Tertullian: The Source of a Grand Mistake?

“We must escort it to the altar of God in a procession of good works to the sound of psalms and hymns. Then it will gain for us all that we ask of God.” -Tertullian

— Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP (@FrAquinasOP) March 12, 2021

Thread Reader

Intercession and Sacrifice

Problematic Western Christianity. Suffering is a means of purification and greater charity, but it is charity which makes intercession powerful.

“...real intercession is sacrificial; we have made little progress in prayer if it never hurts.”

(CHRISTIAN PROFICIENCY, Thornton, Ch. 8, II. Intercession) pic.twitter.com/4MPnt5nDDd

— Nᴀᴛᴇ (@oblatenate) March 12, 2021

The Source of the Tweet May be Probelmatic

But the thesis on"Western Church history" is interesting. Is St. Augustine the primary Latin source for its "ontology of Holy Orders"? And is Latin "theology of the priesthood" based upon St. Augustine solely, or are there other Latin fathers who are sources for it?

Cassian bought the mystical theology of the Egyptian Desert as described by Evagrius of Pontus to southern France. He adapted this desert mysticism to appeal to Latin Europeans. Reforming old monasteries and building new ones. Thus beginning the Gothic revolution. pic.twitter.com/oURBEgWWGs

— OZAbbey (@9AbbeyOZ) December 19, 2020

Cassian's master was Evagrius of Pontus d399CE. Over 15 years Evagrius had interviewed & documented the greatest of the Egyptian-desert mystics. He was meticulous & thorough. A brilliant psychologist. He cataloged 9 Logosmoi, which became Cassian's 8 passions & Gregory's 7 vices. pic.twitter.com/wIMQ8EHrI3

— OZAbbey (@9AbbeyOZ) December 19, 2020

Related:

John Cassian and Augustine on Peter and on the pope via /r/Christianity https://t.co/bLf6gJXSqX

— reddit_christianity (@rd_christianity) March 13, 2018

Well... No.

CWR Dispatch: “They Killed Him”: Deicide and Holy Saturday by Dr. Leroy Huizenga
Why Holy Saturday started to hit me differently a few years ago

Many Christians in modernity, I think, have a conception of the crucifixion restricted to a legal version of penal substitutionary atonement: Our problem is guilt, for which God must punish us, but loving us and desiring to forgive us, God punishes Christ in our place.

True enough as far as it goes, but when compared to classical soteriologies, whether Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant, it doesn’t go very far. 

Penal substitutionary atonement is not true at all, and worst of the satisfaction explanations of atonement.

The cross isn’t just a component in the economy of our salvation, something God needed to do to Christ to acquit us. The cross also reveals the hatred of the human race towards God. They killed him: God comes into the World in Jesus Christ, and Jew and Gentile conspire to cooperate in killing God for reasons of convenience.

The World stands guilty of deicide.

And so on Holy Saturday I feel generally sick to my stomach. The one man who could have helped us, we hammered him to a cross. And that means two things: Deep down, I’m capable of murder and I’m liable to being murdered. We mustn’t deceive ourselves about our capacity for sin, and that of others.

Most people have a theologia gloriae, a theology of glory in which we bypass the cross as we affirm ourselves and affirm God for affirming us in a circle of moral therapeutic deist bilge. True theology, as Luther so rightly and so often stressed, is a theologia crucis, a theology of the cross in which God’s murderers are saved by God through the very instrument of His murder. Our salvation cannot consist in self-improvement; our salvation consists in our own crucifixion.

Forget the Theotokos, the beloved disciple, the remaining apostles who fled and were in hiding, St. Mary Magdalene, Pilate's wife, Joseph of Arimathea, the women of Jerusalem crying in the streets... and probably there were many others as well. The whole entire world at that point in time, afterwards, and before, stood guilty of deicide? That is a bit of an exaggeration which might comport with certain tendencies in Western Christianity to pile on shame and create unnecessary guilt, but it isn't healthy. Is there any collective guilt because all of humanity is guilty of the crucifixion of Christ? Maybe some were guilty of indifference, others of fear, and so on. But not everyone else is guilty of killing or murdering Christ.

Now, one can say that we caused Christ to die, but not as an efficient cause but as a sort of final cause, in so far as Christ died (and chose to die) for us and our salvation. That is true. But that is not the same as having agency in killing Him.

Who isn't guilty of the sin of pride or disordered love? Only our Lord and the Theotokos are probably exempt from that one, and maybe St. John the Forerunner. With those exceptions, all are guilty of some sin worthy of death as a consequence (or a penalty, if you prefer). But that sin isn't necessarily the murder of Christ.

Who is guilty of killing God? Strictly speaking, maybe no one, as (the Son of) God, as divine, cannot be killed. The communication of idioms in this instance may be a bit tricky. Did those guilty of killing Christ believe He was God? It seems noi. They may have been culpable in rejecting the gift of belief that Christ is God, or culpable in denying that He was the Messiah. Does that make their sin formally "deicide"? I don't think so, even if  it could be argued that their sin was materially "deicide." Were they guilty of murdering a man innocent of any crimes against Roman law? Yes.

