The Nature-Grace Distinction

What relevance to the distinction between the distinction between "State" and "Church"?

The reversal noted here by @jacobwwood is missed by many who think about the application of the nature-grace distinction to the distinction of the two powers. pic.twitter.com/UKGW1TV3CB

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 5, 2020

…because he has a much more "optimistic" theology of sin. That is, de Lubac has a naively optimistic understanding of justification through "implicit faith" that leads him to underestimate the extent to which the ’world‘ is under the domination of the devil.

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 5, 2020

An Interesting Reference

Here:

There is no evidence for the alleged apostolic obligation of perpetual continence until the third century, and that is contradicted by contemporary patristic evidence, e.g., Clement of Alexandria.

Furthermore, as Vogels notes, ‘… present-day canon law teaching has to regard the fourth century law as void, since the Codex Iuris Canonici regards “the conjugal act which by itself is apt to produce offspring” (conjugalis actus per se aptus ad prolis generationem), as belonging to the enduring “essence of marriage” (ad quem natura sua ordinatur matrimonium), which is guaranteed by “divine law” and i co sewuence, cannot be removed by tbe ecclesiastical lawgiver (canons 1061 s 1; 1057 s 2; 1059 CIC/1983)’ Vogels, Celibacy – Gift or Law?, Kansas City, 1993, p. 42.

Keunwoo Kwon Reviews Justice as a Virtue

 Reading Religion

While this book is an excellent work crafted by a first-rate scholar, this reader has a minor quibble about an omission rather than a commission. In this volume Porter does not address the issue of “burdened virtue” raised by Lisa Tessman in her 2005 Burdened Virtues (Oxford University Press). Since Porter discusses with nuance the complicated relationship between justice and eudaemonia in chapter 5, it is a little bit of a surprise that Tessman’s well-noted challenge to the Aristotelian moral tradition is entirely absent in this chapter. To what extent would Aquinas acknowledge the contingent connection between virtue and flourishing? Is it legitimate to see the virtue of justice as a mean in an Aristotelian sense, given that there seems to be no mean for an intense sensitivity to others’ suffering in this tragic world? Would Aquinas’s emphasis on supernatural grace and his eschatology based upon the Exitus-Reditus framework somehow help resolve this tension? These questions deserve a serious response from Porter, especially when her work implicitly touches upon the issues treated with care by Tessman.

A New Persoal Line of Inquiry

How is neo-Platonism to be distinguished from Aristotelianism?

Creation and Participation: The Metaphysical Structure of the World-God Relation in Aquinas by Byron Stefan Hagan

"The Transcendentality of Ens-Esse and the Ground of Metaphysics" by Cornelio Fabro
International Philosophical Quarterly 6 (3):389-427 (1966)

"The Intensive Hermeneutics of Thomistic Philosophy: The Notion of Participation"
Cornelio Fabro and B. M. Bonansea
The Review of Metaphysics
Vol. 27, No. 3, A Commemorative Issue. Thomas Aquinas, 1224-1274 (Mar., 1974), pp. 449-491

"Cornelio Fabro on the Distinction and Composition of Essence and Esse in the Metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas" by John F. Wippel
Review of Metaphysics 68 (3):573-592 (2015)

"Was St. Thomas Aquinas a Platonist?" by Luis Cortest
The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review
The Catholic University of America Press
Volume 52, Number 2, April 1988
pp. 209-219

Neoplatonism and Christian Thought

IVE website for Cornelio Fabro

Is CornelioFabro.org working properly?

The Imperial Episcopacy

Given the development of the monoepiscopate and sin, was it inevitable that the centralization of episcopal power/authority would occur in the patriarch? How is such an arrangement (created through positive law or by concession by the "subordinate" bishops) to be prevented from becoming some sort of tyranny? Synodality? Withdrawal from the synod or non-acceptance of a decision?

What is the basis of thinking of a national (or political) grouping of churches as a "particular Church"?

What are the disadvantages of churches being organized along ethnic or political divisions? (And the advantages?)

