Overestimating human responsibility

One of the many pernicious aspects of modern political life is the tendency, every time something bad happens, to look for someone to blame – or, where someone is to blame, to try to extend the blame to people who can’t reasonably be held responsible.  “It’s the Republicans’ fault!” “It’s the Democrats’ fault!” “It’s the NRA’s fault!”  “It’s the environmentalists’ fault!” “It’s the government’s fault!” “It’s the corporations’ fault!” “We need new legislation!”  “We need an investigation!”

Cundy on relativity and the A-theory of time

One of the many topics treated in Aristotle’s Revenge is the relationship between Aristotelian philosophy of nature and contemporary debates in the philosophy of time.  For example, I argue that, while at least the most fundamental claims of an Aristotelian philosophy of nature might be reconciled with the B-theory of time, the most natural position for an Aristotelian to take is an A-theory, and presentism in particular.  Thus was I led to defend presentism in the book – which requires, among other things, arguing that the presentist view of time has not been refuted by relativity theory.  Nigel Cundy disagrees.  A physicist with a serious interest in and knowledge of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, he has posted a detailed and thoughtful critique of this part of my book at his blog The Quantum Thomist.  Cundy thinks that presentism cannot be reconciled with relativity, and that other A-theories of time at least sit badly with it.  What follows is a response.

New from Oderberg

Fans of David S. Oderberg have long been looking forward to a new book from him, and now it is here – just in time to fill Christmas stockings.  The Metaphysics of Good and Evil is out this month from Routledge.  Details can be found at Routledge’s website.  From the cover copy:

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil is the first, full-length contemporary defence, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, of the Scholastic theory of good and evil – the theory of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and most medieval and Thomistic philosophers. Goodness is analysed as obedience to nature. Evil is analysed as the privation of goodness. Goodness, surprisingly, is found in the non-living world, but in the living world it takes on a special character. The book analyses various kinds of goodness, showing how they fit into the Scholastic theory. The privation theory of evil is given its most comprehensive contemporary defence, including an account of truthmakers for truths of privation and an analysis of how causation by privation should be understood. In the end, all evil is deviance – a departure from the goodness prescribed by a thing’s essential nature.

Science et Esprit on Aristotle’s Revenge

In the latest issue of the journal Science et Esprit (Vol. 72, Nos. 1-2), René Ardell Fehr kindly reviews my book Aristotle’s Revenge.  Judging it a “fine work,” Fehr writes:

Feser’s book attempts to support the broad Aristotelian metaphysical structure and its interpretation of modern science as the interpretation, while at the same time defending that structure from the attacks of philosophical naturalists and attacking the metaphysical assumptions of said naturalists.  It is a credit to Feser that he sees the inherent danger in such a project; throughout Aristotle’s Revenge he insists that he is not attacking modern science itself.  Feser writes: “I am not pitting philosophy of nature against physics.  I am pitting one philosophy of nature against another philosophy of nature.”

Brungardt on Aristotle’s Revenge

At Thomistica, philosopher John Brungardt reviews Aristotle’s Revenge.  He provides a fairly detailed overview of its methods and contents, and judges it “a broad, substantive book” that “has gathered and ordered a nearly universal range of topics and contemporary sources in the philosophy of nature and science,” so that “it is essential reading for those interested in the topic of the perennial Aristotelian philosophy of nature and its relationship to the particular natural sciences.”

Word to the Wise

Eric Wise takes to Facebook to express shock that an author would be annoyed with a book reviewer who doesn’t have anything to say about the actual contents of the book under review.  He also manages to pack an amazing amount of further obfuscatory nonsense into a small space.

Wise defends his criticism of my arguing for broadly Aristotelian views rather than grappling with Aristotle’s own texts by noting that the title of my book is, after all, Aristotle’s Revenge.  Shouldn’t I have called it something else if it wasn’t going to be offering detailed exegesis of De Partibus Animalium?  This is like criticizing Tolstoy’s title War and Peace on the grounds that it is really just about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia rather than war in general, or objecting to Nietzsche’s title The Antichrist on the grounds that it isn’t really about eschatology or apocalyptic literature. (I thought Straussians were not supposed to be literal-minded.)

