Coffee Bowl Browsing

How Nanny-Statism killed California. . .will we let this be a lesson for us all?

Roger Kimball on the coming of age of "democratic despotism."

No, Harry Reid is not a racist. . .but it sure is fun to watch the Dems sputter, jump, babble, and dodge to explain away their faux outrage at Trent Lott's gaffe while defending Reid's.  Besides, I don't think the GOP really wants Reid to resign. . .they need him right where he is to take back the Senate.

B.O. is failing as President b/c he doesn't know the American people:  ". . .he is a man trying to govern a nation he doesn't genuinely know, stuck trying to communicate with, as we continue to find out, a nation that never really knew him when they elected him, so superficial and oh my God fantastic, if unrealistic, was the press bubble that surrounded him during the campaign."

On why we need the notion of human nature, or Why Nominalism is the Root of All Evil

Fr. Z. highlights a parochial program for establishing an all-male altar server guild.  I have to admit that I am still just enough of a 90's feminist to cringe at the idea of taking a co-ed server guild and making it all-male.  Don't get me wrong:  I get that that the boys love it, but my well-trained 90's feminist reflex jumps every time!  It doesn't help any that the usual suggestion for the girls' guild has something to do with cleaning, sewing, or wash up after Mass.  OY!

Looks like the anti-Catholic socialists in the U.K. want to see the RCC under persecution again.

If you are a compulsive back seat driver, you shouldn't watch this video. 

Ten apocalyptic scenarios. . .#5 is my fav. . . yea, physicists are very dangerous!  ;-) 

  

Grace trains. . .

Baptism of the Lord: Readings

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

When hearing confessions or giving spiritual direction to university students—especially men—I frequently draw an analogy between developing spiritually and developing physically. Most of us have no illusions about what it takes to lose weight, build muscle, increase stamina, and get ourselves to the point where we are as fit as we can be. The whole unpleasant process begins with radical changes to the diet. Slowly increasing exercise. Maybe even a little weight-lifting. If you've ever started down this road, you know that you will not drop 25lbs in a week, nor will you be able to show off a six-pack by the weekend. Getting a flabby, overweight, diet-stressed body into some kind of shape requires determination, focus, commitment, and lots and lots of time. It wouldn't hurt if you had someone with experience to help. A professional trainer. A coach. Even a friend who knows how to keep you motivated. All of this applies to our spiritual growth as well. Being Catholics, we understand the sacramental nature of creation: the physical world is a sign of the spiritual, an imperfect revelation of God that both points to God's presence and makes Him present to us. We cannot, therefore, rightly divide the human body from the human soul and expect our spiritual lives to be fruitful. Just as the body needs proper diet, exercise, and a little hard-lifting, the soul needs its strength-training too.

We start our life-long regime at The Jesus Gym on the day we are baptized. From that moment on, “the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age. . .” As Catholics, we don't have any trouble understanding grace as divine help, a gift from God to assist us when we need it. What we do have trouble understanding sometimes is that the help we get isn't always the help we want. Like the skinny 18 year old freshman who wants ripped abs in a week to impress his girlfriend, we sometimes approach the throne in prayer and ask not for assistance to accomplish some goal, but rather we ask God to accomplish the goal for us, instead of us. The freshman is very disappointed to hear that his six-pack will take a semester or two with lots of hard work. And we are no less disappointed to learn that grace does not prevent us from traveling the ways of the godless nor desiring what the world would have us desire. Instead, grace trains us how to be godly men and women. The hard work of chiseling out a ripped spiritual six-pack is all ours. But we do not work alone.

And not only do we not work alone, we cannot work alone. Christianity is a team sport. We play as a team, so we train as a team and the perfect model for teamwork is the Holy Trinity: three divine persons, one God. The more perfectly we imitate this model of Love in action, we closer we get to that Jesus Gym spirit we've been wanting. As noted above, the first step on this new regime is baptism. I did not baptize myself. Nor did any of you. The Church baptized us all with parents, godparents, friends, fans, by-standers, accidental tourists, all the angels and saints—every one in attendance. And because we were baptized by the Church, we might think that the only thing we got for our trouble is a life-long membership to the Jesus Gym. As wonderful as that is, it's not even close to the full baptismal package. Paul writes to Titus, “[God] saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.” First, notice: God saved. . .He poured out. We did nothing (nor could we do anything) to initiate the renewal of our relationship with God. It was His move and His alone. Second, notice: through Christ, by the Holy Spirit, through our Savior, by his grace. Christ Jesus is the only mediator, the only mechanism; he is the only way. Third, notice: us, us, our, we, heirs. Not “Me & Jesus.” Not “Jesus, MY Personal Lord & Savior.” His grace is poured out on US. . .WE are saved by the bath of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. . .Christ is OUR Savior. . .And WE are made HEIRS in hope of eternal life. This is what baptism does for us and to us: we are made just (righteous), so that we might work with God's abundant graces to get our spiritual bodies into the best shape possible.

