemplative milieu wherein St Thomas Aquinas theologized.  The anecdote of his nightlong vigil asking the Lord about a certain, difficult passage from the prophet Isaiah is paradigmatic of his theological method or, rather, habit.

In terms of "theological gnosiology," however, I am inclined to think that the Angelic Doctor's antiphonal "by knowledge and by love" captures just this.  In his commentary on Isaiah, for example, he distinguishes between the "intellectual gifts" and the "affective gifts" among the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit:  Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, and Knowledge on one hand, and Fortitude, Piety, and Fear of the Lord on the other.  In appropriating the intellectual gifts to the Son's begetting and the affective gifts to the Holy Spirit's procession, he strongly implies (remember, Super Isaiam is a tightly concise set of lecture notes) that these Seven Gifts conjoin us to the divine Persons and, thus, enables us to theologize.  If 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2 tell us anything, it's that theology is less for "smart" people and more for spiritual people, that is, people imbued with the Holy Spirit.  (I hope at least one seminarian is reading this.)

These intellectual and affective gifts correspond to St Thomas' perennial insistence that Christians adhere to God "by knowledge and by love," that is to say, by an intimacy whereby we are divinized by knowing God as a friend and loving him accordingly.  This is why, here and there, he says that a simple layperson at prayer "knows" God more than a learned theologian who has little time for prayer.

The Eastern Fathers

Ave Maria University recently published a magnificent tome, Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, in which a host of  Aquinas specialists deftly disabuse us of the image of St Thomas as an aloof thinker who was more interested in rationally "proving" dogmas but, in fact, was the first Western theologian to make serious use of the Eastern Fathers.  His Christology, for example, makes heavy use of St John Damascene and St Maximus the Confessor, and demonstrates a keen awareness of the early Ecumenical Councils.

What is more is that St Thomas, more than any other Latin theologian, retrieved the quintessentially "Byzantine" doctrine of theosis or "divinization."  Though he only uses the term 'divinization'/'deification' occasionally, the substance of the doctrine is everywhere in St Thomas' writings.  For example, in asking whether the Incarnation was necessary for the "restoration" of the human race, St Thomas gave five reasons, the fifth of which:

...with regard to the full participation of the Divinity, which is the true bliss of man and end of human life; and this is bestowed upon us by Christ's humanity; for Augustine says in a sermon (xiii de Temp.): "God was made man, that man might be made God" (S.th., 3a, q. 1, art. 2, resp.).

In fact, 2 Peter 2:14 has become for St Thomas the go-to reference for the "Byzantine" doctrine of divinization or theosis.  In his treatise on grace, for example, he writes:

Now the gift of grace surpasses every capability of created nature, since it is nothing short of a partaking of the Divine Nature, which exceeds every other nature. And thus it is impossible that any creature should cause grace. For it is as necessary that God alone should deify, bestowing a partaking of the Divine Nature by a participated likeness, as it is impossible that anything save fire should enkindle (S.th., 1a2ae, q. 112, art. 1, resp.).

Though the originator of the expression "God became man in order that man might become God" appears to be St Irenaeus of Lyons and frequently retrieved by Pope Leo the Great--both Latin Fathers--it is clear that Aquinas' familiarity with the doctrine owes to his familiarity with Damascene and  Maximus the Confessor.

Far from being an 'element' in Thomistic theology, it is, in fact, at the very heart of how he lays out the Summa theologiae, from the "invisible mission of the divine Persons" (S.th. 1a, q. 43, art. 3), through his treatise on sanctifying grace (1a2ae, q. 110, art. 3, 4; q. 112, art. 1; q. 114, art. 3), he explains the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit whereby anointed Christians are made to be "divine" by participation (1a2ae, q. 68) with an explanation of each gift in turn throughout the Secunda secundae until, finally, he reaches the Incarnation whereby the God-Man empowers women and men to become God by participation (3a, q. 1, art. 2) of which the divinization of Christ's soul by grace is the supreme pattern of Christians' (3a, q. 7, art. 1, ad 1; q. 22, art. 1).  Clearly, St Thomas retrieved a quintessentially "Byzantine Christian" theme for his Latin theological synthesis.

This ought to call into question the all-too-frequent pastoral (mis-) praxis of telling Christians that they need only to "stay forgiven" rather than to grow in grace and participation in the Divine Nature.

Nor can we forget that St Thomas inherited from his master, St Albert the Great, a deep familiarity with the writings of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, by which his theological synthesis incorporated the apophatiicsm that is distinctive of Byzantine theology.  Moreover, when Lossky speaks of sophia as the balance between epistemology and gnosiology in theology, it is clear that, as a result of his apophaticism, "...This doctrine is wisdom above all human wisdom; not merely in any one order, but absolutely."  As such, the superlatives of God's attributes (or better, of the "Divine Names") are known by experience and not merely ratiocination:

The first manner of judging divine things belongs to that wisdom which is set down among the gifts of the Holy Spirit: The spiritual man judgeth all things (1 Cor 2:15). And Dionysius says (Div. Nom. ii): Hierotheus is taught not by mere learning, but by experience of divine things (S.th., 1a, q. 1, art. 6; ad 3).

Intimacy with God is better had, St Thomas routinely indicates, by the long detour of the via negativa than the shortcut of the via positiva giving a superficial cognition about God characteristic of post-Cartesian theology, because God's utter unknowability invites us to unrelentingly and endlessly stretch ourselves towards him in friendship.