I don't see any awareness of non-Latin soteriology and theories of atonement in this essay, and I don't think anyone with such an awareness would have written something like this. This seems like the product of a Western Christian, and reveals what is problematic in certain strands of popular Western Christianity.

Latin Pomp

A remnant of court ritual from the Baroque? Is this sort of stiff performance necessary for altar servers? Latin traditionalists and not-so-traditionalists will hold on to rubrics for servers for the sake of "tradition," even if that tradition isn't that old and of questionable value. Is there a tie between this and other manifestations of "legalism" in the Latin mindset?




CWR

Battling Over Latin Christianity

Latin traditionalists and "conservatives."

1P5: Bishop Barron and the ‘Unhappy’ Renewal of the ‘Trad’ Movement by Timothy Flanders

Pope Benedict would later write concerning his formative years before the Council about his “anti-Roman resentment … imparted to us by our studies” [1] and that “we all had a certain contempt for the nineteenth century; it was fashionable then, somewhat kitsch piety and over-sentimentality — we wanted to overcome all that. We wanted a new era of piety” [2].
He recalls that when he saw the original document on revelation at Vatican II (on behalf of which Ottaviani had pleaded), he wished to circumvent the Magisterium in order to impose his own interpretation of Tradition upon it [3]. He “wanted out of classical Thomism[.] … Thomas’s writings were textbooks, by and large, and impersonal somehow[.] … I didn’t want to operate only in a stagnant and closed philosophy, but in a philosophy understood as a question — what is man, really? — and particularly to enter into the new, contemporary philosophy” [4].
Such castigation of the fathers of the immediate past and the imposition instead of their own interpretation of Tradition seems to be the defining characteristic of the Nouvelle Théologie party. This was the party that, in Barron’s words, “won the day at Vatican II.” This attitude on display by these men appears to run contrary to piety, opening up questions about the continuity that is claimed.

Is the reference to piety here when talking about Tradition and its expressions misplaced? Is a particular linguistic and theological expression of Tradition more important than the Person of Christ?

But at Vatican II, the conservatives switched sides and allied themselves with the liberals in order to overcome the prior Magisterium. They successfully convinced enough bishops to throw out all the original documents (save one, written by Bugnini). They suppressed all the warnings from Ottaviani and others, who stated that their dreams of a springtime were naïve. But after the Council was done, Barron notes, the liberals and conservatives immediately broke into two warring parties, represented in the journals Concilium and Communio.

 But was reconciling the Church with modernity or the modern world the only goal of these "conservatives" or these reformers aligned with or following Ressourcement?

This crisis will be overcome when conservatives renounce forever their alliance with the liberal heretics and unite themselves in charity to the traditionalists they once shunned. They must renew their filial piety toward the pontificates of Bl. Pius IX and St. Pius X.

This is to be stuck in an ecclesiological and theological rut, and of course merely re-confirms the Latin belief that Magisterium of the Church is to be centered in the person of the bishop of Rome.

Manifesto of Faith

website

NCReg: Cardinal Müller Discusses His Cinematic ‘Manifesto’ by Bree A. Dail
Arcadia Films released a documentary of the cardinal’s ‘Manifesto of Faith’ Oct. 1.

Interview with Fr. Gabriel Bunge

OrthoChristian: DOES ORTHODOXY NEED MONASTIC ORDERS? by Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel Bunge, Vasily Tsuper
Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Bunge) speaks about Catholic reforms, Orthodox tradition and the most important objective of monasticism

Meanwhile...

May God Grant Him Many Years

Church Life: Observations on Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity on Its 50th Anniversary written by Cyril O’Regan

Theological Casuistry

Re: Ott (and similar manuals) weighing or attempting to weigh the certainty or probability of theological opinions -- upon what crtieria is one opinion deemed to be merely probable versus being of common consensus? (It's been a while since I've picked Ott up so I probably have the exact terms wrong.) Does the author look not just across space but across time? Is there any evaluation of the strength of the opinions themselves other than authority or number of adherents?

Carl Olson on Gaudete et Exsultate

Pope Francis “takes aim” in “Gaudete et Exsultate”—and misses? by Carl E. Olson
The many good qualities and substantive passages in Gaudete et Exsultate are often overshadowed, or even undermined, by straw men, dubious arguments, and cheap shots.

We Are Special Snowflakes

Are they passing out purple (and red) zuchettos in Cracker Jack boxes these days? Re: De Incarnatione, Latin Christianity goes from one extreme (certain Western theories of atonement) to the other (an absolutist humanism/anthropocentricism).

Go read the Church Fathers on the Divine exchange and deification.

Archbishop José H. Gomez:

The archbishop explained that Advent is a time of waiting for the coming of Christ at Christmas, but it is also an opportunity for God to draw closer to his people in relationship, noting this desire of God to be close to creation is a unique aspect of Christianity.
“And we believe that our God comes to be with us, that he loves us so much that he makes himself one of us – sharing in the whole experience of our humanity, beginning as a little child in a mother’s womb.”