But even before we can be baptized in water and the Spirit; even before we can be offered the chance at a right-relationship with the Father through Christ; even before it is possible for us to be heirs to hope in eternal life. . .The Jesus Gym must have a grand opening. It only makes sense. Plans were laid long ago with the prophets. They rounded up the initial investors. After a few false teachers and at least one wash-out (ahem), momentum starting building. Finally, the Plan was conceived and announced. And before it was fully born, there was one enthusiastic booster. Then, with some astronomical fanfare and a couple of sheep, the Plan was born, drawing its first foreign investors twelve days later. With this starting capital and two excellent CEO's, the Plan matured for a while and opened for business for the first time at a wedding in Cana. . .but the Grand Opening, the opening that makes The Jesus Gym not just another gym but The Gym for all peoples, tribes, nations, and tongues, this opening takes place at the River Jordan where Jesus' first booster baptizes him with water and then the Father baptizes him with His Spirit, saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Now, The Jesus Gym is open for business.

If, after all the bad analogizing, you are still reading, let me quickly tell you why Jesus was baptized. Here's a nice summary from the CCC: “The baptism of Jesus is on his part the acceptance and inauguration of his mission as God's suffering Servant. He allows himself to be numbered among sinners;. . .Already he is anticipating the 'baptism' of his bloody death. Already he is coming to 'fulfill all righteousness,' that is, he is submitting himself entirely to his Father's will: out of love he consents to this baptism of death for the remission of our sins. . .”(n. 536). Remember, earlier we said that the Holy Trinity is the perfect model of teamwork. By imitating the work of the Trinity we come closer to the spiritual perfection for which we were made. By submitting to baptism, Christ demonstrated his acceptance of his Father's plan for our salvation. This shouldn't sound all that unusual: three divine persons, one God—perfect Love in action. The Son submits in love to take on human flesh in order to bring the Father's offer of renewal to us. And not only does he deliver the invitation, he becomes our sin; dies for us; rises again to the Father; and sends the Holy Spirit as our guide. The whole of his public ministry, inaugurated by the River Jordan, was to proclaim the Father's invitation and to leave us a body of teaching that serves to reveal what grace in action look likes. The Gospels answer the question: what does the perfected follower of Christ look like? Out of love, she dies for her friends.

Grace trains us for the godly life. What is the godly life? It is not scrupulous moral behavior. It is not meticulous orthodoxy. It is not righteous anger at injustice. It is not any one of these alone. The godly life is the life Christ left for us to follow. The godly life begins with baptism, grows with the Church, and ends with “Out of love, he ____for his friends.” How you fill in that blank will depend on how well you used your time and strength at The Jesus Gym. Most of us will spend our lives trying to decide if we have the courage to put “died” or “suffered” in that blank. Grace trains. But you have to do the work.

Questions...

Questions. ..

1).  I recently saw "2012" and "The Road."  Why do you think people, especially Christians, love these apocalyptic stories?