Related:
Congregation for Clergy: PRIESTS IN THE EARLY CHURCH AND IN VATICAN II

One "Reunion" Council and Two...

ecumenical councils? What did the decrees of Florence really say about the papacy? Something for me to look up, presumably in Denzinger.

From a comment:

I would advise those who have difficulty with Pope Francis’s teaching on the death penalty to follow the guidance of the CDF given in Donum Veritatis, 27-31. Some of Dr. Peters’ comments about the ordinary papal magisterium need clarification because they could be interpreted as challenging the universal ordinary teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, which is affirmed by three ecumenical councils: Florence (D-H, 1307); Vatican I (D-H, 3064), and Vatican II (Lumen Gentium, 22 and 25).

An Overhaul of the Aristotelian Sciences Is Needed?

Do the categories need to be reconsidered in a way going beyond the phenomenologists (e.g. William Marra)? What about the predicaments? Are the predicaments and attributes/properties confusing to the neophyte to Aristotelian philosophy? While the categories seem to be integral of the Metaphysics, are they so important to the Physics? Can one limit a discussion of change, generation, and corrruption to substance and accident? No, Aristotle does mention alteration of quality, quantity, and place. Out of those three, it seems that the category of quality is the one that may need to be revised in light of a better understanding of the natural world, even if it itself is a rather broad category that includes both color and thought?

Given that our Lord and His Apostles and Evangelists transmitted very little about political life and political arrangements (beyond the importance of obedience), would it be erroneous to conclude that political life is not important? Yes. It would also be erroneous to think that Catholic Social Teaching is not subject to change or correction, as its moral theology is only as good as the one doing it.

Means to End, End to Means

Time to reconsider God as end in respect of the relationship of the common good to the ultimate end?

From The End of Modernity by Thaddeus Kozinski:

According to St. Thomas, men cannot adequately understand in theory, let alone fulfill in practice, the detailed precepts of the natural law without the help of its author, God, and its divinely appointed interpreter, the Roman Catholic Church. With regard to a non-sacral foundation for political order, the Thomist Joseph May in the 1950s stated: “The only true doctrine is that civil society cannot prescind from the ultimate end [emphasis mine] both because the temporal welfare implies an ordering to the spiritual and supernatural, and because the individual citizens are directly and positively bound to tend to it.”[8] And even Dignitatis Humanae insists that it “leaves untouched the traditional Catholic doctrine about the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ” (Sec. 1). As Pope John Paul II often reiterated, the face of Jesus Christ is the only true mirror in which man can fully and accurately contemplate and comprehend his own nature and destiny; thus, only therein can he discern the moral values and goods most perfective of himself and the political order.

Does any prominent Father in the first millenium

apply the image of Spouse to the individual human person, and not just to the Church as a whole? Or is this more of a medieval Latin development, concomitant with shifts in Latin understandings of spirituality and the Eucharist?

Regarding the Bridegroom and the Bride, God the Son is the analogue of the male/man, and the Church (and perhaps the individual human person) is the analogue of the female. Just as the husband is the "active" principle and leads and imprints himself on his wife, and the wife is conformed to the husband, so Christ is the active principle, and the individual human person is conformed to Christ.

While the literal application of this imagery may be useful to female religious, I question its effectiveness for men. (As opposed to its being used as a theological metaphor to help our understanding of our communion with Christ and the Holy Trinity.)

And the individual human person has a filial relationship with God the Father by being sons in the Son. A logical consequence of the first, perhaps, our being conformed to Christ.

Would we say that the individual soul is the bride of the Holy Trinity as a whole? Or of the Father? I don't think so, even though it may be claimed that Israel is the bride of God the Father in the OT? It would be even more problematic if the human person were called to have a "conjugal" relationship with God the Father and a "filial" relationship as well. I believe the latter is literal, even if by analogy, while the former is only a metaphor or figurative language. So as I start reading through John Paul II's catechesis (and not the popularizations put forth by others) I will be keen to see how he parses this out.

Genesis 3:16

Dalrock: A big win for Grudem.

How does the Septuagint translate the relevant verses regarding the consequences of Adam's and Eve's sins?