Unwise book reviewing

Honestly, what runs through editors’ minds when they assign book reviewers?  The Claremont Review of Books has just run a review of Aristotle’s Revenge, by some fellow named J. Eric Wise.  And, heaven help us, it’s Glenn Ellmers’ review redivivus. 

Anyone who has read my book will be keen to learn what a reviewer might say about my views on topics like: embodied cognition and embodied perception; epistemic structural realism; causal powers and laws of nature; the A- and B-theories of time; presentism; reductionism in chemistry; primary versus secondary qualities; computational notions in natural science; biological reductionism; evolution and essentialism; neuroscientific reductionism; and so on.  You know, the stuff I actually discuss in the book.

The thread about nothing

It’s open thread time.  There is no topic, which means everything is on topic.  Now is the time finally to raise that issue that you keep bringing up out of left field in other threads – in comments I keep deleting while cussing you out under my breath.  From the Manhattan Project to the Manhattan Transfer, from Brian De Palma to Pachamama, from frontal lobotomies to Kantian autonomy – go ahead and hash it out.  As always, keep it civil, classy, and free of trolling and troll-feeding.

Was Aquinas a property dualist?

One must always be cautious when trying to relate Aquinas’s position on some philosophical issue to the options familiar to contemporary academic philosophers.  Sometimes he is not addressing quite the same questions they are, even when he seems to be.  Sometimes he does not use key terms in the same ways they do.  And he is working with a general metaphysical picture of the world – in particular, a picture of the nature of substance, essence, causation, matter, and other fundamental notions – that is radically different from the options familiar to contemporary philosophers, in ways the latter often do not realize.

Time-sensitive Turkey Day tweets (Updated)

UPDATE 12/10: I'm told that the Gordon-Carrier debate has been cancelled and may be rescheduled for another date.

Palgrave Macmillan announces a Cyber Week Sale until December 3.  Good time to pick up that copy of Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics you’ve been pining for.

Readers in the Los Angeles area might be interested to know that there will be a debate on December 13 at 7 pm between Catholic writer Timothy Gordon and atheist Richard Carrier, at St. Therese Catholic Church in Alhambra.

The Last Superstition in French

My book The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism is now available in a French translation.  The book is also available in Portuguese and German. 

While we're on the subject of translations, I suppose I might offer a reminder that Five Proofs of the Existence of God and Philosophy of Mind are also available in German, and that a book of some of my essays is available in Romanian.

Against candy-ass Christianity

The Mr. Rogers biopic, with Tom Hanks in the starring role, comes out this week and has been getting a lot of positive attention – in some cases, embarrassingly rapturous attention.  This might seem surprising coming from Hollywood types and secular liberals, given that Rogers was a Presbyterian minister.  But of course, Rogers’ adherence to Christian teaching has nothing to do with it.  Commenting on the movie, Angelus magazine reports that “Hanks mentions that Rogers was indeed an ordained minister but seems to take comfort that Rogers ‘never mentioned God in his show.’”  In the movie’s trailer, a man says to Mr. Rogers “You love broken people, like me,” to which Rogers replies “I don’t think you are broken” – never mind the doctrine of original sin.

Join the Ur-Platonist alliance!

What’s in a name?  I’m an unreconstructed Thomist, but I would be the last to deny that it is a mistake to think that one man, Thomas Aquinas, somehow got everything right all by himself.  Aquinas was, of course, part of a much larger tradition that extends back to the ancient Greek philosophers.  Much of his achievement had to do with synthesizing the best elements from the different strands of thought he inherited from his predecessors, especially the Platonic-Augustinian and Aristotelian traditions.  And of course, his successors added further important elements to the mix. 

Oppy and Lim on Five Proofs

Graham Oppy’s article “On stage one of Feser’s ‘Aristotelian proof’”, which responds to some of the arguments I give in Five Proofs of the Existence of God, has recently been posted at the website of the journal Religious Studies.  I will be writing up a response.  (In the meantime, readers who have not seen it may be interested in my recent debate with Oppy on Capturing Christianity.) 

In the Fall 2019 issue of Nova et Vetera, Joshua Lim kindly reviews Five Proofs.  From the review:

Two popes and idolatry

How bad can a bad pope get?  Pretty bad.  Here are two further examples from history.  Marcellinus was pope from c. 296 – 304.  During his pontificate, Emperor Diocletian initiated a persecution of the Christians, requiring the surrender of sacred texts and the offering of incense to the Roman gods.  Marcellinus and some of his clergy apparently complied, though Marcellinus is also said to have repented of this after a few days and to have suffered martyrdom as a result.  Some claim that by virtue of his compliance he was guilty of a formal apostasy that resulted in loss of the papal office, though his purported repentance and martyrdom also led to his veneration and recognition as a saint.

Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics

My article “Natural Law Ethics and the Revival of Aristotelian Metaphysics” appears in The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics, edited by Tom Angier.  You can find out more about the volume at the Cambridge University Press website and at Cambridge Core.

The strange case of Pope Vigilius

The increasingly strange pontificate of Pope Francis is leading many Catholics into increasingly strange behavior.  Some, like the emperor’s sycophants in the Hans Christian Anderson story, insist with ever greater shrillness that nothing Pope Francis does is ever really in the least bit problematic.  If your eyes seem plainly to be telling you otherwise, then it is, they insist, your lying eyes that are the problem.  Others, incapable of such self-deception, are driven into a panic by the pope’s manifestly problematic words and actions.  They overreact, either beating a retreat into sedevacantism or judging that the claims of Catholicism have been proven false and that the only recourse is Eastern Orthodoxy.

New from Editiones Scholasticae

Editiones Scholasticae, the publisher of my books Scholastic Metaphysics and Aristotle’s Revenge, informs me that both of them will within a few days be available in eBook versions.  Also new from the publisher is a German translation of my book Philosophy of Mind.  (Previously they had published German translations of The Last Superstition and Five Proofs of the Existence of God.)  Take a look at Editiones Scholasticae’s new webpage for further information, as well as for information about other new releases from the publisher.  You will find both new works by contemporary writers in the Scholastic tradition, and reprints of older and long out of print works in that tradition.  (The original webpage is still online as well.)

John Paul II in defense of the nation and patriotism

In chapters 11-15 of his last book Memory and Identity, Pope St. John Paul II provides a lucid exposition of the idea of the nation as a natural social institution and of the virtue of patriotism, as these have been understood in traditional natural law theory and Catholic moral theology.  The relevance to current controversies will be obvious.

What is the nation, and what is patriotism?  John Paul begins by noting the connection between the nation and the family, where the former is in a sense an extension of the latter:

Masculinity and the Marvel movies

Some time back, John Haldane gave a Thomistic Institute talk here in Los Angeles on the theme of evil in the movies and in the movie industry.  During the Q and A (at about the 40 minute mark, and again after the 1:16 mark) the subject of superhero movies came up, and Haldane was critical of their current prevalence.  In developing this criticism, he draws a useful distinction between fantasy and imagination.

Around the web

At The Catholic Thing, Fr. Thomas Weinandy on the studied ambiguity of Pope Francis.  In his new book Conciliar Octet, Fr. Aidan Nichols on the hermeneutic of continuity and Vatican II.

At Medium, philosopher Kathleen Stock on gender theory versus academic freedom in the UK.  At Inside Higher Education, twelve prominent philosophers defend the right to free inquiry on matters of sex and gender. 

Philosopher Daniel A. Kaufman on the “woke” fanatics increasingly infesting academic philosophy, at The Electric Agora.  Richard Marshall interviews Kaufman at 3:16. 

Transubstantiation and hylemorphism

One of the key themes of the early modern philosophers’ revolt against Scholasticism was a move away from an Aristotelian hylemorphist conception of the nature of physical substance to some variation or other of the mechanical philosophy.  The other day I was asked a very interesting question: Can transubstantiation be formulated in terms of a mechanistic conception of physical substance rather than a hylemorphic one?  My answer was that I would not peremptorily say that it cannot be, but that the suggestion certainly raises serious philosophical and theological problems.

Harvard talk (Updated)

This Friday, October 4, I will be giving a talk at Harvard University, sponsored by the Abigail Adams Institute.  The topic will be “The Immateriality of the Mind.”  The event will be in Sever Hall, Room 103, at 7:30 pm.  You can RSVP here.

UPDATE 10/11: Some photos from the talk have been posted at Facebook.

Aristotle’s Revenge and naïve color realism

The American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting in Minneapolis this November 21-24 will be devoted to the theme of the philosophy of nature.  On the Saturday of the conference there will be an Author Meets Critics session on my book Aristotle’s Revenge.  It will be chaired by Patrick Toner and the speakers will be Robert Koons, Stephen Barr, and myself.