I'm not sure that Christians love these sorts of stories in any special way; however, we have inherited the Jewish apocalyptic tradition and our history is stuffed full of the faithful believing and acting upon end of the world scenarios.  Here's my armchair theorizing. . .movies/stories like "2012" satisfy a couple of human impulses.  First, we love the idea of starting over.  Everything is so screwed up; everything is beyond repair--let's just wipe it clean and try again.  Second, our fav villains are cast as the cause the disasters, so we get to wallow in a little Told Ya So.  In Jewish-Christian stories, it's the sinner who brings down God's judgment on the planet.  In the eco-theistic stories, it's evil capitalists, polluters, and Christians who cause the apocalypse.  One of the many, many things I love about The Road is that McCarthy avoids completely writing about the cause/blame of the world's destruction.  This single decision saved the book from being just another disaster story.  Third, and this is likely to be controversial, I think we want to be punished. . .not as individuals but as a whole.  Strong consciences are very much aware of guilt but survival instincts tend to keep us bobbing and weaving responsibility.  Wholesale destruction relieves guilt through punishment but also makes sure everyone else gets punished too.  Fourth, and perhaps scariest, these stories have a real wish-fulfillment element to them. Reviews of "Avatar" have pointed out that it is an adolescent suicide note to negligent parents (i.e., corporations, etc.), a sort "you'll be sorry when I'm gone" film that wants us to wallow around in the narrative's pretentious eco-preaching and then do penance by living lives of consumerist self-loathing.  For Christians, none of these should matter much.  God is in control; we aren't.  All things will be well.  The secret for us is to make darn sure that our priorities are properly ordered and that we know who we are in Christ.  Come the end, that's all that will matter anyway.

2).  You said in class at UD once that you aren't really interested in learning the Tridentine Mass.  Has living in Rome changed your mind?

Not really.  I understand and sympathize with Catholics who love the Extraordinary Form and want to see it used more widely and frequently.  If I were a pastor, I'd certainly make every effort to learn the form and celebrate it regularly.  As a religious priest serving in an academic setting, there aren't many opportunities for me to preside at Mass in any form.  But quite apart from these practical considerations, I cannot find any substantial flaws in the Ordinary Form of the Mass.  The current translation is a disaster, and there's ample evidence that the newest translation will have its problems too. . .but at the very least we will have language that doesn't read and sound like people gathering at WalMart to pray that the Eucharist "have an effect in their lives."  And for the record, I do not buy for one second the traditionalist pose that the E.F. is the only valid, only real, only True/Good/Holy Mass of the Ages.  Like all liturgical texts and practices, the E.F. has a history of origination, development, change, decline, revival, etc.  Jesus and the apostles did not write the E.F. at the Last Supper.  And neither did they compose the O.F.  The O.F. can be celebrated with reverence, great solemnity, and bring God's people closer to Him.  I'll end this by saying that I am 100% in favor of celebrating the O.F. ad orientum.

3).  Fr. Z. had a poll going about whether or not the Vatican ought to start using that big sedan chair for the Pope during processions into St. Peter's.  What do you think?

My immediate reaction upon hearing the suggestion was NO!  The last thing any pope, especially this pope, needs is to appear to be even further removed from the people.  Then, Fr. Z. posted an article by a security specialist who made a good case not only for security and visibility but also for relieving the Holy Father from that long walk up the aisle, a walk that usually precedes 2 to 3 hour liturgies.  I think a good compromise would be for someone to design and build a less throne-like sedan chair. . .something tasteful, elegant, but not quite so garish as we have seen in the past.  But even then, as I imagine being at the Vatican and seeing BXVI being carried in, even then I get sort of queasy and wonder if there isn't a better way.  If you can't tell, I don't have much taste for the Imperial Papacy and its trappings.

Fr. Bob's Philosophy Problem

So, you go to Fr. Bob with marital (!) problems and he reads the Wedding at Cana story to you.  And even though you ask him good questions about how this story to relevant to your difficulties, all Fr. Bob will do is re-read the story. . .again and again.

Is Fr. Bob stupid?  Is he being coy?  Zen-like?  What!?

None of the above.  Fr. Bob is an extreme practitioner of a PoMo theological innovation called "narrative theology" (NT).   Since modern science has eliminated metaphysical problems, we can leave aside all that medieval mumbo-jumbo about cause, being, essence, nature, etc.  But leaving aside metaphysical questions in philosophy means leaving aside all of the theology that this sort of philosophy supported, that is, centuries of traditional Roman Catholic theology.

No problem.  Modernism has us covered.  Well, except that postmodernist philosophies have weakened the modernist's strangle on claims to rational truth by pointing out that all truth claims are made within an interpretative field; therefore, truth can never be evaluated from a non-interpretative framework, including the rationalism.  IOW, logic/science/reason are not privileged means of examining the truth claims of other human ways of knowing; they themselves are subject to evaluation.

If Catholic theologians "forget being" and "go beyond metaphysics" AND abandon the modernist grand narrative of Logic and Science, where does this leave them?