The Metaphysics of Gender: A Thomistic Approach

Roots of Christianity

Assuming that it did exist, what remains of the pre-Christian Jewish oral (or written) tradition(s) of interpretation and commentary on the Old Testament? Was there something more authoritative or separate from the Oral Torah? How much of the tradition of early Jewish exegesis has been preserved?

A Note on Voting

Voting seems to be a materially unjust act, not a formally unjust one for most voters -- they have no control over who can be a candidate. In that respect, the parties and the "system" is at fault. Still, if they do not write in a candidate who they think is most qualified for the office, are they complicit in injustice? Who is an acceptable write-in candidates is determined by the state government, and I don't know if all states share the same rules. I am guessing that they don't. One can ask whether those rules or just or not, or if they place an undue burden on those seeking to exercise their vote in good conscience.

Do Christians have a political identity?

That is, does membership in a political community have any moral relevance?

There should be an ordering of our actions based on the good of the political community -- modern Catholic "social justice" proponents may even agree that there is an order of charity. But there will be disagreements in our judgment of particulars: what is to be considered a community, whether this group of people is a community, whether this community has the same group identity as another, and so on.

What is to be done in the absence of any real membership?

The Question of Married Priests in the Roman Rite

Chiesa: The Next Synod Is Already in the Works. On Married Priests

In mid-February Pope Francis will go to Chiapas, where hundreds of deacons with their wives are pushing to be ordained as priests. And in the Amazon as well the turning point seems to be near. It was all written down in the agenda of Cardinal Martini

What is the relationship of the bishops to canon law? Is there just one theory of ecclesiastical law? Would it be possible for a bishop to overwrite the canon law of the patriarchate of Rome with a law applicable only in his diocese? (e.g. could a bishop permit the ordination of married men for his diocese only and thus abrogate canon law within his own diocese? What is the (theory of the) relationship between the patriarch and the other bishops? And is that of Sacred Tradition?


Related: The Other Chiapas. Indigenous Clergy Yes, But Celibate
From myth to facts. In the Mexican diocese that Francis will visit in February ordinations to the priesthood are blossoming again, while the campaign for married priests is wilting. A letter from the bishop

A note on clemency?

So much to read

Liberty Fund's Online Library of Liberty is rather useful for someone studying the development of natural law theory and rights?

Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and Politic Law [1747]
Samuel von Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man According to the Law of Nature [1673]
Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (2005 ed.) 3 vols [1625]

American conservatives are supposed to be familiar with these texts; can they be harmonized with Catholic moral and political theology?

There are some other texts of the Scottish Enlightenment I should read...

Pufendorf condemning anger wholly: "ANGER is the most violent, as well as the most destructive of all the Passions, and is therefore to be resisted with our utmost Strength and Endeavour. It is so far from exciting Men’s Valour, and confirming their Constancy in Dangers, as some alledge, that it has a quite contrary Effect; for it is a Degree of Madness, it renders Men blind and desperate, and runs them headlong into their own Ruin."

Thoughts on religious and the common good

How are they no longer in the world? By no longer participating in the temporal common good, but wholly serving the supernatural common good in itself. Religious are no longer are bound by duties to family or their native political communities, etc. Their ties to family and community are severed. This does not mean that they do not have relations with a political community -- they may maintain economic relations. For example, even a self-sustaining monastery may exchange goods with members of the local community. The mendicants and members of younger religious orders created during and after the Catholic Reformation are primarily dependent upon the surplus wealth of the lay faithful. In that respect, only a few have been privileged to depend on God alone for their survival.

Would the apostolic works of the mendicants and active religious be considered a part of the temporal common good, or only a part of the supernatural common good? It seems that it would be the latter, if we understand the temporal common good to be obtainable by our power alone. If the temporal common good were identified with the complete perfection of the community, then one would have to take grace and supernatural perfection into account, but this is not something which man holding temporal authority (and nothing more) can provide, only God through His Church.

Is a temporal authority, then, concerned with natural perfection alone? Is there anything here that would preclude the hierarchy of the Church from wielding temporal authority in a Christian polity? Temporal authority is subject to the supernatural authority of the Church, but can the latter not hold both, just as charity is a general virtue which commands the other virtues? (Would it be the case then that temporal authority can be permitted to be separate, or that it can be delegated by the Church to others?)