While we’re on the subject, I’d like to call your attention to a couple of very interesting responses to Aristotle’s Revenge, the first from Nigel Cundy at The Quantum Thomist and the second from Bonald at Throne and Altar.  Both writers know the relevant science and both are open-minded and knowledgeable about the relevant philosophical ideas too.  Both seem largely sympathetic to the book but also raise serious criticisms.  They cover a lot of ground (since the book itself does) so there’s no way I can respond to everything they say in one post.  So this will be the first in a series of occasional posts responding to their criticisms.

Fastiggi on the revision to the Catechism (Updated)

UPDATE: The conversation continues.  Prof. Fastiggi has responded to this post in the comments section over at Catholic World Report. I have cut and pasted his responses below, under the text of my original post, together with my replies.  Scroll down to take a look. 

In the comments section under my recent Catholic World Report article “Three questions for Catholic opponents of capital punishment,” theologian Prof. Robert Fastiggi raises a number of objections.  What follows is a reply.  Fastiggi’s objections are in bold, and I respond to them one by one.

Three problems for Catholic opponents of capital punishment

What is left to say about Pope Francis and capital punishment?  Plenty, as I show in a new Catholic World Report article titled “Three questions for Catholic opponents of capital punishment.”  Those who appeal to the pope’s statements on the subject in order to justify the claim that Catholics are now obligated to oppose capital punishment face three grave problems.

A further reply to Glenn Ellmers

At Law and Liberty, Glenn Ellmers has replied to my response to his review of my book Aristotle’s Revenge.  He makes two points, neither of them good.

First, Ellmers reiterates his complaint that I am insufficiently attentive to the actual words of Aristotle himself.  He writes: “This where Feser and I part.  He thinks that it is adequate to have some familiarity with ‘the broad Aristotelian tradition’ – a term of seemingly vast elasticity.  I do not.”  Put aside the false assumption that my own “familiarity” is only with the broad Aristotelian tradition rather than with Aristotle himself.  It is certainly true that my book focuses on the former rather than the latter.  So, is this adequate?

Review of Smith’s The AI Delusion

My review of economist Gary Smith’s excellent recent book The AI Delusion appears today at City Journal.

Ellmers on Aristotle’s Revenge

Last week at Law and Liberty, Glenn Ellmers reviewed my new book Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science.  It’s one of the weirdest book reviews I’ve ever gotten.  Today my response appears at Law and Liberty.

Gage on Five Proofs

I’ve been getting some strange book reviews lately.  First up is Logan Paul Gage’s review of my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God in the latest issue of Philosophia Christi.  Gage says some very complimentary things about the book, for which I thank him.  He also raises a couple of important points of criticism, for which I also thank him.  But he says some odd and false things too. 

Scotus on divine simplicity and creation

In my exchange with Ryan Mullins on the doctrine of divine simplicity, I noted that one of the problems with his critique of the doctrine is that he pays insufficient attention to the history of the debate about it.  Hence he overlooks what should be obvious possible responses to his criticisms, such as Aquinas’s appeal to the distinction between real relations and logical relations.  He also makes sweeping attributions of certain views to all defenders of divine simplicity, overlooking crucial differences between proponents of the doctrine.  Other critics of divine simplicity also often make these mistakes.  A consideration of the views of John Duns Scotus further illustrates the range of issues with which any serious general critique of divine simplicity must deal.

Aquinas on creation and necessity

While we’re on the subject of divine simplicity and creation, let’s consider a closely related issue.  In the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas argues that God wills himself, that he does so necessarily, that what he wills he wills in a single act, and that he wills other things besides himself.  Doesn’t it follow that he also wills these other things necessarily?  Doesn’t it follow that they too must exist necessarily, just as God does?  No, neither of these things follows.

A further reply to Mullins on divine simplicity (Updated)

UPDATE 8/25: David Mahfood replies to Mullins at Eclectic Orthodoxy.  I've got a couple of followup posts, here and here.

UPDATE 8/24: Brandon Watson and John DeRosa also respond to Mulllins.

UPDATE 8/21: Look out!  The Scotist Meme Squad has entered the fray.