Telling stories.  The basic (very, very basic) premise of NT is that all the metaphysical speculation of scholastic theology and all the high-minded rationalism of modernism obscure the gospel story by loading it down with the yoke of post-testament philosophical problems, problems not found in the stories themselves, problems not even implied by the stories.  The way out of this mess is to simply return to the narratives of the gospels and connect them up with the everyday lives of real Christians. 

So, rather than spending a great deal of time worrying about the metaphysical problems of the resurrection or proving within scientific probabilities that the resurrection occurred, narrative theologians simply say, "Here's the resurrection story. . .what did it mean then, now, and for the future?"  Their concern is that we choose the gospel narratives as true descriptions of how our ancestors in the faith understood their relationship to God and how the gospel story shaped their lives.  Having chosen these narratives, we make them our own.  NT does not claim that the gospel stories are merely stories meant to inspire good moral behavior--that's just early 20th-century Protestant liberalism, the social gospel.  By making the gospel narrative "our own," we adopt the worldview of the narratives as our primary interpretative lens for seeing and understanding the world.

This approach poses no great difficulties for Catholic theologians until we start to ask philosophical questions about the narratives.  Now, narrative theologians will cry foul and assert that getting away from philosophical questions is exactly what they are trying to do.  But here's my point about Fr. Bob's pastoral counseling method:  you can't just tell a story and wait for enlightenment to strike.  Stories provoke questions within a context.  The storyteller needs to be able to understand the questions and apply the story accordingly.  This doesn't mean that the storyteller has to adopt complex neo-Platonic metaphysical categories to do his job, but he cannot avoid philosophizing if he is to do his job.  If we take philosophy to be the love of wisdom, then the pastor confronted with a difficult pastoral situation will need to love wisdom in order to be of assistance!  Wisdom is exactly what's call for here.

In order to make a point, I've done a poor job of describing NT.  Narrative theologians do not reject all philosophy as pointless.  However, you will find some in the Catholic world who use a bastardized form of NT to undermine our philosophical tradition in order to arrive at theological conclusions more in line with their reforming ideologies.  I've seen the pattern over and over again:

Complex theological system taught at elite theological school --> system filters down through journals, popular accounts in books, etc. --> enterprising individual simplifies the system and gives it a "sexy spin" (e.g., links to eco-concerns, etc,) and offers workshops --> religious, priests, DRE's, etc. attend workshops --> return to convent/priory/parish --> offer classes to those interested, etc.

What happens at each stage of this process is that complications and nuances are dropped off for the sake of simplicity.  Arguments are replaces by slogans.  And the original intent of the system is reduced to a trendy way of exercising one's will over some problem in theology.  I've seen this sort of thing happen with the Myers-Briggs, the Ennegram, eco-theology, process theology, men's theology, ritual studies, and on and on.

What shortcuts this sort of devolution is a healthy does of philosophical inquiry!

Coffee Bowl Browsing

[NB.  Websites display ads relative to the geographic location of the accessed server.  IOW, the ads I see here in Rome may not be the ads you see in the US or the UK, etc.  If a link is leading you to a site with inappropriate content, just let me know.]

Though not the Final Step of our nation's sink into debauchery, it's one of the last few:  male brothels.

And in related news:  do you know an adulterer?  Do these sorts of polls bug you?  I always get the feeling that they are used to normalize aberrant behavior:  "See!  It's OK.  Everyone's doing it."  

"America Rising": this anti-B.O./Pelosi/Reid vid is all over the internet.  I've watched it two or three times and for some reason it's just not pushing any of my buttons in the right way.  Though I agree with the basic message, something about it just doesn't square up. . .I dunno. . .it could be that the vid starts off by using "we" to describe BO supporters.  Since I've never thought of BO and the Dems as our Savior and His Cloud of Angels, the sense of betrayal that the vid tries to convey falls flat.  I just kept thinking:  "Who's 'we,' buddy?  You got a mouse in your pocket?" 

Andrew Breitbart launches BigJournalism!  I lie awake at night thinking of ways not to make this man mad at me. . .

Gulp!  Trendy, modernist French bishop gets booed at Mass!  And not a few French grannies go at him for his ridiculous rainbow vestments.  I'm not in favor of booing anyone at Mass. . .however, from what I'm reading about this bishop, he should have been prepared for far, far worse.

I sent this to my dad. . .he's a gun safety instructor for the state.

Lots of Geek Cupcakes!