Accurate?

Orthodox Christianity: Christ is Risen! Part 7a. Subtle Differences Between East and West

Dr. Jeannie Constantinou

Before continuing with her discussion of 1 Corinthians in her seventh and last podcast on Christ’s Resurrection, Dr. Jeannie Constantinou discusses some of the subtle differences between the Eastern and Western understandings of doctrine.

What is the new Latin emphasis?

If it is no longer the Passion, is it a sentimental or Pelagian understanding of the Resurrection?

Crisis: Revisiting Jim Bishop’s The Day Christ Died by Michael De Sapio

Marian Consecration

Are Marian Consecrations, whether the version of St. Louis of Montfort or someone else, have taken a hold in the Latin West if the West had had a better liturgical spirituality and liturgical theology? Shouldn't our consecration to God the Father, initiated through Baptism which makes us adopted sons, and repeated in every Eucharist, be sufficient? What about analogues in the East?

wiki
Total Consecration: Consecration Explained
Consecration Prayer to Mary

Pick and Choose

Not your usual post about "cafeteria Catholicism."

Is it possible for a Latin to identify exclusively with certain parts of his ecclesial tradition and not with others. For example, stained-glassed windows may have a place as a form of sacred art but Gothic architecture, while grandiose and conveying the scene of God's transcendent glory, may nonetheless be lacking in other ways, especially with respect to being a fitting place for the celebration of the Eucharist if the building is too big. In that case the problem may be more of scale than of architecture. But Gothic even on a small scale, even wooden neo-gothic temples, may still be less than ideal, especially if coupled with sculpture or carvings done in the Gothic style.

Perhaps I could be convinced otherwise.

But back to my original query: if I were my Latin, what is my ecclesial heritage? Is it an all or nothing affair? Do I need to acknowledge all styles of sacred architecture as being part of my heritage, or can I pick and choose? What if I identify more with classical, mediterranean Christianity of the early Church and the Church Fathers and less with medieval Latin Christianity (or Baroque and beyond)?

Because of the papacy, Latin Catholics are used to seeing Western Christendom as having a single ecclesial culture or tradition. Let's identify two components to this (there are others, such as liturgical customs and rites, other practices, saints that receive special honor):
1. artistic expressions of that tradition (architecture, painting, sculpture, music)
2. theological expressions of the tradition

I wouldn't consider the Latin Fathers peculiar to a specific ecclesial tradition; all of the Fathers of the Church constitute a common patrimony for the Church Universal, even if certain Fathers are emphasized by some traditions more than others. (Though some Latin Fathers may be favored over others in a theological tradition or school.)

It seems to me that it is legitimate for a Latin Christian to identify with certain styles of artistic expression more than others, specially if we take into consideration the national origins of those styles. Latin theological traditions may seem to be more "international" in character since historically they were expressed in Latin. But it was legitimate even back then for Latins to favor one theological tradition over another. No one could truly claim that a medieval Latin monk was less "Latin" (much less Catholic) than a mendicant for preferring monastic theology to scholastic theology. Rather than a Latin monoculture, should we instead think of there being a legitimate diversity within Latin (or Western) [Catholic] Christianity? If there can be not only a legitimate pluralism in theological expressions and schools but a legitimate preference, why not with respect to artistic expressions?

One need not pretend that other artistic styles or traditions do not exist, but I think one can properly maintain that they don't have as central a place in one's received ecclesial tradition or identity than those that are preferred. But is it possible for a Latin Christian to have an ecclesial tradition or identity alone, or whether a Latin ecclesial tradition is specific to a community or local Church, and not to individuals. If the latter is true, then only a community or local Church could have an ecclesial tradition, while an individual believer can have only a preference. Moreover, since the Latin Churches have become more centralized around Rome and the number of liturgical rites in use has been reduced to one, the Roman (for the most part), can any local Church really claim that it continues to bear an ecclesial tradition, one that is historically proper to it?

A Chinese Catechism

Vatican Radio

A Taxonomy of Latin Catholics

Christian Order: On Doctrinal and Moral Disorders Abiding in the Church
Father John A. Hardon's 1990 Commentaries on the “Revised Draft” of the Catholic Catechism

Part 2

Was Fr. Hardon a Latin traditionalist? Perhaps not liturgically, as the author of the above recognizes. (I am not sure if Fr. Hardon had a published opinion on the EF.) But theologically, he was conservative and probably upheld some form of neo-scholasticism in addition to Thomism. As one can see, he criticizes certain points of the CCC based on the Council of Trent (accepted by Fr. Hardon as an ecumenical council) -- the same sort of mindset exhibited by Latin traditionalists which would criticize the judgment that the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, lacking an Institution Narrative, is invalid.

What should we call the position held by Fr. Hardon, Latin traditionalists, and probably many "conservative" Latin Catholics as well? Tridentine Latin Christianity?

Situating Luther

As Opposed to the Eternal Word?