At Theopolis, Ryan Mullins has now replied to those of us who had commented on his essay criticizing the doctrine of divine simplicity.  (The other commenters were Peter Leithart and Joe Lenow.)  What follows is a response to what he has to say in reply to my comments on the essay, specifically.

Summer open thread

It’s about time for another open thread, so here it is.  From violent crimes to medieval times to cringe-making rhymes, nothing is off-topic.  Still, as always, please keep it classy and keep it civil.

While I’ve got your attention, let me take this opportunity to make several comments about comments.  First, a few readers have complained recently that their comments are not appearing.  In fact, they are appearing.  What these readers do not realize is that after a thread exceeds 200 comments, you have to click on the “Load more…” prompt at the bottom of the comments section to see the most recent comments.  It’s easy to miss, but it’s there.  Click on it and you’ll no doubt find that comment that you thought had disappeared into the ether (and perhaps had needlessly re-posted several times).

Contra Mullins on divine simplicity

The Theopolis Institute website is hosting a conversation on divine simplicity, with an opening essay by Ryan Mullins criticizing the doctrine and responses so far from Peter Leithart, Joe Lenow, and me.  More installments to come over the next couple of weeks.  You can read my own response to Mullins here.

McCabe on the divine nature

Herbert McCabe was one of the more important Thomists of the twentieth century, and a great influence on thinkers like Brian Davies.  Not too long ago, Davies and Paul Kucharski edited The McCabe Reader, a very useful collection of representative writings.  Among the many topics covered are natural theology, Christian doctrine, ethics, politics, and Aquinas.  McCabe’s style throughout is lucid and pleasing, and the book is full of insights.  What follows are some remarks on what McCabe has to say about one specific theme that runs through the anthology, and about which he was especially insightful – the divine nature.

Hayek’s Tragic Capitalism

Those who weren’t able to read it when it was behind a paywall might be interested to know that my recent Claremont Review of Books essay “Hayek’s Tragic Capitalism” is now accessible for free.

As I noted before, the essay is a companion piece of sorts to my recent Heritage Foundation lecture on “Socialism versus the Family.”  My recent post on post-liberal conservatism is relevant too.

Debate with Graham Oppy

Yesterday on Cameron Bertuzzi’s Capturing Christianity program, I had a very pleasant and fruitful live debate with Graham Oppy about my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God.  The debate lasted about an hour and a half (and was followed by a half-hour Q and A for Capturing Christianity’s Patreon supporters).  You can watch the debate on YouTube.

Review of Tallis

My review of Raymond Tallis’s excellent recent book Logos: The Mystery of How We Make Sense of the World appears in the July 26 issue of The Times Literary Supplement. 

The latest on Five Proofs

Tomorrow, Thursday July 25, Cameron Bertuzzi’s Capturing Christianity program will be hosting a live discussion between atheist philosopher Graham Oppy and me about my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God. 

Philosopher Stephen L. Brock briefly reviews the book in The Review of Metaphysics.  From the review:

Psychoanalyzing the sexual revolutionary

When someone makes a claim or presents an argument and you pretend to refute it by calling attention to some purported personal shortcoming of his (such as a bad character or a suspect motive), then you’ve committed an ad hominem fallacy.  The reason this is a fallacy is that what is at issue in such a case is the truth of the claim or the cogency of the argument, and you’ve changed the subject by talking about something else, namely the person making the claim or argument.  But as I explained in a post from a few years ago, not every criticism of a person making a claim or argument is an ad hominem fallacy, because sometimes the topic just is the person himself.  For instance, when a person is prone to committing ad hominem fallacies and persists in them despite gentle correction, it is perfectly legitimate to note that he is irrational and maybe even morally defective in certain ways – for example, that he is in thrall to the vice of wrath, or has a willful personality, or is guilty of a lack of charity toward his opponents.

Interview on Aristotle’s Revenge

UPDATE 7/17: Part 2 of the interview has now been posted.

Recently Michael Egnor interviewed me about my book Aristotle’s Revenge for the Discovery Institute.  The interview will be posted in three parts, spread across the Institute’s ID the Future and Mind Matters podcasts, and today the first part has been posted.  (I’m critical of Intelligent Design theory in the book, so the Institute is showing good sportsmanship in hosting the interview!)

The metaphysics of the will

Last month, at a conference at Mount Saint Mary’s College in Newburgh, NY on Aquinas on Human Action and Virtue, I presented a paper on “The Metaphysics of the Will.”  You can listen to audio of the talk at the Thomistic Institute’s Soundcloud page.