We used to call this semiotic dissonance.  Now we call it global capitalism.

Tired of being plain ole "Mister" or "Misses"?  Get a royal title!

Love harder and more faithfully

[Repost from one year ago today. . .I've been pecking away on an Epiphany homily since Friday, but it won't come.   The idea is either too big or too small for a homily. . .]

Christmas Week (T): 1 Jn 4:7-10; Mk 6:34-44

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma

How casually do you use the word “love”? How quickly does it trip off your tongue when necessary, yet means almost nothing at all? Or, are you some kind of Christian freak who uses “love” to mean Love and in doing so, really mean it? In English, superlatives like “awesome,” “greatest,” “wonderful,” are quickly emptied of their strictest meaning by meaningless repetition. I listened to an American comedian over the weekend who riffed on the overuse of the word “awesome.” He noted that Americans will describe hot dogs as “awesome.” He asks, “What does the next astronaut do when he lands on Mars and receives a call from the President asking him to describe the Red Planet? ‘Mr. President, Mars is awesome!’ ‘You mean like a hot dog?’ ‘Um, well, yeah, but like a billion hot dogs!’” See the problem? When everything is awesome, nothing is awesome. If love can mean something as trivial as “I don’t hate you…much” or “this is my preference,” then love is emptied of its meaning. So, for Christians, what does Love mean?

In his first letter, John writes: “…everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” God is Love. Now, the first thing we must do is quickly move beyond any vacuous secular notion of love and settle firmly in the middle of the Christian tradition. Love is not a fluttering stomach, or a swooning head, or a surge of hormones. Those can be signs of love, but they are not Love Himself. If we are to know God, we must love. And we are capable of loving because God, who is Love, loved us first. Since God is the source and destination of our love, when we love we come to know Him. But if our love is to be anything but an abstraction, we must love each other; that is, our love must be for other people. This means we come to know each other in and through God as God knows each of us.

How is this possible? How is it possible that we, mere humans, can come to love another as God loves us and come to know Him and others all the while loving? In his 2005 encyclical, Deus caritas est, our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, writes: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”(1). We just celebrated the event: the Nativity of the Christ Child. We have just met the person—fully God, fully Man—Jesus Christ. In this event and this person, we have Love given flesh! To participate in this event, our baptism, and to meet this person, in the Eucharist, our lives as “mere” humans are transformed; we are given new life, a new horizon, a fresh ambition; we are given a decisive direction, set on an unsullied path, and gifted with every grace we need to arrive in His divine presence whole and secure. The Christ Child—human and divine—is Love in the flesh. Know him and know the One Who sent him: God.

This messy business of loving sinful men and women is no less messy because we must do so with and through Love Himself. But loving God and one another is one superlative that will not be emptied by overuse. Quite the opposite: “God sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we might have life through him.” The longer and harder and more faithfully we love, the more we come to our perfection in this flesh and blood life of Christ.

Infinitely Weird Fat Head!!

"Bob" left the following little puddle in one of the comboxes below. . . 

You infinitely weird Fat Head, [great opener, seriously]

  

People are appalled that you DO post the stuff you do. [well, a small vocal group seems to be appalled, but from what I can tell there are about four of you and three of the four are the same person hiding behind various fake ID's. . .remember:  I can see ISP addresses.] 

Got that???? [Yes, you disagree with me.  I got that.  And. . .???] 

It's simple. Even you should grasp it. [I do grasp it quite well.  I grasp that a tiny little group of my readers don't like my anti-B.O./anti-Left liberal posts so they scream bloody murder in an effort to intimidate me into being quiet. . .is that about right?] 

You are declaring your in control of a bunch of crap that's run amok and you're PROUD of it. [Define:  "run amok."] 

You are the biggest jackass EVER.  [You could be right there. . .] 

Please tell me how this is supposed to help. . .I mean, it's funny and all. . .but not of much practical use.  

I love "infinitely weird Fat Head," by the way!

Bob, just FYI:  I worked in an adolescent psych ward for almost five years.  I was the Team Leader, the disciplinarian, absolutely nothing you can say/write/think can even come close to the verbal abuse I endured for those four-plus years.  I've had every imaginable bodily excretion thrown, smeared, or spat at me.  You name it, I've either dodged it or wash it off.  And just like the hysterical, out of control teens that called me those names and flung their bodily excretions at me, you aren't going to get your way with me either.  Not by acting the attention-seeking adolescent anyway.  If you would like to chat privately about what's bothering you, leave your email in the combox, and I'll contact you. . .Just to be clear:  I'm not having this discussion in the comboxes with you or anyone else.  