The False Dichotomization of de Deo uno and de Deo Trino

Eastern Orthodox theologians often criticise "Roman Catholic theology" for beginning its treatise on God with "the one God" and then moving to "the Triune God" (with Lossky and Dumitru Stăniloae being the loudest critics) since Orthodoxy prefers to look at the unity of the divine Essence only after looking at the plurality of hypostases.  Manualist theology, it is true, does prefer to treat of de Deo uno  prior to de De Trino, but this is a uniquely Manualist/Baroque tendency often 'read into' the "treatise on God" in the Summa theologiae.

There are three problems with the Baroque approach:  (1) It too easily bridges natural theology and revealed theology or reason and Revelation; (2) it conflates ideas of God-as-one and the nature of the Divine Essence; (3) it mistakes God for an "object" of theology rather than its "Subject."

Regarding the first and second points, Jean-Pierre Torrell OP explains:

...we should note that one frequently hears the first section ([1a] qq. 2-26) referred to as "Saint Thomas's [sic] treatise on God" and it has often been used to create a theodicy, a philosophical treatise on God.  This is not in keeping with the intentions of the author.  He is writing a Summa of theology and the God about whom he speaks has nothing in common with that spoken of by the deist philosophers but is instead the living God of the Bible, who has revealed himself in salvation history.  Knowledge of him is not attained until he has been understood as a trinity of persons.  This is why the Summa's treatise on God ends with the question of the plurality of Persons in the Trinity, what distinguishes them and what is proper  to each of them.  The break between the two section serves only a pedagogical function; it should not be understood as a separation (St Thomas Aquinas, vol.1:  The Person and the Work, 21)

Torrell, it seems, shows that the Orthodox criticism of Catholic theology (or, rather, Baroque theology) is not entirely without merit.

Going back to what we said earlier about the "balkanization" of theoology between dogmatics and spirituality, I have become convinced that theological method errs profoundly when God is treated as "object" rather than as Subject.  At S.th., q. 1, art. 7, whereas the Blackfriars' translation reads "God is the object of this [= sacra doctrina] science," the Latin text has «Deus est subiectum huius scientiae».  The difference between subjectus and objectus is that the former has the sense of 'throwing under' whereas the latter has the sense of 'throwing-towards.'  At one level, it is tempting to conflate the two, thinking that "subject" has more to do with subject-matter like "my favourite subject in school is math."  Though we don't have time to explore St Thomas' word-choice here, suffice it to say that he clearly understands this "subject" to be the Subject with whom we enjoy a personal relationship by the theological virtue of faith:

But in sacred science, all things are treated of under [sub] the aspect of God: either because they are God Himself or because they refer to God as their beginning and end.  Hence it follows that God is in very truth the object subject [subjectum] of this science.  This is clear also from the principles of this science, namely, the articles of faith, for faith is about God. The object subject [subjectum] of the principles and of the whole science must be the same, since the whole science is contained virtually in its principles.

Notice a twofold distinction of the "subject" of theology:  First, the revealed God, and second, the "articles of faith" derived from the principles of God whose revelation has been received in faith.  The fundamental presupposition here is faith, that is to say, a relationship rather than an object we think about.  Hence in the Secunda secundae, theological faith is treated first of all, with its corresponding gifts of Understanding and Knowledge, both of which enable the believer to grasp what has been divinely revealed and to have a right judgment about what is to be believed.  And since the Seven Gifts work as a cluster, one cannot drive a wedge between the intellect which beholds the God of Jesus Christ from the will that submits to him in hope and love and, in turn, rightly order the passions in the sensitive soul according to God's purposes.  Though the synthesis that is the Summa theologiae unfolds with a snail's pace, the totality of the work excludes that kind of theologizing that leaves God dissected on the examination table, so to speak, and mistakes what's "interesting" about God as "faith" in him.  And that, precisely, is the constant danger of the theologian.

The little book by Marie-Dominique Chenu OP, Aquinas and His Role in Theology, highlights exactly this:  St Thomas theologized as a contemplative, not a child prodigy.  And may God forbid that child prodigies should grow up to be theologians.

(To be fair, and pace Lossky and Zizioulas, et al., treating of God's Essence while approaching God's tri-unity is not a Roman innovation; one sees it, for example, in St Gregory of Nyssa's Great Catechetical Oration and Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith.)

Conclusion

Lossky's sometimes cutting remarks about Catholic theology must be understood as, rather, critiques of that kind of theologizing likewise criticised by Chenu and Congar.

I shall have more to say about St Thomas Aquinas' "theological gnosiology" in another post.  Our cursory look at the Angelic Doctor's understanding of the Christian life as one of clinging to God "by knowledge and by love" shows that it must be, above all, about a personal relationship which so transforms the believer that she is made a "participant in the Divine Nature" and relates to God as revealed by the Incarnate Word precisely as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Of course, to speak of St Thomas Aquinas as a "Byzantine theologian" would be an anachronism and an overstatement.  But the point still stands:  He often has more in common with Byzantine Christian theology than neo-scholasticism, and may have found a more kindred spirit in Lossky or Zizioulas than Cardinal Ottaviani.

"But with the Holy Spirit..."

Without the Holy Spirit:

God is far away

Christ stays in the past

The Gospel is a dead letter

The Church is simply an organization

Authority a matter of domination

Mission a matter of propaganda

Liturgy is no more than an evocation

Christian living a slave morality.

But with the Holy Spirit--
The cosmos is resurrected and groans
with the birth-pangs of the Kingdom:

The risen Christ is there,

The Gospel is the power of life,

The Church shows forth the life of the Trinity,

Authority is a liberating service,

Mission is a Pentecost,

The liturgy is both memorial and anticipation,

Human action is deified.

Patriarch Ignatius IV (Hazim)
of the Antiochian Orthodox Church