Speaking (what you take to be) hard truths ≠ hatred

Suppose I was driving past you and you stopped me to warn that a bridge was out up ahead and that I was risking my life by continuing in that direction.  Suppose I reacted indignantly, accusing you of hating me and hoping that I drove off the bridge to my doom.  This would no doubt strike you as a most bizarre and irrational response.  Obviously, there is nothing whatsoever in what you said that entails any ill will toward me.  On the contrary, if anything, what you said is evidence of concern for me. 

Norman Geisler (1932 – 2019)

I am sorry to report that philosopher and theologian Norman Geisler has died.  Geisler stood out as a Protestant who took a broadly Thomist approach to philosophy and theology, and as an evangelical who vigorously defended the classical theist conception of God against the currently fashionable anthropomorphism he aptly labeled “neo-theism” (and which Brian Davies calls “theistic personalism”).  Those of us who sympathize with these commitments are in his debt.

Frege on what mathematics isn’t

Mathematics is an iceberg on which the Titanic of modern empiricism founders.  It is good now and then to remind ourselves why, and Gottlob Frege’s famous critique of John Stuart Mill in The Foundations of Arithmetic is a useful starting point.  Whether Frege is entirely fair to Mill is a matter of debate.  Still, the fallacies he attributes to Mill are often committed by others.  For example, occasionally a student will suggest that the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4 is really just a generalization from our experience of finding four things present after we put one pair next to another – and that if somehow a fifth thing regularly appeared whenever we did so, then 2 and 2 would make 5.

Just say the damn sentence already

Suppose you are a Catholic who thinks the death penalty ought never to be applied in practice under modern circumstances.  Fine.  You’re within your rights.  Whatever one thinks of the arguments for that position, it is certainly orthodox.  However, that position is very different from saying that capital punishment is always and intrinsically wrong, wrong per se or of its very nature.  That position is not orthodox.  It is manifestly contrary to scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the consistent teaching of the popes up until at least Benedict XVI.  The evidence for this claim is overwhelming, and I have set it out in many places – for example, in this article and in this book co-written with Joe Bessette.  Attempts to refute our work have invariably boiled down to ad hominem attacks, red herrings, question-begging assertions, special pleading, straw man fallacies, or other sophistries and time-wasters.

Links for thinkers

David Oderberg’s article “Death, Unity, and the Brain” appears in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.

Nicholas Maxwell at Aeon calls for a revival natural philosophy.  Gee, maybe someone ought to write a book on the subject.

Philosopher Kathleen Stock on gender dysphoria and the reality of sex differences, at Quillette.  At Medium, philosopher Sophie Allen asks: If transwomen are women, what is a woman?

The Onion on liberal self-satisfaction.

The bishops and capital punishment

A group of five prelates comprising Cardinal Raymond Burke, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Cardinal Janis Pujats, Archbishop Tomash Peta, and Archbishop Jan Pawel Lenga this week issued a “Declaration of the truths relating to some of the most common errors in the life of the Church of our time.”  Among the many perennial Catholic doctrines that are now commonly challenged but are reaffirmed in the document is the following:

In accordance with Holy Scripture and the constant tradition of the ordinary and universal Magisterium, the Church did not err in teaching that the civil power may lawfully exercise capital punishment on malefactors where this is truly necessary to preserve the existence or just order of societies (see Gen 9:6; John 19:11; Rom 13:1-7; Innocent III, Professio fidei Waldensibus praescripta; Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, p. III, 5, n. 4; Pius XII, Address to Catholic jurists on December 5, 1954).

Augustine on capital punishment

In his book On Augustine: The Two Cities, Alan Ryan says that Augustine’s “understanding of the purpose of punishment made the death penalty simply wrong” (p. 82).  That is a bit of an overstatement.  In The City of God, Augustine writes:

However, there are some exceptions made by the divine authority to its own law, that men may not be put to death.  These exceptions are of two kinds, being justified either by a general law, or by a special commission granted for a time to some individual.  And in this latter case, he to whom authority is delegated, and who is but the sword in the hand of him who uses it, is not himself responsible for the death he deals.  And, accordingly, they who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, “You shall not kill.” (Book I, Chapter 21)