Coffee Bowl Browsing (Mini-Edition)

Apparently, being tattooed, shirtless, and generally unkempt is required for mafia membership

Zombie Rabbis gather on the beach at sundown. . .OY!

The priests of the Church of Global-Warming preach, "Don't believe your lying eyes!"

Eastern Potentate demands Papal submission

Maxims and sayings of St. Philip Neri (H/T: Patrick Madrid)

Coffee Bowl Browsing (Remembering the '00's Edition)

Apologies for the sparse posting over the last few days. . .around 11.2o p.m. New Year's Eve, lightening knocked our internet connection out.  It wasn't restored until 11 a.m. New Year's Day.  Then last night around 7.15 we were knocked off-line again.  Connection restored about an hour ago.

Anyway. . .on with Coffee Bowl Browsing!

The 100 Most Iconic Internet Vids of the '00's.

100 Best Movies. . .how many have you seen?

10 Best Debut Novels. . .I've read only three of them.

50 Best Albums of the Decade. . .I'm not a music fan, so I'll just take their word for it.

10 Most corrupt politicians from Judicial Watch

Happy 2010!

Felice Anno Nuovo!

Thank you all for your support:  the hits, the comments, the emails, the books!

Happy 2010. . .!

Stories aren't enough!

As noted in a post below, there are some contemporary theologians and philosophers of religion who are challenging the dominance of what they call "onto-theological thinking," that is, following Nietzsche and Heidegger, these folks argue that it was a big mistake for the Church's earliest theologians to translate the Biblical witness of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob into the Greek language of substance metaphysics:  "Yahweh" becomes "Being Itself."

The identification of Abraham's God with Plato's One seems natural enough when you consider Exodus 3.14, "I AM that I AM" (or any of the dozens of renditions).  With a name like "I AM," you are inviting metaphysical speculation on the nature of existence and your place in the scheme of things.  If God is not a being like all the others in the world, and yet He somehow manages to exist . . .how exactly are we supposed to understand what it means to exist but not as an existing thing?  Aquinas' answer:  God is not a being; He is Being.  He doesn't exists; He is existence.

Now, we could interpret the last two sentences above in purely metaphysical terms.  "God" and "Being" are two names we give to the persistence of existing.  No bible necessary here.  We could also interpret those same two sentences in a purely Biblical sense, using Exo 3.14 as our text and show that "I AM" is a religious and not a philosophical concept.  But as Gilson argues in the post below, this sort of splitting your worldview up into separate parts in order to keep them compartmentalized is dishonest.  So, an honest believer's religious, philosophical, theological, etc. worldviews need to be consistent with one another.

Aquinas, wanting to be consistent, uses the first part of his Summa to address the question of who and what God is.  To keep this post within a reasonable word count, I will simply quote Brian Davies on Aquinas' notion of God:  "God. . .is the beginning and end of all thing, the Creator of the world which depends on him for its existence. . .Aquinas also holds that God is alive, perfect, good, eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. . ."(129).*  Taking up the characteristics usually assigned to The One of Platonic metaphysics, Aquinas attributes them to God and then argues that though we can have some limited knowledge of God, we cannot know God perfectly this side of heaven.**

Skipping over a couple of centuries of development in philosophical theology, we arrive at what is usually called "the Problem of Evil."  In the past this argument has been more or less used by religious skeptics and atheists to poke holes in theism.  For some, it's THE argument against theism and moves them to quit religion entirely.  The classical form of the argument goes something like this:

1. God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient.
2. Evil exists.
3. Therefore, one or more of the "omni" attributions in #1 must be false.

#3 here is usually taken to mean that God cannot be all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere present if evil exists.  He could be a combination of any of the two but not all three.

There are hundreds of different reasonable responses to the Problem of Evil.  I'm keen on the Free Will Defense myself:  evil is allowed by God so that human freedom may be maximized; or since God wills that human freedom be maximized, He allows evil, which inevitably results from the abuse of human freedom.  This is basically Aquinas' response, so we know it's the correct one.  :-)

This is an example of philosophy helping theology untangle a problem.  However, couldn't we say that philosophy caused this problem in the first place?  There would be no Problem of Evil if we had resisted the temptation to translate Yahweh into Being Itself.  Yahweh is not presented in scripture as possessing the three-omni's of Plato's One.  When Yahweh is addressed as "All-powerful Lord," He is being praised in emotive language and not assigned the philosophical label "omnipotent."  Etc. for the other two-omni's. 