Before Christ, temporal authority was limited in what it could bring about. With the Incarnation, has it been superceded by the authority of the Church with respect to Christian polities (or absolutely, with respect to all polities)?

A bottom-to-top approach in understanding the political community might lead one to think that a temporal authority must be separate from the supernatural authority of the Church, which, as the superior power, is placed over the temporal authority or recognized by the temporal authority as such.

To answer these questions we might have to reconsider what the end of living in common is: to provide for the perfection of all members through work and mutual exchange but also to live with others for its own sake... De Regno discusses why political authority is necessary -- because the common good is not identical to the private good of its members.

The supernatural common good is God; the hierarchy of the Church does legislate as to how charity is to be exercised. (To a limited extent? The bishops are more guides, pastors, than rulers of the Church?)

Is the political common good subsumed or incorporated into the supernatural common good, or is it kept separate but subordinate? Is it necessary to keep the political common good separate because in a polity there are sinners living with the just, and the laws of a polity must be proportioned to its members accordingly? (Humans are competent to judge only sensible actions. Hence this is one reason why the Church's authority with regard to the supernatural common good is limited?)

Social life does not require as much as living in union with God, and so laws which maintain external peace between the members of a community and command acts of justice can be imposed on both sinners and the just. The laws for a political community are therefore distinct from those for the supernatural community, the Church. But this does not necessitate that a bishop may not hold temporal authority. (Although it may be prudent for him not to, since his function is to take care of the Church and concern for temporal affairs may take away too much time, etc. from his pastoral work.) One could also argue that there should be a division of power in order to prevent an abuse of power.

The Medieval Appropriation of Aristotle

1. The medieval schoolmen studied Aristotle, that is clear. What was their purpose in doing so? Was it only for the sake of their theology? Or did they wish to learn philosophy as philosophy?

2. Did they respect the integrity and reasoning of the science, as it was laid out by Aristotle in his lectures? How seriously did they take Aristotle's treatment of the sciences? Was the predominant attitude to use Aristotle only in so far as he bolstered their theological arguments, but without looking at how his arguments fit into the rest of his sciences, as he laid them out? (If he contradicted the Faith he was corrected with a response and/or not employed.) Was their theology so important that they lost sight of the philosophical argumentation?

I have to say that from what I have read of St. Bonaventure, this characterization appears to be true for him. But what of the Franciscans who came after him, or the secular masters? One can appropriate Aristotle without learning well from him, and the early medievals may have been disadvantaged in comparison with their successors.

3. The medievals had inherited certain ways of understanding material creation, but much of this apparatus was not Divinely revealed but given by their non-Christian predecessors, for example the neo-Platonists. Still, are the Augustinian and Aristotelian accounts of the soul so opposed that they cannot be reconciled? With regards to understanding Aristotle's physics as preparation for metaphysics -- was there a problem there as well? Did some jump into metaphysics without acquiring physics first? It seems to me that the later medievals took his physics more seriously.

4. What about Aristotelian logic? I have been unable to investigate the medieval appropriation of logic and its development (especially in relation to metaphysics) I'll have to pick up a copy of Medieval Logic: An Outline of Its Development from 1250 to c. 1400 by Philotheus Boehner. Can differences between Aquinas and Scotus (or Ockham) be reduced or at least partially linked to different understandings/interpretations of Aristotle?

Original Sin

Idle and Rambling Speculations on Original Sin By Joseph Wood


The biological transmission of original sin has puzzled me, but it seems to have been taken seriously by the medievals. St. Thomas talks about the tranmission of sin and the infection of the powers of the soul. corruption of nature. What does that mean though, merely that because they are descendents of Adam that they are therefore subject to the providential order which he has caused through his sin? According to St. Thomas, no -- it is not merely a privation. So what is the corruption of nature, according to St. Augustine and St. Thomas? I need to read the relevant questions more carefully, but it may be that up to this point I have not been able to understand what St. Thomas has written because I was assuming an erroneous dualistic account of human nature, one that lead me to spiritualize original sin too much.