Natural and Supernatural

"The Son reveals and glorifies the Name of His Heavenly Father and the Father glorifies the Son and bears witness...

Posted by Orthodox Christian Network on Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Jeff Mirus on Henri de Lubac's Vatican Council Notebooks, Vol. 1

Henri de Lubac's fascinating notes on Vatican II By Dr. Jeff Mirus

How good is this generalization?

A more immediate historical influence might be attributed to the two world wars of the twentieth century. Throughout the West, people came to have a profound respect for military precision and obedience, and all the habits of thought associated with soldiering. Those who can remember the 1950s will remember a society still interested in precise dress, short military hair cuts, and punctilious manners when it came to rank, not to mention the need to concern oneself primarily with one’s own duties, while accepting unquestionably the larger decisions of authority. This lent the entire culture a quality of systemic formalism.

(Ignatius Press)

Fr. David gave a presentation on St. Maximus the Confessor - I definitely will need to read more, especially his use of "nature." For now it would have to be his writings in English translation. I should improve my Greek! Is there a study of his appropriation (and rejection) of Aristotle's teachings?

Making a Mountain...

Aristotle and Aquinas: The Vital Difference by Don DeMarco, Ph. D.

As far as I'm concerned, personalism is not a significant difference between the ethics of Aquinas and that of Aristotle. (We might even ask the question of whether contenmporary personalism is even important to the moral theology of Aquinas, or if we are just trading one word, e.g. human, for another, person.)

"The difference between the ethics of Aristotle and Aquinas has to do with how virtue comes about. It is reasonable to be virtuous. Surely “honesty is the best policy.” That is simply a reasonable statement that does not require love. And virtue, for Aristotle, lies between two extremes. Thus, the virtue of courage, for example, is the midpoint between the vices of timidity and foolishness. This is all very sensible, though something is missing.

Perhaps Aristotle overestimated our capacity to be reasonable and under-estimated the importance of love. Whereas Aristotle links virtue to reason, Aquinas links it more properly to love. Therefore, as the Angelic doctor states, “Love is the form of all virtues.” This means that every virtue derives its degree of virtuousness by its association with love."

The important difference is that Aristotle writes from a non-Christian perspective, one which is unaided by Divine Revelation. Aristotle does not talk about "love" but he does talk about friendship in all of its forms, as it exists between human beings. But not, friendship between man and God. Should we be surprised then that he has no understanding of the beatitude to which we are called, or the grace that is necessary? No account of the "supernatural organism" which is so central to the moral theology of Aquinas (and of good Christian moral theology in general)?

The differences in their ethics is not due to competing accounts of human nature (with respect to the material or formal causes) - but with respect to human nature as it relates to its Creator, God.

IERS

Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science

Just started to look at the website; Finalism and “The Aristotelian-Thomistic Concept of Nature and the Contemporary Debate on the Meaning of Natural Laws,” (pdf) by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti at the Pontifical Athenaeum of the Holy Cross.

See also the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.

Medievalists.net: Man and nature in the Middle Ages

Dr. Hibbs once posed a question about the history of the word "nature" and how its use changed over time. I haven't come across an answer yet.

medievalists.net: Man and nature in the Middle Ages By Christian Rohr