Our Nietzschean and Heideggerian theologians/philosophers would have us abandon the God of Plato's metaphysics and simply stick with the Biblical God of Abraham, etc.  This notion of "forgetting metaphysics" has a number of different names in the academy, but the most common is "narrative theology."  Generally associated with the Yale Divinity School, narrative theologians are impatient with complex metaphysical problems and all the messy philosophical waste that seems to be secreted from the history of onto-theological discourse.  Their goal is to rescue biblical revelation from the clutches of onto-theological-philosophical obfuscation and return it to the center of the Church's communal life.  This strikes me as a important consideration for the development of a Catholic theology of preaching. 

However, in theology more generally, how we go about separating out philosophy from narrative in the biblical witness is beyond me.  We could, I suppose, focus only on metaphysical language (being, cause, essence, etc) and remove it from our theologizing about revelation.  But then that leaves us unable to ask epistemological questions (i.e., how do we know?).  We could just say that philosophy is really about wisdom and telling stories is the best way to disseminate and promote wisdom.  I wouldn't disagree entirely with this, but we are still left with deciding what counts as wisdom and what doesn't.  We also have the problem of interpreting and applying a story's wisdom to concrete situations.  That's called hermeneutics.  And it comes with a whole mule-load of philosophical considerations. . .and so on.

So, our theological enterprise is not doable without philosophy.  We might disagree about which philosophical approach to take, but philosophy as a way of thinking and talking about problems in human discourse is a non-negotiable.  It's here to stay.  To paraphrase an old prof of mine:  "Philosophy always seems to be its own undertaker!"

*"Aquinas on What God is Not," in Aquinas's Summa Theologiae:  Critical Essays, ed. Brian Davies, Rowan and Littlefield, 2006, 129-144.

**It is this "divine hiddenness" that causes some sceptical philosophers and theologians to question the possibility of knowing anything at all about God.  Some go so far as to argue that the obscurity of God--intended or not--is sufficient reason to withhold belief in His existence.  The argument goes, if God loves me and wants me to be saved; and if believing in God is all-important to my eternal salvation; then revealing Himself to me would be an act of salvific love, while remaining hidden is an act of cruelty.  I'm skipping over several crucial steps in the argument, of course, but you get the idea:  divine hiddenness is an epistemological nightmare.

Without philosophy, all we have is story. . .

Let's say you are having martial problems.  Being a good Catholic, you go to your pastor for some advice on how to improve communication.  You patiently tell Fr. Bob what you see as the problem.  Fr. Bob nods and reaches for his bible.  He flips it open to John 2.1-11 and reads to you the story of Jesus' first miracle at the wedding in Cana. 

When he finishes the story, he snaps the book closed and looks at you as if all your problems have been solved.  It takes you a moment to realize that Fr. Bob believes that he has addressed your problems.  You have a few questions about how the story applies to your situation.  When you are done asking your questions, Fr. Bob gives a slightly annoyed look, opens his bible, and re-reads John 2.1-11. 

OK, at this point you are starting to feel as though Fr. Bob is trying to teach you some sort of Kung-fu-Zen-Master-Grasshopper-Wax-on-Wax-off-lesson about listening or sitting quietly or something like this. . .who knows?!  Anyway,  try one more time. 

You reel off several very reasonable questions about applying the Wedding at Cana story to your particular situation.  There's a pleading tone in your voice and you throw in a dash of desperation to help convince Fr. Bob to help.  And to your horror, all he is does is re-read the Wedding at Cana story to you!

Assuming that violence is not an option, what should you do at this point?  Why is Fr. Bob behaving this way?  What are you expecting from Father that he is apparently unwilling or incapable of giving? 

The title of this post gives a hint at the direction of my thinking here. . .

Hooops

If I end up in Vienna next semester studying German. . .I'm still going to need English-language philosophy books in order to finish the dissertation!

Even though WVO Quine convincingly argues that all languages are ultimately translated into one another in an indeterminate fashion, German/French is still required for the PhL/PhD. 

Hoops, hoops. @#$% hoops.

Coffee Bowl Browsing

This is why you got no presents from Santa. . .

Ten cases of Liberal Hypocrisy

Ten cases of Conservative Hypocrisy (really, just nine cases:  David Cameron is no conservative)

Polyphasic sleep. . .I've always wanted to try this. . .they say it's particularly helpful for insomniacs.

Urban Dictionary. . .so you know what your kids/students/grandkids are talking about

Recycled credit cards

How to write and speak Postmodern Gibberish. . .this is one language I am fluent in.  Maybe I should write a PoMo homily?

I wrote papers just like this in grad school. . .what unmitigated @#$%!

God beyond Being?

In a post on the Incarnation below, I note that our ancestors in the faith struggled to express the Christian revelation in Greek philosophical terms.  Having no non-pagan theological language of their own, the Church Fathers borrowed and adapted the terms and methods of the Platonism of their day.  Our creeds are the best examples we have of how the marriage of Platonism and Biblical revelation can be worked out.

Many contemporary philosophical theologians, following Nietzsche and Heidegger, reject this Greek philosophizing and challenge us to begin a long journey back to the Patristic period to start over with nothing but the Biblical story: the older and newer testaments of our faith.   They argue that our journey back must begin by "forgetting metaphysics" and accepting that God is "beyond being."  But we might wonder why Greek philosophy (esp., metaphysics) poses such a problem for the Biblical witness of faith. 

Etienne Gilson, in his highly accessible book, God and Philosophy, lays out the problem of thinking philosophically about God:

The first character of the Jewish God was his unicity:  "Here, O Israel:  the Lord our God is one Lord."  Impossible to achieve a more far-reaching revolution in fewer words or in a simpler way.  When Moses made this statement, he was not formulating any metaphysical principle to be later supported by rational justification.  Moses was simply speaking as an inspired prophet and defining for the benefit of the Jews what was henceforth to be the sole object of their worship.  Yet, essentially religious as it was, this statement contained the seed of a momentous philosophical revolution, in this sense at least, that should any philosopher, speculating at any time about the first principle and cause of the world, hold the Jewish God to be the true God, he would be necessarily driven to identify his supreme philosophical cause with God.  In other words, whereas the difficulty was, for a Greek philosopher, to fit a plurality of god in a reality which he conceived to be one, any follower of the Jewish God would know at once that, whatever the nature of reality itself may be said to be, its religious principle must of necessity coincide with the its philosophical principle. . .When the existence of this one true God was proclaimed by Moses to the Jews, they never thought for a moment that their Lord could be some thing.  Obviously, their Lord was somebody. . .Hence the universally known name of the Jewish God--Yahweh, for Yahweh means "He who is" (38-40, emphasis added).

Essentially, what Gilson is saying here is that those trained in Greek philosophy who later became Christians in the early Church would find it very difficult to separate their philosophical ideas from their religious commitments.  They had not yet learned the art of Cafeteria Catholicism! At some point, these folks, being consistent philosophers and faithful Christians, would have to find a way to reconcile the God of Biblical revelation with the metaphysics they had found to be true. 

Gilson continues on this very point:  Now, as has been pointed by the unknown author of the Hortatory Address to the Greeks as early as the third century A.D. what Plato had said [about the ultimate nature of reality] was almost exactly what the Christians themselves were saying, "saving only the difference of the article.  For Moses said:  He who is, and Plato: That which is."  And it is quite true that "either of the expressions seems to apply to the existence of God."  If God is "He who is," he also is "that which is," because to be somebody is also to be something.  Yet the converse is not true, for to be somebody is much more than to be something (42).

According to the contemporary theologians who would teach us to forget metaphysics and find God beyond being, the problem with traditional theological thinking is that traditional theologians forgot (sometime after Aquinas) that God is Somebody before He is "something."  Their complaint is that traditional theology (called "onto-theology" by Heidegger) is really just a dressed-up Greek metaphysics with the occasional Biblical touch thrown in for decoration.  So, rather than Christians adopting Greek philosophy for their own theological ends, Greek philosophers adopted Christianity for their philosophical ends. 

You might be wondering at this point:  so what?  What does it matter that we have identified the God of Biblical revelation with the Greek concept of Being?

That is the question for tomorrow's post!  (Hint:  it's evil).